A Pessimist in Theory and Practice

by Frederic Mayer Bird

XX.

APOLOGY FOR LYING.

If you do not understand my waiting for Mabel and the girls to prompt this move, and allowing them to urge it against my apparent reluctance, I ascribe this failure on your part to lack of experience, rather than to any deeper deficiency. Some men like to make a parade of independence, and to do—or pretend to do—everything of themselves, without consulting or considering their womankind. But such are not the sort I choose my friends from; for I have been accustomed to regard both brain and heart as desirable appurtenances to a man. There is little Bruteling, at the club, who would like to be considered a man of the world—but I can't waste space or time on him. And I have met family men even—but I don't meet them more than once if I can help it—who regard their wives and sisters as playthings, dolls, upper-class servants, not to be trusted, taken into their confidence, or treated with any real respect. Such heresies have no place under a Christian civilization, which has exalted Woman to her true rank as the equal and helpmeet of Man, the object of his tenderest affections and most loyal services. It is in his domestic life that one's true character is shown; and Home is not only the dearest place on earth to me and to every one whose head is level, but the stage on which his talents and qualities are best brought out.

You think that I don't practice what I preach; that I introduce within those sacred precincts too much of play-acting and small diplomacy, as Jane says; that even at this moment my thoughts and intentions in a matter which concerns us all are imperfectly revealed to my nearest and dearest? Ah, that is owing to the difference between the sexes, and to the singular lines on which the Sex was constructed, mentally speaking. I don't wish to criticize the Architect's plans, but it seems to me I could suggest improvements which might have simplified relations, and avoided much embarrassment. The difficulty is that women, as a rule, can neither use nor appreciate Frankness. Just after I was married, I thought it was only the fair thing to tell Mabel about several girls I had been sweet on before I knew her. Would you believe it, she burst into tears, and upbraided me with my brutality; and she brings up that ill-advised disclosure against me to this day. I know several ladies who will not lie, under ordinary circumstances—not for the mere pleasure of it, at least; Clarice, for instance, and Jane, I believe; but not one who will tell the whole truth, or forgive you for telling it. Well, well, we have to take them as they are, and make the best of them: they have other redeeming traits, as Jane says of me. In heaven these inequalities will be done away, and one can afford to speak out—at least I hope so. But meantime you can see how these feminine peculiarities hamper a man, and check his natural candor, and impose on him a wholly new, or at least a hugely modified, ethical code. If I were to follow my original bent, which was uncommonly direct and guileless, I should be in hot water all the time. It is this struggle between nature and—well, I can hardly call it grace; let us say necessity, or environment—which is making me bald, and fat, and aging me so fast. You have seen, in the course of this narrative, what scrapes I have gotten into by speaking before I stopped to think, and blurting out the simple truth. I was once as honest as they are ever made—and for practical and domestic uses nearly an idiot. I have been obliged, actually forced, to deny myself the indulgence of a virtue, and diligently to cultivate the opposite vice. The preachers don't know everything: I could give them points. I don't say I have succeeded remarkably, and the exercise has been deeply painful to me; but it was absolutely essential, if I was to be fit for the family circle, and able to do or get any good in this imperfect world. There is no escape, unless you live in a hermitage like Hartman. You may have noticed that my loved ones sometimes appear to treat me with less than absolute respect and confidence: it is the result of this life-conflict, which has left me with a character mixed, and in one respect wrecked. But they would think much worse of me than they do if I told them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, on all occasions. Thus I might—and then again I might not—go to our poor Princess, and say, "Clarice, Mabel and Jane think I ought to see Hartman. I think so too, and they report you as concurring in the verdict. This is delicately put under cover of my health and the fall fishing; but we all know that you and Jim want looking after more than I do, and that bigger game than trout is to be caught. Tell me what you want me to say to him and do with him, and I will start at once." Some women might stand that, possibly, but not the ones I am used to: such would be eminently the way not to attain my benevolent end. No, no; you can do nothing in such cases without finesse, as Jim calls it, and strategy, and tact, and management; and if you have not these gifts by nature, you must acquire them, whatever they may cost. I still hold to my principles; but I don't propose to run them into the ground. In morality, as elsewhere, a little too much is apt to be worse than much too little; and theory and practice are very different things, not to be rashly confounded. You want to hold the right theories, and then to live as near them as depraved mundane conditions will allow. The manly weapons of which Jane spoke so scornfully last night are the right ones—when you can use them. In the case in hand, to tell all I know would have been at any time, and would still be, impossible and ruinous. Hartman is not so far out on some points: as he says, we did not arrange the present scheme of things, and could not be proud of it if we had.

You may say, and I could not deny, that my diplomacy, such as it is, is not always employed for the benefit of women only. Hartman is a luminous and transparent soul—too much so for his own good: why did I practise occasionally on him? I can explain that best on general principles.

In a world a majority of whose inhabitants are female, demoralization has naturally extended far and wide, till strict veracity has become unpractical. The first falsehood (after the serpent's) must have been humiliating to him who uttered it, and a fatal example to those who heard; but mankind soon grew used to the new fashion. I pass over the rude barbarian ages, whose gross and inartistic lying offers no claim to respectful and sympathetic interest, and no excuse but the lame one of selfish depravity, common to the race. But with the inroads of civilization Life became complex, and Truth was found too simple and rigid to fit with all its varied intricacies. That is, when Truth is simple. "Don't you think my baby beautiful?" demands a fond parent. "No, I don't: far from it." That is the truth; but its naked and repulsive brutality demands to be clothed with the garb of humane and graceful fiction. "Prisoner at the bar, are you guilty or not guilty?" He is guilty, of course; but if he says so, it is a dead give-away. In this case indeed the interests of Truth are one with those of Society, though not of the prisoner; but often it is different. The basis of ethics, our moralists say, is as largely utilitarian as it is ideal. If so, is there any special sacredness about cold facts, that they should get up on end and demand to be published everywhere continually? Truth ought to be modest, and not claim all the observances and honors, seeing there are so many other deities whom we poor mortals are no less bound to worship. When Grotius' wife lied to the policeman about her husband's whereabouts, the lie was an act of piety, whereas truthtelling would have been murderous infidelity. If the minions of the law were after me, would I thank Mabel and Jane and Herbert for telling them which way I had gone? There is no more aggravated nuisance than he who insists on exposing all he knows at all times and places—as I used to do before I learned these tricks. Look at poor Hartman, ejecting his honest backwoods thought without asking whether it was a wise and decent offering to his small but highly select audience; and see what trouble he has brought on himself and all of us thereby.

This outspokenness is often mere self-indulgence. Take me, for instance: to this day, in spite of all the lessons I have had, it is far easier and pleasanter for me to tell the truth than not. People of this temperament must learn to put a check on nature. Self-indulgence is bad, all agree, and self-denial useful and necessary. This is the way virtues clash and collide. I say, confound such a world. What is a plain man to do in it? As the poet sings, the Summum Bonum belongs in heaven, and you can't expect to get at it here, but must simply do the best you can, which is generally not very good. And then, as another poet puts it, very likely nobody will appreciate your efforts, but you will get cuffed for them: we are punished for our purest deeds, and so forth.—But this is trenching on Hartman's province. It is well that I should think all this out now: I can talk it over with him before we get to business. He will want sympathy with his notions about the depravity of things in general, and that will smooth the way, and make him willing to open up on the specific woe that lies nearest.

To return to our muttons. The guilt of duplicity has lain heavy on my conscience for two months, but how can I help it? I don't so much mind keeping what I know from Mabel and Jane, for it is not their affair. But it is Clarice's affair—most eminently so—and I had promised solemnly to tell her at once when I knew or thought of anything that concerned her. It was obviously impossible to keep my promise in this case—not on my account, but on hers. It will not be easy to tell even Jim that I overheard their last colloquy, and witnessed the tragical parting scene: I'll have to watch my opportunities, and spring that on him just at the right moment, when it will have the best effect. Now any one who knows Clarice must see that to tell her this would be to take the most awful risks, and probably to destroy all chance of reconciling them; that is level to the meanest apprehension, I judge. No sir: it can't be done till I have seen Jim, and got things in train. Properly handled, the secret—that is, my possession of it, which is a second secret, almost as weighty as the original one—may be a tool to manage both these intractable subjects with, and bring them to terms: in a fool's hands, and thrown about promiscuously, it would be an infernal machine to blow us up. No: I'll take whatever guilt there is, rather than hurt Clarice now and hereafter. Do you want to know my opinion of a man who is always and only thinking about keeping his hands clean and his conscience at peace, so that he can't do a little lying—or it might be other sinning—on adequate occasion, to serve his friends or a good cause? I think he is a cad, sir—a low-minded cad; and of such is not the kingdom of heaven. It may not occur every day: it might not do to insert in the text-books as a rule; but once in a while there may be better businesses than saving one's soul and keeping one's conscience void of offense.[2]

I am arguing against my own nature in all this. In my heart I love Truth above all things, and follow and serve her with a devotion that is probably exaggerated. But I can't help seeing that there are two kinds of her. When she is simple and obvious, she seems to reside in bare facts, which we may easily respect too much, for what are they but blackguard carnalities? Preraphaelitism in art, Realism in literature, might be all very well if they would keep their place—which is in the kitchen. Some may want pots and pans, and scullions, and pigs' feet, and ribs of beef described. I don't myself; but it is a free country, and vivid and accurate portraiture of these delicacies may constitute the main charm of literature for some readers, possibly. But Realism wants to take its pots and pans into the parlor: it always overdoes things. "A daisy by the river's brim a yellow daisy was to him, and it was nothing more." Well, what else should it be?—But perhaps I have not got that right. Pass on to our next head.

Truth is not always simple—by no means always. Often she is highly complex, and as much mixed as I was just now; and then you don't know where she is, or what she is, and it gets to be all guesswork. One says, Here, and another says, There: the philosophers upset each other's schemes in turn, the theologians hurl reciprocal excommunications, the scientists of to-day laugh at those of last year. If Pilate meant it this way, we owe him some sympathy and respect. "Speak the truth and shame the devil," they say. Bah! [I think this expletive ought to be spelt Baa.] When you know what the truth is, you are more likely to shame your friends, and become obnoxious and ridiculous. And in most cases you don't know, and if you suppose you do, you are mistaken. I have thought out a way of approximating Truth on a large scale, and more nearly than most succeed in doing; but this is a big topic, and I had better keep it to entertain Hartman with.