The truth is that the fury which is supposed to imply force is the conclusive proof of weakness. The familiar advice, "If you have no evidence, abuse the plaintiff's attorney," contains by implication the whole philosophy of what is called the manliness and force of the blackguard. He has no reason, therefore he sneers. He has no argument, therefore he swears. He will get the laugh upon his adversary if he can, forgetting that those who laugh at the clown may also despise him.
Of wit, humor, satire, sarcasm, we are not speaking. The ordinary blackguardism of the political platform and press does not belong to that category. Caricature, however, easily may. There are certain pictures in American caricature which are wit made visible. They are the satire of instructive truth. Indeed, they tell to the eye the indisputable truth as words cannot easily tell it to the ear. In this way caricature is one of the most powerful agents in public discussion. But, like speech or writing, it may be merely blackguard. The incisive wit, the rich humor, the withering satire of speech, gain all their point and effect from the truth. They have no power when they are seen to be false.
So it is with caricature. Nobody can enjoy it more than its subject when it is merely humorous; nobody perceive so surely its pungent touch of truth; nobody disregard more completely its mere malice and falsehood. True wit and humor, whether in controversial letters or art, whether in the newspaper article or the "cartoon," as we now call it, often reveal to the subject in himself what otherwise he might not have suspected. It is very conceivable that an actor, seeing a really clever burlesque of himself, may become aware of tendencies or peculiarities or faults which otherwise he would not have known, and quietly address himself to their correction.
This sanitary service of humor in every form, as well as that of the honest wrath which shakes many a noble sentence of sinewy English as a mighty man-of-war is shaken by her own broadside, is something wholly apart from the billingsgate and blackguardism which are treated as if they were real forces. Publicity itself, as the Easy Chair has often said, has a certain power, and to call a man a rascal to a hundred thousand persons at once produces an undeniable effect. But we must not mistake it for what it is not. Being false, it is not an effect which endures, nor does it vex the equal mind.
It is the fact that the public often seems to demand that kind of titillation, to enjoy fury instead of force, and ridicule instead of reason, which suggests the inquiry whether, if self-restraint and wise discipline are desirable for every faculty of the mind and body, the tongue and hand alone should be allowed to riot in wanton excess. If even the legitimate superlative must be handled, like dynamite, with extreme caution, blackguardism of every degree is a nuisance to be summarily discountenanced and abated by those who know the difference between grandeur and bigness, between Mercutio and Tony Lumpkin, between fair-play and foul.
(September, 1888)
VI
The Easy Chair has been asked whether there is any code of newspaper manners. It has no doubt that there is. But it is the universal code of courtesy, and not one restricted to newspapers. Good manners in civilized society are the same everywhere and in all relations. A newspaper is not a mystery. It is the work of several men and women, and their manners in doing the work are subject to the same principles that govern their manners in society or in any other human relation. If a man is a gentleman, he does not cease to be one because he enters a newspaper office, and it would seem to be equally true that if his work on the paper does not prove to be that of a gentleman, it could not have been a gentleman who did the work.
A gentleman, we will suppose, does not blackguard his neighbors, nor talk incessantly about himself and his achievements, nor behave elsewhere as he would be ashamed to behave in his club or in his own family. If a gentleman does not do these things, of course a gentleman does not do them in a newspaper. And does it not seem to follow, if such things are done in a newspaper, and are traced to a hand supposed to be that of a gentleman, that there has been some mistake about the hand?
Good manners are essentially a disposition which moulds conduct. They can be feigned, indeed, as gilt counterfeits gold, and plate silver. But the clearest glass is not diamond. A man may smile and smile and be a villain. Scoundrels are sometimes described as of gentlemanly manners, and Lothario was not personally a boor. But he was not a gentleman, and he merely affected good manners. A gentleman, indeed, may sometimes lose his temper or his self-control, but no one who habitually does it, and swears and rails vociferously, can be called properly by that name. Here again it is easy to apply the canon to a newspaper. When a newspaper habitually takes an insulting tone, and deliberately falsifies, whether by assertion of an untruth or by a distortion and perversion of the truth, it is not the work of a gentleman, and if the writer be responsible for the tone of the paper, the manners of that newspaper are not good manners.