ON BEING DELIGHTFUL
ON BEING DELIGHTFUL
Nov. 8, 19—.
My dear Alexa,—
You accuse me of perpetually charging you to be delightful, and of never giving you any detailed and specific instructions as to how to be it. I can’t help feeling that the accusation is more than a little unjust, that is to say, I did suffer under a sense of injustice for a quarter of an hour or so. It seemed to me that although I had never taught you by way of precept, by way of example I had not failed, for I have been extremely charming to you, Alexa. But reflection has caused me to realise that, perhaps, nay certainly, you are right. Many of the qualities that make a man charming are the antipodes of those which render a woman delightful. There are a few, of course, that should be common to both, but they are few. I will not trifle with the subject and do outrage to your common sense by telling you that Nature herself will teach you to be delightful, because I remember that you and I long ago, when you were little more than a kiddie, agreed that delightfulness is the one attribute which Nature never possesses, and, therefore, can never transmit to her children. Nature is all sorts of pleasant things. She is wholesome, for instance, impressive, restorative, not infrequently magnificent—just here and now she is damp and abominably depressing—but she is never delightful. Delightfulness is an achievement of art. One may speak, accurately, of a delightful garden; none but an indiscriminating idiot would talk of a delightful wilderness. An alcove decorated with tact and lighted, or half-lighted—better—with Chinese lanterns, might be delightful: a sunset never could be. Therefore, my daughter, if you follow the promptings of Nature you may be, let us say, astonishing, but you will never be delightful or anything like it.
Personally, I think you are delightful already; but then, I am quite conscious that that view of mine may be a paternal parti pris which other people with blunter perceptions than mine may possibly not share. If you wish to be universally delightful then, you must be prepared to make of yourself a work of Art. Nature, happily for you—I may say this without flattery—has given you the materials; it is for you to work them up, remembering that a naturally-gifted young woman is no more a delightful young woman than a box of colours is a picture.
In the eighties, when the Æsthetic Movement, as it was absurdly called, was on the town, we used to talk a good deal, of “Art for Art’s sake.” It was a phrase that gave grave offence to the Philistine, (that was why we used it so constantly), the Philistine who nosed in it a danger to his own peculiar variety of morals. You don’t often hear it now, for the Philistine was too strong for us, and he has conquered. And yet it was a phrase as innocent as it was apt. It summed up in four words—nay, in three, for one is repeated—a true and imperishable principle. All it meant was that Art should seek no end outside itself: that if you set about painting a picture, say, your aim should be just to paint a beautiful picture, not to inculcate moral habits in a Sunday school, or to boil your own pot by achieving the line in Burlington House, or even the gold medal of the Salon. You see the implication, Alexa? You see how “Art for Art’s sake” applies to you just now? If you are going to practise the art of being delightful you must do it for the sake of being delightful, not with any arrière pensée, not with an eye to the best partners at dances or invitations to the mansions of the affluent. To die with the consciousness of all your life long having been a delightful person! Can anything be better than that, save living with the same consciousness? Moreover, I can’t help thinking that the best of all preparations for the next world is to be as nice as one possibly can in this.