Father Payne - Arthur Christopher Benson (uplifting novels .TXT) 📗

you don't know, and being well-bred when you are snobbish, and being kind when you are mean, and so on."

"I think you mean humbug rather than pose," said Father Payne; "but even so, I don't agree with you. I have a friend who would be intolerable, but for his pose of being agreeable. He isn't agreeable, and he doesn't feel agreeable; but he behaves as if he was, and it is the only thing that makes him bearable. What you really mean is the pose of superiority--the man whose motives are always just ahead of your own, and whose taste is always slightly finer, and who knows the world a little better. But there is a lot of pose that isn't that. What _is_ pose, after all? Can anyone define it?"

"It's an artist's phrase, I think," said Barthrop; "it means a position in which you look your best."

"Like the Archbishop who was always painted in a gibbous attitude--first quarter, you know--with his back turned to you, and his face just visible over his lawn sleeve," said Father Payne, "but that was in order to hide an excrescence on his left cheek. Do you remember what Lamb said of Barry Cornwall's wen on the nape of his neck? Some one said that Barry Cornwall was thinking of having it cut off. 'I hope he won't do that,' said Lamb, 'I rather like it--it's redundant, like his poetry!' I rather agree with Lamb. I like people to be a little redundant, and a harmless pose is pure redundancy: it only means that a man is up to some innocent game or other, some sort of mystification, and is enjoying himself. It's like a summer haze over the landscape. Now, there's another friend of mine who was once complimented on his 'uplifted' look. Whenever he thinks of it, and that's pretty often, he looks uplifted, like a bird drinking, with his eyes fixed on some far-off vision. I don't mind that! It's only a wish to look his best. It's partly a wish to give pleasure, you know. It's the same thing that makes people wear their hair long, or dress in a flamboyant way. I'll tell you a little story. You know Bertie Nash, the artist. I met him once in a Post Office, and he was buying a sheet of halfpenny stamps. I asked him if he was going to send out some circulars. He looked at me sadly, and said, 'No, I always use these--I can't use the penny stamps--such a crude red!' Now, he didn't do that to impress me: but it was a pose in a way, and he liked feeling so sensitive to colour."

"But oughtn't one to avoid all that sort of nonsense?" said some one; "it's better surely to be just what you are."

"Yes, but what _are_ you, after all?" said Father Payne; "your moods vary. It would be hopeless if everyone tried to keep themselves down to their worst level for the sake of sincerity. The point is that you ought to try to keep at your best level, even if you don't feel so. Hang it, good manners are a pose, if it comes to that. The essence of good manners is sometimes to conceal what you are feeling. Is it a pose to behave amiably when you are tired or cross?"

"No, but that is in order not to make other people uncomfortable," said Vincent.

"Well, it's very hard to draw the line," said Father Payne: "but what we really mean by pose is, I imagine, the attempt to appear to be something which you frankly are not--and that is where the word has changed its sense, Barthrop. An artist's pose is something characteristic, which makes a man look his best. What we generally mean by pose is the affecting a best which one never reaches. Come, tell a story, some one! That's the best way to get at a quality. Won't some one quote an illustration?"

"What about my friend Pearce, the schoolmaster?" said Vincent. "He read a book about schoolmastering, and he said he didn't think much of it. He added that the author seemed only to be giving elegant reasons for doing things which the born schoolmaster did by instinct."

"Well, that's not a bad criticism," said Father Payne; "but it was pose if he meant to convey that _he_ was a born schoolmaster. Is he one, by the way?"

"No," said Vincent, "he is not: he is much ragged by the boys; but he comforts himself by thinking that all schoolmasters are ragged, but that he is rather more successful than most in dealing with it. He has a great deal of moral dignity, has Pearce! I don't know where he would be without it!"

"Well, there's an instance," said Father Payne, "of a pose being of some use. I think a real genuine pose often makes a man do better work in the world than if he was drearily conscious of failure. It's a game, you know--a dramatic game: and I think it's a sign of vitality and interest to want to have a game. It's like the lawyer's clerk in _Our Mutual Friend_, when Mr. Boffin calls to keep an appointment, being the lawyer's only client; but the boy makes a show of looking it all up in a ledger, runs his finger down a list of imaginary consultants, and says to himself, 'Mr. Aggs, Mr. Baggs, Mr. Caggs, Mr. Daggs, Mr. Boffin--Yes, sir, that is right!' Now there's no harm in that sort of thing--it's only a bit of moral dignity, as Vincent says. It's no good acquiescing in being a humble average person--we must do better than that! Most people believe in themselves in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary--but it's better than disbelieving in yourself. That's abject, you know."

"But if you accept the principle of pose," said Lestrange, "I don't see that you can find fault with any pose."

"You might as well say," said Father Payne, "that if I accept the principle of drinking alcohol, it doesn't matter how much I drink! Almost all morality is relative--in fact, it is doubtful if it is ever absolute. The mischief of pose is not when it makes a man try to be or to appear at his best: but when a man lives a thoroughly unreal life, taking a high line in theory and never troubling about practice, then it's incredible to what lengths self-deception can go. Dr. Johnson said that he looked upon himself as a polite man! It is quite easy to get to believe yourself impeccable in certain points: and as one gets older, and less assailable, and less liable to be pulled up and told the hard truth, it is astonishing how serenely you can sail along. But that isn't pose exactly. It generally begins by a pose, and becomes simple imperviousness; and that is, after all, the danger of pose,--that it makes people blind to the truth about themselves."

"I'm getting muddled," said Vincent.

"It _is_ rather muddling," said Father Payne, "but, in a general way, the point is this. When pose is a deliberate attempt to deceive other people for your own credit, it is detestable. But when it is merely harmless drama, to add to the interest of life and to retain your own self-respect, it's an amiable foible, and need not be discouraged. The real question is whether it is assumed seriously, or whether it is all a sort of joke. We all like to play our little games, and I find it very easy to forgive a person who enjoys dressing up, so to speak, and making remarks in character. Come, I'll confess my sins in public. If I meet a stranger in the roads, I rather like to be thought a bluff and hearty English squire, striding about my broad acres. I prefer that to being thought a retired crammer, a dominie who keeps a school and calls it an academy, as Lord Auchinleck said of Johnson. But if I pretended in this house to be a kind of abbot, and glided about in a cassock with a gold cross round my neck, conferring a benediction on everyone, and then retired to my room to read a French novel and to drink whisky-and-soda, that would be a very unpleasant pose indeed!"

We all implored Father Payne to adopt it, and he said he would give it his serious consideration.


LXV


OF REVENANTS

I was sitting in the garden one evening in summer with Father Payne and Barthrop. Barthrop was going off next day to Oxford, and was trying to persuade Father Payne to come too.

"No," he said, "I simply couldn't! Oxford is the city east of the sun and west of the moon--like as a dream when one awaketh! I don't hold with indulging fruitless sentiment, particularly about the past."

"But isn't it rather a pity?" said Barthrop. "After all, most emotions are useless, if you come to that! Why should you cut yourself off from a place you are so fond of, and which is quite the most beautiful place in England too? Isn't it rather--well,--weak?"

"Yes," said Father Payne, "it's weak, no doubt! That is to say, if I were differently made, more hard-hearted, more sure of myself, I should go, and I should enjoy myself, and moon about, and bore you to death with old stories about the chimes at midnight--everybody would be a dear old boy or a good old soul, and I should hand out tips, and get perfectly maudlin in the evenings over a glass of claret. That's the normal thing, no doubt--that's what a noble-minded man in a novel of Thackeray's would do!"

"Well," said Barthrop, "you know best--but I expect that if you did take the plunge and go there, you would find yourself quite at ease."

"I might," said Father Payne; "but then I also might not--and I prefer not to risk it. You see, it would be merely wallowing in sentiment--and I don't approve of sentiment. I want my emotions to live with, not to bathe in!"

"But you don't mind going back to London," said Barthrop.

"No," said Father Payne, "but that bucks me up. I was infernally unhappy in London, and it puts me in a thoroughly sensible and cheerful mood to go and look at the outside of my old lodgings, and the place where I used to teach, and to say to myself, 'Thank God, that's all over!' Then I go on my way rejoicing, and make no end of plans. But if I went to Oxford, I should just remember how happy and young I was; and I might even commit the folly of regretting the lapse of time, and of wishing I could have it back again. I don't think it is wholesome to do anything which makes one discontented, or anything which forces one to dwell on what one has lost. That doesn't matter. Nothing really is ever lost, and it only takes the starch out of one to think about it from that angle. I don't believe in the past. It seems unalterable, and I suppose in a sense it is so. But if you begin to dwell on unalterable things, you become a fatalist, and I'm always trying to get away from that. The point is that no one is unalterable, and, thank God, we are always altering. To potter about in the past is like grubbing in an ash-heap, and shedding tears over broken bits of china. The plate, or whatever it is, was pretty enough, and it had its place and its use; and when the stuff of which it is made is wanted again, it will