We obey the conventions

HAROLD NICOLSON

A drifting dissertation proving several points, though not conclusively enough to be boring

"My dear young man," said the Latvian Minister, "unconventionality is the supreme form of affectation." He leant forward as he made this remark, picking his teeth with a quill held in the left hand. With his right palm, a manicured but knotty object, he concealed the operation from the gaze of the curious. "An affectation," he repeated, laying the tooth-pick beside his plate and wagging at me a finger of his now mobile right hand. Having reached the age of forty I am always grateful to people who say "Mon cher jeune homme"—it gives me that Ninon de Lenclos feeling. But I did not agree with the Latvian Minister. I asked him to be more precise.

"Précisez," I said, "Excellence."

He then embarked upon a defence of the conventions. Man, he said, was a social animal. This was scarcely an original remark, having been made several years previously by Aristotle,—but I let it pass. The herd instinct, he continued, was natural to man, and man's efforts to organize (canaliser was the word he used) to organize that instinct were an important part of evolutionary progress. The first stage of such organization was law, —the prevention of crime. The second stage was convention,—the prevention of. . . . The Minister hesitated at this, and to help him I suggested the word "individualism". He didn't like that word and slid off on a tangent. "Your great Philosopher O. Bess" . . . thus did he begin. "Who?" I asked. "O. Bess," he repeated firmly. "Your great philosopher has stated that without conventions man would become homo hominem lupus—a wolf to every other man." "Oh you mean Hobbes," I interrupted, "and incidentally, it's homo homini—dative you know." He Avaved me aside: intoxicated by his own eloquence, by the glamour of the University of Riga, he embarked upon a long discourse on civilisation, the works of M. de St. Simon, the essentials of the vrai gentleman anglais, the iniquity of the Slav races, the charms of the Casino at Riga,—and after this long detour he came back to the point. "So you see," he concluded, "that all unconventionality is a form of affectation." He flung himself back in his chair, regained his tooth-pick, and looked at me over his veiling palm with a mixture of triumph and uncertainty,—like a boxer watching his opponent struggling to recover from a knock-out blow.

"If you will allow me," I began, "I shall explain to you the exact reasons for which I disagree with your contention. In the first place . .

But he did not allow me. "Tiens," he exclaimed, "la belle Madame X." It was true that the wife of the Rumanian Consul had at that moment entered the restaurant. The Latvian Minister rose and left me. I lit a cigarette and watched him dancing languorously and unctuously with the lovely Madame X. And as I sat there I thought of what, had he not left me, I should have tried to say. ft would have been more or less as follows.

I admit, in the first place, that conventions are in principle necessary. They save time. There can be little doubt that one's automatic reactions are quicker than those that are not automatic. I would go further. It is easier and quicker to act in a stereotyped manner than in a manner which has to be devised to fit every given situation. It is easier, for instance, to accept a dinner invitation than to write and thank your hostess for a Saturday to Monday party: in the former case the shape of your letter is already laid down by convention: in the latter case you have to think of something bright and original to say.

I admit also that social conventions help one to avoid misunderstandings. They carry their own currency, and their purpose and value are at once recognised. It is simpler, for instance, to say that one is not at home, than to say that one really does not want to see Mr. Carruthers in the least. Mr. C. is not hurt very much when one says one is not at home: he is, however, wounded to the soul if one says that, although at home, one does not, in any kind of circumstances, wish to see him. Obviously, therefore, there must be some sort of conventions, the point to discover being what sort of conventions must there be?

Admittedly one's relations with any other person cannot be so starkly intimate as they are with oneself. Even in the most perfect intimacy between two human beings there must be wide areas of secrecy and reserve. The inherited experience of our race has taught us to respect these reserved areas, and there exists between civilised people a tacit understanding on this point, an implicit treaty, —in a word a "convention". From this aspect conventions are the recorded experience of ages. They are civilised and noble: and yet, and yet . . .

For at that moment the Latvian Minister had finished dancing with Madame X. He escorted her back to her table in the corner, and stood there a moment making movements indicative of pleasure, gratitude and concupiscence. In other words the Latvian Minister, according to his conventions, Avas being polite; Madame X. was evidently of the same opinion: she smiled up at him in a roguish fashion. He returned, beaming with flattered virility, to my table. "A delicious little lady," he panted. He tugged a large silk handkerchief from the recesses of his -trouser pocket and started to mop the back of his neck: which was, undoubtedly, in need of such assistance.

"Delicious," he repeated and drank a glass of Brauneberger. My dislike of the clammy little man seized me by the throat.

"You see," I began coldly, "whereas you call all unconventionality an affectation, I call all conventionality a lie."

"Parfaitement, mon cher ami, parfaitement. . . ." He was not listening to me. With one silk-encased finger scraping round inside his collar he was still beaming across at Madame X. He raised his glass towards her and bowed elaborately in her direction. He then shut off his smile suddenly like an opera hat and turned to me. After all, he was the envoy of his country: it was in the best tradition for important diplomatists to flirt with lovely ladies: but they must show also that they are made of sterner stuff: so he assumed his elderstatesman manner and turned to me almost sharply:—

■ "You were saying, my dear Sir?"

"I was saying that all convention was a lie."

He leant towards me adopting a confidential tone. I realised that he wished to convey the impression to Madame X. that we were discussing high affairs of state: the Eastern Corridor or the port of Memel: he started wagging his finger impressively. He was not thinking so much of what he said as of the effect produced across the restaurant to where the Rumanian Consul was endeavouring to attract the passing attention of the man who played the saxophone, while his wife (unaware to all appearance of the Latvian Minister) was talking brilliantly to Baron Ploms.

"You see," thus did I interrupt the Minister,—"You see it is a convention that you should pay outrageous compliments to Madame X. It is a convention that Madame X. should receive these compliments with pleased embarrassment. It is a convention that Monsieur X. should appear to resent the attentions you pay to his wife. It is a convention that she, in order to stimulate you and soothe her husband, should pretend an interest in the ineffable Ploms. It is a convention that you should try to convey the impression that we are talking politics whereas we are discussing a subject of which you have little knowledge, for which you have little aptitude, and to which you have given scant attention."

"Mais voyons donc, mon cher ami. .."

"The truth," I continued relentlessly, "is far otherwise. You are perfectly willing to pay compliments to Madame X. but you do not really want to pay her outrageous compliments since if she took them at their face value you would find yourself in trouble with your wife for whom you have -a solid affection. Madame X. is bored by your compliments as she has a tooth-ache poor thing and does not find you physically attractive. Monsieur X. for his part is delighted that you should occupy his wife's attention as he is fascinated by the saxophone and for the rest is feeling rather sleepy. And Baron Ploms doesn't count much anyway."

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"Excuse me", he said and rose from the table. Clearly he had not been listening. He patted me on the shoulder as he pushed past my chair "Quel original!" he murmured friendlily. He was again dancing with Madame X.

Why do I tell this pointless story? It is not interesting or even instructive. It lives in my mind merely because the incident, although too ill-defined to be called an incident, left me with a deep depression. Was it an affectation on my part to have been rude to the Latvian Minister, to have looked upon his average male behaviour with disgust? I felt like the odd pig who has been unable to push his own snout into the trough. I felt as if none of my clothes fitted. You know the feeling. An uncertain, a detached feeling, a feeling of loose discomfort.

The next day I turned over a new leaf. I left cards upon Madame X. I took the underground railway to the suburb where she lived and deposited with the porter two oblongs of pasteboard which bore in neat block letters my name and my address. I then took the underground back to my office. I had executed a social duty. I was again comfortably one of the herd.

It was during that return journey that I made up my own mind about conventions. I came to the conclusion that I liked the conventions which I had myself adopted or which had been adopted by my immediate friends. On the other hand I disliked the conventions adopted by all societies, cliques, coteries, or nations which were not my own conventions. I recognised also that I was apt to manifest my dislike of the conventions of other people by what is called flying in their face. It was this

flying process which had struck the Latvian Minister as affectation.

And what, if you please, is affectation? Not, as might be presumed, the adoption of attitudes which are not natural to you. It would be far more affected for me to proclaim a liking * for polo than to proclaim a liking for Picasso. I find that the latter gives me sincere and constant pleasure: the former, on the few occasions when I have tried it, has filled me with nothing but anxiety, exhaustion and pain. And yet, were I to assume a passion for polo people would not think me affected. It is only when one is so foolish as to disclose one's artistic or intellectual tastes that the cry of affectation is raised. Here again it is evident that to dissociate oneself in any manner from the pleasures or the ineptitudes of the herd is an unpopular thing to do. But what is so strange about the matter is that whereas one is praised for aping a herd instinct, one is not merely abused for developing individual instincts but is considered to be insincere. I speak this time to the aged and parental. Do not deride your children for resisting the influences to which you yourself succumbed. Probably they are being slightly affected: they are striving to imitate attitudes which they are not old enough to acquire: but you yourselves acquired conventions, which are second hand clothes, and which you considered honourable merely because they were not noticeable. My heart goes out to the young men and women who are hide-bound by the conventions of their elders: my heart also goes out to the young men and women whose hides are not bound at all. For the heresies of one generation are the conventions of the next. The only thing that is important is to keep moving, to keep moving, not to allow the slime to gather on one's pond.

And if unconventionality is in truth an affectation, then surely affectation is the most sublime of virtues. It appears to me as a young man rising from the sea. Uncertain and immodest he walks out onto the sand: and then, having dried himself a little, he dons his plus fours and goes off into the interior stretches. And why not? If we were really ourselves we should become intolerable. The best we can aim at is to be approximately ourselves.