Chapter 31

"COMME IL FAUT"

SEVERAL times in the course of this narrative I have hinted at an
idea corresponding to the above French heading, and now feel it
incumbent upon me to devote a whole chapter to that idea, which
was one of the most ruinous, lying notions which ever became
engrafted upon my life by my upbringing and social milieu.

The human race may be divided into several categories--rich and
poor, good and bad, military and civilian, clever and stupid, and
so forth, and so forth. Yet each man has his own favourite,
fundamental system of division which he unconsciously uses to
class each new person with whom he meets. At the time of which I
am speaking, my own favourite, fundamental system of division in
this respect was into people "comme il faut" and people "comme il
ne faut pas"--the latter subdivided, again, into people merely not
"comme il faut" and the lower orders. People "comme il faut" I
respected, and looked upon as worthy to consort with me as my
equals; the second of the above categories I pretended merely to
despise, but in reality hated, and nourished towards them a kind
of feeling of offended personality; while the third category had
no existence at all, so far as I was concerned, since my contempt
for them was too complete. This "comme il faut"-ness of mine lay,
first and foremost, in proficiency in French, especially
conversational French. A person who spoke that language badly at
once aroused in me a feeling of dislike. "Why do you try to talk
as we do when you haven't a notion how to do it?" I would seem to
ask him with my most venomous and quizzing smile. The second
condition of "comme il faut"-ness was long nails that were well
kept and clean; the third, ability to bow, dance, and converse;
the fourth--and a very important one--indifference to everything,
and a constant air of refined, supercilious ennui. Moreover,
there were certain general signs which, I considered, enabled me
to tell, without actually speaking to a man, the class to which
he belonged. Chief among these signs (the others being the
fittings of his rooms, his gloves, his handwriting, his turn-out,
and so forth) were his feet. The relation of boots to trousers
was sufficient to determine, in my eyes, the social status of a
man. Heelless boots with angular toes, wedded to narrow,
unstrapped trouser-ends--these denoted the vulgarian. Boots with
narrow, round toes and heels, accompanied either by tight
trousers strapped under the instep and fitting close to the leg
or by wide trousers similarly strapped, but projecting in a peak
over the toe--these meant the man of mauvais genre; and so on, and
so on.

It was a curious thing that I who lacked all ability to become
"comme il faut," should have assimilated the idea so completely
as I did. Possibly it was the fact that it had cost me such
enormous labour to acquire that brought about its strenuous
development in my mind. I hardly like to think how much of the
best and most valuable time of my first sixteen years of
existence I wasted upon its acquisition. Yet every one whom I
imitated--Woloda, Dubkoff, and the majority of my acquaintances--
seemed to acquire it easily. I watched them with envy, and
silently toiled to become proficient in French, to bow gracefully
and without looking at the person whom I was saluting, to gain
dexterity in small-talk and dancing, to cultivate indifference
and ennui, and to keep my fingernails well trimmed (though I
frequently cut my finger-ends with the scissors in so doing). And
all the time I felt that so much remained to be done if I was
ever to attain my end! A room, a writing-table, an equipage I
still found it impossible to arrange "comme il faut," however
much I fought down my aversion to practical matters in my desire
to become proficient. Yet everything seemed to arrange itself
properly with other people, just as though things could never
have been otherwise! Once I remember asking Dubkoff, after much
zealous and careful labouring at my finger-nails (his own were
extraordinarily good), whether his nails had always been as now,
or whether he had done anything to make them so: to which he
replied that never within his recollection had he done anything
to them, and that he could not imagine a gentleman's nails
possibly being different. This answer incensed me greatly, for I
had not yet learnt that one of the chief conditions of "comme il
faut"-ness was to hold one's tongue about the labour by which it
had been acquired. "Comme il faut"-ness I looked upon as not only
a great merit, a splendid accomplishment, an embodiment of all
the perfection which must strive to attain, but as the one
indispensable condition without which there could never be
happiness, nor glory, nor any good whatsoever in this world. Even
the greatest artist or savant or benefactor of the human race
would at that time have won from me no respect if he had not also
been "comme il faut." A man possessed of "comme il faut"-ness
stood higher than, and beyond all possible equality with, such
people, and might well leave it to them to paint pictures, to
compose music, to write books, or to do good. Possibly he might
commend them for so doing (since why should not merit be
commended where-ever it be found?), but he could never stand ON A
LEVEL with them, seeing that he was "comme il faut" and they were
not--a quite final and sufficient reason. In fact, I actually
believe that, had we possessed a brother or a father or a mother
who had not been "comme il faut," I should have declared it to be
a great misfortune for us, and announced that between myself and
them there could never be anything in common. Yet neither waste
of the golden hours which I consumed in constantly endeavouring
to observe the many arduous, unattainable conditions of "comme il
faut"-ness (to the exclusion of any more serious pursuit), nor
dislike of and contempt for nine-tenths of the human race, nor
disregard of all the beauty that lay outside the narrow circle of
"comme il faut"-ness comprised the whole of the evil which the
idea wrought in me. The chief evil of all lay in the notion
acquired that a man need not strive to become a tchinovnik,
[Official.] a coachbuilder, a soldier, a savant, or anything
useful, so long only as he was "comme il faut "--that by attaining
the latter quality he had done all that was demanded of him, and
was even superior to most people.

Usually, at a given period in youth, and after many errors and
excesses, every man recognises the necessity of his taking an
active part in social life, and chooses some branch of labour to
which to devote himself. Only with the "comme il faut" man does
this rarely happen. I have known, and know, very, very many
people--old, proud, self-satisfied, and opinionated--who to the
question (if it should ever present itself to them in their
world) "Who have you been, and what have you ever done?" would be
unable to reply otherwise than by saying,

"Je fus un homme tres comme il faut,"

Such a fate was awaiting myself.