Are Good-Natured People Uninteresting?

— In a chance interview with a lady contributor, the other day, the name of a common acquaintance of ours was mentioned, whereupon, in response to a direct inquiry, I spoke of him as “a pleasant man.” It seemed a safe and timely remark. Certainly I intended no offense. On the contrary, I meant to be understood as paying a compliment; which, as I gathered from my interlocutor’s manner, was precisely what the occasion called for. But she picked up the word with something almost like resentment. Pleasant people, she declared, were as a rule a very uninteresting set. I made amends as best I could, on the spur of the moment (in my own case this famous spur commonly proves rather dull and inefficacious), by explaining that, so far as I could judge, her friend was by no means good-natured enough to spoil him, and there the matter ended ; but since then it has several times recurred to my thoughts. I have no prejudice against a paradox. A statement may be all the truer for seeming to he false, or, if not absolutely truer, it may at least be more truly effectual; but is it not putting too great a strain upon language, as well as too heavy a yoke upon the conscience, to treat a simple imputation of amiability as if it were tantamount to a defamation of character ? “ The tongue can no man tame,” says an apostle ; and if this be true, — as I have never seen reason to doubt, — then surely one may hope to be forgiven a slip so slight and unintentional as that of applying the epithet “ pleasant ” to a gentleman of whose qualities, good or bad, one knows next to nothing. Such an offense, I am bound to say, looks to me comparatively venial, especially in view of the freedom with which all of us are accustomed to handle the reputation of absent friends and neighbors.

Yet, as I have turned the subject over in iny mind, I have found myself entering more and more into a measure of sympathy with my fellow-contributor’s feeling. As a general thing, original people, people with wills and opinions, — in other words, interesting people, — are not, I am inclined to believe, of a very easy-going temper. The man who has a mind of his own usually wishes to have his own way, and is therefore not likely to be regarded as in any conspicuous degree pleasant. When it is said of a clergyman, “ Oh, he is a very good man,” all church-going persons at once get an idea of very dry sermons. (For the conveying of such a compliment as this all the vowels and consonants together are not equal to one left-handed inflection.) The most interesting character in Milton’s Paradise Lost is unquestionably the arch-fiend himself ; and in the modern newspaper, — epic poems being long out of date, — no class of persons, unless it be political candidates, cut a greater figure than the criminals. There is no doubt of it, good nature and even a good character — which things, I comfort myself with hoping, are not exactly the same — do tend to grow somewhat monotonous and tiresome. Human nature is like an apple, — all the more palatable for being a trifle tart. No husband and wife ever lived together in greater mutual affection than did Elia and his cousin Bridget, concerning whom we read, nevertheless, “ We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits—yet so as ‘with a difference.’ We are generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings, as it should be among near relations. Our sympathies are rather understood than expressed ; and once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was altered.” .

A little flavor of individuality and self-will is excellent for preventing insipidity. Thus I theorize. And why not ? If a man is fond of his own ease and his own way, always “ notional,” often out of sorts, and never very amiable, why should he not shape his theory to fit the facts ?

All the while, however, I am conscious that I could find much to say on the other side. There used to be a funeral hymn (it may have gone out of vogue ere this) beginning, “ Sister, thou wast mild and lovely,” the word “ lovely” being employed, I take it, in the oldfashioned, dictionary sense of lovable, not in the new-fangled, boarding-school sense of beautiful; and I cannot help feeling that mildness, gentleness of spirit, is one of the traits which most people like to attribute to their friends, at least after they are dead. It would sound rather odd and incongruous — would it not ? — to sing about the coffin, “ Sister, thou wast irascible and interesting.” And even in the case of the living, I must confess to a preference for an equable and obliging disposition, especially in a woman. I may be whimsical, but I have never seen many who affected me as uncomfortably sweet-tempered.

My fellow-contributor is a writer of stories, and possibly may have fallen a little into the habit of looking at her neighbors, as painters look at sunsets, from a professional point of view ; and in these days of realistic fiction (or fictitious realism, — the phrase may be ordered to suit the individual taste) it would no doubt go hard with novelists, especially with the feminine members of the guild, if everybody else were as amiable and innocent as they are themselves. Even a Sunday-school novel must have at least one wicked character. I, however, who write no stories, may be pardoned, I trust, for remaining, on the whole, of a different mind. For a wife, sister, or familiar friend, then, give me one who is never cross-grained or disputatious, but, as country people say, “ always just so.” Let me have such about me, and I will cheerfully risk any possible scarcity of interesting vixens and villains. These are common enough at present, certainly, and, to my vision, seem no more likely to fail than seedtime and harvest; standing, I sometimes think, in the class of universal and indiscriminative mercies, like sunshine and the rain.