Various - Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.306

It is considered a sound rule not to sacrifice reality for appearances. To be good is held as better than only to seem good. Appearances, in as far as they may serve, and often do serve, as a means of cloaking some evil reality, are not, upon the whole, in good esteem among mankind. It is a word seldom mentioned without some expression of contempt or reprobation. Yet it may be questioned if we could, in this world, quite dispense with appearances.

To lead a life free of gross improprieties is undoubtedly the first requisite. If, however, while doing this, we allow much of our conduct to be interpretable into something opposite, is the result a matter of indifference to society? The thoughtless lady who flirts, or, as the common phrase is, allows herself latitudes, and who is yet studious to be substantially correct, answers, Yes; or perhaps she goes no farther than to say, Being in my own mind conscious of perfect rectitude, I have nothing to say to society on the subject, and it has no title to interfere, so long as I commit no actual transgression. This is specious, and seems to exclude reply. Most people give way to its force, yet do not act or speak as if they felt it to be quite right. It is wrong in this way: such conduct tends to become a screen to actual error; for if the virtuous appear to act exactly as the vicious do, how can we know where vice exists? It is our duty even to appear pure and irreproachable, because, when all that are pure present only the symptoms of purity in their external behaviour, it is the more difficult for the erring to conceal their guilt. They are forced into hypocrisy, which is not merely a homage to virtue, but a means of recruiting her ranks from the bands of vice, seeing that there is an additional pain and trouble in being wicked. All hypocrites would be, or have the advantages attendant on being, what they pretend to be. Can we doubt that, under a system of perfect freedom, they would be something worse than they are?

It thus appears that there is a philosophy in those little decorums of society which minds of a bold and sprightly character are so apt to deride, and which many persons, without the least ill intention, are so often seen to disregard. Every great cause must have its banner. Under every banner there will be a few rogues and cowards. But how much worse would it be with an army to have no ensign at all? It might then have the whole force of the enemy mingling in its ranks, and unresistedly hewing it in pieces.

When we hear of people keeping up appearances, we usually either condemn or laugh. Very often the condemnation or the ridicule is just, but not always so. There is much to object to in endeavours to attain or keep up a style of living different from that which is suitable to our actual means or our actual place in society. Let this error be abandoned to the unsparing satire of those who delight in exposing human weakness and frailty. But all keeping up of appearances is not of this nature. A family is often invested with a rank which its income will scarcely support in proper style, yet which it must support, or forfeit that rank altogether. Even in particular professions there is this hard necessity. The style is part of the very profession itself, something without which it cannot be practised. There is also such a thing as a decline of worldly prosperity, where to appear poor would be to become so even more rapidly than is strictly unavoidable. In such cases, if a family does not basely, by incurring debt, throw the actual suffering upon others – if it only pinches itself at one time, that it may make a decent show at another – if it only spares in its own grosser necessaries, that it may appear on a footing of equality with those of its own nominal social rank, or escape the pity which it is heavenly to give, but bitter to receive, there surely is no offence committed. I must own I never could exactly see grounds for the mirth which prosperous citizens will sometimes indulge in regarding the 'appearances' of the struggling professional man, or the fallen-off family of rank. Such efforts, seeing that they involve much self-denial, that they tend to what is elegant rather than to what is gross, to what is elevated rather than to what is low, seem to me more creditable than otherwise. In our external life, observances become habits, and habits become principles. We all of us live not merely for and in ourselves, but partly for and in others. To be threatened with a fall from our sphere or special field of life, is to anticipate one of the greatest of evils, a sort of half death. It is not wonderful that men and women should make such a struggle to avoid it. But in fact efforts of this kind are connected with some of the best properties of our nature. The father eager to give his family the benefits of his own rank – the children willing to submit to any sacrifice, rather than see their parents lowered in the eyes of their equals: the whole resolvable into that sense of decency and sensibility to public esteem, without which this social scene would be a howling wilderness. No, there is surely no proper subject of merriment or of reprobation in these things.

There are in this empire two kinds of cities and towns – those which are passing through a career of mercantile prosperity, and those which rest at one point of prosperity, or are perhaps slowly falling off. It is not uncommon to hear the denizens of the parvenu town indulging in mirth at the expense of the meagre and ill-supported gentility which they observe in their ancient neighbour. Perhaps this neighbour has only a cathedral, or the county courts, to look to as a source of income: it keeps up a brave spirit, but cannot give anything better than tea-drinkings. Its better class are formal and refined in their manners, and even its poor have a clean delicate air about them, dressing much better than they eat or drink. All this is matter of mirth to the unthinking members of the more thriving community, who feel that, if they are less refined, they have at least more of the substantialities of life at their command. It seems to be a great prize to them that the genteel town is only a town of 'appearances.' But is there in this any true ground for so much self-congratulating merriment? I will admit there is, when it is established that the material is superior to the spiritual – that gross, full-feeding habits are more laudable than a taste for neat apparel – that a profuse, and often ostentatious expenditure, unregulated by taste, is better than a tasteful moderate expenditure, in which a sacrifice of immediate appetites is made for the sake of some ultimate gratification in the esteem of our fellow-creatures. It is a point of ambition with a Scottish artisan to have a suit of superfine black clothes in which to go to church and attend funerals. It may be said that this is keeping up an appearance beyond his station; but if he only saves for this appearance what a less intellectual operative of some other country would spend on excesses in meat and drink, enjoyed out of sight, is he not rather to be admired than condemned? I have known something of country towns, where there is considerable poverty within doors and in reality, while at the same time the bulk of the population make a principle of appearing as well dressed as possible; and my feeling on the subject is, that to laugh at such things is to laugh at virtue itself. The whole moral being of the individual anchors perhaps in some frail remains of well-saved clothes, or in the possession of some tolerable house handed down from some more comfortable ancestor. Take away this poor fiction from them, and their self-respect is diminished. They feel that they are regarded as falling into a lower category, and into that lower category they fall accordingly. No one, having a just sense of human frailty, would wantonly remove, or wish removed, even such slight edifications as these, but, on the contrary, rejoice to see them carefully maintained.