Carlyle called the members of upper-class society “amiable stoics,” in reference to the equable serenity of countenance and calm self-possession of manner with which they accept those occasionally trying conditions of social life which necessitate self-denial in matters great and small.
This placidity is the result of long training. Not just at first does a young man bow to the decree of his hostess which separates him from the girl he admires and tells him off to take some uninteresting dowager to the supper-room. But should he evince any sign of discontent with the arrangement he is at once convicted of ill-breeding. The man of “perfect manners” is he who is calmly courteous in all circumstances, as attentive outwardly to the plain and the elderly as he is to the young and pretty.
[Sidenote: The man of “perfect manners.”]
It is difficult to renounce the delightful _tête-à-tête_ with a charming girl when asked by his hostess to dance with some poor wallflower who has been neglected for half-a-dozen dances. But it has to be borne, and eventually it brings its own reward. The “duty” dance is a hard thing, and good manners involve a considerable amount of self-denial; but repetition soon makes it comparatively easy, and invitations of an agreeable kind pour in on the young man who shows himself willing to practise those peculiar forms of selflessness, opportunities for which so frequently arise in society.
It is probably in imitation of this surface equanimity that the wooden stare has been adopted so universally by our golden youth.
This is useful for wearing at one’s club or in the stall of a theatre, and it at once stamps the proprietor of the stare as being “in it.” The fashion is not confined to England. It reigns in New York, and even in far Australia there is a select coterie of golden or gilded youth who are beginning to learn how to abstract every atom of expression from the countenance, and to look on vacantly or seem to do so. As yet, there is no considerable expertness achieved in the matter in Antipodean circles, but in New York a very fair impression of imbecility is conveyed in the look of the ultra-fashionable young man. There are various other important matters on which a transatlantic authority has been instructing the youth of his generation. The one involving the most serious responsibility is connected with carrying a cane or stick, as it is better form to call it.