Sweet Are the Uses of Mendacity

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

A Few of the Most Fashionable Falsehoods, and How to Tell Them—Without Blushing

THE longer I live, the more firmly I am convinced that the real uncrowned king of the Killjoys is the person who always tells the truth.

Truth, no doubt, is all right in its proper place; in the witness-stand or at the bottom of a well, but, for use in the social activities of life, it is distinctly overrated. Nay, more—it is so rude a virtue that it is frequently a flagrant breach of good-manners. Surely, we all know a dozen instances when blurting out the truth absolutely hamstrings the entente sociale. The realization of this fact by well-bred people has given rise to a number of accepted situations in which the only possible thing to do is to lie, promptly, frankly and—most important of all—gracefully.

The Literary Lie

I SHALL enumerate a few of these, with an indication of the proper type of fib which is considered good form under the circumstances, pausing only to remind my readers that it takes two persons to give a falsehood the verisimilitude which culture requires. In other words while one tells it, with every indication of sincerity, the other must be equally careful to preserve an appearance of implicit belief. It is extremely bad form to combat the truth of a social mis-statement, yet some people insist on so doing. Before launching a lie, therefore, it is well to be armed at all points with alibis, sub-alibis and third-line-of-defense alibis, in order to repel the plague who insists on applying the acid test of investigation to these gossamer fabrics of the imagination. One should be equally careful not to be trapped into an expression of the slightest disbelief when someone else happens to be on the fibbing end of the dialogue. In this matter, as in all others, social folk must stand together.

To take up, as an initial example, one of the most usual of lies, we have all of us, I am sure, been seated at dinner next to some very bookish person. In dinner-conversation it is most important to have one's mendacity welloiled and in good working order, because of the obvious impossibility of escape before the coffee.

This was my situation, a few evenings ago, when my right-hand neighbor was a Miss Coleman who, when we were introduced, gave me what was, unmistakably, the "book" look. Nor was I in error. Before we were entirely free of the Cape Cods, of which we had seven each, I remember, we were deeply immersed in a delightful chat over the latest publications. I say delightful; it really was. Personally, I have little leisure for reading, my time being so taken up with living, but Miss Coleman proved to be one of those rare souls who know how to carry on a literary dialogue.

"Have you read Moon-Calf?" she asked, with skillfully simulated interest.

"No," I admitted, looking like one, as. I accompanied my answer with a smile which was intended to imitate sympathetic regret.

She waited patiently for the space of one Cape, Cod, before continuing: "But I suppose, of course, you have read Main Street?"

As a matter of fact, I hadn't, but I saw at once that our conversation had reached the zero hour and that unless I intended to be one of those hopeless blights who says "No" to everything, it was up to me to go over the top, then and there.

"Main Street!" I cried, as if I were a streetcar conductor rousing a sleepy passenger, "well rather! What a book!"

"Isn't it?" she agreed brightly, deceived for a moment by my enthusiasm. "What a remorseless study of mediocrity."

This was the safe ground of generality whereon we gambolled pleasantly for a space before reaching the inevitable stage of definite questions such as "Did you detect, in Main Street, any pacifist propaganda in Carol Kennicott's reactions?"

It is at this point that the spineless and weak-kneed lover of truth usually begins to flounder and, nine times out of ten, resorts to the craven expedient of rapidly shifting the conversation into other channels. As I have always considered this a cowardly act, I boldly took up the challenge.

"The book reeks of it." I announced, registering sternness.

For a moment Miss Coleman looked baffled, but we were soon absorbed in a lively argument on didacticism versus romance with occasional oblique shots at Main Street, all of which seemed to come fairly near the bull's-eye. Believe me, it was a most exciting and exhilarating pastime, fraught with danger and full of risks, which I found myself taking with increasing ease and a growing sense of mastery until, upon my amazed consciousness, dawned the fact that Miss Coleman could not answer some of the questions I put to her. In a word, she hadn't read the book herself. Naturally, we parted with great respect for each other, a respect which has since ripened into friendship,—a friendship based on the gallant device of "De Vaudace, de Vaudace, et toujours de Vaudace"

The Personal Note

ANOTHER striking instance of how nerve and boldness in polite lying make for social success is in the introduction of the personal note in a story. Almost everyone in any particular gathering knows two or three good stories which, under provocation, he or she will tell. But oh, how lamentable is the usual method of telling! Your average raconteur will sidle up to his jest with some such damning introduction as "I heard a good one the other day—-but you've probably all heard it— if you have, stop me—it was the one about the farmer and the book-agent—have you heard it?—it was new to me," etc., and then, after cross-examining everyone present as to ' any previous knowledge of the anecdote in question, will begin, laboriously: "Well, it seems there was an old farmer, this struck me as awfully funny, and he met a book-agent, it's probably as old as the hills, and the farmer, I mean the book-agent said" . . . and so on to a painful and wholly unsuccessful close.

But mark the really gifted social liar with the same material on his mind. "I was motoring over from Bedford to Stamford yesterday," he will say, "and stopped at the High Ridge store, you know—Slocum's?—to get some gas-"

Every soul in the room will nod eagerly to indicate that he knows Slocum's store intimately.

"Well, while I was standing there talking to old man Slocum, a book-agent came up in a Ford—" and there you are! Success, laughter, applause, with some incredulous doubt on the part of those who have heard the tale before and daren't say so.

The only serious danger in connection with this sort of thing is that of relating a story which someone else has told just before your arrival. This is embarrassing, but can usually be turned against the first raconteur, if you claim loudly to have told it to him the night before. In any case, it is always the personal historian who wins; long after the subject matter is forgotten he will be remembered as an amusing individual, to whom all sorts of funny things happen, while the other, if not quite forgotten, will have faded into a vague and ghost-like personality.

Learning to Say No

AT no time is skillful mendacity more desirable than in declining sudden invitations. Here, indeed, is a tremendous field for the gentle art of deception. Ninety per cent of the social engagements contracted every day in our great metropolis become obligations because the prospective guests have no excuse ready. Hostesses are wily creatures. "What are you doing on Thursday?" they ask, and if the victim hesitates, he is lost. The result is a hostess who says to herself, "I don't think he v/anted to come" and a guest who mutters, "Damn!" as he hangs up the receiver.

What we need is a social Leonard Wood with Ananias Training Camps to teach us preparedness. In the back of every male mind should be a prompt, valid excuse for being absent from anywhere at any time. My personal preference is for a conference. The word 'conference' is at once important-sounding and vague. If the invitation proves to be alluring and desirable, the conference can always be postponed, and I cannot stress too strongly the point that it is far more graceful to wriggle into an unaccepted invitation than to be on the inside wriggling out.

Here, again, one should most certainly be equipped with a sub-alibi. During the recent holidays, having laboriously wormed my way out of a most dreary dinner-party I was appalled to find myself seated next to my importunate hostess at the theatre. Obviously the only thing to do under the circumstances was to simulate unbounded enthusiasm.

"Isn't this wonderful!" I cried to the good lady who was eyeing me coldly. "The meeting was called-off; I found out where your seats were and by the greatest luck in the world got one next to them."

By skillful work on my part, I managed to create the impression that I was her guest during the entre-actes, while, during the play, when the house was dark, I was free to explain matters to the charming person whom I had brought to the theatre.

Where a husband and wife are involved in mutually puttting across a bit of social camouflage, it is hardly necessary to point out that the plot should be sufficiently rehearsed so that their stories will hang together. It is all very well for an individual, lying on his own, so to speak, to rely on brilliant improvisation to pull him through, but this method is fatal where two are concerned.

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I have seen some pitiful catastrophes of this kind, and have noticed that, contrary to general opinion, it is always the man who pays. A wife caught in a conversational corner with her veracity at stake, will invariably dump the entire onus on her husband, who is bound by the laws of chivalry to stand the gaff. This sort of thing can be easily avoided by a few moments together before going down to dinner. We have had, in the recent press-despatches from the Canadian wilds a striking instance of how failure on the part of our gallant balloonists to agree on their story resulted in a swinging blow on the point of the jaw. A husband can not resort to this sort of thing and remain a husband, but he frequently feels like it.

This phase of the subject brings up the delicate matter of just how far a husband should go in telling the truth in the intimate relations of home-life; in other words, how frankly should he confide his thoughts and actions to the partner of his joys and sorrows. In general, I should say that honesty was absolutely the worst possible policy.

In many a home where I am visitor the utmost discord prevails because the two partners insist on voicing what they call their frank, honest opinions. On the other hand, I know a number of happy couples who glide peacefully through life on the waves of mutually accepted deception. If Henry says he is going to be delayed at the office, the office goes. If Mrs. Henry has to lunch with an old school-friend, so be it. How sweetly this works out. They are models of domestic accord, always sure of a welcome from one another. In the end, exigent demands for truth being absent, even prevarication becomes unnecessary and they are soon leading pure, blameless lives, in which the question of veracity is never raised.

Is there not a profound philosophy in the remark of a charming friend of mine? "I do not care what people say behind my back as long as they are pleasant to my face."

Verily, if we kept the principle of pleasantness in mind and avoided the often odious brutality of truth, we should all be much happier. I will go so far as to say that I should cherish a much more amiable disposition toward our first President, if I could think that, at the famous episode of the cherry tree, he had had the tact to say: "Father, I cannot tell the truth. The tree must have been struck by lightning. After all, candied cherries are much the nicest."