February 26, 1892] 



SCIENCE. 



115 



THE DECLINE OP SWAGGER.' 



We shall not, we hope, be accused of knocking another 

 nail into the cofiBii of Respectability if we venture to point 

 to the decline of swagger as one of the signs of the times. 

 No doubt the change is somewhat recent, and the transition 

 hardly conaplete. But we may take it as established that, 

 for the moment at any rate, swagger is not the fashion. No 

 doubt the consciousness of personal merit and possible supe- 

 riority is as strong in human nature as ever. But most peo- 

 pleare contented to acquiesce in the knowledge ol the fact, and 

 are willing not only to forego the particular form of its ex- 

 pression which is known as "'swagger," but even to live 

 without expressing it visibly at all. The most obvious and 

 disagreeable form of self assertion, which consists in making 

 other people conscious of their inferiority by intensely un- 

 pleasant and supercilious behavior, has, of course, been dead 

 and done with as a social claim for half a generation. High- 

 born and wealthy heroes of the old novelists, who were too 

 great to speak at the breakfast-table, and " turned to fling a 

 morsel to their dogs with an air of high-bred nonchalance," 

 exist no longer in fiction, and very rarely in life. Mr. 

 Grandcourt was perhaps the last of them. But swagger in 

 its minor and more amusing manifestations is also dying; 

 and though it is premature to write its epitaph, we may call 

 attention to some of the symptoms of its decay. One of the 

 later forms of swagger, much affected by men of the bachelor 

 leisured class, and especially by the much-abused " lotus- 

 eaters " of club-land, was the nil admirari attitude. It had 

 quite a vogue for a time, and in addition to conveying an 

 impression of superiority, saved a great deal of trouble. 

 Older men who had seen life were spared the effort of hear- 

 ing about it again; and young men who had not were able 

 to convey the impression that they had. This form of swasr- 

 ger had positive merits in a negative form. It is still in use 

 as a weapon against a bore, but as a fashionable cult it exists 

 ^no longer. It is as dead as wigs and powder. 



Soldiers, for instance, are now among the quietest of men, 

 not marked off by any mannerisms of dress or demeanor 

 from other well-bred and agreeable gentlemen. No doubt 

 " competition," in place of purchase, has somewhat reduced 

 the number of men of private fortune who hold her Majes- 

 ty's commission. But even if that consideration could ac- 

 count for the difference, the change is only partial, and the 

 cavalry is still a service mainly officered by men of means. 

 But the heavy " plunger" swagger which once distinguished 

 these gentlemen in their relations to men in less fashionable 

 professions has almost disappeared, except among a few of the 

 very old stagers who cannot unlearn, and the very young 

 ones who have not learned better. Some evidence of the 

 change of manner among soldiers may be found in their in- 

 creased popularity in general society — among men, that is ; for 

 it may be doubted whether the other sex quite shares the sat- 

 isfaction with which men hail the absence of the military 

 swagger. Sir Thomas de Boots no longer comes in "scowl- 

 ing round the room according to his fashion, and a face 

 which is kind enough to assume an expression which seems 

 to ask, ' And who the devil are you, sir?" as clearly as if the 

 General had himself given utterance to the words." On the 

 contrary, he as a rule makes himself exceedingly pleasant, 

 claims no more attention than is spontaneously rendered to 

 him and his known position in the service, and perhaps for- 

 gets to fill his glass while engaged in e.<plaining the theory 

 of the Kriegspiel to some inquiring youngster. 



' London Spectator. 



Among minor types we may notice that the scholastic 

 swaggerer whom Thackeray denounced among his university 

 snobs has almost, if not quite, disappeared — partly, per- 

 haps, because scholars are now turned out by the hundred 

 instead of by half-dozens, and their monopoly of a certain 

 kind of knowledge is broken ; partly because good taste has 

 grown with knowledge, and scholars may also be men of the 

 world. No doubt, with wisdom cometh understanding; but 

 we wish that those men of the age, the "scientific gentle- 

 men " — scholars are rather down in the world just now — 

 could discern the signs of thetimesiu the matter of swagger. 

 At present they possess, with Jews, mushroom financiers, 

 and very successful tradesmen — ^the Egerton Bompuses of 

 the day — almost a monopoly of the amount of obvious and 

 positive swagger visible. Whether in public controversy or 

 social intercourse, the scientific person sometimes swaggers 

 with unquenchable energy. In those public discussions 

 which lend such piquancy to the columns of the Times in 

 the dull season, he still delights to pounce from his hygienic 

 mountain home on some wretched disputant, and show him 

 up as an ass — and a fraudulent ass — in that strong native 

 Saxon, undimmed by " pedantry " and " silly compliance," 

 which less gifted minds call education and courtesy. And 

 if some weak controversialist writes in the victim's defence 

 to say that, after all, what was in the poor man's mind was 

 perhaps so-and-so, how promptly some other scientific person 

 takes up the cudgels and knocks the nonsense out of him I 

 These sterling qualities have so endeared him to the social 

 circle that the mere reference to a " professor " — an honor- 

 able title which seems to be monopolized by the expounders 

 of natural science — is usually enough to drive any number 

 of plain men half frantic. No doubt society has itself to 

 blame in a measure for the tyranny of the professors. It 

 overestimated the value of the "facts" which they knew, 

 before they could be weighed and compared with other forms 

 of information. The modesty of Faraday, with his mild 

 formula, " It may be so," and of Darwin — who was a coun- 

 try squire as well as a biologist — are forgotten in the swag- 

 ger of the new men. But swagger, though not confined to 

 parvenus, is, after all, the parvenu's besetting temptation; 

 and the " scientiSc men " are the parvenus of knowledge. 



Swagger, nowadays, is mainly limited to people living in 

 little worlds of their own. Contact with the big world and 

 realities rubs it away. Petty country squires, buried in re- 

 mote neighborhoods, often give themselves airs most comi- 

 cal to behold by those capable of comparing what they are 

 with what they claim to be. The bumptious scientific gen- 

 tlemen who have made their class a byword, the bloated 

 financier, and the overgrown shop-keeper, even when success 

 is attained, are only on the verge of the world where their 

 training should begin. Their time has been otherwise, and, 

 let us hope, more profitably, occupied; and if they do not 

 reform, their children probably will, and will do their best 

 to reclaim their erring parents. For there is no lesson which 

 that increasingly wise young person, the. young man on his 

 promotion, has laid more to heart than that " swagger," or, 

 as he prefers to call it, " side," does not pay; and whatever 

 his private opinion as to his own merits, he distinguishes 

 very clearly between the swagger which does not pay and 

 judicous self-advertisement which does. Moreover, being 

 an educated young person with some claims to good taste, 

 he is discriminating even in the means he takes to advertise 

 himself, having recourse only as a last and doubtful re- 

 source to self-assertion or eccentricities of dress and 

 manner. 



