Title:  Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852

Author:  Various

Editor:  Robert Chambers and William Chambers

Release Date:  December 3, 2005 [EBook #17207]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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Chambers’Edinburgh journal

Conducted by William and Robert Chambers, editors of ’Chambers’s
information for the people,’ ‘Chambers’s educational course,’ &c.

No. 431.  New series.  Saturday, April 3, 1852.  Price 11/2 d.

IMPERFECT RESPECTABILITIES.

Everybody must have had some trouble in his time with imperfect respectabilities.  Nice, well-dressed, well-housed, civil, agreeable people are they.  No fault to find with them but that there is some little flaw in their history, for which the very good (rigid) don’t visit them.  The degree to which one is incommoded with imperfect respectabilities, depends of course a good deal upon the extent of his good-nature, or his dislike of coming to strong measures in social life.  Some have an inherent complaisance which makes them all but unfit for any such operation as cutting, or even for the less violent one of cooling off.  Some take mild views of human infirmity, and shrink from visiting it too roughly.  They would rather that the sinners did not cross them; but, since the contrary is the fact, what can they do but be civil?

One great source of perplexity in the case, is the excessive urbanity of the imperfect respectabilities themselves.  They come up to you on the street with such sunny faces, and have so many kind inquiries to make, and so many pleasant things to say, that, for the life of you, you cannot stiffen up as you ought to do.  Some haunting recollection of a bad affair of cards, or some awkward circumstances attending an insolvency, will come across your mind, and make you wish the fellow in the next street; but, unluckily, there he is, cheerful, even funny, talking of all sorts of respectable things, such as the state of the money-market, and what Sir George said to him the other day about the reviving prospects of Protection; and what avails your secret writhing?  He holds you by the glittering eye.  You listen, you make jocular observations in reply; the cards and the insolvency vanish from your thoughts; you at length shake hands, and part in a transport of good-humoured old acquaintanceship, and not till you have got a hundred yards away, do you cool down sufficiently to remember that you have made a fool of yourself by patronising an imperfect respectability.