Chapter 31

"COMME IL FAUT"

SEVERAL times in the course of this narrative I have hinted at an
idea corresponding to the above French heading, and now feel it
incumbent upon me to devote a whole chapter to that idea, which
was one of the most ruinous, lying notions which ever became
engrafted upon my life by my upbringing and social milieu.

The human race may be divided into several categories--rich and
poor, good and bad, military and civilian, clever and stupid, and
so forth, and so forth. Yet each man has his own favourite,
fundamental system of division which he unconsciously uses to
class each new person with whom he meets. At the time of which I
am speaking, my own favourite, fundamental system of division in
this respect was into people "comme il faut" and people "comme il
ne faut pas"--the latter subdivided, again, into people merely not
"comme il faut" and the lower orders. People "comme il faut" I
respected, and looked upon as worthy to consort with me as my
equals; the second of the above categories I pretended merely to
despise, but in reality hated, and nourished towards them a kind
of feeling of offended personality; while the third category had
no existence at all, so far as I was concerned, since my contempt
for them was too complete. This "comme il faut"-ness of mine lay,
first and foremost, in proficiency in French, especially
conversational French. A person who spoke that language badly at
once aroused in me a feeling of dislike. "Why do you try to talk
as we do when you haven't a notion how to do it?" I would seem to
ask him with my most venomous and quizzing smile. The second
condition of "comme il faut"-ness was long nails that were well
kept and clean; the third, ability to bow, dance, and converse;
the fourth--and a very important one--indifference to everything,
and a constant air of refined, supercilious ennui. Moreover,
there were certain general signs which, I considered, enabled me
to tell, without actually speaking to a man, the class to which
he belonged. Chief among these signs (the others being the
fittings of his rooms, his gloves, his handwriting, his turn-out,
and so forth) were his feet. The relation of boots to trousers
was sufficient to determine, in my eyes, the social status of a
man. Heelless boots with angular toes, wedded to narrow,
unstrapped trouser-ends--these denoted the vulgarian. Boots with
narrow, round toes and heels, accompanied either by tight
trousers strapped under the instep and fitting close to the leg
or by wide trousers similarly strapped, but projecting in a peak
over the toe--these meant the man of mauvais genre; and so on, and
so on.

It was a curious