Bagarrow

Frankly, I detest this Bagarrow. Yet it is quite generally conceded that
Bagarrow is a very well-meaning fellow. But the trouble is to understand
him. To do that I have been at some pains, and yet I am still a mere
theorist. An anthropometric estimate of the man fails to reveal any
reason for the distinction of my aversion. He is of passable height,
breadth, and density, and, save for a certain complacency of expression,
I find no salient objection in his face. He has bluish eyes and a
whitish skin, and average-coloured hair--none of them distinctly
indictable possessions. It is something in his interior and unseen
mechanism, I think, that must be wrong; some internal lesion that finds
expression in his acts.

His mental operations, indeed, were at first as inconceivable to me as a
crab's or a cockchafer's. That is where all the trouble came in. For
that reason alone they fascinated me and aggrieved me. From the
conditions of our acquaintance--we were colleagues--I had to study him
with some thoroughness, observing him under these circumstances and
those. I have, by the bye, sometimes wondered idly how he would react to
alcohol--a fluid he avoids. It would, I am sure, be an entirely novel
and remarkable kind of Drunk, and I am also certain it would be an
offensive one. But I can't imagine it; I have no data. I could as soon
evolve from my inner consciousness an intoxicated giraffe. But, as I
say, this interesting experience has hitherto been denied me.

Now my theory of Bagarrow is this, that he has a kind of disease in his
ideals, some interruption of nutrition that has left them small and
emasculate. He aims, it appears, at a state called "Really Nice" or the
"True Gentleman," the outward and visible signs of which are a
conspicuous quietness of costume, gloves in all weathers, and a
tightly-rolled umbrella. But coupled in some way with this is a queer
smack of the propagandist, a kind of dwarfed prophetic passion. That is
the particular oddness of him. He displays a timid yet persistent desire
to foist this True Gentleman of his upon an unwilling world, to make you
Really Nice after his own pattern. I always suspect him of trying to
convert me by stealth when I am not looking.

So far as I can see, Bagarrow's conception of this True Gentleman of his
is at best a compromise, mainly holiness, but a tinted kind of
holiness--goodness in clean cuffs and with something neat in ties. He
renounces the flesh and the devil willingly enough, but he wants to keep
up a decent appearance. Now a stark saint I can find sympathy for. I
respect your prophet unkempt and in a hair shirt denouncing Sin--and
mundane affairs in general--with hoarse passion and a fiery hate. I
would not go for my