ON AN UNRECOGNIZED FORM OF UNTRUTH.

In the art of painting there are two opposite ways of dealing with natural color. It may be intensified, or it may be translated by tints of inferior chromatic force. In either case the picture may be perfectly harmonious, provided only that the same principle of interpretation be consistently followed throughout.

The first time that I became acquainted with the first of these two methods of interpretation was in my youth, when I met with a Scottish painter who has since become eminent in his art. He was painting studies from nature; and I noticed that whenever in the natural object there was a trace of dull gold, as in some lichen, he made it a brighter gold, and whenever there was a little rusty red he made it a more vivid red. So it was with every other tint. His eye seemed to become excited by every hue, and he translated it by one of greater intensity and power.

Now that is a kind of exaggeration which is very commonly recognized as a departure from the sober truth. People complain that the sky is too blue, the fields too green, and so on.

Afterwards I saw French painters at work, and I noticed that they (in those days) interpreted natural color by an intentional lowering of the chromatic force. When they had to deal with the splendors of autumnal woods against a blue sky they interpreted the azure by a blue-gray, and the flaming gold by a dull russet. They even refused themselves the more quiet brightness of an ordinary wheat-field, and translated the yellow of the wheat by an earthy brown.

Unlike falsehood by exaggeration, this other kind of falsehood (by diminution) is very seldom recognized as a departure from the truth. Such coloring as this French coloring excited but few protests, and indeed was often praised for being “modest” and “subdued.”

Both systems are equally permissible in the fine arts, if consistently followed, because in art the unity and harmony of the work are of greater importance than the exact imitation of nature. It is not as an art-critic that I should have any fault to find with a well-understood and thoroughly consistent conventionalism in the interpretation of nature; but the two kinds of falsity we have noticed are constantly found in action outside of the fine arts, and yet only one of them is recognized in its true character, the other being esteemed as a proof of modesty and moderation.

The general opinion, in our own country, condemns falsehood by exaggeration, but it does not blame falsehood by diminution. Overstatement is regarded as a vice, and understatement as a sort of modest virtue, whilst in fact they are both untruthful, exactly in the degree of their departure from perfect accuracy.

If a man states his income as being larger than it really is, if he adopts a degree of ostentation which (though he may be able to pay for it) conveys the idea of more ample means than he really possesses, and if we find out afterwards what his income actually is, we condemn him as an untruthful person; but lying by diminution with reference to money matters is looked upon simply as modesty.

I remember a most respectable English family who had this modesty in perfection. It was their great pleasure to represent themselves as being much less rich than they really were. Whenever they heard of anybody with moderate or even narrow means, they pretended to think that he had quite an ample income. If you mentioned a man with a family, struggling on a pittance, they would say he was “very comfortably provided for,” and if you spoke of another whose expenses were the ordinary expenses of gentlemen, they wondered by what inventions of extravagance he could get through so much money. They themselves pretended to spend much less than they really spent, and they always affected astonishment when they heard how much it cost other people to live exactly in their own way. They considered that this was modesty; but was it not just as untruthful as the commoner vice of assuming a style more showy than the means warrant?

In France and Italy the departure from the truth is almost invariably in the direction of overstatement, unless the speaker has some distinct purpose to serve by adopting the opposite method, as when he desires to depreciate the importance of an enemy. In England people habitually understate, and the remarkable thing is that they believe themselves to be strictly truthful in doing so. The word “lying” is too harsh a term to be applied either to the English or the Continental habit in this matter; but it is quite fair to say that both of them miss the truth, one in falling short of it, the other in going beyond it.

An English family has seen the Alps for the first time. A young lady says Switzerland is “nice;” a young gentleman has decided that it is “jolly.” This is what the habit of understatement may bring us down to,—absolute inadequacy. The Alps are not “nice,” and they are not “jolly;” far more powerful adjectives are only the precise truth in this instance. The Alps are stupendous, overwhelming, magnificent, sublime. A Frenchman in similar circumstances will be embarrassed, not by any timidity about using a sufficiently forcible expression, but because he is eager to exaggerate; and one scarcely knows how to exaggerate the tremendous grandeur of the finest Alpine scenery. He will have recourse to eloquent phraseology, to loudness of voice, and finally, when he feels that these are still inadequate, he will employ energetic gesture. I met a Frenchman who tried to make me comprehend how many English people there were at Cannes in winter. “Il y en a—des Anglais—il y en a,”—then he hesitated, whilst seeking for an adequate expression. At last, throwing out both his arms, he cried, “Il y en a plus qu’en Angleterre!”

The English love of understatement is even more visible in moral than in material things. If an Englishman has to describe any person or action that is particularly admirable on moral grounds, he will generally renounce the attempt to be true, and substitute for the high and inspiring truth some quiet little conventional expression that will deliver him from what he most dreads,—the appearance of any noble enthusiasm. It does not occur to him that this inadequacy, this insufficiency of expression, is one of the forms of untruth; that to describe noble and admirable conduct in commonplace and non-appreciative language is to pay tribute of a kind especially acceptable to the Father of Lies. If we suppose the existence of a modern Mephistopheles watching the people of our own time and pleased with every kind of moral evil, we may readily imagine how gratified he must be to observe the moral indifference which uses exactly the same terms for ordinary and heroic virtue, which never rises with the occasion, and which always seems to take it for granted that there are neither noble natures nor high purposes in the world. The dead mediocrity of common talk, too timid and too indolent for any expression equivalent either to the glory of external nature or the intellectual and moral grandeur of great and excellent men, has driven many of our best minds from conversation into literature, because in literature it is not thought extraordinary for a man to express himself with a degree of force and clearness equivalent to the energy of his feelings, the accuracy of his knowledge, and the importance of his subject. The habit of using inadequate expression in conversation has led to the strange result that if an Englishman has any power of thought, any living interest in the great problems of human destiny, you will know hardly anything of the real action of his mind unless he becomes an author. He dares not express any high feelings in conversation, because he dreads what Stuart Mill called the “sneering depreciation” of them; and if such feelings are strong enough in him to make expression an imperative want, he has to utter them on paper. By a strange result of conventionalism, a man is admired for using language of the utmost clearness and force in literature, whilst if he talked as vigorously as he wrote (except, perhaps, in extreme privacy and even secrecy with one or two confidential companions) he would be looked upon as scarcely civilized. This may be one of the reasons why English literature, including the periodical, is so abundant in quantity and so full of energy. It is a mental outlet, a dÉrivatif.

The kind of untruthfulness which may be called untruthfulness by inadequacy causes many strong and earnest minds to keep aloof from general society, which seems to them insipid. They find frank and clear expression in books, they find it even in newspapers and reviews, but they do not find it in social intercourse. This deficiency drives many of the more intelligent of our countrymen into the strange and perfectly unnatural position of receiving ideas almost exclusively through the medium of print, and of communicating them only by writing. I remember an Englishman of great learning and ability who lived almost entirely in that manner. He received his ideas through books and the learned journals, and whenever any thought occurred to him he wrote it immediately on a slip of paper. In society he was extremely absent, and when he spoke it was in an apologetic and timidly suggestive manner, as if he were always afraid that what he had to say might not be interesting to the hearer, or might even appear objectionable, and as if he were quite ready to withdraw it. He was far too anxious to be well-behaved ever to venture on any forcible expression of opinion or to utter any noble sentiment; and yet his convictions on all important subjects were very serious, and had been arrived at after deep thought, and he was capable of real elevation of mind. His writings are the strongest possible contrast to his oral expression of himself. They are bold in opinion, very clear and decided in statement, and full of well-ascertained knowledge.