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RESPECTABILITY.
Respectability! Mysterious word! indefinite
term! phantom! Who will presume to say authoritatively
what thou art? What metaphysician or
mental chemist will analyze thee, and expound to
the world the curious substance or essence of which
thou art composed? Where is the lexicographer
gifted with powers, subtle and fine as the spider's
thread, to define thee accurately, satisfactorily, so
that the general voice shall cry aloud, “that is the
meaning of the word;” and every individual whisper
to his neighbor, “that was my meaning.” As for
the explanations of the existing race of dictionaries,
they are mere evasions of the question.
About the boldest and most decided opinion concerning
this particle of the English language that I
am acquainted with, was that given by a witness in
a swindling transaction, who, on being asked by
the judge his reason for affirming that the defendant
was a respectable man, replied, “that he kept a
gig.” There is something in the unhesitating and
weight with it. The witness was well acquainted
with the defendant's moral obliquities; he knew
that he had long been worthy the attention of the
laws of his country; he knew, moreover, that he
was only enabled to maintain this two-wheeled
vehicle by a constant infringement of the right of
meum and tuum; he knew, in short, that he was
rich by good management and unhanged by good
luck; but still, there was no getting over the simple
fact—he kept his gig; and so long as he did keep
it, nothing could impugn his respectability in the
mind of the witness. Yet, before we unthinkingly
laugh at this man's tenacious adherence to his beau
ideal of respectability, let us cautiously examine our
own thoughts on the subject. A gig is respectable.
A curricle may be dashing—a phaeton stylish—a
carriage genteel, lofty, magnificent—but a gig is
respectable par excellence. Yet, of itself, and independent
of other circumstances, it does not wholly
and safely constitute respectability, and here lies
the difficulty. It is not all in all—“there's the rub,”
or the question might be settled. Besides, its condition
must be looked to. It may be badly lined,
and worse painted; the shafts and wheels may be
in ill-condition; it may, in fact, have a disreputable
appearance rather than otherwise; it may be
reality essential circumstances, are to be taken into
account before we can definitively pronounce upon
the respectability of the possessor; and it behoves
us to be cautious; for, to a nice mind, ardently engaged
in the pursuit of truth, a hair-breadth distinction
is found, at times, more obstinately irreconcileable
than a more manifest discrepancy.
Respectability! All-pervading power! like light
and life, thou art everywhere; or, at the least,
wherever civilization is, there art thou to be found,
despotically ruling the minds of men of every grade
and station, from the doctor to the dustman—from
the lawyer to the laborer. But of all the devotees,
none, I think, worship thee with the fervor—the
intenseness of shopkeepers and small tradesmen.
Thou art their idol—their oracle! They consult
thee in all they do or say, or in whatever in any
shape appertains to them. Thou art ever uppermost
in their thoughts, and there is no sacrifice too
great for them to make—no deprivation too severe
for them to endure, rather than to be banished
either in reality, or in the opinion of the world,
from thy presence. But though this race of people
are more peculiarly thine own, millions of others
put in their claim of kindred to thee on some trivial
pretext or other. Thou hast more distant relations
even though his name be Campbell. And it is curious
to mark the different ways in which thy multitudinous
kith and kin infer a connection. Some
are respectable by descent, some by dress, some by
the situation of the dwellings in which they have
temporarily located themselves. A man in very
low circumstances, if he has no better claim, is
consanguineous on the strength of a hat with a
brim, or a stocking without a hole—“ two precious
items in a poor man's eye;” the spruce mechanic's
dapper coat, or his wife's silk gown, leave no doubt
in his own eyes at least, how closely he is allied;
the small tradesman's snug house, tiny flower-spot
before the door, and neat green railings, distinctly
mark him for thine own; while the more aristocratical
storekeeper in the wholesale or large retail
way, getting above business, successful ship-brokers,
cotton-speculators, lottery-office keepers, and other
anomalies, forgetful of all thou hast done for them,
look above thee, and creep into the back ranks of
gentility and fashion, where they remain neither
fish nor flesh—genteel in their own estimation,
simply respectable in that of their neighbors.
Some men neglect their personal appearance, and
concentrate their claims to respectability in a brass
knocker, a plate with their name engraved thereon,
their domiciles; others are respectable by virtue of
their connexions; others by going to the private
boxes at the theatre; others by a pew next the parson
at church; others by the people they visit;
others by having every thing in season. Yet, difficult
as it is for the mind of man to comprehend all
these things, and to decide properly and justly, the
women, taking advantage of their superior powers
of penetration, and delicacy of discrimination, divide
and subdivide respectability as easily as quicksilver.
They have their “respectable sort of people
—very respectable—highly respectable—extremely
respectable—most respectable,” which makes the
thing about as difficult to understand or explain,
as political economy or electro-magnetism. Indeed,
there are some men, otherwise not deficient in intellect,
who never have even a glimmering of light
upon the subject. Think of the more than Egyptian
darkness of Robert Burns, for instance—mark
his heterodoxies,
Wear hodden gray and a' that,
Gie fools their silk, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that.”
Or, grant that he is so by courtesy, what is a man
some of the floating laws and regulations on the
subject? “Oh, better had he ne'er been born!” for,
as the Persian sage justly remarketh—“he shall
drink of the waters of bitterness all the days of his
life, and his bread shall be as ashes in his mouth;
his face shall be near unto the earth, and he shall
be so small that his friends will look over his head
and see him not, even though the day be light—
and his shadow shall be less than the shadow of a
dog, or of a Russian, whom God destroy!”
Respectability is in and over all things. There
are respectable substances to eat, and drink, and
wear; there are respectable towns and streets and
situations—for men and houses. There is a shade
of respectability in colors. A black coat is more
respectable than a brown one—a white handkerchief
decidedly more so than a red one. Why this
is we cannot tell, we only know that it is so.
One of the immutable laws of nature is, that
doctors and lawyers shall wear black coats and
white handkerchiefs, and perhaps to this, in a large
degree, is owing the respectability which is so generally
conceded to those bodies. I speak not here
of lawyerlings and doctorlings—boys with scarcely
a tinge of their profession, who are injudiciously
abandoned in those matters to their own weak
go abroad in josephean garments “of many
colors,” but of full-grown responsible men of law
and physic. Who would trust a life or a lawsuit
of any importance to one of either profession in a
pea-green coat, fancy waistcoat, and colored handkerchief?
the idea is preposterous. There is more
in those black and white habiliments than the unthinking
dream of.
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