BLACK LOOKS. •
BLACK looks are very pbwerful. Most men and most women are afraid to meet them, and almost unconsciously alter their course to avoid them. They produce discomfort around them " as far as the eye can reach." As a rule they are not the weapon of those in authority. They are chiefly used in. self-defence by people not otherwise armed. The black looks of a valued subordinate seem sometimes hardly endurable, espeC'ally when they are directed against the man who suggests any form of innovation. We have sometimes wondered how often an employer about to make some serious change in the conduct of his affairs, a man with his hand, so to speak, upon the foielock of time, has loosened his hold and lost his chance because of a black look. In smaller matters, at any rate, we all do and leave undone under the influence, of this tiny fear. We hardly like to say to ourselves how much we mind it, it seems so childish and absurd. Men, we think, are greater cowards than women where looks are concerned. For instance, they dare not leave a shop without buying, and that though the shopman may confess that he has not got the thing they are asking for.
One of the best arguments against the system of tips lies, we think, in the fact that they are so often nothing but the price of a look. We do not give them because the recipient has, in our eyes, deserved them, or because we want to do him a kindness, or because we would uphold a system. We give them to avoid a black look, or to buy a grateful one. Hero and there we find some one for whom looks mean nothing. One sees very selfish and very unselfish people who are indifferent to a face of thunder. To a man entirely bent upon his own comfort no one's mood matters but his own. On the other hand, there are a few genial people who delight in dispelling a storm. They like to try conclusions in a temperamental wrestling match. Again, some jaunty souls are rather amused by the black looks of grown-up people, just as we are all rather amused by the black looks of a pouting child. We suppose it is the contrast between the child's anger and impotence which makes us inclined to laugh, and the same thing is true of all black looks in some sense ; but only exceptional persons sec the humour of the situation.
But if black looks are widely detested, those who indulge in them are very frequently admired. In books, and we think in real life, men with stern and lowering countenances are flattered by the fair sex. Chronic black looks seem less odious than occasional ones. Have we not all known handsome, frowning boys whose families worshipped them, and who were certainly much run after by women when they grew up ? We think, however, that the fashion is changing, and that these black- visaged heroes have for the most part had their day. It is still common to hear an old woman say of some old man upon whose handsome brow the clouds of quick-coming anger have settled permanently: "He was immensely admired when he was young. He might have married any one. Dear me ! how well I remember how much So-and-so and So-and-so were in love with him!" It is not only to men, either, that constant black looks are forgiven— and here the fashion is coming in rather than going out. Gentle- ness is not so much admired in the fair sex as it was. We see striking girls, whose mothers dread their black looks, who have exceptional chances of marriage. Oddly enough, it is rare to see an old maid of the particular type we are thinking of. Old maids—we except some old maidservants—seldom look threaten- ing. They look sad, or sour, or fanatical often enough, but it is very seldom that they look black. We wonder what would be the experience of schoolmistresses in this matter. We believe they would say that the typo of girls who sulk and get angry— together, of course, with the sweetest and most womanly types —all marry. The truth is that significance is an integral part of charm, and is not infrequently mistaken for it when standing alone.
Do the people who constantly indulge in black looks know that they do it! We are inclined to think that they do. We 'believe that they know, and seldom repent. The remembrance of hasty words is apt to be disagreeable, even if we have got our own way by their means. Those who use them feel foolish, and possibly even remorseful, when 'their anger abates. But in black looks there is nothing to regret, and it may be that the sense of dignity that they give to those who put them on is pleasurable. Apart from dignity, many people take a sportive pleasure in frightening others. It is not unknown for a friend to tell a friend that a-third person is much afraid of him, and 'occasionally the compliment would seem to be acceptable. To
be able to • reflect that, without having said a word, we have rendered some one else uncomfortable ought certainly not to Please us, but it sometimes does. To produce fear by very subtle methods and without any reason is to many not very noble natures what, for want of a better phrase, we must call part of the social game. Such looks can perhaps hardly be called black looks, yet they partake of the nature of these, though in an ultra-refined form, and upon analysis: the one can scarcely be distinguished from the other. In order to produce a dis- couraging effect some one deliberately excludes from his facial expression all suggestion of sympathy, geniality, or frankness. and whether we say that he looks black or he looks haughty we mean the same thing. Some difference does no doubt exist,for black looks are cast up as a rule, and haughty looks down. Real black looks, in their simpler form, are in a measure excused by temper. The other sort of disagreeable looks are without excuse.
There was an old notion, now only current in the nursery, that the human eye had power to paralyse even lions and bulls. No grown-up person believes it ; but without doubt certain men of genius have had a strange power to lower the mental energy and capacity of those with whom they were in close contact by fixing their eyes upon them. This has of course been constantly said of more than one well-known statesman in the near past. Personally, we are inclined to think that this fierce and almost malevolent look was in no way connected with their greatness. It belongs to not a few small people. Can we not all think of some One—it may be a man or it may be a woman—whose eyes it is difficult to meet for any length of time ? He or she does not look insolent, or critical, or interrogatory, but repels and confuses. For persons who are conscious of it, it is an absolute bar to sympathy. On the other hand, it makes an impression upon inferior natures of a kind not altogether disagreeable, and we believe those who are cursed with these looks are proud of them, partly because they share them with a few people who have much to be proud of.
But when all is said, the eye has little power to wound, though it has so much to fascinate, and can exercise so good or so evil an influence. The scars which never go away are made by the tongue. The present writer was told the other day a story of two English soldiers who were overheard in a train discussing their officer. On the whole they liked—or shall we say they kindly excused ?—him. Taking everything into account, he was not, they said, a bad chap ; and one man would have gone the length of calling him a good one, " if it wasn't for his d—d sarker-zam" (sarcasm). Sarcasm is a power which sometimes arouses literal hatred in its victims, though when it is accom- panied by wit it is in the end generally forgiven. Inferior sarcasm, the sort which looks at first sight like nothing but a whip and which feels like one when applied, is not, as a rule. an instrument of discipline at all. Very few men use it simply to keep order. They sting their neighbours lest they should be disregarded by them. Like black looks, it is first and foremost a method of self-assertion. It is not impossible to assert one- self by kindness, even when the kindness is only verbal, but it is likely to be a slower process. It is possible to assert oneself by looking pleasant, but it takes a very long while. A tendency to self-assertion is a very ugly quality unless it is found in conjunc- tion with very potent virtue : then it may be transformed into ambition. Even in its lower forms it is hardly to be regarded as a vice, but it ruins what we may call the appearance of the character without fundamentally affecting the moral health.
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