THE PASSION FOR NOTORIETY.
IT is a little difficult to understand clearly the dislike of the passion for notoriety which is always expressed and felt by the able and the goad. It is a pretty keen dislike, largely mixed as it is with contempt, and with a certain indefinite wish to punish ; yet there seems at first sight to be little reason for it. Most men would describe the wish for notoriety as a vulgarised form of the desire for fame ; and while all passions must be vulgarised by the vulgar, the desire for fame excites neither derision nor dislike. It is held to be a respectable weak- ness, even in the weak, who will miss their object; while in the strong it is pronounced a noble quality, the desire which stimu- lates poets and conquerors and reformers. It was not absent from the man who said, " Write me as one who loved his fellow- men," and who consequently wished that specialty of his to be known abroad. Nor is there anything inherently bad in the feeling which is the ultimate source of the passion for notoriety. The desire to be known, to be separated from the crowd, to be somebody in the world, and not to be " thrust foully in the earth to be forgot," is not evil in itself, is perfectly natural, and has repeatedly led men to high achieve- ment. Great communities have fostered the desire for distinction by creating an elaborate machinery for gratifying it ; and the most ascetic of theologians smiles indulgently on the man who seeks the laurel crown, or even the crown of parsley, while the philosopher remarks that individuality, even if pushed to an excess, has its good sides. The man who seeks notoriety must to a considerable extent suppress himself, and self-suppression is not only a virtue, but a cause of strength. Yet we all more or less despise the desire for notoriety, and hold the man who is possessed by it to be not only a weak man, but, in a sense, a bad one. He is a " cad " in the slang dialect— an epithet which, rightly and carefully used, imputes moral evil, or at least moral failure, as well as deficiency in manners. The popular explanation of the difference—that the man who loves fame seeks it through lofty means, and the man who desires notoriety is regardless of means—is not quite true, for it would not cover the case of many unscrupulous men who yet sought fame and not notoriety. They were free of vulgarity in their desire. The true explanation is, we believe, that while the -desire of fame, or of distinction, or even of separateness may, and often does, leave its victim a true man, true to himself, and therefore able to seek success through the cultivation or display -of the noblest part in him, the passion for notoriety implies that the man is either false, or willing to be false; that he will simu- late or dissimulate qualities rather than give up his object ; and does not seek it so much as he is possessed by it, till the sense of right and wrong, the becoming and the unbecoming, dis- appears from his mind. Right and wrong have become alike to him in an overmastering desire for personal display, which is not vanity, but a separate and lower passion. He craves to be noticed, instead of craving to be noticed with reverence or regard ; and will knowingly lower him- self, as Henri Rochefort and some English journalists of Rochefort's kind have recently done, rather than remain invisible in the crowd. The quality of the attention he draws matters nothing, compared with the fact of attention; and if all other means fail, he will fire the temple of Diana, and live through the ages as the blasphemer and foe of the one pure goddess. The readiness to be false to oneself and to the facts, is the note of evil which distinguishes the hunger for notoriety from the thirst for fame. He advertises rather than displays himself ; and in all advertisement there is some trace of lying. If the good condemn or the wise scorn, scorn and condemnation are still acceptable, if only they are sufficiently audible to increase the roar.
There is an impression abroad that the desire for notoriety tends to increase, and is more frequently gratified than it was ; but we fancy there is little truth in it. The desire has always -existed, and the means of gratifying it. It is true the notorious man of our day is much more notorious than any predecessor, because the means of publicity have been so inconceivably increased. He can be as easily notorious in a State as in a
town, in four Continents as in one. If his eccentricity or his crime is interesting enough, all civilised mankind will look at him, and his name will penetrate for an instant to the ends of the earth. If any man could diffuse cholera, for instance, and had the callousness to do it, instead of his name slowly creeping as a horror through mankind, he would be cursed in all lan- guages within a week, and in a month would be as noted and as near lynching as even his heart could desire. An echo that spreads through a planet seems to the creatures on that planet a huge roar, and is, no doubt, more noticeable than an echo which only sounds on a mountain-side and makes the dogs of one village bark. It is one of the evils of news- papers that they are mechanical sounding-boards, reflecting and spreading all noises, without power of distinguishing between the qualities of noise. They must, and do, throw back a hysteric scream more sharply than articulate wisdom. But we do not know that the desire to arouse the roar increases; rather, we should say, it diminishes. Men are certainly more doubtful of themselves, less anxious to be observed, more indisposed to indulge in eccentricity or whim. The pres- sure of the moral atmosphere is heavier, till, for good as well as for evil, it diminishes individuality, and makes it as difficult for a man to dance on his head as to per- form any more admirable feat. To depart from the usual takes more effort than it did ; while the fear of opinion, which directly checks the notoriety-seeker, has been indefinitely developed. Besides, notoriety pays less. The multitude, getting educated, has become more keen to perceive pre- tence, more willing that false claims to fame should be exposed. The vulgarity which is inseparable from the pur- suit of notoriety slightly shocks it, and it doubts whether a tradesman who advertises can be quite as first-rate as a tradesman who never does. Of coarse, there are those to whom publicity means gain—as, for instance, it must mean gain to the wonderful lists of professionals advertised weekly in the Era—and to them notoriety is the equivalent of fame, but to the majority notoriety hardly pays as it once did. The people are not ignorant enough, and the advocati diaboli, the people who resist canonisation, are so very keen and strong. Barnum stands detected in a month, and unless detection is of itself a gain, hesitates to put himself under the electric light. We should say Europe had never had so few persons in it of extensive "notoriety" as distinguished from eminence, and that there never had been so few candidates who saw in the gratification of that passion a road to power, or even to applause and pelf. The disposition is rather to be quiet, so far as being like everybody else can secure quietness. Even in France, the land of notorieties, there seems to be a per- ception that notoriety, which is troublesome to gain, hardly pays when it is gained ; and we can hardly name a politician who gives full swing to the low impulse. A few profess extreme opinions in the hope of notoriety; but though the opinions are more extreme than ever, old extremism passing unnoticed, the number who scream and shout to the crowd merely to be noticed is smaller than it was. In an age of observant indifference, the passion for notoriety has decayed like the vice of hypocrisy, and for the same reason, that the world does not concede to it the expected reward. It smiles or sneers, but passes on forgetting. A man's name may be in all men's mouths now-a-days, and he himself, unless he has something to sell which men want, may reap little except a faint contempt. There are too many names with a meaning in them, for the mere repetition of a name to make any perceptible impression, or for anybody except an actor or an advertiser to gain by notoriety.
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