STODGINESS.
OF all words suggesting their sense by their sound, there are surely few more expressive than the word "stodgy." Indeed, even the shape and appearance of the printed word almost force its sense upon the reader. If a French or German schoolboy, confronted with the word in a piece of English set him to translate into his own language, were to look for two minutes at it, he would not, even had he never seen or heard of the word before, make a mistake in transla- tion. Yet though it conveys its sense by its sound, it would not be easy in a dozen words to say exactly what that sense is. What is " stodginess " P The first notion that suggests itself in attempting a definition is that of stolidity,—a sort of dull immovableness, combined with perseverance, or rather obstinacy, and an absence of surface emotion. But stolidity is not enough. A person can be stolid without being stodgy. There is a sort of stolid good-humour which will put up with any amount of personal chaff, yet which does not belong to the thoroughly stodgy person, whom personal chaff slightly irritates. There is a certain offensiveness about people who are stodgy. Two men were being criticised by an acquaint- ance. "Brown does not offend me," the verdict ran, "though undoubtedly be is as obstinate as a mule. But Smith has a mind like the back of a fat pug." That is too violent and intolerant a definition of stodginess, but it expresses in some measure the effect produced upon an alert mind by contact with brains that move slowly and with a kind of self- satisfied deliberation.
It is, perhaps, as a schoolboy that the truly stodgy person stands in his clearest outline. Gray wrote his famous ode "on a distant prospect" of his old school, and from the distance he remembered his schoolfellows in the mass as those
who-
" Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy."
But he must have remembered several whom be could never have described as possessing "wild wit, invention ever-new," or even "lively cheer of vigour born,"—thougb, for that matter, the stodgy schoolboy is as often of a cheerful as of a moody disposition. The stodgy boy seldom greatly distin- guishes himself in any particular department of his school life. His conduct can generally be truthfully described as good; he goes through the day's routine with a solid, comfort- able regard of rules and regulations, which he feels no sudden and fearful impulse to break. They are there, and he accepts them; they are part of his regular surroundings, and the idea of setting them aside does not occur to him, or if it does, he usually dismisses it as likely to make him unsettled and uncomfortable. He may, of course, fall sometimes, to the astonishment of his schoolfellows and to the relief of a discerning schoolmaster. "That is the best news I have heard of Robinson for a long time," remarked a bead-master upon being informed with gravity by an assistant that a pupil had smoked a cigarette with immediate and catastrophic consequences ; "I had nearly given up hope that he would ever do anything wrong." There are times when the stodgiest of schoolboys boils over. But, as a rule, he goes quietly on his way, neither making new rules for himself, nor
breaking those already made ; he never goes into school with his work unprepared, though he may not have brought any particularly brilliant acumen to its preparation; he is seldom unpunctual, and if he is, he is about three minutes late,—to be deliberately half-an-hour late is not possible to him. Punish- ment, of course, occurs at intervals; but throughout his schoolboy life he seems to go on the principle that it is better to be hanged for one lamb than for several sheep.
Later on, when the stodgy boy grows up, he has naturally to face and to take account of wider issues. He does so in much the same imperturbable frame of mind. The outer covering, or the armour, or whatever it may be called which surrounds and protects that part of him which forms con- clusions, cannot be rightly described as impenetrable. It is, rather, of a sort of indiarubber texture, against which pointed ideas keep on bouncing, and into which the most pointed idea occasionally penetrates and is held. As a schoolboy, his brain used to be perpetually assailed with this or that small idea, small suggestion or temptation. When he is a man, the points which rain on the indiarubber are heavier, larger, and sharper ; if they stick, they leave their mark, though they seldom do stick. Such " points " may be divided into two classes; one, those which concern his own interests as a private person; the other, those which concern in a large or small degree his relation to matters connected with the country at large. In the first would be included, for instance, such a pointed question as that of the desirability of marriage with a particular person; and when once a truly stodgy person has had it borne in upon him that it would be satisfactory to marry anybody in particular, his stodginess is peculiarly per- sistent. Probably few stodgy persons remain unmarried. In the second class come questions of current politics, civic duties, social fashions, and so forth. It is here that the stodgy person is most irritating, and also most interesting. He has, to all appearances, no original views whatever upon questions of the day ; he is assumed by those who meet him at dinner or in railway trains to accept and to agree with the views of the newspaper which he takes in or is seen reading. He would never be supposed to buy and to read a newspaper because he disagreed with its views upon political and social questions. Everything he does, says, and thinks is taken for granted by those who meet and know him to be of a sort of pudding-like consistency, which can be depended upon to make a doughy resistance if any question of resistance arrives. And suddenly the stodgy person astonishes everybody. It may be that a crisis springs up, in which he is compelled to take sides, either adopting or disavowing a broad general principle; or, as more often happens, he amazes his friends by taking at a moment's notice a strong and original line when circum- stances do not apparently call for sudden and decisive action. Possibly the questions on which, seemingly, he makes up his mind without any warning may be con- cerned with national or local politics; or it may happen that he decides upon a serious personal sacrifice, as, for instance, volunteering to serve in a war. Many such sacrifices were made in the first twelve months of the South African War, when men who seemed to their friends the last persons in the world likely to face the dangers and discom- forts of service in the field suddenly announced that they had been accepted by the enlisting officer. Yet ought the friends
of such men to have been surprised at their action ? Not, perhaps, if they had tried to realise the hard, sound qualities, instead of carelessly noting the superficial resilience, of the stodgy person. It takes a long time for an idea to get settled in the stodgy person's mind, but when once the idea is there it becomes a rooted conviction that nothing shakes. He does not take action before he has become thoroughly convinced of the necessity of doing so, nor does he state that he is making up his mind ; he never talks about what he is going to do,— merely his mind becomes made up and he does it with stodgy thoroughness. His is, after all, not an exceptional character among Englishmen, though he is possibly an exaggeration. Yet he is commonly taken, by foreigners as well as Americana, as typical of his nation. He is not, as a fact, exactly typical; but it is a compliment to him that he is taken to be so by the outsider who can appreciate what his nation has done.
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