Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 240, 30 December 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings

People Disliked

I would much rather be writing about people I like, but of course it would take too long, for, taking it by and large, most people are likeabie. I know it is flabby not to be a good hater, but indeed I can’t think of xnyone at all of whom it would ever occur to me to say: “There goes an enemy!” It must be thrilling to hate (says Clemence Dane in an English magazine), but the nearest I ever get to it, I am afraid, is a resolution to keep clear of Mrs. So-and-So. Oh, I admit that there are few friends at whom now and then I have not wanted to throw a dish of poached eggs; few friends in whose eyes I have not seen the same desire gleam as they regard me. But hammering at a person with your tongue because they won’t see what appears so crystal-clear to yourself is not disliking—it is merely mourning over them. Of course, everyone has some trick or trait that pokes up your nerves, and you dislike the trait heartily. But to dislike your friends themselves on account of it is like giving up growing strawberries in order to spite birds. INVITING DISLIKE But there are people, nevertheless, who do invite dislike. Cruelty is the grandmother of bad manners, and thinking over traits that are dislikeable in p ople, it seems to me that they have all grown out of one or other of these vices. SO VERY YOUNG For instance, I dislike people who are all elbows in a crowd; I dislike intensely sniffers and sneerers, and the people who assume that everyone is guilty until they are proved innocent, and even then are left murmuring: “There’s no smoke without fire.” I dislike snobs, especially literary snobs, and most of all the young of that species; but, indeed, literary snobs are generally young, and develop out of that crawly, caterpiller state into passable butterflies and moths by the time they are 35. But I confess that I do dislike the silly little boys new down from the universities, who say “Ah, poor Kipling!” and “What a pity Hardy ever tried to write verse.” I dislike even more young women who talk about complexes in Americanese. “LITTLE MAN ...” And I can’t bear people who speak lightly of Queen Victoria. When I hear them I remember a story told of another great queen. When Queen Elizabeth lay dying, young Cecil told her “she must go to bed.” At which she smiled, wonderfully contemning him, observing: “Little man, little man, ye know that I must die, and that makes 3'e so presumptuous.” When I read such passages as the reference in Mr. Wells’s “Joan and Peter” to “Victoria, that poor little old panting German widow,” I seem to hear once more a voice, guttural maybe, but not the less terrible: “Little man, little man, ye know that I am dead!” MORE OF THEM! Likewise do I dislike people who call

other people by their Christian names behind their back, when they do not do so to their faces, and discuss tiie love affairs, knowledgably, of men and women with whom they are not acquainted. And I dislike men who say “You ladies!” and women who speak of “Men!” with a twist on the M; and motorists who don’t honk before they try to pass you; and creatures who use strong scent, and women whose lips come off on their table napkins at lunch. I dislike backbiters and scratchbacks, and people who play pianos in flats, and people who interfere with other folks’ liberty, who dictate to men what they should drink, and tell women how short their should be and how long their hair. 1 dislike women who are “catty”; women who say through half-closed eyes, “Um —yes, I like it, dear, but don’t you think it needs rather a special type to wear that colour with success?” THAT IS WHY ....

Dear me, what a lot of people I find myself disliking, and I do dislike people who dislike other people! I suppose that is why I find myself sometimes even disliking my own dear self. And small comfort is to be gained from the assertion of the nurse of our childhood that “there is some good in everyone.”