MANNERISMS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4232, 17 January 1940, Page 10

MANNERISMS

IN EVERY WALK OF LIFE Myriad are the forms they may assume. We are born with them! we acquire them. They are more distinctive than our features; the latter change under the vicissitudes of the years, the former outlast a lifetime. In pursuance of a normal active life we all do much the same things. In the different way we do them lies the difference between us. Happily the inherited mannerism rarely jars on the observer. It is such an integral part of the individual that it seems perfectly natural. Not infrequently it can be discerned in the cradle. By some unconscious gesture the tiny child proclaims its kinship with some ancestor, not merely in that physical resemblance which is a natural sequence, but in some definite mannerism having no physiological basis. Some peculiarity of walk, some habit of speech, some movement of the hands; by such things particular individuals are instantly recognisable. Many mannerisms are automatic responses to nervous strain. The pursing of the lips, the involuntary clenching of the fists, the tapping of the foot, each is a mere reaction. But it is a permissible hypothesis that there is some atavistic reason for each person reacting in his own special fashion. The more genuinely inherited the mannerism the less conscious is the victim; it has to be pointed out to him by his friends. Even after that has been done volun tary efforts to correct it are invariably in vain. Fortunately most mannerisms are socially harmless, and even mildly diverting. On the golf links Jones can be picked out at almost any distance by the mannerism I he imparts to his swing. But in that he is on a par with many an eminent musical conductor. Of a dozen artists painting the same subject each could instantly be identified by reason of his inescapable mannerism in treatment. We smile at the little oddities of our associates; behind our back they smile more often at our own. In the evening of life, when memories cluster thick, it is not so much the great thing some old schoolmate has achieved that makes him vivid to us; it is the nervous little laugh he had, or the curiously perky way in which he shook his head. That elderly citizen still remembers more pleasantly than he would care to confess the charming grace with which a certain girl used to pat her back hair in the days when such a thing was an appreciable part of woman’s coiffure. During the previous war it was credibly reported that when FieldMarshal Hindenburg had “the wind up” he went about whistling softly. One great ambition of the Diggers was to “keep Hindenburg whistling.” Sir Walter Scott when at school was constantly eclipsed by a boy who in answering orally always twisted his bottom vest button. One day Scott

surreptitiously removed it. At question time the rival was humiliated. His fingers sought the button, but found it not. Deprivation of the mannerism created partial paralysis of mind. It was frequently observed that King Edward VII. when emotionally disturbed uniformly toyed with his neck-tie. A well-known and still surviving Australian Prime Minister, when in any way perturbed, performed a pirouetting movement with the point of his shoe on the carpet at his foot. The more he became perturbed the more pointed and swift became the pirouette. Unfortunately mannerisms are not always merely amusing. One famous British Judge habitually interjected a short, shrill cough into his speech; practically every second sentence was so punctuated. To iistin to him delivering a judgment strained the nerves of even seasoned barristers. It was a constant incitement to justifiable homicide. In the mannerism of exaggeration, both speech and action, lies the genesis of that megalomania which, with opportunity, can sometimes operate so disastrously. Even John Wesley, with all his goodness, habitually exaggerated to the point of absurdity the size of his congregations. Many a friendship has been imperilled by an ineradicable peculiarity of manner on one side or the other. Some quite harmless but previously undiscovered mannerism! has been the source of no little conjugal infelicity.

The person whose mannerism is genuine, even though exasperating, it is possible to respect. But society is constantly suffering from a plague of manneristic copy-cats. In practically all forms of social contact there is to be encountered the man or woman with the spurious mannerism based on the supposed model of someone who is great. Men of genius have occasionally been unconventional even to the point of rudeness. Invariably they have had a host of imitators who were destitute of the genius but who, in rudeness, could far excel the original. At an earlier period in German history Prince Bismarck, the Imperial Chancellor, was renowned for his arrogance and insolence. As a consequence these characteristics were deliberately cultivated by at least the German Junkers. Thomas Carlyle inaugurated a literary style heavily cumbrous and based largely on a home-made vocabulary. It was probably in his own case a natural manner. But for years English literature was disfigured by a host of imitators who hoped that by reason of their verbal crudeness, not to say coarseness, they would be credited with sharing Carlyle’s genius. The assumed mannerism is sheer imposture, deserving of contempt and certain of exposure. The mannerism that is genuine, however, is to the thoughtful person a reminder that he almost certainly bears the imprint of some long-distance ancestor. *The reflection might well inspire the resolution that in any mannerism which he himself adopts and in which he persists there shall be nothing at all likely to discredit any long-distance descendant.