Young Men I Have Met
by J. M. Barrie
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: Originally serialised in the Young Man Magazine between January and November 1890, Young Men I Have Met is Barrie’s humorous take on a variety of types.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Originally serialised in the Young Man Magazine between January and November 1890, Young Men I Have Met is Barrie’s humorous take on a variety of types.
Episode Three – The Prig
The prig never by any chance misses he last ‘bus – indeed, he usually says goodnight and goes just as the clock strikes ten. This permits those who are left behind to discuss him, and perhaps one – who likes to differ from the rest – complains.
‘Why do you call Prendergast a prig? I think him a very nice fellow.’
‘We all think him a nice fellow – indeed, that is perhaps why we consider him a prig,’ may be the hasty rejoinder. It is not warranted, but it contains an element of truth. Priggishness is not one of the virtues, but it lives on speaking terms with them.
We fling our terms about promiscuously nowadays, and even talk as if prig were brother to snob. They really cut each other when they meet, and one mother never bore them both. A snob hangs on to the coat-tails of those whose social position is better than his own: he ‘dearly loves a lord’ if he be only an alderman, and an alderman if he be only a clerk. The prig is generally ostentatiously (and genuinely) contemptuous of such servility. He makes no difference between the peer and the peasant, and is affable to both. Unfortunately, if he be like Prendergast, he talks of this admirable quality of his over-much, and, in his mind, he is always contrasting himself with the snob. He is lamentably self-conscious, and lacks humour.
The peasant, whom Prendergast treats like a peer, does not, I fear, think much of our friend.
‘Good morning,’ I once heard Prendergast say to a peasant.
‘Eh?’ the peasant asked.
‘It is a fine morning for the time of year,’ Prendergast explained.
‘Oh! Maybe,’ said the rude peasant, resuming his work.
To the peasant’s wife and daughters, Prendergast is excessively, indeed painfully polite.
‘They are as good as I am,’ he says, and they ought to like him for opening stiles to them with a graceful bow. Glendinning, who is a friend of Prendergast’s, is not nearly so polite to the ‘lower orders’. They were once living together in a rustic village, and Prendergast always rose politely when the landlady entered. Glendinning, on the other hand, continued to smoke, and made impolite remarks – so Prendergast considered them – to the landlady. She certainly ought to have liked Prendergast, and objected to Glendinning, but she says of the former that he is a ‘stick’, while ‘that Mr Glendinning do have a pleasant way with him.’ Glendinning called her ‘mother’ (which was in his companion’s eyes an unpardonable liberty), and one day he kissed her. She rushed from the room, saying something about his impudence, and Prendergast was so pained that he apologised to her. She is said to have regarded him with some contempt.
Prendergast has a tremendous sense of his responsibility, and talks a good deal about it. He knows that there is a right and a wrong in everything, and is quite heroic in his endeavours to follow the right. It is declared of him that he has thought out the vexed question, whether should one start to walk with the left foot or the right, and that he believes himself morally bound to start with the left. He does not fish because it is a cruel sport, and, indeed, he has conscientious scruples against all pastimes. If you were to tell him that he hurts the feelings of ‘bus conductors by walking past them, he would, no doubt, give the subject very serious consideration.
Prendergast never acts on impulse, and he reads Glendinning many lectures for giving to the poor without first enquiring into their case. Yet it must not be thought that Prendergast is avaricious. I daresay he gives more to the poor than Glendinning, and he takes some pains to discover which of the poor deserve his charity.
He dresses very carefully – taking an hour to it probably every morning. This is one of the duties he owes to society, he says, and he speaks of the duties he owes to society a good deal. Glendinning is said to receive company at times without a collar, or even in his shirt sleeves, but Prendergast is prim and neat at all times. When you go into Glendinning’s rooms you find the antimacassars on the floor, or anywhere except where they ought to be, but Prendergast’s antimacassars always hang nicely on the back of his chairs. He must be a model lodger, and yet I don’t think his landlady takes any interest in him.
Prendergast has a flow of small talk that ought to make him popular at the tea-parties which he frequents. He talks in the pleasantest way of the weather, and never forgets to say that he has spent a charming evening, and remembers to ask if his hostesses youngest son, Tommy (he knows that Tommy is the name), has got rid of his cold. To see young ladies home from tea-parties there is no one so suitable as Prendergast, who, in answer to their protestations, explains that it ‘is no trouble at all.’ He talks ‘Robert Elsmere’ to them most genteelly, and hopes the water is not dripping onto them from the umbrella. He rings the bell for them, and then when the servant answers it he bows and says good evening. Glendinning is neither so courteous nor so well-informed, and yet they prefer him to see them home.
I suppose Prendergast does have the air of a superior person, and that the more he tries not to have it the more he has it. He is so self-conscious that he can never forget himself for a moment. This it is, perhaps, that makes such a well-meaning man a prig.
The prig never by any chance misses he last ‘bus – indeed, he usually says goodnight and goes just as the clock strikes ten. This permits those who are left behind to discuss him, and perhaps one – who likes to differ from the rest – complains.
‘Why do you call Prendergast a prig? I think him a very nice fellow.’
‘We all think him a nice fellow – indeed, that is perhaps why we consider him a prig,’ may be the hasty rejoinder. It is not warranted, but it contains an element of truth. Priggishness is not one of the virtues, but it lives on speaking terms with them.
We fling our terms about promiscuously nowadays, and even talk as if prig were brother to snob. They really cut each other when they meet, and one mother never bore them both. A snob hangs on to the coat-tails of those whose social position is better than his own: he ‘dearly loves a lord’ if he be only an alderman, and an alderman if he be only a clerk. The prig is generally ostentatiously (and genuinely) contemptuous of such servility. He makes no difference between the peer and the peasant, and is affable to both. Unfortunately, if he be like Prendergast, he talks of this admirable quality of his over-much, and, in his mind, he is always contrasting himself with the snob. He is lamentably self-conscious, and lacks humour.
The peasant, whom Prendergast treats like a peer, does not, I fear, think much of our friend.
‘Good morning,’ I once heard Prendergast say to a peasant.
‘Eh?’ the peasant asked.
‘It is a fine morning for the time of year,’ Prendergast explained.
‘Oh! Maybe,’ said the rude peasant, resuming his work.
To the peasant’s wife and daughters, Prendergast is excessively, indeed painfully polite.
‘They are as good as I am,’ he says, and they ought to like him for opening stiles to them with a graceful bow. Glendinning, who is a friend of Prendergast’s, is not nearly so polite to the ‘lower orders’. They were once living together in a rustic village, and Prendergast always rose politely when the landlady entered. Glendinning, on the other hand, continued to smoke, and made impolite remarks – so Prendergast considered them – to the landlady. She certainly ought to have liked Prendergast, and objected to Glendinning, but she says of the former that he is a ‘stick’, while ‘that Mr Glendinning do have a pleasant way with him.’ Glendinning called her ‘mother’ (which was in his companion’s eyes an unpardonable liberty), and one day he kissed her. She rushed from the room, saying something about his impudence, and Prendergast was so pained that he apologised to her. She is said to have regarded him with some contempt.
Prendergast has a tremendous sense of his responsibility, and talks a good deal about it. He knows that there is a right and a wrong in everything, and is quite heroic in his endeavours to follow the right. It is declared of him that he has thought out the vexed question, whether should one start to walk with the left foot or the right, and that he believes himself morally bound to start with the left. He does not fish because it is a cruel sport, and, indeed, he has conscientious scruples against all pastimes. If you were to tell him that he hurts the feelings of ‘bus conductors by walking past them, he would, no doubt, give the subject very serious consideration.
Prendergast never acts on impulse, and he reads Glendinning many lectures for giving to the poor without first enquiring into their case. Yet it must not be thought that Prendergast is avaricious. I daresay he gives more to the poor than Glendinning, and he takes some pains to discover which of the poor deserve his charity.
He dresses very carefully – taking an hour to it probably every morning. This is one of the duties he owes to society, he says, and he speaks of the duties he owes to society a good deal. Glendinning is said to receive company at times without a collar, or even in his shirt sleeves, but Prendergast is prim and neat at all times. When you go into Glendinning’s rooms you find the antimacassars on the floor, or anywhere except where they ought to be, but Prendergast’s antimacassars always hang nicely on the back of his chairs. He must be a model lodger, and yet I don’t think his landlady takes any interest in him.
Prendergast has a flow of small talk that ought to make him popular at the tea-parties which he frequents. He talks in the pleasantest way of the weather, and never forgets to say that he has spent a charming evening, and remembers to ask if his hostesses youngest son, Tommy (he knows that Tommy is the name), has got rid of his cold. To see young ladies home from tea-parties there is no one so suitable as Prendergast, who, in answer to their protestations, explains that it ‘is no trouble at all.’ He talks ‘Robert Elsmere’ to them most genteelly, and hopes the water is not dripping onto them from the umbrella. He rings the bell for them, and then when the servant answers it he bows and says good evening. Glendinning is neither so courteous nor so well-informed, and yet they prefer him to see them home.
I suppose Prendergast does have the air of a superior person, and that the more he tries not to have it the more he has it. He is so self-conscious that he can never forget himself for a moment. This it is, perhaps, that makes such a well-meaning man a prig.
About the Author
J. M. Barrie (1860-1937) is of course best known for his play Peter Pan. As well as being a dramatist, he was famous in his own day for fiction. A graduate of Edinburgh University, he cut his teeth in journalism in Nottingham and London. Find out more about him at the unco online bookstore.