Fastidiousness
Fastidiousness may be defined as undue niceness or exactness in selection. The essence of this quality is that it is exceedingly difficult to please the person possessed of it. Nothing appears to satisfy his taste or inclination. When going to buy an article of dress, for instance, the fastidious man examines one stuff after another, rejecting them all, and demanding fresh ones, and better ones, and still better ones, until in the end, perhaps, he is unable to buy at all. This is fastidiousness in the matters of dress. The same quality may manifest itself in other matter just as well. The fastidious man is dissatisfied with his meals, rejecting dish after dish as unsavoury, tasting a bit out of one plate and putting it by, and another out of another, until in the end he rises up in utter disgust from the table. “This is not good”; “this quality is not the best”; “there is surely a better than this”; remarks such as these are always on the lips of the fastidious man. Nothing can please his fancy; nothing can suit his taste, nothing can come up to his standard.
At bottom it will be found that fastidiousness is only another form of egotism. For it really consists, not so much in the expression of dissatisfaction or disgust with what is, as in a strong assertion of one’s own tastes and inclinations. The fastidious man believes in no one except himself; what he likes is what the world should accept; what he dislikes should be ruled out of court absolutely. He is always talking of his own tastes, which he regards as superfine,—better, more refined than those of all others; and in this respect he is as vain as a peacock. For he is not content with gratifying his own tastes, but goes further, and makes a show of them both at home and in society.
From the above description it would appear that fastidiousness is an unqualified vice, as reprehensible as vanity or egotism. Is this really so ? Is there no saving grace about this quality that would clear it of moral stain ? The answer to this question would appear from a consideration of the root or origin of this alleged vice. There can be no question that fastidiousness results from the over-cultivation of a particular taste. If a man’s liking for decent clothes is pushed to extremes, the result is fastidiousness in dress. Fastidiousness in meat and drink similarly springs from excessive regard for savouriness in our meals. Fastidiousness may also be displayed by a writer in the matter of style and language. De Quincey knew an author so laudably fastidious in the art of style as to have recast one chapter of a series no less than seventeen times. It is clear, then, that fastidiousness is impossible except for people whose tastes are highly developed; and that just as it is an indication of over-cultivation of taste in the person possessing it, so it conduces to a better cultivation of taste in others. A vulgar or ignorant man has no chance of being accused of fastidiousness; what is to be feared in his case is an absolute lack of good taste, or rather too much evidence of bad taste. Hence if the choice were to lie between vulgarity on the one hand and fastidiousness on the other, there can be no doubt that the latter would be the more desirable alternative. Better that there should be an increase of fastidiousness than that a premium should be set on clownishness.
There is decidedly some good in fastidiousness. If it does no other good, at least it tends to raising the standard in taste. The passing away of whatever is ugly or inelegant is due chiefly to the influence of fastidious people. It is they that set the standard for good taste. Reforms in fashion, invention of new styles of dress, improvements in the quality of articles of clothing as well as of food,—all these we owe to the turned-up nose of the fastidious gentleman or the fastidious lady. If no one had felt any dissatisfaction with the button less chapkan, with front and side fastenings, the modern sherwani would not have come into existence. If the nerves of fastidious people had not rebelled against the jolty vibration of iron-tyred vehicles, rubber tyres for carriages would never have been invented. If we look closely into modern improvements, we shall find that in most cases they have originated in a “discontent”, born first in the minds of fastid-ious people. To this extent, therefore, fastidiousness is a blessing to society.
But while it is a blessing to society itannot help being a curse to the individual himself. The fastidious man or woman suffers endless agonies in life, over and above the thousands natural shocks that flesh is heir to. He finds little appetite for his food—it is not so tasteful as it could be; his dress is abhorrent to him—is badly cut and badly made; his house is loath-some den, as bad as a pig-sty—there’s not a comfortable house that he has ever seen; his coach is worse than a bullock-cart,—indeed, he thinks, the bullock-cart would be a better vehicle than the carriages now in vogue; his tea is simply “horrid”; his wines musty or insipid; his cigars utterly devoid of flavour. There is hardly a thing that pleases him. If he has to write a letter, he cannot reconcile himself to the sort of stationery he can command—flimsy paper, scratchy pen, clotted ink—and he finds the work of writing a sore task. And if perchance he submits to the use of inferior stationery, he finds his heart recoiling in disgust from the poverty of the style which he can command at the moment. He tears up one sheet, two sheets, three sheets, and then probably leaves off the task in dispair. When he goes to a play, he is continually groaning within himself at the bad acting, the bad management, the bad dialogue, the bad plot. Nothing is to his taste. When dressing for a dinner party, he suffers a series of tortures as he tries shirt after shirt, collar after collar, hat after hat, and finds each a misfit or a type of ugliness. In this way the fastidious man finds himself dwelling in a hell of self-inflicted torments, deriving no consolation from the fact that his pangs are serving to lay the foundation of a better order of tastes in every department of cultured life.
But whatever good it might do to the world, or whatever harm it might do to the individual himself, there can be no question that fastidiousness is a creature of that love of pleasure which is gradually becoming a characteristic of modern culture. The most pronounced tendency of modern civilization is undoubtedly to give birth to refined modes of pleasure-seeking. The ball, the banquet, the stage, and the race-course are but a few of that endless variety of pleasures which the modern epicure is accustomed to take delight in; and within each of these departments a continuous course of improvement is going on. The result is that there are as many different styles of dancing as there are merry couples willing to dance. There is also no end to the variety in the manner of holding feasts, —no end also to the variety of dishes served at those feasts. And so for theatres and opera houses, no two of them will be found alike in quality or in the taste which they profess to gratify. Horse-racing has, for the same reasons, stepped beyond its proper sphere to be a scene of merry social gatherings, in which the centre of interest is not always the galloping horse, but some accessory amusement, such as betting. For love of pleasure can be pushed to any extreme. Like the man of ambition, the man of pleasure continually sighs for new worlds to conquer. Nothing loses its charm so quickly as a pleasure; the confirmed epicure cannot brook to taste the same pleasure twice; he is always longing for fresh pleasures; and since new pleasures cannot be produced so quickly as they are desired, the result often is that, in the words of the poet, the man of pleasure finds himself a man of pain.
