A Club of Cantankerous Old Men

“He had become a creature of habit and set opinions . . . . He joined that somber club in Pall Mall that had been the scene of so many painful interviews with his self-appointed guardian, Sir Joseph Mannering, and there often sat in the chair what had belonged prescriptively to Sir Joseph and, as Sir Joseph had done, pronounced his verdict on the day’s news to any who would listen.” 

Evelyn Waugh, “Basil Seal Rides Again” (1962)

“A friend of mine tells me that he is not cantankerous himself, but he has a friend who knows a man who has a cousin liable to the complaint.”

Arnold Frederick, Three-Cornered Essays (1890)*

There are few exceptions to the rule that every man likes his own opinions best, which should hardly surprise us since liking certain opinions best is why almost every man has taken those opinions as his own.**

A man’s liking for his own opinions tends to grow with age, with the result that, before senility, fatigue, or death put an end to his thinking and speaking, an old man is very often cantankerous.  But an old man very seldom sees himself as cantankerous—this word means obnoxiously stubborn—because his verdicts sound in his own ears like the verdicts of God.

When I put fingers to keyboard and compose a post for this blog, I am essentially doing what the aged Basil Seal did when he took the seat that had prescriptively belonged to Sir Joseph Mannering in that somber club in Pall Mall.  I am pronouncing my verdicts on the day’s news to any who will read, but I retain the modesty to understand that few readers will like my opinions as well as I do.  I do what I can to make myself agreeable, but I am at least intermittently aware that I have become a cantankerous old man.

An old man is especially attached to his opinions because he reasonably supposes that these are the opinions he will carry to his grave.  These are not like the fashionable and fly-by-night opinions of his fickle youth; but are instead like the suit in which he expects he will be buried.  These are indeed the opinions for which he may be required to give account when he stands at the pearly gate, nervously shuffling his feet.  So it makes sense for him to practice making excuses for them here and now.

An old man is also especially attached to his own opinions because he has had a lifetime to hoard supporting evidence and testimony.  He has filled his (now rapidly leaking) memory with the most crushing arguments in favor of his cherished opinions; although he is repeatedly disappointed by the impotence of his apologetic arsenal when he takes it into battle.  Repeated disappointment in polemical battles makes most old men even more cantankerous.

An old man is finally especially attached to his own opinions because he has so often trounced every objection in the snuggery of his own imagination.  He may have done this with borrowed arguments or arguments of his own invention, but an old man has long forgotten the last time he lost a debate in his own head.  When these cerebral fantasies of triumph collide with disbelieving reality, anger naturally results.  And with this flush of anger, an old man’s cup of cantankerousness runneth over.

Cantankerousness has been described as “angularities” and “moral boniness,” as an absence of the soft padding that makes a collision between two fat men a painless affair.*  A cantankerous man is nothing but elbows and shins, so he howls, and you howl, when the two of you bump into each other.  I suspect that this is why feelings are so easily bruised in a club of cantankerous men like the Orthosphere.

Angularities, moral boniness, and perhaps the fact that too few in this club are mellowed by drink.

To keep our cantankerousness in check, I suggest that readers adopt the rule I adopt (although often fail to observe).  This is to find humor in contradiction and to laugh when tempted by anger.  If you have read Lawrence Sterne’s great comic novel Tristram Shandy (1759), you may remember the advice that author gave to every reader who joined him on that literary journey:

“Therefore, my dear friend and companion . . . bear with me, and let me go on, and tell my story in my own way; or, if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road—or should sometimes put on a fools cap with a bell to it . . . don’t fly off—but courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside—and, as we jog on, either laugh with me, or in short do anything—only keep your temper.”

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*) Arnold Frederick, Three-Cornered Essays (London: Ward and Downey, 1890), p. 158.
**) Very few women have opinions of the sort that men do, opinions of the sort that cause men to brood, and quarrel, and write grandiose and fatuous posts for an obscure blog.
***) Vol. 1, chap. 6.