The Art of Commendation

by Frank Boreham

      Frank Boreham was ordained a Baptist Minister but has preached before Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational and Church of England pulpits for many years in Australia. He was the author of forty-eight books and a regular columnist for The Melbourne Age from 1936 to his death in 1959. This article is reprinted from The Melbourne Age, November 16, 1947.

      Mr. A. C. Benson, the renowned schoolmaster, loved to tell of a pretty girl who, entering a fashionable emporium, announced to the young man behind the counter that she required some soap. "I would suggest, madam," the youth replied politely, "the to suit a complexion like yours in which the lily and the rose are so perfectly blended . . . " "Excuse me," interrupted the prospective customer, "but it wasn't soft soap that I was wanting!" One has not to travel far in a world like this in order to encounter shining examples of this kind of thing. Nor must it be too hastily assumed that the melodious compliments are always dispensed with an ulterior motive.
      Kingsley's Dennis is not a lone specimen. On his way to the stream an angler asked Dennis if salmon were plentiful. Dennis assured him that the fish were literally shouldering each other out of the water. Without having experienced so much as a bite, the angler was returning in the evening when he again met Dennis. Asked what on earth he meant by vouchsafing such unreliable information, Dennis, with a disarming smile, blandly replied, "Shure, and didn't I think your honor would like a pleasant answer?" The amiable hero of "The Water Babies" is not alone in preferring to tickle his listener's ear rather than to instruct his mind.
      Soft soap becomes a habit. It is like the drink habit and the drug habit. Its victims are afflicted by an insatiable craving for the horrid substance. And, taking it for granted that other people esteem it as highly as they themselves do, they dole out soft soap with as lofty an air as if they were distributing sapphires. The more illustrious slaves of the habit use soft soap deliberately, systematically and with a definite end in view. Goldsmith has a poem in which he twits Garrick with a proclivity of this kind. And Lord Beaconsfield made no attempt to conceal his culture of the art. He himself loved to be flattered. Even when he knew full well that the dulcet tones were insincere, he found sweet music in them. True to the traditions of his kind, he did unto others as he would that they should do to him. He told Matthew Arnold that he studied the effects of flattery and used the instrument for all it was worth. Mr. G. W. E. Russell used to say that none of Lord Beaconsfield's masterpieces of public oratory was as clever as the compliments that, in private conversation, he paid to Queen Victoria. He paid such compliments, with his tongue in his cheek, every day of his life; and the letters and diaries that have been published since his death show how few of his victims were really deceived by them.
      The artist in soft soap resembles the boy who argued that, if an apple pie that contains one quince is so appetizing, an apple pie that contained nothing but quinces would be even more delicious. He sees that praise is a good thing. He thereupon assumes that, if praise be good, flattery must be even better. He is right in his premises but wrong in his conclusion. Praise is undoubtedly a good thing and the world would be a poor place without it. Human nature is a very complicated organism: it rises to super excellence only under the influence of an infinite series of stimuli. Appreciation is one of those stimuli. Mr. H. C. Barkley, in his clever "Studies in the Art of Rat-catching," urges aspiring sportsmen on no account to deny to their dogs their fair meed of praise. "We humans," he says, "often behave well and do good, not because it is our duty so to do, but for what the world will say and for the praise we may get. Dogs are not in all things superior to humans, and, in this matter of praise, I fear they are even inferior to us." He, therefore, advises those who would get the best from their dogs to pat them and praise them whenever they do anything worthwhile. The dog who is adequately applauded will, Mr. Barkely says, worship his master like a devotee and serve him like a slave. Mr. Barkley is talking of dogs, but there is a twinkle in his eye. In view of that tell-tale twinkle, his readers may be pardoned for reading between the lines; and when they read between the lines the will come to the conclusion that Mr. Barkley did not intend this morsel of sage philosophy to be applied exclusively to matters canine.
      There is, then, noting beneath the stars sweeter than sincere praise honestly earned. If the praise be not sincere it is nauseous; the recipient revolts from it and loses respect for the giver. Unless it has been honestly earned the honeyed words fall upon the ear with all the force of a stinging rebuke. But granted these two conditions-transparent sincerity in the person praising and a consciousness of high endeavor in the person praised-there is noting in the solar system sweeter than well-won praise. It blesses him that gives and him that takes. No man ever yet came to harm through it; but many a man has suffered shipwreck for want of it.
      In his autobiography, Mark Rutherford, perhaps the purest of our English writers, tells of a night in his life on which one word of appreciation, or even interest, would have saved both his health and his career. He had, he says, poured his soul into his work with a pent-up intensity of passion. But nobody seemed to have noticed. With every highly-strung nerve quivering to the breaking point, he resolved, on this particular evening, that, if no word was uttered, he must give up. Save that a caretaker remarked lugubriously that it was raining, no world was spoken, and Mark Rutherford collapsed in consequence. The Book of Revelation reaches its climax with the assertion that, one great day, we shall all hear the sober truth about ourselves. That ultimate estimate, we are assured, will be marked by scrupulous accuracy, crystal candor, stark sincerity and generous recognition of the best. Every word of praise will be worth its full face value. Mark Rutherford's tragic experience will know no duplication. Not one cup of cold water given to a thirsty child shall be omitted from that final reckoning.