Using Mysterious Manners for Effect

In the modern era, would one portray one’s self as an “Influencer”? — Many women are mysterious. Indeed, I have met more mysterious women than mysterious men. The mysterious woman is often small, but her hats are large, plumed like a hearse and generally black as night. Pale is her face and languid her manner. She tries to look consumptive and succeeds surprisingly often. As a rule, she has little to say, but says it in such an awful manner, that it takes on a fictitious importance and for the moment appears to be impressive. — Photo ITV/Carnival Films

Mysterious People Assume Importance 

and “Secretive Air” for Effect

Many people assume certain manners as they assume certain clothes and change these manners more seldom than they change their clothes. Some think it ingratiating to be perky. Others think it more graceful to be drooping and melancholy, to gaze wistfully, walk mournfully and sit as if before the baked meats of a funeral feast. But of all the people who indulge in travesty, I think I get most amusement out of the mysterious people. Bated, forever bated, is the breath of the mysterious person. Directly he comes into the room you are conscious of the presence of the unutterable and know that it will speedily be uttered into your most private ear. 

When he speaks to you he “takes you aside,” so that none other may know that he is telling you that the weather is damp and that there is a touch of influenza about. As he discusses with you such dreadful subjects as the price of hobnailed boots, the fluctuations of stocks and the economies of the administration his head approaches yours, his lips pout secretively, his eyes glance round warily to make sure that no one is within earshot to betray him and you, the gallows is surely in his memory. He wishes to avoid it; he wishes—kindly wishes—to save you from it also. Meet him halfway, it is such fun to do that. He responds sensitively to the slightest mysterious encouragement and thinks he is impressing you and that you believe him to be a strange and remarkable personage and that you will go away and say: “Glad I met John Smith. Interesting man. Not every day you come across a man like that.” 

Many women are mysterious. Indeed, I have met more mysterious women than mysterious men. The mysterious woman is often small, but her hats are large, plumed like a hearse and generally black as night. Pale is her face and languid her manner. She tries to look consumptive and succeeds surprisingly often. As a rule, she has little to say, but says it in such an awful manner, that it takes on a fictitious importance and for the moment appears to be impressive. Think over your acquaintances and friends. Are not some of them mysterious, and are not they highly considered? Are are not they called “interesting” on that account? There are many spurious beings in the social world, yet few things are more spurious than that reputation for being interesting which is gained by the mysterious manner. And half of the world at least is tricked, for everyday perkiness is called brilliance, mystery wisdom, assurance greatness and the puppet in the mask a giant in the sunshine. - Robert Lichens in Chicago Tribune, 1905

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