WIBCI Post #75

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray follows the lives of the anti-heroine Becky Sharp and milky vanilla Amelia Sedley  during and after the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. This biting portrayal of early 19th century British society only sits in the backseat to the snarky presence of the omniscient author, and the titillating immorality of almost all its characters.

Below comes from Vanity Fair  and is a line I initially blew off as filler, but after I thought about it, I believe Thackeray meant more:

When a traveler talks to you perpetually about the splendor of his luggage, which he does not happen to have with him, my son, beware of that traveler, he is, 10 to 1, an imposter.

 

At first I thought this was literally about traveling and luggage. But now I think it is more like this: if you communicate with someone whom persistently talks about the wonderful things they have and do, wonderful things that are never present, a person who says a lot of pretty words with no substance, no proof – ask yourself if they are compensating for something. Good people are just good people and often don’t need to lead with this, or pre-empt any discovery of such a personality trait that you might make on your own.  I think it is a cautionary tale, telling us to be wary of people who talk as though they are marvelous rather than showing you they are marvelous by just being marvelous.