'Professional Seers-Off'

“I am not good at it. To do it well seems to me one of the most difficult things in the world, and probably seems so to you, too.” 

It does. Saying goodbye, when not a relief, can be a tongue-tied torment. Some people, of course, we’re glad to be rid of – bores, assorted angry cranks and narcissists – but not so friends or loved ones. The pressure to not merely experience but express sadness at their departure can feel overwhelming. That’s just how some of us are built. We’re not among those annoyingly sincere and healthy-minded folks whose emotional lives are placid as a mountain lake in the spring. We stutter.

 

Max Beerbohm is writing above in his essay “Seeing People Off,” collected in his 1909 essay collection Yet Again. In it he conjures a novel profession, one that sounds very twenty-first-century – “professional seers-off.” He watches as a familiar face in a train station say goodbye to a young woman, whom he assumes is the man’s daughter. It turns out his one-time acquaintance, an actor, works for a service called the Anglo-American Social Bureau:

 

“He explained to me that of the thousands of Americans who annually pass through England there are many hundreds who have no English friends. In the old days they used to bring letters of introduction. But the English are so inhospitable that these letters are hardly worth the paper they are written on. ‘Thus,’ said Le Ros, ‘the A.A.S.B. supplies a long-felt want. Americans are a sociable people, and most of them have plenty of money to spend. The A.A.S.B. supplies them with English friends. Fifty per cent. of the fees is paid over to the friends. The other fifty is retained by the A.A.S.B. I am not, alas, a director. If I were, I should be a very rich man indeed. I am only an employe. But even so I do very well. I am one of the seers-off.’”

 

Today, such a service would probably have a website and app. My wife, you see, flies to Santiago, Chile, on Friday for a two-week visit to Patagonia. She’ll be roughing it—camping, hiking, horseback riding. She was born in Peru but has never visited this part of South America. My knowledge of the region is largely limited to In Patagonia (1977), in which Bruce Chatwin he writes: “In Patagonia, the isolation makes it easy to exaggerate the person you are: the drinker drinks; the devout prays; the lonely grows lonelier, sometimes fatally.” My wife is a strong, hearty, self-reliant woman who loves adventure and whose Spanish is fluent. She will have the experience of a lifetime, I’m certain. Beerbohm has the actor tell him:

 

“‘You can’t express your feelings. In other words, you can’t act. At any rate,’ he added kindly, ‘not in a railway station. ‘Teach me!’ I cried. He looked thoughtfully at me. ‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘the seeing-off season is practically over. Yes, I'll give you a course. I have a good many pupils on hand already; but yes,’ he said, consulting an ornate note-book, ‘I could give you an hour on Tuesdays and Fridays.’”