Maybe when reading (and enjoying) satirical personages, how they came to be and why shouldn't be contemplated, because it does if meditated on too deeply lessen their comedic effect, when their manner, although somewhat egotistical, is free and mocking and their chief attraction. Their utterances eloquent but abusive and delivered with smug smiles and curling lips and ridiculous flourishes. Their heads and hearts swelled with their own self-importance and pride as their opinion is sought, although unasked for it's often still given and listened to with the same awe, even if clumsily put or lacking in conviction. Snide comments are their bread and butter; truth is not necessary. Truth as in an accurate and true account of whatever they're relaying, truth as in their own held opinion. That's not their purpose as an addition to a house party, nor their aim.
Such characters are the entertainment: there to distort and to provoke; to be deliberately disagreeable and generally to amuse, if they're in (and as a host you hope they are) good humour because if they're not they can be either very dull or very cruel. Neither is what you the host or you the reader want, for what you want is for them to shock, to titillate, whereas if they refuse to engage or slump in a corner then the party, even if you're not actually there, is a ruined affair.
Their craft is this part they play: a role they made for themselves and perfected, and which is soon, if successful and popular, expected from them. A mask they have to wear which although it gets them invited everywhere can be tired of if for some reason they don't, won't or can't perform. An act such as this must not give way to normal human emotions or display them unless doing so furthers the farce. If they disappoint too often they'll soon be out of favour and forced to find it elsewhere.
Friends, in their proper sense, are rare, but then such characters, as they've made themselves, don't look for any, for if they did so the mask would have to slip, and then they fear they'd be found out, which as it happens many actors of different genres do, though for this type of whom we are speaking it's more related to their intelligence rather than their acting ability. They will be discovered to be merely pontificating and to, in actual fact, have very little to say for themselves. They have no opinions, but that of others. Any knowledge they have has been gleaned from reliable and unreliable sources and so they evade careful questioning, but are unafraid to turn a scrutinising eye on those who attempt to discover them. They are well-read, but only enough so that they can repeat verses and passages made fashionable; they know a little politics, just enough to get by; they know the intrigues of the social circle they happen to be in, enough to gossip or spread lies; and they know plenty of tales about people whom they profess to have met or heard tell of, though usually the persons and the circumstances are fabrications.
Their audience, however, is captivated, though not all wish to be and yet they find themselves nibbling like a greedy fish at what looks to be a most convenient wiggling snack to then find it's nothing of the sort but some man-made inedible resemblance on a concealed hook which is incidentally tied to a line. More than a couple of lines that in a very short time produce laughter, with and against the orator, and uncontrollable shaking; even on rare occasions silent shaking, as with their convulsions the sounds of laughter are swallowed or choked on, sometimes too with tears that make their eyes glisten like stars.
Picture credit: The New Spirit in Drama and Art, 1913, Spencer Gore
