The Principles of the Art of Conversation

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Title: The Principles of the Art of Conversation
Author: Mahaffy, J. P. (John Pentland)
Language: English
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CONVERSATION ***

THE PRINCIPLES

OF THE

ART OF CONVERSATION

_J. P. MAHAFFY_

London

_MACMILLAN AND CO_.

_AND NEW YORK_

1887

------------------------------------------------------------------------

MY SILENT FRIENDS

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PREFACE

IF the reader should inquire what special claims the present author can
put forward to treat so complex and indeed novel a subject, the first
reply is, of course, that he has thought a long time and with much care
about it, and this, for a theorist, is sufficient vindication. But it
may fairly be added that a writer on the principles of conversation
ought to live in a country where the practice of it is confessedly on a
high level, and where the average man is able to talk well. This is an
additional justification. Lastly, though examples cannot teach the art,
it is to be expected that the writer should not live altogether in his
study, but should go out and hear as many good conversations as
possible, in order to bring his theories to the practical test. These
three conditions having been honestly fulfilled, the failure of the book
will rather be due to want of ability than to want of honest preparation
in the author.

The generality of the treatment may perhaps mislead the reader to think
that there is nothing but speculation attempted. This is not so, each
single case of general description being drawn from instances under the
author’s own observation, so that not a few will be recognised by those
who have moved in the same society. But, if justly drawn, they ought to
be found in every society.

In seeking for advice among those whose conversation has supplied the
best materials for his theory, the author has been fortunate enough to
obtain the assistance of the MARCHIONESS OF LONDONDERRY and LADY AUDREY
BULLER, who have made suggestions and criticisms which he here cordially
acknowledges.

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN,
September 1887.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION.

Conversation:

(1) is universal;
(2) is necessary; and therefore
(3) Is it an art? (§ 2)
(4) Can it be improved?

The great difficulty is this: that it must seem to be natural, and not
an art. Hence—

(5) Analogy of the arts of logic and rhetoric (§ 3, § 4),
viz.—

(α) They can never be taught without natural gifts to receive them.

(β) They can always be greatly improved in those who possess these
gifts.

(γ) They must not be paraded, or they cease to be arts in the higher
sense, for

(δ) The highest art is to attain perfect nature.

So also—

(1) No teaching by mere specimens and by memory is possible (§
5).
(2) All the general rules are obvious, and yet
(3) Natural gifts are necessary to apply them with skill.

I. THE MANNER OF CONVERSATION, or
Subjective Conditions,

(A) in the speaker, and these are either—

(α) Physical, viz.

(1) A sweet tone of voice (§ 6).
(2) Absence of local accent.
(3) Absence of tricks and catchwords (§ 7).

(β) Mental, viz.

(1) Knowledge, which may be either General (books, men), or
Special (great topics, the topic of the day).
(2) Quickness.

(γ) Moral, viz.

(1) Modesty.
(2) Simplicity—digression on Shyness and Reserve.
(3) Unselfishness.
(4) Sympathy.
(5) Tact.

Digression as regards Conditions—

(α) too general—Moral Worth and Truthfulness.
(β) too special—Wit and Humour.

Objective Conditions,

(B) in the hearers, which are either in—

(1) Quantity, for we speak with (α) one, (β) a few, (γ) many.
(2) Quality, for we speak with (α) equals, (β) superiors, (γ)
inferiors.
(3) Differences (A) of age, (1) older, (2) younger,
(3) equal; (B), of sex—men and women.
(4) Degrees of Intimacy, (α) relations, (β) friends, (γ)
acquaintances (familiar, slight).

II. THE MATTER OF CONVERSATION, or

In Quantity—infinite.
In Quality—serious or trivial.
In Relation—personal or general.

(D) The handling of the Topics must be either—

Deliberative, or by all the company.
Controversial, or by two speakers.
Epideictic, or by one.

EPILOGUE.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE PRINCIPLES

OF THE

ART OF CONVERSATION

INTRODUCTION

§ 1. THERE can be no doubt that of all the accomplishments prized in
modern society that of being agreeable in conversation is the very
first. It may be called the social result of Western civilisation,
beginning with the Greeks. Whatever contempt the North American Indian
or the Mohammedan Tartar may feel for talking as mere chatter, it is
agreed among us that people must meet frequently, both men and women,
and that not only is it agreeable to talk, but that it is a matter of
common courtesy to say something, even when there is hardly anything to
say. Every civilised man and woman feels, or ought to feel, this duty;
it is the universal accomplishment which all must practise, and as those
who fail signally to attain it are punished by the dislike or neglect of
society, so those who succeed beyond the average receive a just reward,
not only in the constant pleasure they reap from it, but in the esteem
which they gain from their fellows. Many men and many women owe the
whole of a great success in life to this and nothing else. An agreeable
young woman will always carry away the palm in the long run from the
most brilliant player or singer who has nothing to say. And though men
are supposed to succeed in life by dead knowledge, or by acquaintance
with business, it is often by their social qualities, by their agreeable
way of putting things, and not by their more ponderous merits that they
prevail. In the high profession of diplomacy, both home and foreign,
this is pre-eminently the case.

But quite apart from all these serious profits, and better than them
all, is the daily pleasure derived from good conversation by those who
can attain to it themselves or enjoy it in others. It is a perpetual
intellectual feast, it is an ever-ready recreation, a deep and lasting
comfort, costing no outlay but that of time, requiring no appointments
but a small company, limited neither to any age nor any sex, the delight
of prosperity, the solace of adversity, the eternal and essential
expression of that social instinct which is one of the strongest and
best features in human nature.

§ 2. If such be the universality and the necessity of conversation in
modern society, it seems an obvious inquiry whether it can be taught or
acquired by any fixed method; or rather, as everybody has to practise it
in some way, not as a mere ornament, but as a necessity of life, it may
be asked: Is there any method by which we can improve our conversation?
Is there any theory of it which we can apply in our own case and that of
others? If not, are there at least some practical rules which we ought
to know, and which we should follow in endeavouring to perform this
essential part of our social duties?

To assert that there is some such systematic analysis of conversation
possible is to assert that it is an _Art_—a practical science like the
art of reasoning called Logic, or the art of eloquence called Rhetoric.
Now this runs counter to one of the strongest convictions of all
intelligent men and women, that if anything in the world ought to be
spontaneous it is conversation. How can a thing be defined by rules
which consists in following the chances of the moment, drifting with the
temper of the company, suiting the discourse to whatever subject may
turn up? The instant any one is felt to be talking by rules all the
charm of his society vanishes, and he becomes the worst of social
culprits—a bore. For it is the natural easy flow of talk which is indeed
the perfection of what we seek. Didactic teaching, humorous anecdotes,
clever argument—these may take their part in social intercourse, but
they are not its perfection. To take up what others say in easy comment,
to give in return something which will please, to stimulate the silent
and the morose out of their vapours and surprise them into good humour,
to lead while one seems to follow—this is the real aim of good
conversation. How can such a Protean impalpable acquirement be in any
way an art depending on rules? Does it not altogether depend on natural
gifts, on a ready power of expression, on a sanguine temperament, on a
quick power of sympathy, on a placid temper? Is there not a risk, nay a
certainty, that in dissecting it we shall slay its life and destroy its
beauty?

§ 3. However natural and reasonable this objection, it is based on the
mistake that art is opposed to nature, that natural means _merely_ what
is spontaneous and unprepared, and artistic what is _manifestly_ studied
and artificial. This is one of the commonest and most widely-spread
popular errors. If such were the real meaning of _natural_, it might be
argued that nothing was natural in man above the condition of the lowest
savage—the _Naturmensch_, as the Germans call him. And if such were the
meaning of _artistic_ we must exclude from art the highest of all its
functions—that of reproducing, or perhaps even of producing, nature in
its most precious and perfect phases. It is a curious reflection that
conventionality and awkwardness seem the most universal inheritance, and
so far thoroughly natural to men, that they require either conscious art
or the unconsciousness attending some violent emotion to keep them clear
of it. The savage has it strongly marked in him; the most enlightened
societies are encumbered with it. Ask any child of five or six years
old, anywhere over Europe, to draw you the figure of a man, and it will
always produce very much the same kind of thing. You might, therefore,
assert that this was the _natural_ way for a child to draw a man, and
yet how remote from nature it is. If one or two out of a thousand made a
fair attempt and avoided the conventional treatment, you would attribute
this either to special genius or special training—and why? because the
child had really approached nature.

§ 4. Let us leave generalities and consider practical sciences, which
have a closer analogy to the subject under discussion. The science of
Logic or analysis of reasoning professes to show us how men ought to
reason, and to discover the precise nature of their mistakes when they
reason falsely. Yet the best reasoner is not the man who parades his
logic and thrusts syllogisms upon his opponents, but he who states his
arguments as if they came spontaneously and followed one another by
natural suggestion. In fact, the man who parades his logic is one of
those poor and narrow thinkers whose over-attention to form mars his
comprehension of the matter, and so leads him astray. The logically
formal reasoner is generally a bad persuader. And yet logic is not to be
blamed for this man’s stupidity. The fact that he goes wrong on every
practical question is not due to logic, but to the man’s narrowness of
vision or his vanity in parading an art that does not admit of parade in
its proper use.

The case is still clearer with Rhetoric, or the science of speaking
persuasively in public. Here we have a science so akin to that of which
we are in search, that the points of importance may serve as direct
clues to discover what we want. The most obvious points about rhetoric
as a practical science are these: it pre-supposes some natural gifts in
the pupil, and though we have notable instances of men overcoming great
congenital obstacles by study, the fact of this very conquest shows that
a fund of power or of passion lay concealed beneath these hindrances. No
stupid or idle person, no person without any flow of ideas ever was, or
could be made, an effective speaker by studying rhetoric.

On the other hand, every speaker, bad or good, is greatly improved by a
study of this science, and by reflecting on the suggestions it gives
him. There is no orator, however naturally ready and fluent, who will
not profit immensely by such a study. Nay, even those who have formed
themselves as speakers by long practice, have generally constructed for
themselves some such science or body of rules which they consciously
obey, and which gives them most of their efficiency and power; so that
even if they have succeeded without studying the science of rhetoric,
they are not therefore devoid of rhetorical study.

But it is of the last importance, as was already observed in the case of
logic, that a man’s theory of speaking should not be paraded to his
hearers. The moment they are made aware that he has drawn up
premeditated engines of persuasion, as it were, in position, they
fortify themselves against them, and what the orator gains in display,
he loses in power. For here, as in all art, the real perfection is to
reproduce nature—not nature in its halting, and stammering, and
repetition, but nature in its most perfect and purified form. Here, too,
the untutored speaker is always conventional and consciously awkward; it
is the trained orator who is easy and graceful; he is in fact at home
not only with his audience, but, if I may say so, with himself.

In public speaking, however, studied effects and evident preparation,
though not agreeable, though not showing the highest art, are still
excusable, owing to the acknowledged difficulties with which that art is
beset. It is not so with conversation. Here, if anywhere, the first
thing to be aimed at is to appear perfectly natural. Hence the fact that
no “theory of conversation” has yet been attempted. But hence also the
fact that such an analysis is very much needed, and that conversation
generally is at a far lower level than it might be. The many analogies
already pointed out, and many others which will suggest themselves to
any intelligent reader, indicate that the line to be followed in this
discussion must be determined by the sister art of rhetoric, if indeed
conversation can be called a sister art, and not a mere pendant to the
art of rhetoric. In general, good public speakers are also agreeable in
conversation; the art of persuading people from a platform is nearly
akin to that of pleasing them in social discourse, though there are of
course some men only fit for the greater and more serious mission, and
some who are perfect enough in the lesser yet who cannot rise to the
importance of the greater task.[1]

Footnote 1:

So it was said of Phæax, the contemporary of Alcibiades and Cleon,
λαλεῑν ἄριστος, ἀδυνατὠτατος λἐγειν—a capital talker, but the worst of
speakers.

§ 5. The analogy, therefore, being established, we may feel tolerably
certain of the following results, which should be stated at the outset
in order to allay any vain or excessive expectations: (1) no teaching of
the art of conversation by specimens is possible. Even in rhetoric this
is very difficult, and yet rhetoric is busied about weighty topics which
must often recur in the same form. But in the case of conversation,
except to point out some notable examples in great authors, any teaching
by special cases is quite illusory. It would at once tempt the learner
to force the train of the discourse into the vein he had practised, and
to force conversation is in other words to spoil it. (2) As in logic and
in rhetoric, we may be certain that all the general rules, when stated,
will be perfectly obvious. The notion of any of these sciences being
mysteries, whereby a secret or magic power is to be acquired, is only
fit for the dark ages. The broad foundations of logic are nothing but
truisms; the rules of rhetoric are founded on these truisms, combined
with psychological observations neither subtle nor deep. So we may be
certain that the laws of good conversation, being such as can be
practised by all, are no witchery, but something simple and commonplace,
perhaps neglected on account of their very plainness. (3) But simple as
these rules may be, it requires a certain special faculty to apply
them—a faculty which may be called common sense, or judgment, or
genius—a something which some men and women have not at all and can
never acquire, but which the great majority have in some degree, and
this determines their success more than all the rules in the world. So
it is with eloquence of the higher kind. What are called natural gifts
start one man far ahead of another. And yet these external qualities may
be outrun by a larger mental gift, which overcomes weakness of voice,
and poverty of frame, and makes a man whose presence is mean, and whose
speech at first contemptible, fascinate great audiences with his genius.
We will not define what this peculiar quality is in the case of
conversation, but it is necessary to feel its presence from the very
outset.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUBJECTIVE SIDE—PHYSICAL CONDITIONS

§ 6. There are no physical conditions absolutely necessary for becoming
a good talker. I have known a man with a painful impediment in his
speech far more agreeable than all the fluent people in the room. But
when a man comes to consider by what conditions conversation can be
improved, and turns first of all to his own side, to see what he can do
for himself in that direction, he will find that certain natural gifts
which he may possess, or the absence of which he may regret, are of no
small importance in making him more agreeable to those whom he meets in
society. It seems desirable to mention these at the outset for
completeness’ sake, and also that educators may lay their foundations in
children for after use in the world.

The old Greeks set it down as an axiom that a loud or harsh voice
betokened bad breeding, and any one who hears the lower classes
discussing any topic at the corners of the streets, may notice not
merely their coarseness and rudeness in expression, but also the
loudness and harshness of their voices, in support of this observation.
The habit of wrangling with people who will not listen without
interruption, and who try to shout down their company, nay even the
habit of losing one’s temper, engenders a noisy and harsh way of
speaking, which naturally causes a prejudice against the talker in good
society. Even the dogmatic or over-confident temper which asserts
opinions loudly, and looks round to command approval or challenge
contradiction, chills good conversation by setting people against the
speaker, whom they presume to be a social bully and wanting in sympathy.

Contrariwise, nothing attracts more at first hearing than a soft and
sweet tone of voice. It generally suggests a deeper well of feeling than
the speaker possesses, and certainly prejudices people as much in his
favour as a grating or loud utterance repels them. It is to be classed
with personal beauty, which disposes every one to favour the speaker,
and listen to him or her with sympathy and attention. This sweetness in
the tone of the voice is chiefly a natural gift, but it may also be
improved, if not acquired, by constant and careful training in early
years. It can certainly be marred by constant straining and shouting. It
should therefore be carefully cultivated or protected in youth as a
valuable vantage-ground in social intercourse.

Similarly the presence of a strong local accent, though there are cases
where it gives raciness to wit and pungency to satire, is usually a
hindrance in conversation, especially at its outset, and among
strangers.[2] It marks a man as provincial, and hence is akin to
vulgarity and narrowness of mind. It suggests too that the speaker has
not moved much about the world, or even in the best society of his
native country, in which such provincialism is carefully avoided, and
set down as an index of mind and manners below the highest level. Hence
all careful educators endeavour to eradicate peculiarities of accent or
pronunciation in children, and justly, though we have all met great
talkers whose Scotch burr or Irish brogue seemed an essential feature of
their charm. If this be so, no education can eradicate it. In lesser
people to be provincial is distinctly an obstacle in the way, even
though a great mind may turn it into a stepping-stone.

Footnote 2:

It has been suggested to me that a slight impediment or stammer often
gives peculiar zest to conversation. But this is hardly the case at
first hearing; it is only appreciated when we have discovered that
what the speaker is hesitating to utter is worth waiting for. It then
produces the same kind of surprise that irony does, which is often
deliberate mental stammering.

§ 7. There is yet another almost physical disability or damage to
conversation, which is akin to provincialism, and which consists in
disagreeable tricks in conversation, such as the constant and
meaningless repetition of catchwords and phrases, such as the unmeaning
oaths of our grandfathers, such as inarticulate sounds of assent, such
as contortions of the face, which so annoy the hearer by their very want
of meaning and triviality as to excite quite a disproportionate dislike
to the speaker, and to require great and sterling qualities to
counterbalance it. However apt a man’s internal furniture may be for
conversation, he may make it useless by being externally disagreeable,
and how often when we praise a friend as a good talker do we hear the
reply: I should like him well enough if he did not worry me with his
_don’t you know_, or his _what_, or his _exactly so_, or something else
so childishly small, that we shudder to think how easily a man may
forfeit his position or popularity among civilised men in their daily
intercourse. But modern society, which ought to be of all things in
human life the most easy and unconstrained, is growing every day more
tyrannical and only to be kept in good humour by careful attention to
its unwritten behests, unless indeed we have the power to bend it to our
will, and force it to follow our lead instead of driving us along like
slaves.

No more need be said concerning these physical conditions, which are
rather negative conditions, or favourable starting points, than real
aids for our purpose. The handsomest man or woman, even with the
sweetest tones of human voice, will soon be found out, if dull or
unsympathetic, and then these advantages all go for nothing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

MENTAL CONDITIONS—SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE

§ 8. Far more important than the physical gifts of nature, which can
only be slightly improved, though they can be completely marred by
habit, are the mental conditions of conversation. Among these the most
obvious is, of course, Knowledge. An ignorant man is seldom agreeable in
conversation, except as a butt; a man full of knowledge is certain to be
agreeable if he will conform to the other conditions of the game. The
word _knowledge_ is, however, so vague, that we must be at pains to
define more particularly its divisions, and consider what kind of
knowledge is most conducive to good conversation.

Of course the first question suggested to the reader is whether general
or special knowledge in the speaker is to be preferred. There are
arguments in favour of each. Let us take the specialist first. There is
undoubtedly a great satisfaction in talking to a man who is master of
any special subject, even if it be remote from ordinary life.
Intelligent questions will draw from the astronomer, from the chemist,
possibly from the pure mathematician, curious facts and interesting
views on the progress of discovery, which will pleasantly beguile the
time even in a light-minded and frivolous company. This opens a field
for conversation which is inaccessible if there be no one present to
explain or to speak with authority, and so no invitation is more
frequent or more welcome than to come and meet a man celebrated in his
own line and of wide reputation. The very fact of meeting such a man
disposes the company to be sympathetic, and to draw from him the secrets
of his knowledge.

This kind of vantage-ground may be occupied by a man of no original
capacity or deep learning, if accident has made him intimate with some
exciting or absorbing subject of the day. The man who has just escaped a
shipwreck, or fought in a famous battle, or survived some catastrophe,
has for the moment the advantage of being endowed with special
knowledge, which everybody wants to talk about, and to learn particulars
from the actual eye-witness. Akin to this is the advantage of having
seen and conversed with the greatest men of the day—a feature which
lends the principal charm to those volumes of autobiography or of
_recollections_, which approach nearer than any other kind of book to
the conditions of a conversation.

§ 9. Of course the danger with either of these specialists, the
specialist of a day or the specialist of years, is that he will not
leave his subject when it has been sufficiently discussed, as he will
probably gauge the interest of others by his own preoccupation, and so
may become not a blessing but a bore to his company. Though this is
frequently the case, those who have gathered company about them for
conversation, and have long experience of what is most likely to
succeed, will agree with me that to have a specialist present is always
valuable. If other topics flag an appeal to this abundant source will
always introduce a new current of talk, and often of the most agreeable
kind.

Neither of these mental conditions, which are distinctly valuable in
society, include the case of specialists on topics which are of no
universal or no permanent interest. Thus there are in English society
men devoted to one particular sport or one narrow pursuit, upon which
they can talk with authority indeed, and with interest, but only to
those who have received the same training. A party of fox-hunters, or
racing-men, or college dons, or stockbrokers, who rehearse again in the
evening what they have been doing all day, may indeed amuse themselves
with talk, but in no sense is it good conversation. One specialist, as I
have said, may be of the greatest use in conversation. A set of
specialists when they get together are either unintelligible to the
average mind or exceedingly tedious.

The same remarks apply to specialists, men or women, who can only
discuss topics interesting to one sex. I will not go so far as to say
that no conversation can be really good which does not include speakers
of both sexes; the divergence in the education and the life of our boys
and of our girls is still too wide to make such a limitation reasonable.
But it is surely a bad sign of any society to find men’s parties
considered more agreeable than those of both sexes, for it is a sign
either of licence in men’s talk or of narrowness in women’s education.
There are cases of both within most people’s experience. The latter is
notably the case in some parts of Ireland, and arises from the want of
_political_ education in Irish women of any but the highest classes. And
so it is in many other countries. But this is verging upon the
educational conclusions which we must postpone to another occasion.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE

§ 10. We come now to the broader condition of General Knowledge. This,
in the minds of many, sums up in itself all the conditions of good
conversation, and yet it is so partial a truth as to be practically
misleading. A great mistake lies at the root of such an opinion, which
assumes that the first object of conversation is not to please but to
instruct. I could produce one hundred Irish peasants more agreeable than
many a highly-informed Englishman, and yet these peasants might in many
cases be unable to read or write. Of course to instruct or to be
instructed is often very pleasant, and so far knowledge, general or
special, is a very useful help to conversation, but it is as talk, not
as a lesson, that we must here regard it.

The advantage of general above special knowledge for our purpose is that
it can be applied in a greater number of cases, and used to interest a
greater number of people. The man of general knowledge can suit himself
to various company, and, if he is not able to speak with the authority
of the specialist, can help and stimulate in many cases where the latter
is likely to be silent. If therefore we exclude the object of gaining
information, which many people estimate above its importance in our
present subject, we must decide that general information is the better
condition to promote agreeable social intercourse.

It may be attained in two directions; either knowledge of books or
knowledge of men. The former is within the reach of most men, even
though it requires a peculiar memory to make it applicable with ease and
readiness. We may even say with truth that no man can attain to general
knowledge nowadays without reading many books. The danger of a desultory
habit, very likely to arise from skimming the mass of ephemeral
literature now gushing from the press, is that the facts acquired will
not be ordered, and will come out as untidy scraps, not as the details
of a proper system of study. The books which a man reads may either be
the great masters, which are perhaps rather useful for cultivating his
deeper self than for ordinary converse, or the newest authors, whose
merits are still upon trial, and who therefore afford an excellent field
for discussion and criticism. In either case there is hardly a
distinction to be drawn between the specialist and the generalist, for
all people are supposed to study literature, and a good knowledge of
either familiar or fashionable books can hardly fail to tell in any
gathering of cultivated men and women.

§ 11. There is, however, another kind of general knowledge which is not
so easy to acquire, for it requires long experience, a certain position
in society, and means for foreign travel. I mean the general knowledge
of remarkable men, concerning whom the speaker can tell his
recollections. There is often a man of no great learning or ability
whose official position, tact, or private means have brought him into
contact with the great minds about whom every detail is interesting.
Such a man’s general knowledge should always make him an agreeable
member of society. Akin to this man is the experienced traveller who has
wandered through many lands and seen the cities and the ways of men. The
peculiar advantage of this kind of general knowledge for conversation is
that its very acquisition comes in the practice of society, and that all
those defects of narrowness, awkwardness, and self-consciousness which
often mar the man of books, are rubbed off, as the phrase is, by
constant contact with various men. The man of books, on the contrary,
has to acquire his store in the silence of his study, and so by a
process which rather untrains him for talking, so that even though his
knowledge when acquired may be of more solid and permanent value, his
way of producing it may put him at a disadvantage.

Let me add before leaving this head that the enormous increase of the
means for acquiring knowledge, and the application of great inventions
to save time in so doing, are by no means accompanied by corresponding
strides in the art of conversation. All the knowledge of the day
professes to be curtailed and collected into newspapers, periodicals,
and handbooks, just as all the travelling of the day is done by rail and
steam, with the aid of guide-books, which save the traveller all the
trouble and all the education of thinking. The tourist who formerly went
through Italy with his _vetturino_, and saw every village and road
deliberately, talking with the people and observing national life, is
now whirled through tunnels and by night from one capital to another,
where he sees what Cook or Murray choose him to see, just as the man who
trusts the newspapers for his knowledge gets scraps, perversions, even
lies, served up for him by way of universal information. It is easy to
see that this kind of training, as it interferes with both liberty and
leisure of thought, and induces men to spend far too much time in
gathering facts, is in no way conducive to the improvement of
conversation.

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INTELLECTUAL QUICKNESS

§ 12. What has hitherto been said about knowledge in a man of
conversation has left out of all account the way of producing it, and
merely considered the mental store from which conversation may be
supplied. But almost as important as these materials, is the faculty of
producing them without effort. This quality may be called intellectual
_quickness_, as distinguished from solidity; and of all the conditions
we have yet discussed, this seems most due to nature, and unattainable
by education. It is indeed sometimes a characteristic of nations. The
Irishman or the Frenchman will show this quality with an average
excellence far above that attained in England or Germany. It may of
course be allied with, or even due to, some such moral quality as
sympathy, of which we shall speak presently. But quite apart from it, a
selfish man, who has no sympathy for his company, may, by the quickness
of his intellect, show brilliantly in conversation, while his more solid
and worthy fellow is considered a bore. As I have just said, this is
generally a gift of nature. Some men and some nations are born with
quick wits. But even so it is a great mistake to think that it may not
be vastly improved by intercourse with people who have the faculty
already well developed. Moreover it is a very dangerous advantage, and
if not deepened by solid acquirements, or chastened by moral restraints,
may make a man rather the scourge than the delight of his company.

For this is the mental quality which is the foundation of wit, and a
joker who merely consults his own amusement, or the amusement of some of
his hearers at the expense of others, is not a good converser. The
tendency of a very quick intellect is also to impatience, and so it will
interfere with and cow more modest minds, which might have contributed
well to the feast of talk had they been allowed to work without hurry or
pressure. So strong do we often find this contrast that it is
unadvisable, in choosing a set of people for conversation, to bring
together very slow and very quick intellects. While the former are more
dazzled and confused than pleased, the latter feel the delay of
listening to long and deliberate sentences intolerable; and so a company
in which all the members are socially excellent may fail to be pleasant
on account of the mental contrasts of its members.

Let me illustrate it by an extreme case. Who would think of introducing
a young brilliant flashing sceptic into a society of grave and sober
orthodoxy? If the conversation did not soon degenerate into acrid
controversy—the very lees of social intercourse—it would result in
contemptuous silence on one side or other, probably with the contempt so
transparent as to challenge harsh over-statement from the talker by way
of challenge or reply to unspoken censure. Could anything be more
ruinous to the object we have in view? It may be urged on the other hand
that if too many quick intellects are brought together—not a very easy
thing, by the way, to accomplish—the pressure will become too great and
the conversation move so fast that the strain may become a weariness. I
think that any danger in this direction is rather due to the moral
defects of the talkers than their intellectual brightness, and so I
shall discuss this point under another head.

But if the quality under consideration is valuable at all times, it is
so peculiarly when a number of strangers meet together, or when it is
the lot of men and women to be obliged to talk together in dialogue,
upon a stray or sudden occasion. Then it is, when for example you go
down to dinner with a strange man or woman whose name you have not
caught, that quickness of intellect becomes the prime agent in starting
a pleasant conversation. There are, indeed, even here many easy rules
which may help to get over the initial difficulty, without those initial
chords about the weather whereby so many people, otherwise really
intelligent, hide themselves at the outset under the prelude of
commonplace. But here as elsewhere art can only imitate better nature.

It is further to be added that as general knowledge, and special also,
are principally to be expected from men, so quickness of mind, which is
often impaired by deeper study, is the proper attribute of women, and
ought to be the distinctive quality of their conversation. This is
supposed to be so in French society; I cannot say that it has come under
my observation as a general law, the many instances which I have met
being always noted and quoted as brilliant and as exceptional, so
implying that it was not the rule.

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MORAL CONDITIONS—MODESTY

§ 13. We may now pass from the intellectual conditions of conversation
to what I may call, for simplicity’s sake, the moral conditions. It is,
of course, certain that these so-called moral qualities are frequently
congenital or constitutional, and that, therefore, the owner of them
deserves no credit for possessing them. But as they are qualities
enjoined upon us by moralists, and are in any case analogous to moral
virtues, we may in this book, which does not affect precise philosophy,
class them as moral. For example, the instinct of sociality, which is
really the same as the gregarious instinct in birds and animals, is not
the same as the love of our neighbour enjoined by the Gospel, but is
closely connected with it, for to be social without being civil is not
possible, and civility is at least the imitation of friendship, if it be
not friendship or benevolence in outward acts of social intercourse.
This, too, appears to be the reason why a particular class of social
instincts is so agreeable to men, and so honoured in society—their close
relationship to moral virtues.

Let me take up the first and most obvious—Modesty.[3] It is quite
certain that modesty and its opposite are congenital to various people.
Those who have to do with the education of children can see it within
the limits of a family, not to say a school. Some boys and girls are
naturally retiring, and think little of their powers; others are the
reverse. But here too, as we all know, early education may make great
changes. A child not originally remarkable in either way may be unduly
brought forward and applauded, or again unduly repressed and cowed, so
that the constant habit of early years may actually modify the original
character in either of two opposite directions. But this is only
possible when the original nature is not strongly declared; if it be so,
I hold education to be almost helpless.

Footnote 3:

I include here under the word all its various gradations from mere
bashfulness to that moral self-restraint which makes us fear to assert
ourselves, as implying an over-estimate of our powers.

When the child is growing to maturity it is likely to be strongly
affected by watching the defects of others, or hearing the frequent
censure of them. Thus I see that the children of people with too much
manner are apt to have no manner at all (as the phrase is), and the
children of incessant talkers are so bored with this social vice that
they never think of practising talk during the absence of their parents.
Let us apply these remarks to modesty.

§ 14. There is no quality in man, still more in woman, which is more
attractive and which commands more respect. Every intelligent and
sympathetic person makes allowance for it, and strives to lessen the
necessary pains which it inflicts upon the possessor of it in society.
It is akin to simplicity and honesty, and opposed to that artificiality
which is the outward and visible sign of some kind of dishonesty. It
lends a charm to youth and inexperience, so that people who are wearied
with the labours of talking to worn and world-stained equals feel, as it
were, the breath of gorse and heather after the odours of city air when
they come in contact with genuine modesty. It is a quality sometimes
allied with that heaven-born genius which attains great results without
apparent effort, and, therefore, is not infected with the pride of
having gained conscious and hard-fought successes. It is, lastly, the
outcome of great and solid labour, which teaches the specialist how much
he fails to know, and the general student how small a fragment of human
knowledge he has compassed. Here it is no natural quality, but an
acquired virtue; yet it excites the same kind of feeling in society.

There is, therefore, no quality more highly valuable in society and more
certain, _within limits_, to conduce to agreeable conversation. Perhaps
the clearest reservation, and one which will cover almost all the
various cases, is this: _modesty without simplicity_, though it may
still be a moral virtue, is always a social vice; and therefore highly
detrimental to good conversation; for as soon as modesty becomes
conscious, it assumes one of two forms—the parade of apology or the
cloak of reserve.

I need hardly insist that the man or woman who displays modesty by
constantly apologising for native ignorance or stupidity injures
conversation, and can only amuse a company by becoming ridiculous. What
we want to learn from each member is his free opinion on the subject in
hand, not his own estimate of the value of that opinion. How evidently
this is a social vice will appear from the fact that an assumption of
this kind of modesty is one of the commonest and most diverting forms of
humour—I mean the irony which has been the helper of conversation ever
since the days of Socrates, as we find him in Plato’s _Dialogues_.

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MORAL CONDITIONS—SIMPLICITY

§ 15. We cannot analyse the second form of conscious modesty, Reserve,
till we have said a few words on the virtue akin to modesty which
reserve particularly violates, I mean of the quality of Simplicity. It
is a great mistake to say that simplicity as such is always a virtue.
There is for example the _enfant terrible_ who upsets everybody and
causes shocking shame and confusion by the indiscreet directness of his
inquiries. The very same kind of mistake is made by grown people who are
ignorant of the ways of society, such as country girls, or girls of an
inferior rank, who are married into a cultivated society, and who are
allowed such liberties, either for their beauty’s sake, or for novelty’s
sake, that they announce whatever comes into their head, and disturb
conversation by their irrelevancy and shallowness, if not by suggesting
subjects undesirable in general society. There is also the blunt man,
whose simplicity takes the form of rudeness, who thinks it more
important that he should speak out the plain truth, than that he should
spare the feelings of others. This is again a vice parading under the
form of a virtue—perhaps here of truthfulness rather than simplicity,
but the two are so akin that at this point we need not draw
distinctions. The conversational side of truthfulness is after all
little more than directness and simplicity of utterance.

So far then I have put the defects of simplicity first, because they are
more likely to be overlooked than its advantages. When, therefore, these
important limitations are made, and they affect a great number of cases,
we must admit that there is the greatest charm in simplicity, in the
temper which without assumption of ignorance, or parade of inexperience,
opens a candid eye of inquiry upon the company, receives with readiness
new information, and is ready to tell without conceits or ornaments the
actual impressions in the speaker’s mind.

It may be found not only along with genius, which is often of this
character, but along with great experience and acuteness; we hear for
example, that it is the leading characteristic of Prince Bismarck’s
conversation. I remember it likewise with delight in the conversation of
the late Isaac Butt, an Irish genius of the highest order, and a talker
second to none, whose life was stormy, and whose character not by any
means such as would naturally imply this quality of simplicity. On the
other hand, it is quite extravagant to postulate it as a necessary sign
of genius, and to say that those who are wanting in it are certainly
wanting either in ability or honesty. There are great minds naturally
wanting in simplicity, just as there are great minds wanting in modesty
or in truthfulness—such as J. J. Rousseau and the great Napoleon in the
latter two, and one great English writer of our day in the former, whom
I need not name. Human nature will not be tied down in any such fetters.

But when all has been said that can be said on either side, it will
remain certain that the man who appears simple, and who therefore
affects his company with the impression that they are in direct contact
with his mind, has a distinct advantage over those who either from
conceits of style, or over-delicacy of sentiment, or education in an
artificial atmosphere, appear with their minds, as it were, dressed or
tattooed, and not in the purity of nature.

I need hardly add that it is necessary to sever simplicity from modesty
as social qualities, since the one may even contradict the other, though
they are so often in harmony. The blunt man above mentioned, who speaks
out his mind with over-simplicity, may be very devoid of modesty, and
conversely there are certain phases of modesty, such as _prudery_, which
make the speaker avoid simplicity, and cover his meaning by various
subterfuges. It is when the two qualities work together, and appear
habitual to the speaker, that they produce their admirable effect. If he
is narrating, for example, a tragic history, or story of adventure in
which he has taken part, while his modesty will prevent him from
magnifying his own share in the matter, and so trying to the utmost the
faith of his hearers, his simplicity will prevent him from unduly
concealing his action, and will ensure that he tells the whole truth, so
far as he knows it. If again he be asked his opinion on a question which
he has studied, and upon which he ought to be an authority, his modesty
may prevent him from giving the company the benefit of his knowledge,
unless his simplicity makes him attend directly to the matter in hand,
and not to the position of referee in which he suddenly comes to be
placed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

MORAL CONDITIONS—SHYNESS RESERVE

§ 16. We have kept till now the main violation of simplicity, and
greatest of modern hindrances to conversation, which we have already
mentioned in connection with modesty.

What distinction are we to make between Shyness and reserve, two
qualities whose effects are generally similar, and each of which is a
great hindrance to good conversation? We may start from the distinctions
in ordinary use. No man or woman will openly claim to be reserved, but
many will plead that they are shy. The reason of this is that shyness is
assumed to be a physical or at least constitutional thing, whereas
reserve implies deliberate choice to stand aloof, and repel any intimacy
of conversation as unwarranted either by the circumstances or by the
relative position of the speakers. Thus though reserve _may_ arise from
modesty, it is generally a form of pride, which for that reason no one
will attribute to himself.[4] On the other hand shyness is either
assumed to be a form, or an excess, of modesty, which is a virtue, or it
is assumed to be congenital, and therefore a defect to be excused rather
than a fault to be censured. So shy people as a rule rather ’fancy
themselves’; for though they urge their peculiarity as an excuse for
social defects, there lies behind a secret conviction that they at least
have escaped the vice of forwardness, or of that coarseness of mental
fibre which is implied in forwardness. Accordingly, though there are
many people who sincerely regret their shyness upon particular
occasions, as for example, when they are compelled to make a speech, or
entertain some great personage, yet you will not find any one who would
exchange it as a permanent quality for perfect ease, or assurance, or
total absence of nervousness, or whatever else the opposite of shyness
may be called. The more we reflect on this and other similar symptoms in
shyness, the more we shall be convinced that here we have not to deal
with mere modesty, but with conscious modesty, with modesty without
simplicity, and therefore really with a subtle form of conceit.

Footnote 4:

I am reminded that there are, especially in England, people who desire
to be thought reserved, and are secretly proud of this reputation. It
is, of course, part of this pride not to declare it publicly. These
exceptional cases are, however, to be classed with those of people who
are secretly proud of other vices, and do not disturb my theory.

§ 17. There are of course cases of children who are allowed to run away
whenever a stranger appears, as if nature were a state of war, and man
the natural enemy of man. Such children will require training to be
cured of their own and their parents’ stupidity, and must be taught that
every stranger is not a bogy. But this is mere domestication, such as we
apply to the lower animals. It is also possible, though rare, that some
people of refinement and culture may have a physical repugnance to
meeting any but their intimates, and that they may make honest efforts
in vain to overcome this stubborn nervousness. The great majority of shy
people are not of this kind. Thus you will see a girl extremely shy in
ordinary society, who blossoms out when she receives attentions from
some one who may possibly marry her. Or else you may find a youth, who
jumps over a hedge to avoid meeting a party of his acquaintances on a
country road, anything but modest in lower society, thus showing that it
is a consciousness of unfitness for good company and a fear of being
criticised which dominate him. In almost all the cases which occur there
is therefore modesty without simplicity, a conscious and almost guilty
air; it is often nothing better than vanity which fears the results of
conversation, which desires to be thought well of, and which from
mistrust of itself puts on the garb of modesty.

If shyness really arises from this cause, it is a grave moral fault. But
in any case it is socially a crime. How can any conversation be easy and
natural, how can it range from topic to topic, and bring out the tempers
and the characters of the speakers, if any of them displays this vice by
dogged silence, by conscious blushing when any personal topic arises, or
by the awkwardness which always accompanies this noisome preoccupation
with one’s self? If then the capital conditions of pleasant intercourse
are modesty and simplicity, this defect which always contradicts the
latter, and generally both of them, is to be regarded as the most
prevalent and destructive anti-social vice. The only high quality which
may be concealed, or perhaps even displayed by shyness, is a delicate
sensitiveness, which shy people generally postulate in themselves, but
which has far better and nobler ways of affecting society than by
impeding conversation.

§ 18. Reserve, which few venture to claim for themselves, is a far
higher and better feeling, for it implies that the unwillingness to
enter upon conversation arises from some deliberate judgment as to the
relative positions of the speaker and his company—often a correct
judgment, saving us from the vice of familiarity, which in an inferior
is offensive, in a superior uncomfortable, in either case distinctly
vulgar. We feel that reserve can be laid aside in pleasant moments, and
among congenial people, and that there is often force and dignity behind
it. But it is rarely a virtue which improves conversation, and therefore
need not occupy us here. It may indeed act as a check on licence, and so
by bringing the company back from some aberration, start it afresh on
nobler and pleasanter topics. This is so indirect a mode of action, and
may be so much more easily attained in other ways, that I need only
mention it for completeness’ sake.

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UNSELFISHNESS

§ 19. Next to modesty and simplicity I class the moral virtue of
_unselfishness_. It is very characteristic that we have no other word
for this noble quality than the mere negation of its opposite—the most
prevalent vice in the world. Why can we not describe it better? Because
in particular connections it has other names—loyalty, devotion,
self-sacrifice, which occupy a part of the ground with more especial
attributes. We are not here concerned with these heights of human
nature, with the nobility of grand and pathetic moments. What shows
itself in these as devotion and self-sacrifice bears in our commonplace
life a negative and non-descriptive name, and is yet a very distinct and
valuable quality, distinct from simplicity, distinct even from sympathy,
with which it is so often allied; it may display itself in all kinds of
men and women who take part in a conversation. It is not less important
to the silent man than to the talkative man, though the latter case is
the more obvious. The good talker who monopolises conversation, who
insists on keeping other people waiting that he may finish his story,
who tells anecdotes which are evidently unpleasant to some of the
company, but will not forego his joke for the sake of others—the social
bully who makes butts of the more retiring, and sallies at their
expense, is the most obvious case of a man failing from selfishness, and
losing the great natural advantages he possesses through want of the
opposite quality. This is the man too who interrupts others, who refuses
to exercise for a moment that patience which he so often exacts.

I have spoken of these people as failures, and such they really are, in
the truest and highest sense, for they certainly kill more conversation
than they create, nor do they understand that the very meaning of the
word implies a contribution-feast, an _eranos_ as the Greeks would say,
not the entertainment provided by a single host. But alas! in a lesser
and looser sense these people often dominate society for years, and are
even sought out as social conveniences, who will keep things going at a
dinner table, and supply the defects of silence and dulness so painfully
common in English more than in other societies. But the punishment of
the selfish talker is sure to come at last, when he lives till his
vivacity and his power of acquiring new things fail, while he still
presumes on his old reputation. He is then discovered to be an
intolerable bore, which, indeed from a higher point of view, was always
the case; and thereupon society, which is as selfish as he is, and
insists on being amused at all costs, throws him aside with contempt. He
has perhaps still one place of refuge; he may become a high priest in
that great modern temple of selfishness—his club; but even there his
popularity has waned, and he sinks into the old age unfriended and
unsociable—ἄφιλον ἀπροσὀμιλον—which Sophocles regarded as one of the
tragic features in the life of man.

§ 20. I turn now to a far more common, but less observed and less
censured case of social selfishness, which requires urgently to be
brought into the light of criticism. No man requires to practise
unselfishness more than the silent man; for as everybody is able to
contribute and ought to contribute something, so the man who thrusts
himself into society to enjoy the talk of others, and will take no
trouble to help, to suggest, or to encourage, is really a serious
criminal. I have known a person of good position, and not the least
wanting in brains, who would insist in sitting at dinner between the two
most agreeable people in the room, in order that he might eat and
listen, while under no circumstances would he make the smallest effort
to entertain in return. These silent people not only take all they can
get in society for nothing, but they take it without the smallest
gratitude, and have the audacity afterwards to censure those who have
laboured for their amusement.

I ask the reader’s pardon for illustrating this important fact by a
personal anecdote. In a country house where I was staying, the host had
invited the colonel commanding a neighbouring dèpôt and his wife to
dinner, and the conversation was flagging seriously. Some mention of New
Zealand in that day’s papers suggested it as a topic, upon which a
couple of us brought out all we knew about New Zealand, discussed the
natives, then savages generally, and so restored the fortunes of the
evening. The colonel and his wife still sat silent. When they were gone,
we said to the host that we thought it very hard work to entertain
people who would not say anything to anybody. He replied that they _had_
said something as they got into their carriage. What was it? The colonel
observed that it was very impertinent of people to talk about countries
they had never seen, especially in presence of a man like himself, who
had not only lived for years in New Zealand, but had written a book
about it! This was the thanks we got.

§ 21. There is another special scope for unselfishness in society, which
may fitly find its place here. In every company there may be people
either socially or intellectually inferior to the rest, who feel
themselves somewhat _out of it_ (to use a vulgar phrase), and whom the
selfish man, the big talker, the ambitious man is apt to ignore. And yet
these very people may be in possession of knowledge or of mental
qualities which will be of the highest value in conversation. It
requires unselfishness to watch them, to appeal to their sympathies, to
draw them into the stream and make them feel that instead of being
outsiders they are really among people anxious to know what they think
and hear what they have to say. Many a time have I seen an unknown and
obscure person drawn in this way and become the leading feature in a
delightful evening, for fresh and curious knowledge, which suddenly
springs from an unexpected source, can hardly fail to be profoundly
interesting, and to stimulate all the active minds that hear it. Thus I
remember a stupid young man successfully probed by an intelligent
person, till it accidentally came out that he knew all about the wild
cattle in Lord Tankerville’s park (Chillingham Forest). From that moment
he took the lead in the conversation, and excited a most interesting
discussion, in which several very dull country farmers took an animated
interest.

All this can be done by mere intellectual unselfishness, by the man or
woman who considers that each person in a society should be attended to,
and if possible compelled to contribute to the general entertainment.
But it is both rare to find this kind of unselfishness and difficult to
apply it without the subsidiary faculty or constitution of mind, which
many think the whole root of good conversation—I mean sympathy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SYMPATHY

§ 22. The great Adam Smith, in a book called _Moral Sentiments_, which
he seems to have thought out as a sort of antidote to the selfishness of
the _Wealth of Nations_,[5] managed to deduce all the virtues from this
one root of sympathy. Starting from the fact that man is a gregarious
animal, with social instincts, he showed that the desire to be in
sympathy with our fellow-creatures, and so command their love and
respect, made us watch them, consider what they felt about us, and avoid
everything which might shock or hurt their opinions or their feelings.
It was this indefinite and impersonal public opinion which was by
degrees made a part of ourselves, and under the name of conscience was
set up as ‘a man within the breast’ of each of us to approve and
disapprove even our most secret actions.

Footnote 5:

Cf. on the relation of these two books, the highly interesting passage
in H. T. Buckle’s chapter on the development of the Scotch intellect
in his famous _History of Civilisation_.

I quote this once famous theory here, to show how a great thinker,
probably the greatest of his age, estimated the force and influence of
sympathy; and whatever exaggerations he may have made concerning it in
the province of morals, it seems hard to over-estimate it in the
province of social intercourse. The first condition of any conversation
at all, is that people should have their minds so far in sympathy that
they are willing to talk upon the same subject, and to hear what each
member of the company thinks about it. The higher condition which now
comes before us is, that the speaker, apart from the matter of the
conversation, feels an interest in his hearers as distinct persons,
whose opinions and feelings he desires to know.

This is the real secret of the power of personal beauty in society. Only
a very small number of people will fall in love with each beautiful man
or woman. But nearly every one will be so far attracted by beauty that
he will pay attention to what the beautiful person says, and feel a keen
interest to know what mind and temper accompanies such perfection of
form. Thus personal beauty secures the sympathy of any company, so much
so, that even when found out to be a mere shell, with no mental force
behind it, the attraction lasts, and lends some charm to what would
otherwise be called trivial and stupid. This natural sympathy with
beauty of external form is a sort of symbol of the feeling which seeks
for any mental beauty or advantage to be found in a company, and by
showing an interest in it, disposes the possessor of it to expand and
become friendly in response to such appreciation. The sympathetic man
will feel that his company talk best about the things they know best, or
have had special opportunities of learning, and he will be naturally
anxious to find the best side of them, and to exhibit it by his
suggestions. And as in every conversation there must not only be good
talking but good listening, the intellectual gifts which make the talker
are often marred if he has not the sympathy which makes the listener.

This remark suggests that the social virtues of the sexes are broadly
distinguished by some such principle. Women ought not to be obliged to
lead in a conversation, but it will grow dry and dull if they are not
ready with their sympathy to hear what is said with pleasure, and to
stimulate others by quick and intelligent appreciation. I have known a
clever woman maintain a deservedly high character for her conversation
who really said very little, but was so sympathetic that she made her
guests eloquent, and thus so thoroughly pleased with themselves, that
she was lit up by the glow of their satisfaction, and earned very justly
the credit for talking well simply because she made others talk. There
is probably no social talent higher than this—or rarer.

§ 23. But I suppose no one will be disposed to dispute this, or to
underrate the value of sympathy as a quality for conversation. It is
much more likely that people may think to simplify the whole matter by
arguing that, with the postulate of some brains and some education, all
that is required is sympathy, and the more of it the better, so that
nothing else remains to be said. We must, therefore, consider carefully
how far this is true, and whether there be not some important
limitations which complicate the question.

There is one on the very surface. Sympathy must not be excessive in
quality, which makes it demonstrative, and therefore likely to repel its
object. We have an excellent word which describes the over-sympathetic
person, and marks the judgment of society, when we say that he or she is
_gushing_. Of course as women are more frequently endowed with this
virtue than men, they also err more frequently in the excess, at least
in Teutonic races, for among Latin races a gushing man is quite a common
phenomenon. This sort of person not only volunteers to show his sympathy
before it is required, and often spoils conversation at the outset, but
is ever ready to agree with everybody, so making a discussion, which
implies differences in opinion, impossible. There results a social
impression of a mixed kind, which is even more disagreeable than
downright dislike, and therefore socially worse—I mean that of feeling a
dislike and contempt for a person who is known to be full of goodness
and benevolence. Many people resent being obliged to confuse their
judgment in this way, and feel a stronger antipathy to this marred
goodness than to proclaimed evil.

In the next place, sympathy must not be excessive in quantity or
indiscriminate, otherwise it ceases to have any great social value. The
most seductive way of conveying your sympathy to another is to join with
him in some strong antipathy, thus showing that all the world cannot
claim your friendship, but that you distribute your likes and dislikes
with judgment and discrimination. A man who is known to have a special
sympathy for some particular age or sex or class in society is far more
agreeable to that class than he who embraces all the world in his
affections. Nay, if one usually reserved or shy expands for once, or to
some few people, in contrast to his usual habit, this sympathy is indeed
treasured as a real token of confidence.

These and many similar observations, which will occur to the intelligent
reader, will indicate how important are the limitations of sympathy, and
how essential it is that this, like every other social virtue, should be
carefully husbanded, and not squandered at random without regard to its
value. I should add that the foregoing remarks are specially applicable
to English (I do not mean English-speaking) society. There is no people
more distant and reserved in social intercourse, or that more resents
any display of feeling, most of all of sympathy, without a careful
introduction and considerable intimacy among the company. Thus those who
are accustomed to freer and more outspoken societies, not to say French
and Italian life, may make social mistakes in England on the score of
sympathy, which are sins only in the heavy atmosphere of Anglo-Saxon
manners.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

MORAL CONDITIONS—TACT

§ 24. The highest and best of all the moral conditions for conversation
is what we call _tact_. I say a condition, for it is very doubtful
whether it can be called a single and separate quality; more probably it
is a combination of intellectual quickness with lively sympathy. But so
clearly is it an intellectual quality, that of all others it can be
greatly improved, if not actually acquired, by long experience in
society. Like all social excellences it is almost given as a present to
some people, while others with all possible labour never acquire it. As
in billiard-playing, shooting, cricket, and all these other facilities
which are partly mental and partly physical, many never can pass a
certain point of mediocrity; but still even those who have the talent
must practise it, and only become really distinguished after hard work.
So it is in art. Music and painting are not to be attained by the crowd.
Not even the just criticism of these arts is attainable without certain
natural gifts; but a great deal of practice in good galleries and at
good concerts, and years spent among artists, will do much to make even
moderately-endowed people sound judges of excellence.

Tact, which is the sure and quick judgment of what is suitable and
agreeable in society, is likewise one of those delicate and subtle
qualities or a combination of qualities which is not very easily
defined, and therefore not teachable by fixed precepts; but we can
easily see that it is based on all the conditions we have already
discussed. Some people attain it through sympathy; others through
natural intelligence; others through a calm temper; others again by
observing closely the mistakes of their neighbours. As its name implies,
it is a sensitive touch in social matters, which feels small changes of
temperature, and so guesses at changes of temper; which sees the passing
cloud on the expression of one face, or the eagerness of another that
desires to bring out something personal for others to enjoy. This
quality of tact is of course applicable far beyond mere actual
conversation. In nothing is it more useful than in preparing the right
conditions for a pleasant society, in choosing the people who will be in
mutual sympathy, in thinking over pleasant subjects of talk and
suggesting them, in seeing that all disturbing conditions are kept out,
and that the members who are to converse should be all without those
small inconveniences which damage society so vastly out of proportion to
their intrinsic importance.

§ 25. This social skill is generally supposed to be congenital,
especially in some women, and no one thinks of laying down rules for it,
as its application is so constant, various, and often sudden. Yet it is
certain that any one may improve himself by reflection on the matter,
and so avoid those shocking mistakes which arise from social stupidity.
Thus in the company of a woman who is a man’s third wife, most people
will instinctively avoid jokes about Blue Beard, or anecdotes of
comparison between a man’s several wives, of which so many are current
in Ireland. But quite apart from instinct, an experienced man who is
going to tell a story which may have too much point for some of those
present, will look round and consider each member of the party, and if
there be a single stranger there whose views are not familiar to him, he
will forego the pleasure of telling the story rather than make the
social mistake of hurting even one of the guests. On the other hand,
this very example shows how a single stranger may spoil a whole
conversation by inducing caution in the speakers and imposing upon them
such reserve as is inconsistent with a perfectly easy flow of talk.

Another evidence of tact is the perception that a topic has been
sufficiently discussed, and that it is on the point of becoming tedious.
There is nothing which elderly people should watch more carefully in
themselves, for even those once gay and brilliant are almost certain to
become prosy with age, and to dwell upon their favourite topics as if
this preference were shared by all society. But even the young must be
here perpetually upon the watch, and show their tact by refraining from
too many questions or too much argument upon any single subject, which
becomes a bore to others.[6] Every host and hostess should make it their
first duty to watch this human weakness, and should lead away the
conversation when it threatens to stay in the same groove. It is better
to do this bluntly and confessedly than to refrain from doing it. But
the quality of tact, as it quickly perceives the growing mischief, is
also quick of resource in devising such interruptions as may seem
natural or unavoidable, so as to beguile the company into new paths, and
even make the too persistent members lay aside their threadbare
discussion without regret.

Footnote 6:

Even too careful an attention to grammar, and the careful rounding of
periods in easy intercourse, is apt to be tedious, and should be
avoided. The instant the company has grasped your idea, you should
pass to something else without regard to the form of your sentence.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONDITIONS TOO GENERAL—MORAL WORTH AND TRUTHFULNESS

§ 26. In all the faculties hitherto enumerated, it has been my principle
to select and specify those which are capable of improvement by
conscious training. I have over and over again admitted that
nature—probably meaning by nature _heredity_—has endowed some people
with gifts which others must strive to attain by exercise. But I have
hitherto excluded such conditions as are either too wide to be called
conditions of conversation, or too special ever to be attained without
great and peculiar natural gifts.

Of the first kind are general moral worth and truthfulness, which afford
the proper ground for respect, and which therefore give weight and
importance to anything the speaker says. In cases of moral doubt, in
cases of disputed fact, the authority of such a person is a welcome
haven of rest for those that distrust other evidence, and like a great
authority in a science expounding the principles of that science, so a
man or woman of high character may be of much service in conversation.
But of course it would be ridiculous to recommend the cultivation of
this lofty character for the sake of conversation. It is perhaps more
practical to observe that an over-seriousness in morals may be
detrimental to the ease and grace, above all to the playfulness, of
talk. Let me not be misunderstood in this matter. There is no more
valuable and useful check on the degenerating of talk into ribaldry,
profanity, or indecency, than the presence of a mind of solid moral
worth, which will not tolerate such licence. There are companies,
especially of young men, where such things are taken for wit, and which
thus show a degradation of the conception of talk that would very soon
render conversation intolerable to any intelligent man, not only from
its coarseness, but from its dulness. No man, no society, can be called
witty, which has not far better credentials than that. Every company of
men ought to import two or three grave and reverend people into their
circle for the purpose of checking such ruinous excesses, if there be
any probability that the conversation may stray into this slough of
mire.

§ 27. But on the other hand, there is such a thing in society—Aristotle
saw it long ago—as being over-scrupulous in truthfulness. Even a
consummate liar, though generally vulgar, and therefore offensive, is a
better ingredient in a company than the scrupulously truthful man, who
weighs every statement, questions every fact, and corrects every
inaccuracy. In the presence of such a social scourge I have heard a
witty talker pronounce it the golden rule of conversation to _know
nothing accurately_. Far more important is it, in my mind, to _demand_
no accuracy. There is no greater or more common blunder in society than
to express disbelief or scepticism in a story told _for the amusement of
the company_. The object of the speaker is not to instruct, but to
divert, and to ask him: Is that really true? or to exclaim: Really that
is too much to expect us to believe! shows that the objector is a
blockhead unfit for any amusing conversation. The only social criticism
on such a story, if it be really beyond the bounds of reasonable belief,
is to out-do it with another still more extravagant, and so to bring
back the company with laughter, and by excess of exaggeration to a
soberer vein. The seriousness of the blunder just noted is not felt till
we have learned that there is a vast number of real facts in nature so
strange at first hearing, that they excite active scepticism, and that
you may lay a wager with any one to pass them off as lies. In fact, any
society only familiar with one class of natural facts, can be furnished
with facts from another sphere in nature which the majority will
disbelieve.[7]

Footnote 7:

For example, to men of town life, or of mere books, it will seem
incredible that a fish should shoot flies with a drop of water, or a
diver carry about its egg hugged against its breast, or that an otter
should take a single bite out of a salmon and leave the rest, or that
a woodcock should carry its young in its bill, all of which facts in
natural history I have myself heard told to intelligent pedants, and
set down by them as impudent inventions.

The point of importance in the present connection is that, if a man is
reporting what he knows to be true, and finds himself disbelieved, he
will certainly either feel hurt, or will conceive such contempt for the
ignorance and bad manners of his hearers that he will make no further
effort to help the conversation.

The outcome, therefore, of what has here been said about high moral
worth and extreme truthfulness, is that these virtues, though lending
the speaker dignity, must not be allowed to tyrannise. The great and
good man must unbend; he must acquiesce in being amused; he must even
connive at inaccuracies, and smile at what he considers inventions; he
must for the nonce regard recreation as his direct object.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONDITIONS TOO SPECIAL—WIT AND HUMOUR

§ 28. There may have been times and nations where conversation was
regarded as so serious and important an engine of education, that sound
argument, brilliant illustration, and ample information, took the
highest place as qualities of talk. Perhaps they do in some cases now,
as, for example, everybody who knows him will concede to Mr. Gladstone
the palm as a very charming man in society by reason of these qualities.
But among hard-working and somewhat fatigued people, who have been
pursuing information of various kinds in all their working hours,
conversation must be of the nature of relaxation; it must be amusing
first, instructive afterwards, and so it is that nowadays no qualities,
however valuable, rank so high in popular estimation for social
purposes, as wit and humour.

I will not ascend to a philosophical analysis of these terms, or attempt
to answer the obscure and difficult question: What is it that makes us
laugh, and why we seem to have in this somewhat trivial point a special
feature distinguishing us from all the lower animals? They may have the
faculty of reason; they seem entirely devoid of the faculty of ridicule.
Nay, even in the scale of civilisation, it is remarkable that the savage
and the ignorant laugh less and understand less of this great fund of
enjoyment than civilised people. There are also, of course, national
differences. The English boor seldom laughs, and then at very coarse
fun; the Italian or the Irishman often, and very innocently; the modern
Greek, though highly intelligent and keen, very seldom, apparently from
want of taste for the ridiculous.

As regards the distinction between wit and humour, all I need here
insist upon is that the former consists in quick flashes, in prompt
repartee, in quaint comparison; while the latter is sustained; it is a
comic way of looking at serious things, a flavouring of narrative, a
perception of a ludicrous vein in human life and character. Both these
are now esteemed very highly, perhaps beyond their value, in society,
but they are so specially natural gifts, and are so impossible to attain
by practice, that they cannot be enjoined as conditions to which every
talker must conform; they can only be described, and their force or
weakness illustrated.

§ 29. There is nothing that requires to _appear_ spontaneous more
stringently than either of these qualities, and yet we read of great
wits, like Sheridan, who carefully prepared their sallies, and even
suborned some one to lead up to them. The effect of knowing this is to
detract greatly from the enjoyment of the company, and still more from
the reputation of the speaker. Most of us would say, that however
brilliant in writing comedies, Sheridan must have been distinctly
wanting in that gift of spontaneous and ready wit which flashes out at
the least provocation, and is mere intellectual playfulness, like the
playfulness of a young and happy animal.

So strongly do we feel this in Irish society, where wit is less uncommon
than elsewhere, and where it is no less highly prized, that a kind of
social religion warns us not to study it beforehand, and any one
suspected of coming out with prepared smart things is received by the
company with ridicule. Yet for all that, it cannot possibly be denied
that as most of the brilliant things which a man uses in any
conversation must be at second hand—to invent such things one after
another at the moment being beyond the power of human genius—they must
depend upon a good memory, and this may best be aided by having things
written down, which would else escape and be lost.

We should therefore conclude that every man who goes into society, and
has an inclination for that kind of conversation, ought to keep some
record of the happy trifles he hears upon various occasions. But it
seems, at least in Ireland, as if the repugnance to doing this amounted
to a conclusive argument against it. It is assumed that as surely as a
man has such a store, which he looks up beforehand, so surely will he
force the conversation towards his points, or bring them in when
irrelevant; and an irrelevant joke is hardly a real joke. I have known,
indeed, of a college Don having a note-book of wit in his pocket, and
peeping at it under the table to refresh his memory. This was regarded
as far the best joke about him, and the laughter before he spoke was
always greater than when he had sped his shaft. In actual society it has
never occurred to me to meet any one who has sustained a reputation for
wit in this way. We think that if the suggestion of the current
conversation is not strong enough to bring up a smart point naturally,
and without effort, it is better that it should be forgotten or unsaid.
Let me add the significant fact, that in spite of endless attempts, no
printed collection of jokes has ever attained even a decent position in
literature.[8]

Footnote 8:

I believe I should mention Dean Ramsay’s well-known book as an
exception.

So much for wit; the case of humour is slightly different.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

HUMOUR

§ 30. If wit be the quick flash, the electric spark, the play of summer
lightning which warms the colour of conversation, humour is the
sustained side of the ridiculous, the comic way of looking at things and
people, which may be manifested either in comment upon the statements
made by others or in narrating one’s own experiences. Of course in
receiving and commenting upon what is being said, no preparation is
possible. It depends altogether upon a mental attitude, which looks out
with a smile upon the world, and exposes the ridiculous side of human
life not more by irony of comment than by mock approval of social vices,
mock indignation at social virtues, seriousness when false comedy is
being produced, raillery when false tragedy is being paraded with
insincerity or empty bombast. In these and a hundred other ways humour
receives and criticises what other people say in a company; and if it be
coupled _with kindliness of heart and with tact_, may be regarded as the
very highest of conversational virtues.

Analogous to this is the display of humour, not in receiving but in
producing ideas in company. The humourist is the only good and effective
story-teller; for if he is to monopolise a conversation, and require
others to listen to him, it must be by presenting human life under a
fresh and piquant aspect—in fact, as a little comedy. Thus the lifelike
portrayal of any kind of foible—pomposity, obsequiousness, conceit,
hypocrisy, nay even of provincial accent or ungrammatical
language—ensures a pleased and therefore agreeable audience, and opens
the way for easy and sympathetic intercourse. It is perhaps not too much
to say that in any society where conventionality becomes a threatening
power, humour is our great safeguard from this kind of vulgarity. Let me
point as an illustration of this to the social sketches in _Punch_,
which for years back have been the truest mirror of the vulgarities of
English society. The humorous exhibition of these foibles is the most
effective way we know of bringing them before the public mind, and of
warning people that here is a judge whose censure is really to be
feared. We may also learn from the success of this extraordinary paper
how much more valuable and more respected prepared humour is than
prepared wit. The jokes in the text pass by unheeded, while the sketches
of character are thought deserving of a permanent place in our
literature.

§ 31. I need hardly add that the abuse of these great natural gifts is
not only possible, but frequent, and in both it arises from the same
mental defects—conceit and selfishness. A man who can say a good thing
or make a person appear ridiculous may be so proud of his power that he
exercises it at the cost of good taste and even of real humanity. The
great wit is often cruel, and even glories in wounding to the quick the
sensibilities of others. If he can carry some of the company with him he
has a wicked enjoyment in making one of the rest a butt or target for
his shafts, and so destroying all wholesome conversation. He may leave
in the minds of his society an admiration of his talent, but often a
serious dislike of his character. With such feelings abroad he will
injure conversation far more than he promotes it. People may consent to
go into his company to hear him talk, but will avoid talking in his
presence.

The excesses of the humourist are perhaps rather those of a complacent
selfishness, which does not hesitate to monopolise the company with long
stories in which all do not feel an interest. But humour is its own
antidote; and if a man have the true vein in him he will also have the
tact to feel when he is tedious, and when his fun is out of harmony with
his hearers. For these reasons it is not only a higher but a safer gift
than wit for the purposes of conversation; the pity of it is that so few
possess it, and that there is hardly any use in trying to attain it by
education. No doubt the constant society of an elder or superior who
looks at things in this way may stimulate it in the young, but with the
danger of making them sarcastic and satirical, which are grave faults,
and which are the distortion of humour to ill-natured and unsocial
purposes, so that even in this view of the matter education in humour
may turn out a very mischievous failure.

On the whole we must set ourselves to carry on society and to make good
conversation without any large help from these brilliant but dangerous
gifts. Occasional flashes will occur to ordinary people, and sometimes
the very circumstances themselves will create a situation so humorous
that it requires no genius to bring it home to the company. But beyond
the necessary cautions above indicated, we cannot bring it into any
systematic doctrine of social intercourse.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS. THE COMPANY—ITS NUMBER

§ 32. We have now exhausted all the conditions which lie in the speaker,
which must be brought by him into a society as the subjective conditions
of good conversation. Let us turn to the company, regarded as the object
with which he is to deal, and see what an analysis of its varieties may
teach us in the way of practical direction.

The very first and most obvious division is that of quantity. You may be
required to converse either with one person, with a few, or with many.
And though no agreeable person may take the trouble to think about it,
he nevertheless makes considerable modifications in his talk according
to these circumstances. Thus a colloquy with a single person, which is
the easiest form, for it is usually with some one who is not a stranger,
and it allows far more personality, should consist in a direct
interchange of serious opinion, in which each seeks to make the other
speak out in confidence his inmost character. You should turn the
conversation upon the other person’s life, inquire into his or her
history, so far as that can be done with good taste and without
impertinence, and so induce him (or her) to give personal recollections
or confessions, which are to the teller of them generally of the deepest
interest. But you will not elicit these without some frankness on your
own part, sometimes without volunteering some slight confession which
may induce the other to open the flood-gates of his inner life. When
this is once attained there must ensue good conversation; for to have a
volume of human character laid open before you, and to turn over its
pages at leisure, is one of the highest and most intense recreations
known to an intelligent mind. Such confessions will hardly ever be made
to more than one person at a time, and a sympathetic freedom in
encouraging the timid by giving parallel experiences in your own life
will often make a silent and reserved person agreeable who could never
be induced to speak out in a larger company.

As our manners and customs determine these things, it is not usual to
have a long _tête-à-tête_ with another person of the same sex without
choosing your companion and seeking out the opportunity; but, on the
contrary, two people of different sexes are often brought together and
ordered (so to speak) to converse, for no other reason than the command
of society. Thus a young man is introduced to a partner at a ball, or a
man of soberer age is directed to take a lady down to dinner. Here,
though the company is large, the conversation is really of the kind
before us—a dialogue between two persons only, of different sexes, and
often comparative strangers. There is no case more frequent where
conversation is imperative, and where failures are common and
conspicuous. It is bad enough to begin with truisms about the weather—an
excusable exordium; it is far worse and more disgraceful to end with
them, and positively many people get no further. And yet this failure is
not from mere emptiness of mind. These very same people, young and old,
could be brought into circumstances where almost any of them would be
interesting—not a few of them eloquent.

I have spent an evening shut up with a very unpromising commercial
traveller in a remote country inn, and yet by trying honestly to find
out what he knew and liked, succeeded in drawing from him a most
interesting account of his experiences, first in tea-tasting, then in
tea-selling to the Irish peasants in the remote glens of Donegal. What
he told me was quite worthy to make an article in a good magazine. Yet a
more unpromising subject for a long dialogue could hardly be found. He
and I had apparently not a single interest in common. But when the right
vein was touched one had to supply nothing but assent, or an occasional
question; the man flowed on with an almost natural eloquence. People
said that others had found him morose and unapproachable. It was
certainly their fault. This case is cited as an instance that almost
anybody can be made to talk, unless he has determined positively that he
will not do so, and is moreover a very obstinate person.

§ 33. In the cases with which we started no such obstinacy exists; the
people are really ready to talk, but don’t know how. The beginning is
evidently the difficulty, and surely here, if anywhere, people who have
no natural facility should think out some way of opening the
conversation, just as chessplayers have agreed on several formal
openings in their game. Nothing is easier than to do this, and to do it
in such a general manner as will not be ridiculous. It must always be
remembered that the most domestic men and women are often the most
difficult to rouse into conversation. Their very virtues in home life
have dulled their interests in outer things, and the best of mothers
have sometimes forgotten to talk about anything except the education of
their children. But it is always better worth probing a sound nature
than hearing the ready chatter of idleness. For this reason, some
serious topic ought to be the best, even for talking with a stranger,
since our conversation errs more frequently through frivolity than
through gravity.

But it is not the object of this book to give any special directions.
They are only useful when framed by each man and woman for their own
private use, and any stock proceeding becomes a mere commonplace, and as
such contemptible. Yet no intelligent person who thinks over it can fail
to make out some general lines to be followed on such occasions, and so
thousands of men and women will save themselves from the punishment of a
dull and tedious evening beside a person whom they might easily find
lively and agreeable.

As there are some people who require to be encouraged by finding out
their daily interests, and inquiring into them, so there are others who
are only to be excited by the stimulus of opposition, by suggesting some
opinion adverse to what they believe or advocate, and so tempting them
to a friendly controversy. If you enter such a controversy with
perfectly good temper, with a desire to be convinced by good arguments,
and no further interest than to bring out the latent fire in the other
person, it may produce a very good conversation. But the moment you find
the points of difference too strongly accentuated, the moment you
perceive the dissatisfaction which is so common in people who are losing
ground, or who feel they are making no impression, you should turn the
stream into another channel, in which you anticipate at least partial
agreement.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TALKING WITH A FEW

§ 34. These last remarks are very applicable to the case next before us,
when conversation is among a few—say from four to eight people—a form of
society the best and most suitable for talk, but which is now rather the
exception, from the common habit of crowding our rooms or our tables,
and getting rid of social obligations as if they were commercial debts.
Indeed many of our young people have so seldom heard a general
conversation that they grow up in the belief that their only duty in
society will be to talk to one man or woman at a time. So serious are
the results of the fashion of large dinner-parties. For really good
society no dinner-table should be too large to exclude general
conversation, and no couples should sit together who are likely to lapse
into private discourse.

It is generally thought the fault of the host or hostess if such an
evening turns out a failure;[9] and indeed it is possible to bring one
incongruous person into a small company, who will so chill or disturb
the rest that conversation languishes. But this case is rare, and the
fault usually lies with the company, none of whom take the trouble to
tide over any difficulty, or seek to draw out from those present what
they like or want to say. I am now looking at the thing from the point
of view of the man or woman who comes in as a guest, and whose duty it
is to make the evening, or the period of time during which the company
is assembled, pass in a pleasant way. Perhaps it is the practical course
to consider the usual form in modern society, that of the small
dinner-party, and then apply what is to be said upon it to analogous
cases.

Footnote 9:

It is right to add that there are hosts, and hostesses so anxious for
the good entertainment of their friends that this preoccupation spoils
their own enjoyment, and so far defeats the very object they have in
view. But people so truly desirous of giving pleasure can hardly avoid
being pleasant in a better sense than those who do not feel their
responsibilities so acutely.

In the very forefront there stares us in the face that very awkward
period which even the gentle Menander notes as the worst possible for
conversation, the short time during which people are assembling, and
waiting for the announcement of dinner. If the witty man were not
usually a selfish person, who will not exhibit his talent without the
reward of full and leisurely appreciation, this is the real moment to
show his powers. A brilliant thing said at the very start, which sets
people laughing, and makes them forget that they are waiting, may alter
the whole complexion of the party, may make the silent and distant
people feel themselves drawn into the sympathy of common merriment, and
thaw the iciness which so often fetters Anglo-Saxon society. But as this
faculty is not given to many, so the average man may content himself
with having something ready to tell, and this, if possible, in answer to
the usual question expressed or implied: Is there any news this
afternoon? There are few days that the daily papers will not afford to
the intelligent critic something ridiculous either in style or matter
which has escaped the ordinary public; some local event, nay, even some
local tragedy, may suggest a topic not worth more than a few moments of
attention, which will secure the interest of minds vacant, and perhaps
more hungry to be fed than their bodies. Here then, if anywhere in the
whole range of conversation, the man or woman who desires to be
agreeable may venture to think beforehand, and bring with them something
ready, merely as the first kick or starting point to make the evening
run smoothly.

§ 35. When the company has settled down to dinner, the first care should
be to prevent it breaking into couples, and for that purpose some one
opposite should be addressed or some question asked which may evoke
answers from various people. Above all, however, the particular guest of
the night, or the person best known as a wit or story-teller, should
_not_ be pressed or challenged at the outset—a sort of vulgarity which
makes him either shy or angry at being so manifestly _exploité_ by the
company, so that he is likely either to turn silent or say some
ill-humoured things.

The main advice to be given to women to help them in making such a small
company agreeable, is to study politics. A vast number of clever and
well-read women exclude themselves from a large part of the serious talk
of men by neglecting this engrossing and ever-fruitful topic of
conversation. Literature, of course, is a still more various and
interesting subject; but here perhaps the defect lies with men, who are
so devoted to practical life that they lose their taste for general
reading. Except for politics, the daily papers seldom afford any
literary food fit for good conversation.

The topic which ought to be common to both and always interesting, is
the discussion of human character and human motives. If the novel be so
popular a form of literature, how can the novel in real life fail to
interest an intelligent company? People of serious temper and
philosophic habit will be able to confine themselves to large ethical
views, and the general dealings of men; but to average people, both men
and women, and perhaps most of all to busy men, who desire to find in
society relaxation from their toil, that lighter and more personal kind
of criticism on human affairs will prevail which is known as _gossip_.

§ 36. This may, therefore, be the suitable moment to consider the place
of gossip in the theory of conversation; for though gossip is not only
possible but usual in the private discourse of two people, and possible
too in a large society, its real home and natural exercising ground is
the society of a few people intimate with the same surroundings.

It is usual for all people, especially those who most indulge in it, to
censure gossip as a crime, as a violation of the Ninth Commandment, as a
proof of idleness and vain curiosity, as a frivolous waste of the time
given us for mental improvement. Yet the censure is seldom serious.
These people cannot but feel obscurely what they are either afraid to
speak out or have not duly considered, that the main object of
conversation is neither instruction nor moral improvement but
_recreation_. It is of course highly desirable that all our amusements
should be both intellectually and morally profitable, and we may look
back with special satisfaction upon any conversation which included
these important objects. But the main and direct object is recreation,
mental relaxation, happy idleness; and from this point of view it is
impossible for any sound theory of conversation to ignore or depreciate
gossip, which is perhaps the main factor in agreeable talk throughout
society.

The most harmless form is the repeating of small details about
personages great either in position or intellect, which give their empty
names a personal colour, and so bring them nearer and more clearly into
view. The man who has just come from the society of kings and queens, or
great generals, or politicians, or literary men whose names are
exceptionally prominent at the time, can generally furnish some personal
details by which people imagine they can explain to themselves great and
unexpected results. Who has not heard with interest such anecdotes about
Mr. Gladstone, or Prince Bismarck, or Victor Emanuel? And what book has
ever acquired more deserved and lasting reputation than Boswell’s _Life
of Johnson_?

The latest development of the literary side of gossip is to be seen in
what are called the ’society papers,’ which owe their circulation to
their usefulness in furnishing topics for this kind of conversation.[10]
All the funny sketches of life and character which have made _Punch_ so
admirable a mirror of society for the last fifty years, are of the
character of gossip, subtracting the mischievous element of personality;
and though most people will think this latter an essential feature in
our meaning when we talk of gossip, it is not so; it is the trivial and
passing, the unproven and suspected, which is the main thing, for it is
quite possible to bring any story under the notion while suppressing the
names of the actors.

Footnote 10:

I only speak of the _fact_ that they are useful in supplying a want.
Whether they are or are not corrupting the public mind is another and
a very serious question.

Next to the retailing of small personal points about great people comes
the narrating of deeper interests belonging to small people, especially
the affairs of the heart, which we pursue so assiduously even in feigned
characters. But here it is that all the foibles of our neighbours come
under survey, and that a great deal of calumny and slander may be
launched upon the world by mere shrug and innuendo. The reader will
remember with what effect this side of gossip is brought out in
Sheridan’s _School for Scandal_.

§ 37. It is idle to deny that there is no kind of conversation more
fascinating than this, but its immorality may easily become such as to
shock honest minds, and the man who indulges in it freely at the expense
of others, will probably have to pay the cost himself in the long run;
for those who hear him will fear him, and will retire into themselves in
his presence. On the other hand, nothing is more honourable than to
stand forth as the defender or the palliator of the faults imputed to
others, and nothing is easier than to expand such a defence into general
considerations as to the purity of human motives, which will raise the
conversation from its unwholesome ground into the upper air.

If the company be fit for it, no general rule is more valuable than that
of turning the conversation away from people and fixing it on things;
but, alas! how many there are who only take interest in people, and in
the weakest and most trivial aspects of people! Few things are more
essential and more neglected in the education of children than to
habituate them to talk about things, and not people; yet, what use is
there in urging these more special rules, when the very idea of teaching
them to converse at all is foreign to the minds of most parents and of
all educators? Let me illustrate this by one grotesque fact.

It will be conceded that the one thing absolutely essential to the
education of a lady is that she should talk agreeably at meals. It is
the natural meeting time, not only of the household, but of friends, and
conversation is then as essential as food. Yet, what is the habit of
many of our schools? They either enforce silence at this period, or they
compel the wretched pupils to speak in a foreign language, in which they
can only labour out spasmodic commonplaces, without any interchange or
play of thought. Consequently many of our girls drift into the habit of
regarding meal-times as the precise occasion when conversation is
impossible. How far this mis-education, during some of the most critical
years of their lives, affects them permanently it is not easy to
over-estimate. If parents were decently intelligent in this matter they
should ascertain clearly the practice of a school, and the schoolmaster
or schoolmistress who is obtuse and mischievous enough to practise this
crime should at once lose every pupil.

The only excuse I can find for this widespread outrage upon the social
rights of the young, is the old tradition of universities, still pursued
in convent schools and Roman Catholic seminaries, that a portion of
scripture, or of some edifying book, should be read out during meals, so
that the pupils may take in spiritual food along with their dinners, and
avoid the crime of light and trivial conversation. A clever Jesuit
educator whom I knew, went so far within the letter of the law as to
substitute the _Saturday Review_ for the usual work of edification, the
_Lives of the Saints_! This worthy man did his best under a system
devised to bring up young people in silence and in fear, not in free and
friendly intercourse with their instructors. But why should we, with our
spiritual liberty, retain these mischievous and antiquated shackles?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

WITH MANY

§ 38. Conversation with a crowd, or even with a large number of people,
is almost a contradiction in terms. How can there be interchange of
thought or repartee where so many clashing fancies make confusion rather
than harmony? In ordinary society, therefore, it is the obvious solution
to break up a large company into couples or small groups, and so reduce
this case to one of the preceding. Two exceptional forms may be noted,
which come, perhaps, upon the verge of conversation proper: the one
where a good story-teller, or person who has had some wonderful
experience, is ready to talk for the benefit of the whole company, and
receive occasional support from questions put to him by various people.
But even in this case the number must be limited, and usually such a
talker will seem to his audience egotistical, for people who want to
have their little private say, and tell their little modest story, feel
ousted by the monopoly of the leading spirit.

Perhaps the pleasantest form into which to lead such a conversation, is
a sort of public dialogue, in which one or two querists will draw from
the real object of attention his views, or question his statements in
such a way as to provoke the exercise of his powers. This is the kind of
conversation to be found in Plato’s _Dialogues_, which are quite fitted
for a large company, though but few speakers share in them. But I will
not be bound to admire these immortal compositions as specimens of
conversation. To the modern reader, they cease to be such as soon as
they become serious, and I may even venture to say that in any modern
society they would justly be voted tedious.

§ 39. The second case worth noticing here is when a leading person, king
or viceroy, or princess, or political magnate, entertains a crowd of
people mostly inferior in station, and has to perform the duty of going
through the rooms and talking in succession to all sorts and conditions
of men. If on the one hand the people addressed are sure to be flattered
by such attention, and therefore responsive and anxious to be pleased,
on the other there is no social duty which gives more scope for all the
mental and moral perfections already enumerated, and therefore there is
no more certain test of conversational ability. For here the talk is not
really with many at a time, nor again is it the conversation with one
person, in which the main element is the sustaining of interest for a
considerable time; it is a series of brief successive dialogues, in
which the two great difficulties of conversation, the starting of it and
the breaking off, are perpetually recurring. The speaker is even
debarred from the use of any fixed formula or method of overcoming these
difficulties, for the people addressed will be sure to compare notes,
and will reject as insincere any politenesses which are administered
according to a formula, however graceful it may appear.

Here then, if anywhere, the art must consist in concealing the art. But
let none imagine that art has no place here. A sympathetic nature, which
readily apprehends the interests of other minds, is not more useful to
the great man or woman than a careful previous study of the company, who
they are, what they have done, what the distinction or the hobby of each
of them may be. Nothing is easier than to acquire such information from
the staff whose duty is to furnish it. A great natural aptitude or a
specially trained memory is required to remember the various scraps of
information about each, and to fit them to the proper names. It is said
that royal personages often inherit an exceptional power of remembering
names and persons from the exercise of this faculty by a long line of
successive ancestors. But the suggestion of an equerry or a
lord-in-waiting is in such cases the usual and more obvious cause of
this apparent genius, which the flattery of courtiers exaggerates with
shameless effrontery.

However this may be, the knowledge, inspired or acquired, of the name
and circumstances of an inferior is the great key to smoothing over the
difficulty of beginning a conversation, for any personal question will
be taken as a compliment, and evidence of a friendly interest on the
part of the prince. The breaking off with ease and grace is more
difficult, for I do not count the formal bow of dismissal or the
prearranged interruption by a new presentation as more than awkward
subterfuges. Some form of expressing regret that the moment does not
admit of fuller discussion of the subject already commenced, and a hope
to resume it, is of course an obvious and polite way of closing the
interview, or a question as to some one else who must receive attention,
or a complaint that duty must oust pleasure—there are myriad
possibilities, as may be seen from the conversation of the few great
ladies in England who have the gift or have attained the art. I mention
ladies because the traditional bluntness and simplicity inherited,
respected, assumed, affected by most Englishmen makes them very averse
to this social grace. It is no accident that those of our great houses
who have adopted public life after a considerable experience of French
manners, and with a ready knowledge of the French language, are the most
brilliant exceptions. Perhaps, too, Irish vivacity has in most of these
cases added life and brightness to their talk. But, as a rule, it is to
women that we look for this talent, and to older French society for the
best examples of it. One often hears it said that since Lady
Waldegrave’s death no one in London knows how to have a _salon_. This,
whether true or false, is the popular recognition of that social
excellence in conversing with many, to which I have devoted the last few
pages.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE QUALITY OF THE COMPANY

§ 40. Hitherto we have regarded the company merely from the point of
quantity, and considered them as so many units, grouped in larger and
smaller masses. We shall now adopt a totally different principle, and
regard their _quality_ in relation to the speaker. It is obvious that
for our purpose this element must receive careful consideration.

I remember years ago occupying myself in constructing from the epitaphs
in a country church the genealogy of the great squire who owned the
parish. Among the stereotyped and hardly varied eulogies of his
ancestors one stood out as peculiar and original. It was said of this
magnate, who died about the year 1830, that to express his virtues among
those that knew him would be impertinent, ‘but to strangers and to
posterity let this monument declare, that in him were combined _the
generous Patron, the affable Superior, the polished Equal_, the
uncompromising Patriot, and the Honest Man’ The sequel was commonplace.
Nor is the social description complete, for the dignity of the subject
would not allow the epitaphist to suggest the virtues of his hero in the
guise of an inferior. _The supple courtier_ would, from what I have
heard about him, have been the truest addition to the picture. But what
interests us here is not only the importance given to social talents
over morals and religion,—a truly Irish feature,—but the accurate
perception the writer had of the various talents required according to
the quality of the people around us.

If he had thought more upon the subject, or if he had been allowed to
give us the results of his thinking, he might have told us that the
secret in all cases, and the _sine qua non_ of good conversation, is to
establish equality, at least momentary, if you like fictitious, but at
all costs _equality_, among the members of the company who make up the
party. The man who keeps asserting his superiority, or confessing his
inferiority, is never agreeable. Nay even, if the superiority is very
marked, as in the case of royal persons, it is almost impossible to
converse with them in the better sense, and one of the most melancholy
penalties of this kind of greatness is, that except within the narrow
circle of their families and equals they can never enjoy the fresh
breeze of unconstrained society. Any truth they can learn from their
surroundings is confined to the very poor category of pleasant truths.
All vigorous intellectual buffeting, all wholesome contradiction which
would open their minds, is carefully avoided by courtiers, because it is
the assertion of this very equality which is the backbone of
conversation. It requires peculiar earnestness and honesty on the part
of a prince to break through this crust of assentation, and discover the
real opinions of the men around him; nor can he incur any bitterer loss
than the removal of those rare advisers, who have the gift of combining
real liberty with formal obsequiousness, and without violating the
etiquette of the courtier, can assume the character of the independent
critic and just adviser.

But this little book is not meant for the advice or criticism of kings,
who by their position are almost completely excluded from conversation.
The question before us is how we ordinary people should modify the tone
of our talk according as our company consists of people socially or
intellectually above us, of our equals, or lastly, of our inferiors. It
is evident that in the first and last cases there is difficulty; the
second is the normal atmosphere of conversation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TALKING WITH SUPERIORS

§ 41. In conversing with superiors, we must broadly distinguish the
socially from the intellectually superior. For the art of producing
agreeable society in the former case differs widely from doing so in the
latter. Perhaps the matter may be expressed tersely, if not quite
accurately, by saying that the necessary equality between the members of
the company is attained in the former instance by the good talker
raising himself to the level of his superior, in the latter by his
bringing down his superior to his own level. A word of explanation is
here necessary. The man or woman that succeeds among social superiors is
not the timid or modest person, afraid to contradict, and ever ready to
assent to what is said, but rather the free and independent intellect
that suggests subjects, makes bold criticisms, and in fact introduces a
bright and free tone into a company which is perhaps somewhat dull from
its grandeur or even its extreme respectability. It is a case of the
socially superior acknowledging another kind of superiority, which
redresses the balance. We need hardly add that the greatest stress must
here be placed on tact, for to presume on either kind of superiority
will cause offence, and so spoil every attempt at breaking the bonds set
around us by the grades of the social hierarchy.

If, on the contrary, we meet a man of acknowledged mental superiority,
whether generally or in his special department, it is our social duty by
intelligent questioning, by an anxiety to learn from him, to force him
to condescend to our ignorance, or join in our fun, till his broader
sympathies are awakened, and he plays with us as if we were his
children. Indeed this very metaphor points out one of the very
remarkable instances of social equality asserted by an inferior—I mean
the outspoken freedom of the child—which possesses a peculiar charm, and
often thaws the dignity or dissipates the reserve of the great man and
woman whose superiority is a perpetual obstacle to them in ordinary
society.

I may here dwell a moment upon conscious superiority and its companion,
that conscious inferiority which is the great social barrier to
conversation, and which in most cases actually prohibits all
intercourse. In other European countries the separation of _noblesse_
and _bourgeoisie_ is carried so far as wellnigh to annihilate all free
and intellectual society of the better kind. The intellectually-educated
classes are so thoroughly excluded from social education in the urbanity
and grace of noble society, that they sink into mere intellectual boors,
while the aristocrats so seldom hear any intellectual discussion or take
any interest in learning, that their society becomes either vapidly
trivial or professionally narrow. For these nobles have their
professions like other people, especially the profession of arms.

The case is not so bad among us, where there are always great commoners,
where eminent success in making money, or even in letters, brings men
and women into the highest society, and where there are some of the
greatest positions in the country from which our Peers are even
excluded. There is no doubt that an intellectual man, or a man of strong
and recognised character, whatever his origin, can easily take a place
in high society among us. But how many lesser people are there of
excellent social gifts who assume most falsely that they are not suited,
and will not be welcome, to the higher classes, and so avoid both the
pleasure and the profit to be derived from a more refined, though not
more cultivated, stratum than their own! I am here talking of really
modest and worthy people, not of those vain and vulgar persons who make
it a boast—often a very dishonest one—that they have spurned associating
with their superiors, from a profound contempt of what they call
_toadyism_.

§ 42. This term, which expresses the vicious relations of socially
inferior and superior, is used in very vague senses, ranging from a just
censure of meanness in others to a mistaken assertion of independence in
ourselves. Nothing is more inherent in all European society derived from
the feudal and ecclesiastical traditions of the Middle Ages—probably in
every cultivated society—than to honour rank and social dignity as such,
apart from the real worth of the person so distinguished. This is the
basis of that loyalty to sovrans which even when irrational does not
incur the imputation of toadyism. People of independent rank and
personal dignity even still accept and prize semi-menial offices about a
Court, without losing either respect among ordinary people or even
self-respect.

There is then such a thing as respect for rank as such, and a feeling of
pride in the contact with it, which is regarded as honourable. When does
the virtue of loyalty pass into a vice? Clearly when the higher and more
important duties of life are postponed to this love of outward dignity.
The man who neglects his equals for the purpose of courting his
superiors, still more who confesses or asserts his inferiority when
associating with them, and who submits to rebuffs and indignities for
the sake of being thought their associate, above all, who condones in
them vices which he would not brook in an equal, is justly liable to the
charge, which, however, only asserts the exaggeration of a tendency
affecting almost all his censors.

The usual thing, however, is to hear people censured for the _fact_ of
associating with those above them, as if this were in itself a crime.
There is, too, not unfrequently an element of jealousy in our criticism,
and of secret regret that another has attained certain advantages, or
supposed advantages, to which we ourselves feel an equal claim. Yet one
thing is certain, that if the supposed toady exhibited in the society
which he courts the qualities ascribed to him by his critics, he would
very soon lose his position and miss the very object of his ambition.
The only cause of his popularity is the very fact that his company feel
him in some respects their equal, possibly their superior, and it is the
secret of asserting this equality with tact and courtesy which makes men
and women popular among their superiors.

There is one point of view which gives a good talker a distinct
advantage under these circumstances. The distinctness of his ordinary
associates from those whom he occasionally meets makes his everyday
experience different from theirs, and so things familiar to him and his
everyday society are often interesting and novel to people of a
different standing. He ought therefore to be able to bring new
information to bear upon either class of society, and so secure its
interest with his store of fresh experiences.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

WITH INFERIORS

§ 43. Let us now turn to the other side and consider the proper
principles of conversation with inferiors. And here, too, it is more
practical to take our standpoint in the middle class of society, and not
among those who must habitually talk to inferiors owing to their own
high condition. The same key unlocks the secret of success. If it be
indispensable for good conversation to make your superiors feel you for
the time their equal, so it is indispensable that your inferiors should
feel that they too are upon a social level with you during their talk.
Of course, the first thing is to banish all traces of _condescension_,
that odious ape of humility and urbanity, which is the loud expression
of want of brains and want of tact, for it emphasises the very
differences which conversation seeks to obliterate. On the other hand,
there is an extreme of _familiarity_ which shocks and alarms the
inferior, for he justly expects a sudden revulsion from it, as we are
told in Polybius of the common people of Antioch, into whose humble
entertainments or amusements Antiochus Epiphanes would come, and sit
down to drink and joke with them. These vagaries on the part of their
despotic sovran so frightened them that they would get up and run away.
The just mean is to strike out a line of conversation, either of common
interest, or in which the inferior is a specialist, and therefore your
superior. He will then feel that he is speaking with authority, and the
honest expression of your ignorance and your desire to learn will give
him confidence to tell you freely what he knows.

§ 44. It is in the lower ranks of society that national differences
become really great. The highly bred or highly cultivated people of any
European nation have attained a certain unity of type, and are
interested by the same sort of conversation; it is very different with
English, French, Italian, and German peasants. Nay, even within our
islands, there is a marked difference in the social abilities of
English, Scotch, and Irish peasants. It is customary to set this down to
race, and be satisfied with some such vague generality. But I fancy the
causes of these social differences are rather recent than primeval; they
do not depend directly upon climate or atmosphere, and if I may quote
the opinion of a wise friend on this large question, I should say that
one chief cause of the talking or social ability of some peasantries
over others is the fact that their proximate ancestors were a bilingual
people. Thus the great majority of West Irish and North Scotch peasants
are descended from grandfathers, whose talk oscillated between Celtic
and English, and who were therefore constantly educated in intelligence
by the problem of _translating_ ideas from one language into another,
not to mention the distinct inheritance of the special ideas peculiar to
each and every language. This is an education in expression, in
thinking, and therefore in conversation, wholly foreign to the English
Midland boor, who has never heard more than two or three hundred words
of a very rude provincial dialect of English, and therefore commands
neither the words nor the ideas of the outlying provinces. A great part
of the French peasantry are likewise proximately descended from
bilingual ancestors, French being the old language of but a small part
of their now recognised territory. Breton, Bearnais, Provençal, Walloon,
are even still living languages in large parts of France (as was German
up to 1871), and so the peasantry were under like favourable conditions.

But I must not diverge further from the subject in hand. Thus much was
naturally suggested to me by the best and most diverting conversation I
know with inferiors—that which sporting men have with those whose
livelihood has been earned by studying the habits and ways of fish and
game. There are few men who shoot, fish, or hunt in Ireland, who do not
know specimens of that remarkable though small class whose natural
ability, combined with long experience, makes them masters of their
craft, and whose long association with their superiors in matters of
sport has given them perfect ease and even charm of manners.
Conversation with these people, which is often prolonged through many
hours, is not only very instructive—a secondary matter to us now—but
exceedingly amusing, from the perfect frankness as well as tact with
which they speak their mind to the sporting friend, whom they regard as
their inferior or equal from a professional point of view. It is this
perfect liberty, this spiritual equality, often designated as the free
masonry of sport, from which arises the charm of talking upon subjects
of common interest to one confessedly inferior in many respects. But in
one he is commonly your superior, even apart from his sport. It has been
far more important to him all his life to study and know the characters
of his employers than it has been for them to study his, and so he is
generally your superior in perceiving what will please, and what topics
are to be selected or avoided in conversation. Nothing has struck me
more in many such talks than the acute estimate which these people form
of the strength and weakness of those who are their patrons.

These are illustrations of a general kind, to show how inferiority in
social station may not imply inferiority for the purposes of
conversation, so that we may even here attain that equality which I
regard as essential for its success.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE RELATIONS OF SEX AND AGE

§ 45. So far we have been considering the quality of the company as
determined by social position, which, if not an absolutely artificial
distinction, is at least frequently such, so that it may be even
reversed by circumstances. There are great distinctions made by nature
which are indelible, and which must therefore be reckoned with as
permanent factors in our theory—I mean those of age and sex.

There are, properly speaking, three grades of age worth
considering—youth, maturity, and old age; but from our point of view we
are justified in regarding mature life as the normal state, and shall
therefore consider the duties of the mature man and woman as they come
in contact with the extremes. It is not worth while writing any advices
for the old, as they are beyond the age of improvement, though by no
means always stripped of their social qualities; indeed, the position of
very old people, who have maintained their faculties, is quite
exceptional in modern society, and will require a few words of comment
in the present connection.

A collection of very old people is of course hardly to be found; so that
the practical case before us is the occurrence of one, or at most two,
very old people in a company, and the consequent modifications in
ordinary society likely to make this element effective and agreeable. It
may almost be assumed that however lively the old person is, he (or she)
will not be able to converse when many people are talking in the room,
and to assert himself in even a small crowd. There must be comparative
silence while he is speaking, and special attention should be paid him.
Under these circumstances it almost follows as a matter of course that
he should be discreetly drawn out to tell such experiences as are beyond
the memory of the rest, which from their pictures of bygone manners or
long dead celebrities are very interesting, and admirably suited for the
best social recreation. The many _Recollections_, _Diaries_,
_Autobiographies_, etc., now published from the papers of the mere
observers of their age, such as Greville, and which are generally too
trivial and minute to make good books, form the staple of excellent
conversation when told by the very actor or observer. Of course there is
a considerable chance of his becoming tedious; it is one of the most
frequent defects of age, but if a man’s hobby makes him tedious, it also
may make him very interesting; and the first and best receipt to make a
man agreeable is to make him talk about what he likes best.

The most successful conversations with old men are, however, not those
with the old _raconteur_, who is in the habit of narrating his
experiences and expects to be asked to do so, but with some modest and
apparently dull old person who is successfully probed by intelligent and
sympathetic questions, till he is actually reminded of long-forgotten
scenes, which have perhaps not been suggested to him for years, and then
he draws from his memory, with the help of further questions, some
passage of life and adventure of the highest interest. Many a time have
I seen an old person, at first regarded as an obstacle, prove the
highest advantage to the conversation, and it is for this reason that in
a book of theory the reader should be reminded of his duty to see that
so valuable an item does not escape him. It is generally easy enough to
gather from the old gentleman (or lady) where he has lived, what society
he has frequented, and what are his strongest impressions as to the
contrasts between his own early days and ours.

There is, moreover, in discussing the gossip and the scandal of a bygone
generation an amount of freedom—I had almost said licence—allowed which
would be intolerable as regards living society, and a very old person
may be allowed to say things which younger people should avoid. I do not
mention this as an advantage in itself—far from it—but as an additional
possibility in making conversation lively, and in avoiding that
stagnation in talk which, from our present point of view, is the
extremest crime known to society.

It is also obvious that as old people are unable to talk loudly and with
vivacity, the dialogue between two, or a couple of listeners added to
the questioner, will be the most likely way to attain the end in view.
To stop an old person who is becoming tedious is probably the most
difficult of all social duties, and requires the most delicate tact. The
respect due to age takes from our hands those weapons of sarcasm,
banter, or even blunt interruption which are our natural defences
against obtrusive youth; nor do I know of any general directions which
can help a host or hostess in this grave and not uncommon difficulty. It
is of course useless to lecture old people, either in this book or
elsewhere, on the dangers of tediousness.

§ 46. I turn now to conversation with people much younger than
ourselves, not of course with babies, or very young children, the art of
amusing whom can hardly be called the art of conversation. I mean rather
such ordinary cases as going in to dinner with a person much younger
than yourself, whose main interests must therefore be foreign to yours;
or else the entertaining of a party of young people who have met for
purposes of sport, but are also to be regarded as guests at a table
where conversation asserts its universal importance.

What modifications in our talk are here desirable?

In the first place it is but natural that the older person should lead
the discourse, and suggest the topics which will elicit sympathy from
the young. And of course the easiest way to begin is to make people talk
about themselves—this being a subject which interests most young people
exceedingly. But it is by no means an universal rule. The life of the
young, of schoolboys, and of young girls, is often very monotonous, and
really affords no scope for conversation beyond the first ordinary
inquiries into their tastes, habits, and what they read. If you find a
strong taste for any special thing, such as music or cricket, you may
work out that subject.

But if, as is too often the case, the youth has not thought seriously
about anything, it is surely best to draw from your own stores, and tell
experiences which will be new and interesting from their curiosity, such
as the ways and habits of the lower animals which you may have observed,
the manners of men, or of strange cities which you have visited, the
feats you have seen performed. These things are seldom suitable for
other kinds of society, when any display of your own experiences is
offensive; but in talking to young, fresh, and ingenuous people, the
novelty of the information you give them will generally obscure their
critical or fault-finding sense, and even if they are very sceptical as
to facts,—the young and inexperienced in our day are usually so,—they
will fully appreciate the effort to make them feel happy.

§ 47. It is perhaps not till then that you will succeed in probing out
some interesting nook in their short experience. They have been in
accidental contact with some great or notorious person, and have seen
him in his leisure moments; they may have lived in a peculiar country,
where either the sport or the natural features are very interesting, and
upon which they can have the distinction of instructing older and wiser
people.

I have met quiet country gentlemen, who in their youth had seen active
service in the army, and fought in remarkable campaigns, who never spoke
of these things among their neighbours, so that when some intelligent
stranger drew from them their experiences, it came like a revelation to
those who for years had voted them stupid and dull members of their
county society.

So important and so neglected is this duty of probing for the strong
point of others, which is naturally brought forward, in connection with
the effort to talk with the young and inexperienced, that I am disposed
to lay this down as a practical rule: _if you find the company dull,
blame yourself_. With more skill and more patience on your part it is
almost certain you would have found it agreeable. If even two or three
people in a company acted on this rule, how seldom would our social
meetings prove a failure!

§ 48. We come now to a still more indelible contrast than that of age,
and ask what effects, advantageous or otherwise, has the contrast of sex
upon conversation? It is a problem very difficult indeed to solve, for
while it is a great law of nature that the very instincts of each sex
urge it to please the other, it is on the contrary a great law of
society that (perhaps for this very reason) a large number of topics are
not to be discussed by the sexes in common. It is then a case where
nature stimulates and tradition restrains: which shall we declare to be
stronger? That depends altogether upon the character of the society in
which we live. If it be perfectly free—let us say the society of the
Navigator Islands—there the natural attraction of opposite sexes must
make their conversation far more agreeable than that of men or women
separately.

So it is too among those exceptional sets of people in civilised
countries, who brave public opinion so far as to speak their minds to
the other sex, and whose conversation is accordingly considered too free
by the average of people around them. In this it is natural that the
more restrained sex should take the initiative; but if any woman makes
bold to speak with perfect freedom among men, and if she be gifted with
the ordinary talents for conversation, she will be more agreeable than
an intelligent man who says the same things—or rather she will say
things in a fresher way; the very situation is somewhat piquant, and so
she will certainly gain by the contrast of sex. A small party of men and
women of this sort ought to produce the most amusing conversation
possible. But I need only hint how easily such a society may transgress
the due limits, and degenerate into what the later Athenians thought
brilliant, and collected in a special book. Nor will freedom, far less
audacity, in conversation redeem ignorance, rudeness, or graver vices.

Take another kind of society, either one of Puritanical strictness—I
remember when the word _girl_ was thought rather improper in religious
Dublin society, you should say _young person_—or else that sort of
foreign society which, from suspicion and fear, prohibits any intimacy
between young men and women, or brands such intimacy as foreign to good
society. There can be no doubt that here contrast of sex is fatal to
conversation, which must needs be constrained, conventional, and
occupied with topics either too trivial or too serious for proper
recreation. Women living under these conditions find no interest in
studying the subjects that interest men—especially politics; and so it
comes to pass that in the greater part of orderly modern English
society, a company of men only is thought more agreeable than a mixed
one—even though the ladies be not so strict as in the extreme cases
mentioned, but merely confined to domestic and moral topics, to the
exclusion of public affairs.

§ 49. This being the general aspect of the problem, it only remains to
apply the principles already attained in the case of a dialogue with one
of the other sex. In old times, that extreme form of courtesy called
gallantry was thought the proper way to please a woman. It is now almost
vulgar, and the man who desires to flatter an intelligent woman most
keenly, and interest her, will take care to treat her as an intellectual
equal, not as a plaything or a pet. A man who seizes the opportunity of
a conversation to consult a lady on some social difficulty, or makes her
for the moment his confidante in some matter not to be divulged, will be
almost sure to find her agreeable and sympathetic.

Men, especially elderly men, are far more easily flattered by women, and
more easily carried away by such flattery. For this reason I think it
unnecessary, nay, perhaps mischievous, to give any advices to ladies how
to use this powerful engine in society. The real difficulty under which
they labour as to conversation is to hit off the right mean between
prudery and its opposite, to know how far to speak out frankly, and when
to put a bridle on the talker who threatens to overstep the bounds of
the reverence due to ourselves and to one another.

This reverence is, of course, due most especially to youth, and elderly
people who discuss before young boys and girls any topics not perfectly
pure, are guilty of such a crime in conversation as can hardly be
punished too severely. Before other elderly people the case is somewhat
different, and things may then be said or implied which should not be
selected for discussion in the presence of the young. But above all, let
us be strict in checking this kind of licence, which is so apt to take
possession of the baser minds among us, and degrade conversation—the
recreation of intellect and the mirror of social goodness—into a serious
mischief.

§ 50. What I have said above concerning the duty of treating the other
sex as strict equals in conversation, is but another instance of the
principle already laid down (§ 40), that no really bright social
intercourse is possible without equality. There is, in fact, nothing so
democratic as good conversation, nothing so Protestant, for we must seem
to assert our private judgment, even where we assent. And as a man does
best to seek a woman’s opinion, and ask her advice, so as to make her
feel on the same plane, a woman who desires to be agreeable should
differ without hesitation from the opinions expressed by men, and assert
her independence of judgment, and her consequent right to take part in a
real conversation. A woman who does this, even stupidly, and without
good reasons, is better than those who sit down and acquiesce in
whatever is said by men; this latter is the acknowledgment of
inferiority which is subversive of all pleasant talk.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

DEGREES OF INTIMACY

§ 51. The only other classification of the members of a small society
worth making here is in accordance with the various degrees of their
previous intimacy. They may either be a family party consisting of near
relations, or a friendly party consisting of intimate friends, or a
party of casual acquaintances who meet not unfrequently, or a chance
collection of almost strangers. In all these cases there is naturally
some modification to be made in the rules and conditions of agreeable
talking. And first of all let us warn those who think it is not worth
while taking trouble to talk in their family circle, or who read the
newspaper at meals, that they are making a mistake which has
far-reaching consequences. It is nearly as bad as those convent schools
or ladies’ academies, when either silence or a foreign tongue is imposed
at meals, and concerning which I have already spoken. Whatever people
may think of the value of theory, there is no doubt whatever that
practice is necessary for conversation, and it is at home, among those
who are intimate, and free in expressing their thoughts, that this
practice must be sought. It is thus, and thus only, that young people
can go out into the world properly provided with the only universal
introduction to society—agreeable manners.

Here, then, conversation is not so much a recreation as a duty, and so
becomes too grave a matter for this book. I will merely say a word upon
the position of a guest who is introduced into such a party, to whose
daily trifles, family feuds, or friendships, he is a stranger. It is of
course the first duty of the family not to monopolise the topics by
discussing family histories unknown and uninteresting beyond their
circle. Menander long ago complained of the misfortune of falling into a
party of this kind.[11] On the other hand, the stranger must assume a
temporary interest in affairs outside his ordinary life, and merely for
the sake of his hosts. But if he is appealed to as an umpire by members
who habitually differ in opinion (and this he will easily note), let him
be very wary of giving a decision, and rather discover that there is
truth on each side of the question.

Footnote 11:

Cf. my _Social Life of Greece_, p. 317.

§ 52. Far easier is the position of a party of intimate friends. They
have probably become friends simply because they enjoy each other’s
society, and have many topics of interest in common. It requires no
exertion to make them talk, and they will readily condone moments of
taciturnity and depression in one or more members of the party. They
want no advice, and need no instruction, for this is the only true and
permanent human bond which makes men and women ever sympathetic, and
ever agreeable to one another.

§ 53. As regards a company of strangers, on the contrary, all the
principles stated in the earlier parts of this book will have their
clearest application. To interest or to fascinate a stranger requires
all the gifts there enumerated, and in proportion as we possess them,
and take pains to use them, we shall succeed in turning the stranger
into the friend. There is no greater test of conversational powers than
to go into a company of strangers, to make them feel at home, to turn
their minds to some common thought, and establish an agreeable and
sociable spirit where there was at first nothing but coldness and
diffidence. To do this single handed is a feat beyond the power of most
people. But if several persons make an effort in the same direction, the
combination will effect what a single genius can hardly accomplish.

Nothing proves more conclusively the value of practice in these things
than the fact that the higher classes, who are compelled through
constant moving about both at home and abroad to converse frequently
with casual acquaintances, and who in various society often meet
strangers—these are the people in whom we generally observe ease in
conversation under such conditions. We set it down to good breeding, but
this means that not only they but their ancestors have been practising
it. Hereditary virtues have not been created with less labour than any
other virtues. Generally they require the efforts of several
generations, and are therefore the most arduous and meritorious of all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE TOPICS OF CONVERSATION—SERIOUS AND TRIVIAL

§ 54. Having now exhausted the subjective side, that is to say the
qualities in the speaker and the conditions among the hearers which make
or mar conversation, it is natural to proceed to the objective side and
see how far we can classify the topics which form the matter of our
talk. Of course a division of the actual subjects under specific heads
would require an encyclopædia, and even then would never be complete,
for the very essence of good conversation is to wander through all
possible things in heaven, in earth, and under the earth without bond or
limit, the only universal condition being that we should range far and
near and seek all possible variety, or rather let ourselves drift from
point to point, and not determine to hold a fixed course. The quantity,
therefore, of subjects being infinite, and so not to be described, we
must content ourselves with regarding them in quality as either serious
or trivial; in relation to the speakers, as either universal or
personal; in the mode of treatment, as handled either in council, in
controversy, or in exposition.

§ 55. Our theory has declared itself long ago against over-seriousness
in conversation. This caution is specially necessary nowadays,—when
people read so many books and work so hard,—lest they should regard
conversation as a deliberate method of instruction and channel of
improvement. Nay, these very objects will be far better attained
indirectly and by the way, while the company is indulging in talk as a
recreation.

But it is almost needless to say that the most solid and lasting
recreation, the most excellent refreshment of the soul, is to be had
from very serious converse, especially where not more than two or three
are gathered together, and to exclude this precious comfort from any
theory of conversation would be absurd. On the other hand, when two
people are earnestly engaged on a really serious topic, we may leave
them to themselves, and need not intrude upon them any idle
considerations as to their manner of treating it. For this is not
conversation in the proper sense. ‘In this frame of mind,’ says
Hawthorne in his _Transformation_ (chap. ii.), ‘men sometimes find their
profoundest truths side by side with the idlest jest, and utter one or
the other, apparently without distinguishing which is the more valuable
or assigning any considerable value to either.’ He hits the truth
exactly. Great seriousness is as detrimental to a general talk as
excessive trifling. For as the latter fails after a few moments to
interest people who have any sense, so the former fails to recreate or
amuse, and is in fact earnest work invading the proper domain of
leisure.

There is therefore no general direction here possible save to avoid both
extremes, or rather to avoid persistence in either extreme, for it is
better to have them in turn, than to cultivate subjects which are
indifferent. Brilliant talk should alternate between grave and gay, and
above all shun dryness, detail, minuteness—in a word, tediousness.

The moment at which by common consent people talk trivialities is the
moment of first introduction. And here the weather is almost invariably
the first pawn to be moved. It is amazing what triteness and endless
repetition is tolerated by society on this point. The facts stated are
common property, and agreed to by all, so that the first object of
ordinary people seems to be to express nothing while they are saying
something. Yet I suppose what is sanctioned by almost universal practice
must have some good reason behind it, and is perhaps meant to give
people time to observe each other without apparent rudeness. This method
of opening the game seems, however, so stale that every sensible person
should have some paradox or heresy about the weather ready whereby he
may break through this idle skirmishing and make the people about him
begin to think as soon as possible. On the other hand it is easy to
overdo this attempt, and begin with something so serious that the
unprepared audience is frightened and chilled. Thus there can be no
greater blunder than to inquire suddenly about the state of a man’s
soul, a sort of _coup_ which many pious people have actually thought a
decent introduction to a conversation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE TOPICS OF CONVERSATION—GENERAL AND PERSONAL

§ 56. Here we have before us one of the most difficult of problems, and
which I shall rather state than attempt to solve. Should we aim at
making our conversation universal in subject, or should we prefer it to
be on personal topics, such as gossip or scandal—the character of some
mutual friend, an enemy, and so forth? There is not the smallest doubt
that if we wish it to be profitable and improving, personal topics
should be avoided, and that we should talk not about people but about
things. And when an assembly of really cultivated people discusses
literary questions, such as the comparative merits of poets or
novelists, there is not only great pleasure to be gained from such a
society, but the after-taste is good, and you feel that your leisure has
not been in vain.

On the other hand it is idle to deny that in most companies people have
not read or thought enough to join in such a conversation or to enjoy
it, whereas details of personal life, the latest anecdote, the facts or
surmises about some scandal, the adverse criticism of some
acquaintance—all this kind of thing, ranging from harmless gossip into
libellous scandal, is deeply interesting to almost everybody, and though
by no means improving is always entertaining.

But even so let the scandalmonger beware. If his ordinary topics are the
characters of his acquaintances, he will soon find himself shunned or
treated with suspicion by society; and nothing so completely kills all
the pleasure of a company as a protest from any one present that he will
not have his absent friend maligned, and that he denies the truth of
what has just been said. To apologise to him for the statement or to
resist him with argument is equally fatal, for the whole ease and good
temper required for pleasant talk has vanished for that occasion.

§ 57. For this reason, unless the talk consists of confidences between
two people who thoroughly understand one another, in which case I hold
personal topics to be far the easiest and the most agreeable, it should
be our duty to raise if possible the gossip about individuals into
reflections upon classes or even principles. Thus if a young lady tells
you that such a man is conceited, you may raise the question how far
conceit is excusable, or whether it may not be commendable, whether it
means a false estimate of poor endowments or a just estimate of
considerable attainments, and so forth. Or else you may inquire whether
men or women are the more conceited as a rule, and whether Aristotle was
not right in setting down over-bashfulness as a vice. Beginning then
with the characters of individuals, which is the easiest prologue, and
in which somebody will always be ready to start, disengage the general
or common feature, and you will not only avoid personalities, but enable
those who have no knowledge and interest about the person described to
join in the broader discussion of social ethics. And let it not be
imagined that because these things have been discussed millions of times
they are therefore trite and dull. Just as each succeeding philosopher
insists on thinking out again for himself what seems to have been
thoroughly exhausted by his predecessors, so every member of society
thinks himself capable of deciding over again upon questions which have
been settled by thousands of other people to their own satisfaction.

I said just now that when two people only are conversing, personal
topics are most suitable, and of all these the confessions of either to
the other are the best. In the first place nothing is so agreeable to
most men as to have their own history the object of sympathy, and that
is the meaning of the trite adage: Talk to people about themselves, and
not about yourself. And again, nothing can be more fascinating than
genuine autobiography—I mean confessions of human experience not set
down for the public, not trussed and cooked for their use, but the real
out-speaking of a human heart. This it is which makes autobiographies so
popular as books, though as soon as any one begins to confess to the
public, all the real depth and intimacy of his experience vanishes,
generally to make way for exhibitions of morbid vanity. It is only one
man in a million who has the modesty and the shamelessness, the
innocence and the impudence to unveil all his real life to the world of
strangers.[12]

Footnote 12:

I may cite the autobiographies of Benvenuto Cellini and of Alfieri in
their complete Italian form as the most real, if not the only real,
specimens I know.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOPICS OF CONVERSATION—MODES OF TREATMENT

§ 58. Finally, we may distinguish the mode in which all subjects may be
treated, just as the old rhetoricians divided the various modes of
oratory; for, as we said at the outset, conversation may be in theory
regarded as informal rhetoric. The old division, then, of orations was
based on the form which the company of hearers and speakers assumed. Was
it a deliberative assembly, which sat in conclave, as it were, to find
out the truth or the right thing to do upon an open question? Then the
proper form of eloquence was the _Deliberative_, that of the
Senate-house or Parliament suggesting arguments with gravity and
modesty,[13] receiving with deference and attention the views of others,
stimulating all to give their opinions. Was it a judicial court, where
the question was a dispute, and the speakers had their line determined
as plaintiffs or defendants? Then the form was the _Controversial_, in
which each side was bound to make the best of its own case, and the
worst of the adversary’s; in which each speaker was to bid for the
favour of the court, and only limit the violence of his invective by the
fear of alienating the judges of the case, and so defeating the object
he had in view. Lastly, was the meeting one which merely came together
to be impressed or amused by the display of a single speaker, to whom
the topic was prescribed, and whose duty it was to excite the emotions
and enlist the sympathy of his hearers? Then the proper form was the
_Florid_, or _Epideictic_, as they called it, where display was the
object, where pomp and ornament were in their proper place.

Footnote 13:

I need hardly say that the present Houses of Parliament in England and
elsewhere, if we except the House of Lords, will not serve as
specimens.

§ 59. These distinctions are with reasonable reservations clearly
applicable to conversation. The best kind is when the subject is
discussed by the company as if at an informal council, in which each
member gives his opinion, and contributes something to the common stock;
where each is not only listened to in turn, but is expected to speak,
and where the variety of views and of the expression of them constitutes
the very charm of the company. The more people succeed in adopting this
form of discussion, the more successful their society will be. The most
perfect host and hostess are those who induce all their guests to talk,
and elicit even from the silent and the bashful some stray flash of
intelligence, which gives additional flavour to the spiritual repast.

It may happen, however, that the topic is taken up by two leading minds
in the company, and discussed as a controversy, each putting forth his
strength to wrestle with his friendly adversary. Then it may be
desirable for the rest to take sides in sympathy, and encourage the
conflict of wit or argument. This sort of society may be exceedingly
pleasant, provided the disputants keep their temper, and provided they
do not monopolise too great a share of the time and attention of the
rest. There is hardly a company which will not tire of the discussion of
a single subject, however important or interesting. Nevertheless the
controversial form is distinctly an agreeable and often highly
instructive form of conversation, and many a society of ordinary people
attain to the enjoyment of an excellent evening by encouraging two
leading spirits to show their powers.

The same good result may be obtained when the company comes together for
the purpose of hearing some remarkable person, who is held out as the
attraction of the party. It is not conversation, in any real sense,
unless it stimulates others to speak; but still we must include in our
survey those cases where the funny man, or the Arctic traveller, or the
superannuated detective, or the escaped nihilist, undertakes to tell his
experiences, and delight us with ‘real fiction.’ This is truly the
epideictic or _show-off_ style, in which the solitary speaker is
supposed to delight and display himself without a rival, or with a rival
silenced before him. Indeed, it is matter of common remark that two or
three such talkers are apt to neutralise one another and produce no
effect. Each is supposed to be afraid of the other, or jealous of the
other, and so wanting in that spontaneity or _abandon_ only attained in
a congenial atmosphere. This is not my experience of Irish wits, of whom
a wise English friend often remarked to me: There is no use in asking
one Irishman to dinner; you must ask another to draw him out.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

EPILOGUE

§ 60. The theory of conversation here attempted seems to be completely
contained in the foregoing paragraphs, so far as the author has been
able to investigate it. No doubt many of his readers will wonder that a
subject so interesting can be made so dry, and will complain (in spite
of § 5) that he has not given at least a few specimens of what he
approves. If he is unable to compose them, why not cull them from the
best novel literature of the day? It is, of course, quite easy to give
such examples, which can be found in thousands from the comedies of
Sheridan to the stories of Lever—who was himself, like Sheridan, a great
master of conversation. But who ever profited directly in his own
conversation by reading conversations? Who could ever transfer to
ordinary intercourse the imaginary dialogues of romance? They may be
elaborate and studied, like those of Walter Scott’s heroines, and indeed
the lovers’ dialogues of almost all novelists; or they may be perfectly
natural and easy, like those of Charles Lever just referred to. But in
either case they are stereotyped in their book, and are useless even as
models. One may quote from them an occasional brilliant or foolish
remark, as one may from any book, but that is all.

There is always this difficulty about any practice, which has never been
reduced to rule, that the laws of it, when set forth in order, seem
trivial and dull; nor will the student believe that such valuable and
complicated results can be derived from mere truisms. We are quite
accustomed to that surprise in the case of logic. The whole system of
human reasoning in all its wonderful intricacy is built up from a few
general principles in themselves perfectly and necessarily obvious, just
as the prose of Ruskin and the poetry of Browning are expressed in
combinations of twenty-six letters. But as in this case the theory of
composing words is easy enough, and yet the art a mystery, which only
very few can ever attain in perfection,—each, too, after his own
fashion, and stamped with his own genius,—so the theory of conversation
may be reduced to a small number of general observations, and yet the
perfect practice of it is a mystery, which defies analysis—one of the
myriad manifestations of human genius which all can admire but no one
can ever explain.

THE END

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh

------------------------------------------------------------------------

● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

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