yielded us, which will reward the time spent on them. In comparing the
number of good books with the shortness of life, many might well be
read by proxy, if we had good proxies; and it would be well for sincere
young men to borrow a hint from the French Institute and the British
Association, and, as they divide the whole body into sections, each of
which sits upon and reports of certain matters confided to it, so let
each scholar associate himself to such persons as he can rely on, in
a literary club, in which each shall undertake a single work or series
for which he is qualified. For example, how attractive is the whole
literature of the “Roman de la Rose,” the “Fabliaux,” and the _gaie
science_ of the French Troubadours! Yet who in Boston has time for
that? But one of our company shall undertake it, shall study and master
it, and shall report on it, as under oath; shall give us the sincere
result, as it lies in his mind, adding nothing, keeping nothing back.
Another member, meantime, shall as honestly search, sift, and as truly
report, on British mythology, the Round Table, the histories of Brut,
Merlin, and Welsh poetry; a third on the Saxon Chronicles, Robert of
Gloucester, and William of Malmesbury; a fourth, on Mysteries, Early
Drama, “Gesta Romanorum,” Collier, and Dyce, and the Camden Society.
Each shall give us his grains of gold, after the washing; and every
other shall then decide whether this is a book indispensable to him
also.
CLUBS.
CLUBS.
We are delicate machines, and require nice treatment to get from us
the maximum of power and pleasure. We need tonics, but must have those
that cost little or no reaction. The flame of life burns too fast in
pure oxygen, and nature has tempered the air with nitrogen. So thought
is the native air of the mind, yet pure it is a poison to our mixed
constitution, and soon burns up the bone-house of man, unless tempered
with affection and coarse practice in the material world. Varied
foods, climates, beautiful objects,--and especially the alternation of
a large variety of objects--are the necessity of this exigent system
of ours. But our tonics, our luxuries, are force-pumps which exhaust
the strength they pretend to supply; and of all the cordials known to
us, the best, safest, and most exhilarating, with the least harm, is
society; and every healthy and efficient mind passes a large part of
life in the company most easy to him.
We seek society with very different aims, and the staple of
conversation is widely unlike in its circles. Sometimes it is
facts,--running from those of daily necessity to the last results of
science,--and has all degrees of importance; sometimes it is love, and
makes the balm of our early and of our latest days; sometimes it is
thought, as from a person who is a mind only; sometimes a singing, as
if the heart poured out all like a bird; sometimes experience. With
some men it is a debate; at the approach of a dispute they neigh like
horses. Unless there be an argument, they think nothing is doing.
Some talkers excel in the precision with which they formulate their
thoughts, so that you get from them somewhat to remember; others lay
criticism asleep by a charm. Especially women use words that are not
words,--as steps in a dance are not steps,--but reproduce the genius
of that they speak of; as the sound of some bells makes us think of
the bell merely, whilst the church-chimes in the distance bring the
church and its serious memories before us. Opinions are accidental in
people,--have a poverty-stricken air. A man valuing himself as the
organ of this or that dogma is a dull companion enough; but opinion
native to the speaker is sweet and refreshing, and inseparable from his
image. Neither do we by any means always go to people for conversation.
How often to say nothing,--and yet must go; as a child will long for
his companions, but among them plays by himself. ’Tis only presence
which we want. But one thing is certain,--at some rate, intercourse we
must have. The experience of retired men is positive,--that we lose our
days and are barren of thought for want of some person to talk with.
The understanding can no more empty itself by its own action than can a
deal box.
The clergyman walks from house to house all day all the year to give
people the comfort of good talk. The physician helps them mainly in the
same way, by healthy talk giving a right tone to the patient’s mind.
The dinner, the walk, the fireside, all have that for their main end.
See how Nature has secured the communication of knowledge. ’Tis certain
that money does not more burn in a boy’s pocket than a piece of news
burns in our memory until we can tell it. And, in higher activity of
mind, every new perception is attended with a thrill of pleasure, and
the imparting of it to others is also attended with pleasure. Thought
is the child of the intellect, and this child is conceived with joy and
born with joy.
Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student. The
affection or sympathy helps. The wish to speak to the want of another
mind assists to clear your own. A certain truth possesses us, which we
in all ways strive to utter. Every time we say a thing in conversation,
we get a mechanical advantage in detaching it well and delivery. I
prize the mechanics of conversation. ’Tis pulley and lever and screw.
To fairly disengage the mass, and send it jingling down, a good
boulder,--a block of quartz and gold, to be worked up at leisure in the
useful arts of life,--is a wonderful relief.
What are the best days in memory? Those in which we met a companion who
was truly such. How sweet those hours when the day was not long enough
to communicate and compare our intellectual jewels,--the favorite
passages of each book, the proud anecdotes of our heroes, the delicious
verses we had hoarded! What a motive had then our solitary days! How
the countenance of our friend still left some light after he had gone!
We remember the time when the best gift we could ask of fortune was
to fall in with a valuable companion in a ship’s cabin, or on a long
journey in the old stage-coach, where, each passenger being forced
to know every other, and other employments being out of question,
conversation naturally flowed, people became rapidly acquainted, and,
if well adapted, more intimate in a day than if they had been neighbors
for years.
In youth, in the fury of curiosity and acquisition, the day is too
short for books and the crowd of thoughts, and we are impatient of
interruption. Later, when books tire, thought has a more languid flow;
and the days come when we are alarmed, and say there are no thoughts.
‘What a barren-witted pate is mine!’ the student says; ‘I will go and
learn whether I have lost my reason.’ He seeks intelligent persons,
whether more wise or less wise than he, who give him provocation,
and at once and easily the old motion begins in his brain: thoughts,
fancies, humors flow; the cloud lifts; the horizon broadens; and
the infinite opulence of things is again shown him. But the right
conditions must be observed. Mainly he must have leave to be himself.
Sancho Panza blessed the man who invented sleep. So I prize the good
invention whereby everybody is provided with somebody who is glad to
see him.
If men are less when together than they are alone, they are also in
some respects enlarged. They kindle each other; and such is the power
of suggestion, that each sprightly story calls out more; and sometimes
a fact that had long slept in the recesses of memory hears the voice,
is welcomed to daylight, and proves of rare value. Every metaphysician
must have observed, not only that no thought is alone, but that
thoughts commonly go in pairs; though the related thoughts first
appeared in his mind at long distances of time. Things are in pairs:
a natural fact has only half its value, until a fact in moral nature,
its counterpart, is stated. Then they confirm and adorn each other; a
story is matched by another story. And that may be the reason why, when
a gentleman has told a good thing, he immediately tells it again.
Nothing seems so cheap as the benefit of conversation: nothing is more
rare. ’Tis wonderful how you are balked and baffled. There is plenty
of intelligence, reading, curiosity; but serious, happy discourse,
avoiding personalities, dealing with results, is rare: and I seldom
meet with a reading and thoughtful person but he tells me, as if it
were his exceptional mishap, that he has no companion.
Suppose such a one to go out exploring different circles in search
of this wise and genial counterpart,--he might inquire far and
wide. Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low
as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet. Amidst all the gay
banter, sentiment cannot profane itself and venture out. The reply
of old Isocrates comes so often to mind,--“The things which are now
seasonable I cannot say; and for the things which I can say it is not
now the time.” Besides, who can resist the charm of talent? The lover
of letters loves power too. Among the men of wit and learning, he
could not withhold his homage from the gayety, grasp of memory, luck,
splendor, and speed; such exploits of discourse, such feats of society!
What new powers, what mines of wealth! But when he came home, his brave
sequins were dry leaves. He found either that the fact they had thus
dizened and adorned was of no value, or that he already knew all and
more than all they had told him. He could not find that he was helped
by so much as one thought or principle, one solid fact, one commanding
impulse: great was the dazzle, but the gain was small. He uses his
occasions; he seeks the company of those who have convivial talent. But
the moment they meet, to be sure they begin to be something else than
they were; they play pranks, dance jigs, run on each other, pun, tell
stories, try many fantastic tricks, under some superstition that there
must be excitement and elevation;--and they kill conversation at once.
I know well the rusticity of the shy hermit. No doubt he does not make
allowance enough for men of more active blood and habit. But it is only
on natural ground that conversation can be rich. It must not begin with
uproar and violence. Let it keep the ground, let it feel the connection
with the battery. Men must not be off their centres.
Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to
school-girls, or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people
gladly lend an ear to any one. On these terms they give information,
and please themselves by sallies and chat which are admired by the
idlers; and the talker is at his ease and jolly, for he can walk out
without ceremony when he pleases. They go rarely to their equals, and
then as for their own convenience simply, making too much haste to
introduce and impart their new whim or discovery; listen badly, or
do not listen to the comment or to the thought by which the company
strive to repay them; rather, as soon as their own speech is done,
they take their hats. Then there are the gladiators, to whom it is
always a battle; ’tis no matter on which side, they fight for victory;
then the heady men, the egotists, the monotones, the steriles, and the
impracticables.
It does not help that you find as good or a better man than yourself,
if he is not timed and fitted to you. The greatest sufferers are
often those who have the most to say,--men of a delicate sympathy,
who are dumb in mixed company. Able people, if they do not know how
to make allowance for them, paralyze them. One of those conceited
prigs who value nature only as it feeds and exhibits them is equally
a pest with the roysterers. There must be large reception as well
as giving. How delightful after these disturbers is the radiant,
playful wit of--one whom I need not name,--for in every society there
is his representative. Good-nature is stronger than tomahawks. His
conversation is all pictures: he can reproduce whatever he has seen;
he tells the best story in the county, and is of such genial temper
that he disposes all others irresistibly to good-humor and discourse.
Diderot said of the Abbé Galiani: “He was a treasure in rainy days; and
if the cabinet-makers made such things, everybody would have one in the
country.”
One lesson we learn early,--that, in spite of seeming difference, men
are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are
disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their
watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never
forgive in each other is difference of opinion. We know beforehand that
yonder man must think as we do. Has he not two hands,--two feet,--hair
and nails? Does he not eat,--bleed,--laugh,--cry? His dissent from
me is the veriest affectation. This conclusion is at once the logic
of persecution and of love. And the ground of our indignation is our
conviction that his dissent is some wilfulness he practises on himself.
He checks the flow of his opinion, as the cross cow holds up her milk.
Yes, and we look into his eye, and see that he knows it and hides his
eye from ours.
But to come a little nearer to my mark, I am to say that there may
easily be obstacles in the way of finding the pure article we are in
search of; but when we find it, it is worth the pursuit, for beside
its comfort as medicine and cordial, once in the right company, new
and vast values do not fail to appear. All that man can do for man is
to be found in that market. There are great prizes in this game. Our
fortunes in the world are as our mental equipment for this competition
is. Yonder is a man who can answer the questions which I cannot. Is
it so? Hence comes to me boundless curiosity to know his experiences
and his wit. Hence competition for the stakes dearest to man. What is
a match at whist, or draughts, or billiards, or chess, to a match of
mother-wit, of knowledge, and of resources? However courteously we
conceal it, it is social rank and spiritual power that are compared;
whether in the parlor, the courts, the caucus, the senate, or the
chamber of science,--which are only less or larger theatres for this
competition.
He that can define, he that can answer a question so as to admit of no
further answer, is the best man. This was the meaning of the story of
the Sphinx. In the old time conundrums were sent from king to king by
ambassadors. The seven wise masters at Periander’s banquet spent their
time in answering them. The life of Socrates is a propounding and a
solution of these. So, in the hagiology of each nation, the lawgiver
was in each case some man of eloquent tongue, whose sympathy brought
him face to face with the extremes of society. Jesus, Menu, the first
Buddhist, Mahomet, Zertusht, Pythagoras, are examples.
Jesus spent his life in discoursing with humble people on life and
duty, in giving wise answers, showing that he saw at a larger angle
of vision, and at least silencing those who were not generous enough
to accept his thoughts. Luther spent his life so; and it is not his
theologic works,--his “Commentary on the Galatians,” and the rest,
but his “Table-Talk” which is still read by men. Dr. Johnson was
a man of no profound mind,--full of English limitations, English
politics, English Church, Oxford philosophy; yet having a large heart,
mother-wit, and good sense, which impatiently overleaped his customary
bounds, his conversation as reported by Boswell has a lasting charm.
Conversation is the vent of character as well as of thought; and Dr.
Johnson impresses his company, not only by the point of the remark, but
also, when the point fails, because _he_ makes it. His obvious religion
or superstition, his deep wish that they should think so or so, weighs
with them,--so rare is depth of feeling, or a constitutional value for
a thought or opinion, among the light-minded men and women who make up
society; and though they know that there is in the speaker a degree
of shortcoming, of insincerity, and of talking for victory, yet the
existence of character, and habitual reverence for principles over
talent or learning, is felt by the frivolous.
One of the best records of the great German master, who towered over
all his contemporaries in the first thirty years of this century, is
his conversations as recorded by Eckermann; and the “Table-Talk” of
Coleridge is one of the best remains of his genius.
In the Norse legends, the gods of Valhalla, when they meet the Jotuns,
converse on the perilous terms that he who cannot answer the other’s
questions forfeits his own life. Odin comes to the threshold of the
Jotun Waftrhudnir in disguise, calling himself Gangrader; is invited
into the hall, and told that he cannot go out thence unless he can
answer every question Waftrhudnir shall put. Waftrhudnir asks him the
name of the god of the sun, and of the god who brings the night; what
river separates the dwellings of the sons of the giants from those of
the gods; what plain lies between the gods and Surtur, their adversary,
etc.; all which the disguised Odin answers satisfactorily. Then it is
his turn to interrogate, and he is answered well for a time by the
Jotun. At last he puts a question which none but himself could answer:
“What did Odin whisper in the ear of his son Balder, when Balder
mounted the funeral pile?” The startled giant replies: “None of the
gods knows what in the old time THOU saidst in the ear of thy son: with
death on my mouth have I spoken the fate-words of the generation of the
Æsir; with Odin contended I in wise words. Thou must ever the wisest
be.”
And still the gods and giants are so known, and still they play the
same game in all the million mansions of heaven and of earth; at all
tables, clubs, and _tête-à-têtes_, the lawyers in the court-house,
the senators in the capitol, the doctors in the academy, the wits in
the hotel. Best is he who gives an answer that cannot be answered
again. _Omnis definitio periculosa est_, and only wit has the secret.
The same thing took place when Leibnitz came to visit Newton; when
Schiller came to Goethe; when France, in the person of Madame de Staël,
visited Goethe and Schiller; when Hegel was the guest of Victor Cousin
in Paris; when Linnæus was the guest of Jussieu. It happened many
years ago, that an American chemist carried a letter of introduction
to Dr. Dalton of Manchester, England, the author of the theory of
atomic proportions, and was coolly enough received by the Doctor in the
laboratory where he was engaged. Only Dr. Dalton scratched a formula
on a scrap of paper and pushed it towards the guest,--“Had he seen
that?” The visitor scratched on another paper a formula describing
some results of his own with sulphuric acid, and pushed it across the
table,--“Had he seen that?” The attention of the English chemist was
instantly arrested, and they became rapidly acquainted. To answer a
question so as to admit of no reply, is the test of a man,--to touch
bottom every time. Hyde, Earl of Rochester, asked Lord-Keeper Guilford,
“Do you not think I could understand any business in England in a
month?” “Yes, my Lord,” replied the other, “but I think you would
understand it better in two months.” When Edward I. claimed to be
acknowledged by the Scotch (1292) as lord paramount, the nobles of
Scotland replied, “No answer can be made while the throne is vacant.”
When Henry III. (1217) plead duress against his people demanding
confirmation and execution of the Charter, the reply was: “If this were
admitted, civil wars could never close but by the extirpation of one of
the contending parties.”
What can you do with one of these sharp respondents? What can you do
with an eloquent man? No rules of debate, no contempt of court, no
exclusions, no gag-laws can be contrived, that his first syllable will
not set aside or overstep and annul. You can shut out the light, it may
be; but can you shut out gravitation? You may condemn his book; but
can you fight against his thought? That is always too nimble for you,
anticipates you, and breaks out victorious in some other quarter. Can
you stop the motions of good sense? What can you do with Beaumarchais,
who converts the censor whom the court has appointed to stifle his
play into an ardent advocate? The court appoints another censor, who
shall crush it this time. Beaumarchais persuades him to defend it. The
court successively appoints three more severe inquisitors; Beaumarchais
converts them all into triumphant vindicators of the play which is
to bring in the Revolution. Who can stop the mouth of Luther,--of
Newton?--of Franklin,--of Mirabeau,--of Talleyrand?
These masters can make good their own place, and need no patron. Every
variety of gift--science, religion, politics, letters, art, prudence,
war, or love--has its vent and exchange in conversation. Conversation
is the Olympic games whither every superior gift resorts to assert
and approve itself,--and, of course, the inspirations of powerful
and public men, with the rest. But it is not this class,--whom the
splendor of their accomplishment almost inevitably guides into the
vortex of ambition, makes them chancellors and commanders of council
and of action, and makes them at last fatalists,--not these whom we
now consider. We consider those who are interested in thoughts, their
own and other men’s, and who delight in comparing them, who think it
the highest compliment they can pay a man, to deal with him as an
intellect, to expose to him the grand and cheerful secrets perhaps
never opened to their daily companions, to share with him the sphere of
freedom and the simplicity of truth.
But the best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to
treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple
lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds,--as a religious or
intellectual seeker,--finds himself a stranger and alien.
It is possible that the best conversation is between two persons who
can talk only to each other. Even Montesquieu confessed that, in
conversation, if he perceived he was listened to by a third person,
it seemed to him from that moment the whole question vanished from
his mind. I have known persons of rare ability who were heavy company
to good, social men who knew well enough how to draw out others of
retiring habit; and, moreover, were heavy to intellectual men who ought
to have known them. And does it never occur that we, perhaps, live with
people too superior to be seen,--as there are musical notes too high
for the scale of most ears? There are men who are great only to one or
two companions of more opportunity, or more adapted.
It was to meet these wants that in all civil nations attempts have been
made to organize conversation by bringing together cultivated people
under the most favorable conditions. ’Tis certain there was liberal
and refined conversation in the Greek, in the Roman, and in the Middle
Age. There was a time when in France a revolution occurred in domestic
architecture; when the houses of the nobility, which, up to that time,
had been constructed on feudal necessities, in a hollow square,--the
ground-floor being resigned to offices and stables, and the floors
above to rooms of state and to lodging-rooms,--were rebuilt with new
purpose. It was the Marchioness of Rambouillet who first got the horses
out of and the scholars into the palaces, having constructed her
_hôtel_ with a view to society, with superb suites of drawing-rooms
on the same floor, and broke through the _morgue_ of etiquette by
inviting to her house men of wit and learning as well as men of rank,
and piqued the emulation of Cardinal Richelieu to rival assemblies,
and so to the founding of the French Academy. The history of the Hôtel
Rambouillet and its brilliant circles makes an important date in French
civilization. And a history of clubs from early antiquity, tracing the
efforts to secure liberal and refined conversation, through the Greek
and Roman to the Middle Age, and thence down through French, English,
and German memoirs, tracing the clubs and coteries in each country,
would be an important chapter in history. We know well the Mermaid
Club, in London, of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Chapman, Herrick, Selden,
Beaumont and Fletcher; its “Rules” are preserved, and many allusions
to their suppers are found in Jonson, Herrick, and in Aubrey. Anthony
Wood has many details of Harrington’s Club. Dr. Bentley’s Club held
Newton, Wren, Evelyn, and Locke; and we owe to Boswell our knowledge of
the club of Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Gibbon, Reynolds, Garrick,
Beauclerk, and Percy. And we have records of the brilliant society that
Edinburgh boasted in the first decade of this century. Such societies
are possible only in great cities, and are the compensation which these
can make to their dwellers for depriving them of the free intercourse
with Nature. Every scholar is surrounded by wiser men than he--if they
cannot write as well. Cannot they meet and exchange results to their
mutual benefit and delight? It was a pathetic experience when a genial
and accomplished person said to me, looking from his country home to
the capital of New England, “There is a town of two hundred thousand
people, and not a chair in it for me.” If he were sure to find at No.
2000 Tremont Street what scholars were abroad after the morning studies
were ended, Boston would shine as the New Jerusalem to his eyes.