I heard, or read, lately, that we make a great mistake in furnishing our
reception-rooms with all the light and delicate colours, the profusion
of ornament, and flecked and spotted chintzes, if we wish to show off
the human face and figure; that our ancestors and the great painters
knew better, with their somewhat sombre and heavy-tinted backgrounds,
relieving, or throwing out into full relief, the rounded figure and the
delicate peach-like complexion.
I fancy Madame de Sablé’s salon was furnished with deep warm soberness
of tone; lighted up by flowers, and happy animated people, in a
brilliancy of dress which would be lost nowadays against our satin
walls and flower-bestrewn carpets, and gilding, gilding everywhere.
Then, somehow, conversation must have flowed naturally into sense or
nonsense, as the case might be. People must have gone to her house well
prepared for either lot. It might be that wit would come uppermost,
sparkling, crackling, leaping, calling out echoes all around; or the
same people might talk with all their might and wisdom, on some grave
and important subject of the day, in that manner which we have got into
the way of calling “earnest,” but which term has struck me as being
slightly flavoured by cant, ever since I heard of an “earnest uncle.”
At any rate, whether grave or gay, people did not go up to Madame de
Sablé’s salons with a set purpose of being either the one or the other.
They were carried away by the subject of the conversation, by the humour
of the moment. I have visited a good deal among a set of people who
piqued themselves on being rational. We have talked what they called
sense, but what I call platitudes, till I have longed, like Southey,
in the “Doctor,” to come out with some interminable nonsensical word
(Aballibogibouganorribo was his, I think) as a relief for my despair at
not being able to think of anything more that was sensible. It would have
done me good to have said it, and I could have started afresh on the
rational tack. But I never did. I sank into inane silence, which I hope
was taken for wisdom. One of this set paid a relation of mine a profound
compliment, for so she meant it to be: “Oh, Miss F.; you are so trite!”
But as it is not in everyone’s power to be rational, and “trite,” at all
times and in all places, discharging our sense at a given place, like
water from a fireman’s hose; and as some of us are cisterns rather than
fountains, and may have our stores exhausted, why is it not more general
to call in other aids to conversation, in order to enable us to pass an
agreeable evening?
But I will come back to this presently. Only let me say that there is
but one thing more tiresome than an evening when everybody tries to be
profound and sensible, and that is an evening when everybody tries to be
witty. I have a disagreeable sense of effort and unnaturalness at both
times; but the everlasting attempt, even when it succeeds, to be clever
and amusing is the worst of the two. People try to say brilliant rather
than true things; they not only catch eager hold of the superficial
and ridiculous in other persons and in events generally, but, from
constantly looking out for subjects for jokes, and “mots,” and satire,
they become possessed of a kind of sore susceptibility themselves, and
are afraid of their own working selves, and dare not give way to any
expression of feeling, or any noble indignation or enthusiasm. This kind
of wearying wit is far different from humour, which wells up and forces
its way out irrepressibly, and calls forth smiles and laughter, but not
very far apart from tears. Depend upon it, some of Madame de Sablé’s
friends had been moved in a most abundant and genial measure. They knew
how to narrate, too. Very simple, say you? I say, no! I believe the
art of telling a story is born with some people, and these have it to
perfection; but all might acquire some expertness in it, and ought to do
so, before launching out into the muddled, complex, hesitating, broken,
disjointed, poor, bald, accounts of events which have neither unity, nor
colour, nor life, nor end in them, that one sometimes hears.
But as to the rational parties that are in truth so irrational, when all
talk up to an assumed character instead of showing themselves what they
really are, and so extending each other’s knowledge of the infinite and
beautiful capacities of human nature—whenever I see the grave sedate
faces, with their good but anxious expression, I remember how I was
once, long ago, at a party like this; everyone had brought out his or
her wisdom, and aired it for the good of the company; one or two had,
from a sense of duty, and without any special living interest in the
matter, improved us by telling us of some new scientific discovery, the
details of which were all and each of them wrong, as I learnt afterwards;
if they had been right, we should not have been any the wiser—and just
at the pitch when any more useful information might have brought on
congestion of the brain, a stranger to the town—a beautiful, audacious,
but most feminine romp—proposed a game, and such a game, for us wise men
of Gotham! But she (now long still and quiet after her bright life, so
full of pretty pranks) was a creature whom all who looked on loved; and
with grave, hesitating astonishment we knelt round a circular table at
her word of command. She made one of the circle, and producing a feather
out of some sofa pillow, she told us she should blow it up into the air,
and whichever of us it floated near, must puff away to keep it from
falling on the table. I suspect we all looked like Keeley in the “Camp
at Chobham,” and were surprised at our own obedience to this ridiculous,
senseless mandate, given with a graceful imperiousness, as if it were
too royal to be disputed. We knelt on, puffing away with the utmost
intentness, looking like a set of elderly—
“Fools!” No, my dear sir. I was going to say elderly cherubim. But making
fools of ourselves was better than making owls, as we had been doing.