"Isn't it rather odd," said someone to Father Payne after dinner, "that
great men have as a rule rather preferred the company of their inferiors to
the company of their equals?"
"I don't know," said Father Payne; "I think it's rather natural! By Jove, I
know that a very little of the society of a really superior person goes a
very long way with me. No, I think it is what one would expect. When the
great man is at work, he is on the strain and doing the lofty business for
all he is worth; when he is at leisure, he doesn't want any more strain--he
has done his full share."
"But take the big groups," said someone, "like the Wordsworth set, or the
pre-Raphaelite set--or take any of the great biographies--the big men of
any time seem always to have been mutual friends and correspondents. You
have letters to and from Ruskin from and to all the great men of his day."
"Letters, yes!" said Father Payne; "of course the great men know each
other, and respect each other; but they don't tend to coagulate. They
relish an occasional meeting and an occasional letter, and they say how
deeply they regret not seeing more of each other--but they tend to seek the
repose of their own less exalted circle. The man who has fine ideas prefers
his own disciples to the men who have got a different set of fine ideas.
That is natural enough! You want to impart the ideas you believe in--you
don't want to argue about them, or to have them knocked out of your hand.
Depend upon it, the society of an intelligent person, who can understand
you enough to stimulate you, and who is grateful for your talk, is much
pleasanter, and indeed more fruitful, than the society of a man who is
fully as intelligent as yourself, and thinks some of your conclusions to be
rot!"
"But doesn't all that encourage people to be prophets?" Vincent said. "One
of the depressing things about great men is that they grow to consider
themselves a sort of special providence--the originators of great ideas
rather than the interpreters."
"Yes," said Father Payne, "of course the little coteries and courts of
great men are rather repulsive. But the best people don't do that. They
live contentedly in a circle which combines with its admiration for the
hero a comfortable feeling that, if other people knew what they know, they
wouldn't feel genius to be quite so extraordinary as is commonly believed.
And we must remember, too, that most great men seem greater afterwards than
they did at the time. More of a treat and a privilege, I mean."
"Do you think one ought to try to catch a sight of great men who are
contemporaries?" said I.
"Yes, a sight, I think," said Father Payne. "It's a pleasant thing to
realise how your big man sits and looks and talks, what his house is like,
and so forth. I have often rather regretted I haven't had the curiosity to
get a sight of the giants. It helps you to understand them. I remember a
pleasant old gentleman, Vinter by name, who lived in London. Vinter the
novelist was his son. When young Vinter became famous for a bit, and people
wanted to know him, old Vinter made a glorious rule. He told his son that
he might invite any well-known person he liked to the house, to luncheon or
dinner--but that unless he made a special exception in any one's favour,
they were not to be invited again. There's a fine old Epicurean! He liked
to realise what the bosses looked like, but he wasn't going to be bothered
by having to talk respectfully to them time after time."
"But that's rather tame," said Vincent. "The point surely would be to get
to know a big man well."
"Why, yes," said Father Payne, "but Vinter was a wise _old_ man; now I
should say to any _young_ man who had a chance of really having a
friendship with a great man, 'Of course, take it and thank your stars!' But
I shouldn't advise any young man to make a collection of celebrities, or to
go about hunting them. In fact I think for an original young man, it is apt
to be rather dangerous to have a real friendship with a great man. There's
a danger of being diverted from your own line, and of being drawn into
imitative worship. A very moderate use of great men in person should
suffice anyone. Your real friends ought to be people with whom you are
entirely at ease, not people whom you reverence and defer to. It's better
to learn to bark than to wag your tail. I don't think the big men
themselves often begin by being disciples."
"Then who _is_ worth seeing?" said Vincent. "There must be somebody!"
"Why, to be frank," said Father Payne, "agreeable men like me, who haven't
got too much authority, and are not surrounded by glory and worship! I'm
interested in most things, and have learnt more or less how to talk--you
look out for ingenious and kindly elderly men, who haven't been too
successful, and haven't frozen into Tories, and yet have had some
experience;--men of humour and liveliness, who have a rather more extended
horizon than yourself, and who will listen to what you say instead of
shutting you up, and saying 'Very likely' as Newman did--after which you
were expected to go into a corner and think over your sins! Or clever,
sympathetic, interesting women--not too young. Those are the people whom it
is worth taking a little trouble to see."
"But what about the young people!" said Vincent.
"Oh, that will look after itself," said Father Payne. "There's no
difficulty about that! You asked me whom it was worth while taking some
trouble to see, and I prescribe a very occasional great man, and a good
many well-bred, cultivated, experienced, civil men and women. It isn't very
easy to find, that sort of society, for a young man; but it is worth trying
for."
"But do you mean that you should pursue good talk?" said Vincent.
"A little, I think," said Father Payne; "there's a good deal of art in
it--unconscious art in England, probably--but much of our life is spent in
talking, and there's no reason why we shouldn't learn how to get the best
and the most out of talk--how to start a subject, and when to drop it--how
to say the sort of things which make other people want to join in, and so
on. Of course you can't learn to talk unless you have a lot to say, but you
can learn _how_ to do it, and better still how _not_ to do it. I
used to feel in the old days, when I met a clever man--it was rare enough,
alas!--how much more I could have got out of him if I had known how to do
the trick. It's a great pleasure, good talk; and the fact that it is so
tiring shows what a real pleasure it must be. But a man with whom you can
only talk _hard_ isn't a companion--he's an adversary in a game. There
have been times in my life when I have had a real tough talker staying here
with me, when I have suffered from crushing intellectual fatigue, and felt
inclined to say, like Elijah, 'Take away my life, for I am not better than
my fathers.' That is the strange thing to me about most human beings--the
extent to which they seem able to talk without being tired. I agree with
Walter Scott, when he said, 'If the question was eternal company without
the power of retiring within myself, or solitary confinement for life, I
should say, "Turnkey, lock the cell!"' Companionship doesn't seem to me the
normal thing. Solitude is the normal thing, with a few bits of talk thrown
in, like meals, for refreshment. But you can't lay down rules for people
about it. Some people are simply gregarious, and twitter together like
starlings in a shrubbery: that isn't talk--it's only a series of signals
and exclamations. The danger of solitude is that the machinery runs just as
you wish it to run--and that wears it out."
"But isn't your whole idea of talk rather strenuous--a little artificial?"
said Vincent.
"Not more so than fixed meals," said Father Payne, "or regular exercise.
But, of course silent companionship is the greatest boon of all. I have a
belief that even in silent companionship there is a real intermingling of
vital and mental currents, and that one is much pervaded and affected by
the people one lives with, even if one does not talk to them. The very
sight of some people is as bad as an argument! The ideal thing, of course,
is to have a few intimate friends and some comfortable acquaintances. But I
am rather a fatalist about friendship, and I think that most of us get
about as much as we deserve. Anyhow, it's all worth taking some trouble
about; and most people make the mistake of not taking any trouble or
putting themselves about; and that's not the way to behave!"