The other day I went to dine at a house known for the brilliancy of the
conversation. I confess that I found the experience a little trying.
In conversation I am naturally rather a pedestrian person. The talk I
like is the talk which Washington Irving had in mind when he said that
"that is the best company in which the jokes are rather small and the
laughter abundant." I do not want to be expected to be brilliant or to
be dazzled by verbal pyrotechnics. I like to talk in my slippers, as
it were, with my legs at full stretch, my mind at ease, and with all
the evening before me. Above all, I like the company of people who
talk for enjoyment and not for admiration. "I am none of those who
sing for meat, but for company," says Isaac Walton, and therein is the
secret of good talk as well as of cheerful song. But at this dinner
table the conversation flashed around me like forked lightning. It was
so staccato and elusive that it seemed like talking in shorthand. It
was a very fencing match of wit and epigram, a sort of game of
touch-and-go, or tip-and-run, or catch-as-catch-can, or battledore and
shuttlecock, or demon patience, or anything you like that is
intellectually and physically breathless and baffling. I thought of a
bright thing to say now and then, but I was always so slow in getting
away from the mark that I never got it out. It had grown stale and out
of date before I could invest it with the artistic merit that would
enable it to appear in such brilliant company. And so, mentally out of
breath, I just sat and felt old-fashioned and slow, and tried to catch
the drift of the sparkling dialogue. But I looked as wise as possible,
just to give the impression that nothing was escaping me, and that the
things I did not say were quite worth saying. That was Henry Irving's
way when the conversation got beyond him. He just looked wise and said
nothing.
There are few things more enviable than the quality of good talk, but
this was not good talk. It was clever talk, which is quite a different
thing. There was no "stuff" in it. It was like trying to make a meal
off the east wind, which it resembled in its hard brilliancy and lack
of geniality. It reminded me of the tiresome witticisms of Mr. Justice
Darling, who always gives the impression of having just come into court
from the study of some jest book or a volume of appropriate quotations.
The foundation of good talk is good sense, good nature, and the gift of
fellowship. Given these things you may serve them up with the sauce of
wit, but wit alone never made good conversation. It is like mint sauce
without the lamb.
Fluent talkers are not necessarily good conversationalists. Macaulay
talked as though he were addressing a public meeting, and Coleridge as
though he were engaged in an argument with space and eternity. "If any
of you have got anything to say," said Samuel Rogers to his guests at
breakfast one morning, "you had better say it now you have got a
chance. Macaulay is coming." And you remember that whimsical story of
Lamb cutting off the coat button that Coleridge held him by in the
garden at Highgate, going for his day's work into the City, returning
in the evening, hearing Coleridge's voice, looking over the hedge and
seeing the poet with the button between forefinger and thumb still
talking into space. His life was an unending monologue. "I think,
Charles, that you never heard me preach," said Coleridge once, speaking
of his pulpit days. "My dear boy," answered Lamb, "I never heard you
do anything else."
Johnson's talk had the quality of conversation, because, being a
clubbable man, he enjoyed the give-and-take and the cut-and-thrust of
the encounter. He liked to "lay his mind to yours," as he said of
Thurlow, and though he was more than a little "huffy" on occasion he
had that wealth of humanity which is the soul of hearty conversation.
He quarrelled heartily and forgave heartily--as in that heated scene at
Sir Joshua's when a young stranger had been too talkative and knowing
and had come under his sledge hammer. Then, proceeds Boswell, "after a
short pause, during which we were somewhat uneasy;--Johnson: Give me
your hand, Sir. You were too tedious and I was too short.--Mr. ----:
Sir, I am honoured by your attention in any way.--Johnson: Come, Sir,
let's have no more of it. We offend one another by our contention; let
us not offend the company by our compliments." He always had the
company in mind. He no more thought of talking alone than a boxer
would think of boxing alone, or the tennis player would think of
rushing up to the net for a rally alone. He wanted something to hit
and something to parry, and the harder he hit and the quicker he
parried the more he loved the other fellow. That is the way with all
the good talkers of our own time. Perhaps Mr. Belloc is too cyclonic
and scornful for perfect conversation, but his energy and wit are
irresistible. I find Mr. Bernard Shaw far more tolerant and much less
aggressive in conversation than on paper or on the platform. But the
princes of the art, in my experience, are Mr. Birrell, Lord Morley, and
Mr. Richard Whiteing, the first for the rich wine of his humour, the
second for the sensitiveness and delicacy of his thought, the third for
the deep love of his kind that warms the generous current of his talk.
I would add Mr. John Burns, but he is really a soloist. He is too
interesting to himself to be sufficiently interested in others. When
he is well under way you simply sit round and listen. It is capital
amusement, but it is not conversation.
It is not the man who talks abundantly who alone keeps the pot of
conversation boiling. Some of the best talkers talk little. They save
their shots for critical moments and come in with sudden and
devastating effect. Lamb had that art, and his stammer was the perfect
vehicle of his brilliant sallies. Mr. Arnold Bennett in our time uses
the same hesitation with delightful effect--sometimes with a shattering
truthfulness that seems to gain immensely from the preliminary
obstruction that has to be overcome. And I like in my company of
talkers the good listener, the man who contributes an eloquent silence
which envelops conversation in an atmosphere of vigilant but friendly
criticism. Addison had this quality of eloquent silence. Goldsmith,
on the other hand, would have liked to shine, but had not the gift of
talk. Among the eloquent listeners of our day I place that fine writer
and critic, Mr. Robert Lynd, whose quiet has a certain benignant
graciousness, a tolerant yet vigilant watchfulness, that adds its
flavour to the more eager talk of others.
It was a favourite fancy of Samuel Rogers that "perhaps in the next
world the use of words may be dispensed with--that our thoughts may
stream into each other's minds without any verbal communication." It
is an idea which has its attractions. It would save time and effort,
and would preserve us from the misunderstandings which the clumsy
instrument of speech involves. I think, as I sit here in the orchard
by the beehive and watch the bees carrying out their myriad functions
with such disciplined certainty, that there must be the possibility of
mutual understanding without speech--an understanding such as that
which Coleridge believed humanity would have discovered and exploited
if it had been created mute.
And yet I do not share Rogers's hope. I fancy the next world will be
like this, only better. I think it will resound with the familiar
speech of our earthly pilgrimage, and that in any shady walk or among
any of the fields of asphodel over which we wander we may light upon
the great talkers of history, and share in their eternal disputation.
There, under some spreading oak or beech, I shall hope to see Carlyle
and Tennyson, or Lamb and Hazlitt and Coleridge, or Johnson laying down
the law to Langton and Burke and Beauclerk, with Bozzy taking notes, or
Ben Jonson and Shakespeare continuing those combats of the Mermaid
Tavern described by Fuller--the one mighty and lumbering like a Spanish
galleon, the other swift and supple of movement like an English
frigate--or Chaucer and his Canterbury pilgrims still telling tales on
an eternal May morning. It is a comfortable thought, but I cannot
conceive it without the odd, cheerful din of contending tongues. I
fancy edging myself into those enchanted circles, and having a modest
share in the glorious pow-wows of the masters. I hope they won't vote
me a bore and scatter at my approach.