conversational group. A guest can as easily lead the talk into general
paths as can a host or hostess. Indeed, it is gracious for him to do
this, tho it is not his duty. The duty lies entirely with a host or
hostess. At any time through the dinner a guest can help to make
conversation general: If some one has just told in a low voice, to a
right-hand or left-hand neighbor alone, some clever impersonal thing, or
a good anecdote, or some interesting happening suitable to general
table-talk, the guest can get the attention of all present by addressing
some one at the furthest point of the table from him: "Mr. Snow, Miss
Frost has just told me something which will interest you, I know, and
perhaps all of us: Miss Frost, please tell Mr. Snow about," _et cetera_.
Miss Frost, then, speaking a little louder in order that Mr. Snow may
hear, engages the attention of the entire table. The moment any one
round the table thus invites the attention of the whole dinner-group,
dinner-companions should drop instantly their private chats and join in
whatever general talk may ensue on the topic generally introduced. The
thread of their _tete-a-tete_ conversation can be taken up later as the
general table-talk is suspended.
A narration or an anecdote should not be long drawn out. A dinner-guest,
or a host, or a hostess, is for the time being a conversationalist, not
a lecturer. It is the unwritten law of successful dinner-talk that no
one person round the table should keep the floor for more than a few
short sentences. The point in anecdotes should be brought out quickly,
and no happening of long duration should be recounted. A guest in
telling any experience can break his own narration up into conversation
by drawing into his talk, or recital, others who are interested in his
hobby or in his experience. Responses to toasts at banquets may be
somewhat longer than the individual speeches of a single person in
general table-talk; but any dinner-speaker knows that even his response
runs the risk of being spoiled if extended beyond a few minutes.
There are never-failing topics of interest and untold material out of
which to weave suitable dinner-talk, provided it is woven in the right
way. And this weaving of talk is an art in which one may become
proficient by giving it attention, just as one becomes the master of
any other art by taking thought and probing into underlying principles.
So in the art of talking well, even naturally fluent talkers need by
faithful pains to get beyond the point where they only happen to talk.
They need to attain that conscious power over conversational situations
which gives them precision and grace in adapting means to ends and a
fine discrimination in choosing among their resources.
A one-sided conversation between companions is deadly unless
discrimination is used in the matter of listening as well as talking.
For instance:
_Mr. Cook_: "Don't you think the plan of building a great riverside
drive a splendid one?"
_Miss Brown_: "Yes."
_Mr. Cook_: "The New York drive is one of the joys of life; it
gives more unalloyed pleasure than anything I know of."
_Miss Brown_: "Yes."
Unless under conditions suitable to listening and not to talking, Mr.
Cook might feel like saying to Miss Brown, as a bright young man once
said to a quiet, beautiful girl: "For heaven's sake, Miss Mary, say
something, even if you have to take it back." While it is true that
listening attentively is as valuable and necessary to thoroughly good
conversation as is talking one's self, good listening demands the same
discretion and discrimination that good talking requires. It is the
business of any supposedly good conversationalist to discern when and
why one must give one's companion over to soliloquy, and when and why
one must not do so.
The dining-room is both an arena in which talkers fight with words upon
a field of white damask, and a love-feast of discussion. If guests are
neither hatefully disputatious, nor hypocritically humble, if they are
generous, frank, natural, and wholly honest in word and mind, the
impression they make cannot help being agreeable.
CHAPTER V
TALK OF HOST AND HOSTESS AT DINNER
_The Amalgam for Combining Guests--Hosts' Talk During the Quarter
of an Hour before Dinner--Seating Guests to Enhance
Conversation--Number of Guests for the Best Conversation--Directing
the Conversation at Dinner--Drawing Guests Out--Signaling for
Conversation--General and_ Tete-a-tete _Conversation--Putting
Strangers at Ease--Steering Talk Away from Offensive Topics--The
Gracious Host and Hostess--An Ideal Dinner Party._
CHAPTER V
THE TALK OF HOST AND HOSTESS AT DINNER
Sydney Smith, by all accounts a great master of the social art, said of
himself: "There is one talent I think I have to a remarkable degree:
there are substances in nature called amalgams, whose property it is to
combine incongruous materials. Now I am a moral amalgam, and have a
peculiar talent for mixing up human materials in society, however
repellent their natures." "And certainly," adds his biographer, "I have
seen a party composed of materials as ill-sorted as could possibly be
imagined, drawn out and attracted together, till at last you would
believe they had been born for each other."
But this role of moral amalgam is such a difficult one, it must be
performed with such tact and delicacy, that hostesses are justified in
employing whatever mechanical aids are at their command. In
dinner-giving, the first process of amalgamation is to select congenial
people. Dinners are very often flat failures conversationally because
guests are invited at random. Choosing the lesser of two evils, it is
better to run the risk of offending than to jeopardize the flow of talk
by inviting uncongenial people. When dinners are given to return
obligations it is not always easy to arrange profitably the inviting and
seating of guests. But the judgment displayed just here makes or mars a
dinner. A good way out of the difficulty, where hosts have obligations
to people of different tastes and interests, is to give a series of
dinners, and to send the invitations out at the same time. If Mrs. X. is
asked to dine with Mrs. Z. the evening following the dinner to which
Mrs. Z. has invited Mrs. Y., Mrs. X. is not offended.
To see that there is no failure of tact in seating guests should be the
next process of amalgamation. To get the best results a great deal of
care should be bestowed upon the mixture of this human salad. Guests
should be seated in such a way that neighbors at table will interest
each other; a brilliant guest should be placed where he may at least
snatch crumbs of intellectual comfort if his near companions, tho
talkative, are not conversationalists of the highest order; the
loquacious guest should be put next to the usually taciturn, provided he
is one who can be roused to conversation when thrown with talkable
people. Otherwise one of the hosts should devote himself to the business
of promoting talk with the uncommunicative but no less interesting
person. A wise hostess will consider this matter of seating guests in
connection with selecting and inviting them. It is, therefore, one of
the subordinate and purely mechanical processes of the real art of
amalgamation.
If hosts forget nothing that will tempt a guest to his comfort, they
will remember above all the quarter of an hour before dinner, and will
begin the actual conquest of amalgamation while their friends are
assembling. By animation and cordiality they will put congenial guests
in conversation with each other, and will bring forth their mines of
things old and new, coining the ore into various sums, large and small,
as may be needed.
In some highly cultured circles, men and women are supposed to be
sufficiently educated and entertaining to require no literary or
childish aids to conversation. Every dinner-giver, however, knows the
device of suitable quotations, or original sayings, or clever limericks,
on place-cards, and the impetus they give to conversation between
dinner-companions as the guests are seated. But the responsibility of
host and hostess does not end when they thus furnish dinner-companions a
conversational cue. "This is why," as has been well said by Canon
Ainger, "a dinner party to be good for anything, beyond the mere
enjoyment of the menu, should be neither too large nor too small. Some
forgotten genius laid it down that the number should never be less than
that of the Graces, nor more than that of the Muses, and the latter half
of the epigram may be safely accepted. Ten as a maximum, eight for
perfection; for then conversation can be either dialog, or may spread
and become general, and the host or hostess has to direct no more than
can profitably be watched over. It is the dinner party of sixteen to
twenty that is so terrible a risk.... Good general conversation at table
among a few 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." At a banquet of thirty or forty, for instance,
general talk is impossible. At such banquets toasts and responses take
the place of general talk; but at small dinners it is gracious for a
host and hostess to lead the conversation often into general paths.
Ignoring a host and hostess through the various courses of a three
hours' dining, which I have already mentioned, can as easily be the
fault of the host and hostess themselves as it can be due to inattention
on the part of guests. A host and hostess should no more ignore any one
guest than any one guest should ignore them; and if they sit at their
own table, as I have sometimes seen hosts and hostesses do, assuming no
different function in the conversation than if they were the most
thoughtless guest at the table of another, they cannot expect their own
guests to be anything but petrified, however instinctively social.
The conversational duty of a host and hostess is, therefore, to the
entire company of people assembled at their board, as well as especially
to their right-hand neighbors, the guests of honor. It is the express
function of a host and hostess to see that each guest takes active part
in general table-talk. Leading the talk into general paths and drawing
guests out thus become identical. It is this promoting of general
conversation which is the backbone of all good talk. Many people,
however, do not need to be drawn out. Mr. Mahaffy cautions: "Above all,
the particular guest of the occasion, or the person best known as a wit
or story-teller, should not be pressed or challenged at the outset, as
if he were manifestly exploited by the company." Such a guest can safely
be left quite to himself, unless he is a stranger. As drawing out the
people by whom one finds one's self surrounded in society will be
treated in a forthcoming essay, I shall not deal with it here further
than to tell how a famous pun of Charles Lamb's gave a thoughtful host
not only the means of swaying the conversation of the entire table to a
subject of universal interest, but as well the means of drawing out a
well-informed yet timid girl. Guiding his talk with his near neighbor
into a discussion of the _pros_ and _cons_ of punning, he attracted the
attention of all his guests by addressing some one at the further end of
the table: "Mr. White, we were speaking of punning as a form of wit, and
it reminded me that I have heard Miss Black, at your left, repeat a
clever pun of Charles Lamb's--a retort he made when some one accused him
of punning. Miss Black, can you give us that pun? I'm afraid I've
forgotten it." In order that her host and all the table might hear her
distinctly, Miss Black pitched her voice a little higher than in talk
with her near neighbors and responded quickly: "I'll try to remember it,
yes:
"'If I were punish-ed
For every pun I've shed,
I should not have a puny shed
Wherein to lay my punished head!'"
Thus Miss Black was not only drawn out, she was also drawn _into_ the
conversation and became the center of an extended general discussion on
the very impersonal and interesting subject of punning. As the talk on
punning diverged, the conversation gradually fell back into private
chats between dinner-companions.
A host or hostess will know intuitively when the conversation has
remained _tete-a-tete_ long enough, and will once more make it general.
When guests pay due attention to their host and hostess, the talk will
naturally be carried into general channels, especially where guests are
seated a little distance away. Even in general conversation a good
story, if short and crisp, is no doubt a good thing; but when either a
host or a guest does nothing but "anecdote" from the soup to the coffee,
story-telling becomes tiresome. Anecdotes should not be dragged in by
the neck, but should come naturally as the talk about many different
subjects may suggest them.
It is the duty of the host and hostess, and certainly their pleasure, to
make conversational paths easy for any strangers in a strange land. It
does not follow that a host and hostess are always well acquainted with
all their guests. There are instances where they have never even met
some of them. An invitation is extended to the house-guest of a friend;
or some person of distinction temporarily in the vicinity is invited,
the formality of previous calls being waived for this reason or that.
Unless a hostess can feel perfectly safe in delegating to some one else
the entertaining of a stranger, it is wise to seat this guest as near to
herself as possible, even tho he is not made a guest of honor. She can
thus learn something about her new acquaintance and put the stranger on
an equal conversational footing with the guests who know each other
well.
In their zeal to give their friends pleasure, a host or hostess often
tells a guest that he is to take a particularly brilliant woman in to
dinner, and the woman is informed that she is to be the neighbor of a
notably clever man. To one whose powers are brought out by being put on
his mettle this might prove the best sort of conversational tonic; on
the other hand it might be better tact to say that tho a certain person
has the reputation of being exceptionally clever, he is, in truth, as
natural as an old shoe; that all one has to do to entertain him is to
talk ordinarily about commonplace topics. In ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred this is so. Some one is responsible for the epigram: "A great
man always lives a great way off"; and it is true that when we come to
know really great people we find that they are as much interested as any
one else in the commonplaces of life. Indeed, the more intellectual
people are, the more the homely things of life interest them. When
Tennyson was once a passenger on a steamer crossing the English Channel,
some people who had been assigned to seats opposite him in the dining
saloon learned that their neighbor at table was the great poet. In a
flutter of interest they listened for the wisdom which would drop from
the distinguished man's mouth and heard the hearty words, "What fine
potatoes these are!" This particular point requires nice discernment on
the part of host and hostess; they should know when they may safely
impress one guest with the cleverness of the other, and when it would be
disastrous to do so. Suppose the consequence is that each guest waits
for the sparkling flow of wit from the other, and to the consternation
of the host and hostess there is profound silence between two really
interesting people on whose cleverness they had counted to make their
dinner a success!
It is also the province of a host and hostess tactfully to steer the
drift of general table-talk away from topics likely to offend the
sensibilities of any one guest. Hosts owe not only attention but
protection to every person whom they ask to their home, and it devolves
upon them to interpose and come to the rescue if a guest is disabled in
any way from doing himself any sort of conversational justice. Swaying
conversation round and over topics embarrassing to any guest requires
the utmost tact and delicacy on the part of a host and hostess; for in
keeping one guest from being wounded or embarrassed, the offender
himself must not be made to feel conscious of his misstep. Indeed he may
be, and usually is, quite unconscious of the effect his words are having
on those whom he does not know well. Any subject which is being handled
dangerously must be _juggled_ out of sight, and the determination to
juggle it must be concealed. Tho it is quite correct for one to say
one's self, "I beg pardon for changing the subject abruptly," nothing is
worse form than to say to another, "Change the subject," or, "Let us
change the subject." To do this is both rude and crude. Directing
conversation means leading talkers unconsciously to talk of something
else. Any guest, as well as a host or hostess, may graciously steer
conversation when it touches a subject some phase of which is likely to
offend sensitive and unsophisticated people. At a series of dinners
given to a circle of philosophic minds religious intolerance was largely
the subject of discussion. The circle, for the most part well known to
each other, was of liberal belief. A guest appeared among them, and it
was known only to one or two that this man was a sincere Catholic. As
the talk turned upon religious discussion, one of the guests so directed
the conversation as to bring out the information that the stranger was a
Catholic by faith and rearing. This was a very kind and appropriate
thing to do. It acquainted the hostess with a fact of which she was
ignorant; and it gave all present a feeling of security in whatever
they might say.
A hospitable host and hostess will not absorb the conversation at their
table. They will render the gracious service of furnishing a background
for the cleverness of others, rather than display unsparingly their own
brilliancy. Indeed, a man or woman does not have to be brilliant or
intellectual to succeed in this most gracious of social arts. The host
or hostess who possesses sympathy and tact will surpass in dinner-giving
the most brilliant person in the world who selfishly monopolizes
conversation at his own table. If guests cannot go away from a
dinner-table feeling better pleased with themselves, that campaign of
hospitality has been a failure. When the self-satisfaction on their
faces betrays the subtle art of the host and hostess in having convinced
all their guests that they have made themselves interesting, then the
acme of hospitality has been achieved. One of the most good-natured but
most inane of men was one day chuckling at having been royally diverted
at a dinner-party.
"He was at Mrs. X's," said some one.
"How do you know that?"
"Indeed! Don't I know her way? She'd make a raven go home rivaling the
nightingale."
To be able to make your guests better pleased with themselves is the
greatest of all social accomplishments.
"An ideal dinner party," says a famous London hostess, "resembles
nothing so much as a masterpiece of the jeweler's art in the center of
which is some crystalline gem in the form of a sparkling and sympathetic
hostess round whom the guests are arranged in an effective setting." It
would seem quite as necessary that a host prove a crystalline gem in
this masterpiece of the jeweler's art. To be signally successful at
dinner-giving, care to make the talk interesting is as necessary as care
in the preparation of viands. Really successful hosts and hostesses take
as much precaution against fatalities in conversation as against those
which offend the palate. While attending carefully to the polishing of
the crystal and to the preparing of the menu which will make their table
a delight, they remember that the intellect of their guests must be
satisfied no less than their eyes and their stomachs.
CHAPTER VI
INTERRUPTION IN CONVERSATION
_Its Deadening Effect on Conversation--Habitual
Interruption--Nervous Interruption--Glib Talkers--Interrupting by
Over-Accuracy--Interruptions Outside the
Conversation-Circle--Children and Their Interruption--Good Talk
at Table--Anecdotes of Children's Appreciation of Good
Conversation--The Hostess Who Is "Mistress of Herself Tho China
Fall."_
CHAPTER VI
INTERRUPTION IN CONVERSATION
Interruption, more surely than anything else, kills conversation. The
effusive talker who, in spite of his facility for words, is in no sense
a conversationalist, refuses to recognize the fact that conversation
involves a partnership; that in this company of joint interest each
party has a right to his turn in the conversational engagement. He
ignores his conversational partners; he breaks into their sentences with
his own speech before they have their words well out of their mouths. He
has grown so habitual in his interrupting that he rattles on
unconscious of the disgust he is producing in the mind of any
well-bred, discriminating conversationalist who hears him. The best of
talkers interrupt occasionally in conversation; but the unconscious,
rude interruption of the habitual interrupter, and the unintentional,
conscious interruption of the cultivated talker are easily discernible,
and are two very different things.
We are accustomed to think that children are the only offenders in
interrupting; but, shades of the French _salon_, the crimes of the
adults! The great pity about this positive phase of interrupting is that
all habitual interrupters are totally unconscious that they continually
break into the speeches of their conversers and literally knock their
very words back into their mouths. Robert Louis Stevenson pronounced
this eulogy over his friend, James Walter Ferrier: "He was the only man
I ever knew who did not habitually interrupt." Now, you who read this
may not believe that you are one of the violators of this first
commandment of good conversation, "thou shalt not interrupt"; but stop
to think what small chance you have of escape when only _one_
acquaintance of Stevenson's was acquitted of this crime. One must become
conscious of the fact that he continually interrupts before he can cease
interrupting. The unconsciousness is what constitutes the crime; for
conscious interruption ceases to be interruption. The moment a good
talker is aware of having broken into the speech of his converser, he
forestalls interruption by waiting to hear what was about to be said. He
instantly cuts off his own speech with the conventional courtesy-phrase,
"I beg your pardon," which is the same as saying, "Pardon me for seeming
to be unwilling to listen to you; I really am both willing and glad to
hear what you have to say." And he proves his willingness by waiting
until the other person can finish the thought he ventured upon. What
better proof that conversation is listening as well as talking?
Sheer, nervous inability to listen is responsible for one phase of
interruption to conversation. It is the interruption of the wandering
eye which tells that one's words have not been heard. "The person next
to you must be bored by my conversation, for it is going into one of
your ears and out of the other," said a talker rather testily to his
inattentive dinner-companion whose absent-minded and tardy replies had
been snapping the thread of the thought until it grew intolerable. She
was perhaps only a little less irritating than the man who became so
unconscious in the habit of inattention that on one occasion his
converser had scarcely finished when he began abstractedly: "Yes, very
odd, very odd," and told the identical anecdote all over again.
There is another phase of interrupting which proceeds from the jerky
talker whose remarks are not provoked by what his conversational partner
is saying, with observation and answer, affirmation and rejoinder, but
who waits breathlessly for a pause to jump in and tell some thought of
his own. Of this sort of talker Dean Swift wrote: "There are people
whose manners will not suffer them to interrupt you directly, but what
is almost as bad, will discover abundance of impatience, and lie upon
the watch until you have done, because they have started something in
their own thoughts, which they long to be delivered of. Meantime, they
are so far from regarding what passes that their imaginations are wholly
turned upon what they have in reserve, for fear it should slip out of
their memory; and thus they confine their invention, which might
otherwise range over a hundred things full as good, and that might be
much more naturally introduced." An anecdote or a remark will keep. We
are not under the necessity of begrudging every moment that shortens our
own innings; of interrupting our companion by our looks and voting him
an impediment to our own much better remarks.
A less objectionable phase of interrupting, because it as often springs
from kind thought as from arrogance, is that of the conversationalist so
anxious to prove his quickness of perception that he assumes to know
what you are going to say before you have finished your sentence in your
own mind, and to put an interpretation on your arguments before you are
done stating them. His interpretation is as often exactly the opposite
of your own as it is identical; and, right or wrong, the foisted-in
explanation serves only to interrupt the sequence of thought. As early
as 1832 a writer in the _New England Magazine_ waxed wroth to pugilistic
outburst against this form of interruption: "I have heard individuals
praised for this, as indicating a rapidity of mind which arrived at the
end before the other was half through. But I should feel as much
disposed to knock a man down who took my words out of my mouth, as one
who stole my money out of my pocket. Such a habit may be a credit to
one's powers, but not to one's modesty or good feeling. What is it but
saying, 'My dear sir, you are making a very bungling piece of work with
that sentence of yours; allow me to finish it for you in proper style.'"
Tho one is inclined to feel that this author could well have reserved
his verbal scourging for more irritating forms of impertinent
interruption, it is nevertheless true that people are more entirely
considerate who allow their conversational partners to finish their
statements without fear of being tript up.
It is only lack of discrimination on the part of glib talkers to suppose
that those who express themselves more deliberately are less interesting
in conversation. The pig is one of the most rapidly loquacious of
animals, yet no one would say that the pig is an attractive
conversationalist. Pope may have been slow in forming the mosaic of
symbols which express so superbly the fact that
"Words are like leaves; and where they most abound
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found,"
but his deliberateness did not dim the wisdom, or interest, or beauty,
of his lines. Slow talkers, if allowed to express themselves in their
own way, only add to the attractiveness of any group. Why should we
enjoy characterization more in literature and in drama than in life?
"Good talking," says Stevenson, "is declarative of the man; it is
dramatic like an impromptu piece of acting where each should represent
himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk
where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you
should shift the speeches round from one to another, there would be the
greatest loss in significance and perspicuity."
The Gradgrinds of society who are always coming down upon us with some
horrible and unnecessary piece of fact are another form of interruption
to good conversation. They stop you to remind you that the accident
happened in Tremont Street, not in Boylston; and they suspend a
pertinent point in the air to inform you that it was Mr. Jones's eldest
sister, not his youngest, who was abroad at the time of the San
Francisco earthquake. If some one refers to an incident as having
occurred on the tenth of the month, they deem it necessary to stop the
talker because they happen to know that it was on the ninth. People are
often their own Gradgrinds, interrupting themselves in the midst of a
narration to correct some trivial mistake which has no bearing one way
or the other on what they are saying.
Many otherwise good talkers are at times afflicted with aphasia and lose
the simplest and most familiar word at just the crucial moment--the very
word which is necessary to the point they wish to make. This happens
more often with elderly people; and it was on such an occasion that I
heard a catchword fiend, a moderately young person, use her pet phrase
as a red lantern to stop better, if more halting, talk. "Mr. Black was
telling me to-day about Mr. White's being appointed to ---- what do you
call that office?" implored the dignified matron. "Just call it
anything, Mrs. Gray, a bandersnatch, or a buttonhook, or a
battering-ram," impertinently suggested the glib undergraduate who had
been applying these words to everybody and everything, and who continued
to do so until she had found a new catchword as the main substance of
her conversation. The infirmities of age, as well as the mellowed wisdom
of it, deserve the utmost consideration, especially from youth; and in
this instance deference in aiding the elderly woman to find her word
would have been more graceful than pleasantry, even if the pleasantry
were of a less spurious kind.
Conversation suffers from outside interruptions as much as from
interrupting directly within the conversational group. Bringing very
little children into grown-up company led Charles Lamb to propose the
health of Herod, King of the Jews! Society is no place for young
children; and if older children are permitted to be present they should
be led to listen attentively and to join the conversation modestly. If a
child ventures an opinion or asks a question concerning the topic he is
hearing discust, he should be welcomed into the conversation. His views
should, in this case, be given the same consideration, no matter how
immature, as the riper views of his elders; he should be made a
legitimate part of the conversational group. Either this, or he should
be sent entirely away. There are no half measures in a matter of this
sort. The parent's reiterated commands to "keep quiet," or "to be seen
and not heard," interrupt as much as the child's prattle. Furthermore,
many a child's natural aptitude for talking well has been crusht by
older people stifling every thought the youngster attempted to utter. A
bright young girl of my acquaintance was so supprest by her parents from
the age of seven to fifteen that she early acquired the habit of never
opening her mouth without first getting the consent of father's eyebrow,
or mother's. A child thus treated in youth grows up to be timid and
halting in speech; his individuality and spontaneity are smothered.
Either let the children talk, meanwhile teaching them _how_ to converse,
or send them off to themselves where they may at least express their
thoughts to citizens of their own age. The very best conversational
lesson that a child can be given is imparted when he is taught not to
interrupt; when he is made to understand that he must either talk
according to the niceties of thoroughly good conversation or must be
sent away.
It is often contended that children are out of place at a dining-table
where even tolerable conversation is supposed to be carried on. This
view is no doubt well taken regarding formal dinners; but round the
family board is the best place in the world to implant in children the
principles of good conversation and interesting table-talk. To this end
family differences and unpleasantnesses should be left behind when the
family goes to the table. Parents should insist, as far as possible,
that their children discuss at the dining-table only the pleasant and
interesting happenings of the day. "First of all," says Mr. Mahaffy,
"let me 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, where
either silence or a foreign tongue is imposed at meals. Whatever people
may think of the value of theory, there is no doubt whatever that
practise is necessary for conversation; and it is at home among those
who are intimate, and free in expressing their thoughts, that this
practise 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 speech and manner."
Trampling on the social and conversational rights of the young was some
time ago so well commented upon in _The Outlook_ that I transfer part of
the article to these pages. The editorial emphasized also the
educational advantages of good table-talk in the home: "There is no
educational opportunity in the home more important than the talk at
table. Children who have grown up in homes in which the talk ran on
large lines and touched all the great interests of life will agree that
nothing gave them greater pleasure or more genuine education.... Perhaps
one reason why some American children are aggressive and lacking in
respect is the frivolity of the talk that goes on in some American
families. If children are in the right atmosphere they will not be
intrusive or impertinent. Make place for their interests, their
questions, the problems of their experience; for there are young as well
as old perplexities. Encourage them to talk, and meet them more than
half-way by the utmost hospitality to the subjects that interest and
puzzle them. Give them serious attention; do not ridicule their
confusion of statement nor belittle their troubles.... Do not limit the
talk at table to the topics of childhood, but make it intelligible to
children. Some people make the mistake of 'talking down' to their
children; of turning the conversation at table into a kind of elaborate
'baby-talk'; not realizing that they are robbing their children of
hearing older people talk about the world in which they live. The child
is always looking ahead, peering curiously into the mysterious world
round him, hearing strange voices from it, getting wonderful glimpses
into it. At night when the murmur of voices comes upstairs, he hears in
it the sounds of a future full of great things.... It is not, therefore,
the child of six who sits at the table and listens; it is a human
spirit, eager, curious, wondering, surrounded by mysteries, silently
taking in what it does not understand to-day, but which will take
possession of it next year and become a torch to light it on its way.
It is through association with older people that these fructifying ideas
come to the child; it is through such talk that he finds the world he is
to possess.... The talk of the family ought not, therefore, to be
directed at him or shaped for him; but it ought never to forget him; it
ought to make a place for him."
Apropos of children's appreciation of good talk, this story is told of a
young son of one of the clever men of Chicago: Guests were present and
the boy sat quietly listening to the brilliant conversation of his
elders, when his father suggested to Paul that it was late and perhaps
he had better go to bed. "Please, father, let me stay," pleaded the
youngster, "I do so enjoy interesting conversation." Another and as deep
a childlike appreciation comes from the classic city of our American
Cambridge. The little daughter of one of its representative families
had lain awake for hours upstairs straining her ears to hear the
conversation from below. When her mother came into the little one's room
after her guests had gone, the tiny lady said plaintively, "Mother dear,
while I've been lying here all alone you were having such a liberal time
downstairs." Unconscious recognition of his just right to converse
occasionally with older people was exprest naively by the little son of
a prominent Atlanta family when visiting friends on a plantation. "I
like to stay here because you let me talk every day at the table,"
answered John, when his host asked him why he was pleased in the
country. "Don't they let you talk every day at home, John?" "Oh, when
father says 'give the kiddo a chance,' then they let me talk." This
appreciation of his host's welcoming him into the conversation was a
rare compliment from little John to his older friends and to their
interest in child-life.
Another external and demoralizing interruption to talk is poor
table-service. There can be no good conversation at table where the talk
is constantly interrupted by wordy instructions to servants. A hostess
who takes pride in the table-talk of her guests assures herself in
advance that the maid or the butler serving the table is well trained,
in order that no questions of servants can jeopardize the flow of
conversation. If anything makes it necessary for serving maid or butler
to confer with host or hostess, it should be done in an undertone so
that conversation is not interrupted. But no matter how quietly the
servant does this, the conversation _is_ interrupted by the mere fact
that the attention of the host or hostess is diverted for even a moment
from the subject being discust. In the home, as in the business office,
efficient help means efficient management. It is a reflection on any
hostess to have her table served so badly three hundred and sixty-five
days in the year that the service is an interruption to table-talk. If
she were capable herself, she would have a capable, well-trained maid or
butler. If a maid or butler could not be trained properly, her
capability would show itself in dismissing that servant and getting one
who could be trained. To the end that conversation will not be
interrupted, the "Russian" method of dining-table service is preferable
to all others, and is becoming as popular in America as in the rest of
the world.[A]
A host and hostess can themselves, by the very atmosphere they create,
become an unconscious element of interruption to table-talk. To insure
fluent conversation at table, hosts must be free from worry; they must
cultivate imperturbability; they must be able to ignore or smile at any
accident which might happen "in the best regulated family." There is
nothing more distasteful to guests than to observe that their host is
anxious lest the arrangements of the hostess miscarry, or that their
hostess is making herself quite wretched by a fear that the dishes will
not be prepared to perfection, or over the breaking of some choice bit
of crystal. At a dinner recently I saw the hostess nervous enough to
weep over an accident which demolished a treasured salad bowl; and the
result was that it took strong effort on the part of a self-sacrificing
and friendly guest to keep up the pleasant flow of talk. How much more
tactful and delightful was the manner in which another hostess treated a
similar situation. The guests were startled by a crash in the butler's
pantry, and every one knew from the tinkling sound that it was cut
glass. After a few words of instruction quietly given, the hostess
laughingly said, "I hope there is enough glass in reserve so that none
of you dear people will have to drink champagne from teacups." This was
not only a charming, informal way of smoothing out an awkward situation,
but it gave the poor butler the necessary confidence to finish serving
the dinner. Had the hostess been upset over the affair her agitation
would have been communicated to the servants; and instead of one mishap
there might have been several. A hostess should still "be mistress of
herself tho China fall." In dinner-giving, as in life, it is the part
of genius to turn disaster into advantage. "I was once at a
dinner-party," said an accomplisht diner-out, "apparently of undertakers
hired to mourn for the joints and birds in the dishes, when part of the
ceiling fell. From that moment the guests were as merry as crickets."
Interrupting within the conversational group is perhaps the most
insufferable of all impediments to rippling talk; and interruptions from
without are quite as intolerable. What pleasure is there in conversation
between two people, or among three or four, when the thought is
interrupted every other remark? Frequent references to subjects entirely
foreign to the topic under discussion give conversation much the same
jerky, sputtering ineffectualness as sticking a spigot momentarily in a
faucet prevents an even flow of water from a tank. People who have any
feeling for really good conversation do not allow needless hindrances to
destroy the continuity and joy of their intercourse with friends and
acquaintances. And people who do permit these interruptions are not
conversationalists; they are mere drivelers.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote A: The author, if addrest "Secretary for Mary Lavinia Greer
Conklin, Post Office Box 1239, Boston, Massachusetts," would be glad to
give information about the Russian method of serving, and would be
pleased, also, to answer questions and to correspond with readers
regarding any individual conversational situation in which they may find
themselves, provided a self-addrest and stamped envelop is enclosed for
reply.]
CHAPTER VII
POWER OF FITNESS, TACT, AND NICETY IN BUSINESS WORDS
_Why Cultivating the Social Instinct Adds Strength to Business
Persuasion--Secret of the Ability to Use Tactful and Vivid Words in
Business--Essential Training Necessary to the Nice Use of
Words--Business Success Depends upon Nicety and Tact More Than on
Any Quality of Force._
CHAPTER VII
POWER OF FITNESS, TACT, AND NICETY IN BUSINESS WORDS
There is an aspect of business words which has to do with social tact.
"The social tact of business words" sounds incongruous on first thought.
Business is largely force, to be sure; but a pleasing mien is often
powerful where force would fail. Training in social instinct and nicety
is more essential to a man's commercial interests than is visible on the
face of things. For instance:
_Customer_ (entering store)--"I wish a tin of 'Cobra' boot polish,
black."
_Dealer_--"Sorry, madam, we do not stock 'Cobra,' as we are seldom
asked for it. Do you wish polish for the class of shoes you are
wearing?"
To tell a customer abruptly, "We do not carry such-and-such a brand in
stock" has the effect of leading her immediately to turn to go. This is
not cordial, nor gracious, nor diplomatic; hence it is unbusiness-like.
Furthermore, to tell a customer that the brand she mentions is seldom
asked for is immediately to question her judgment. The dealer, in this
case, lost a chance to get attention on the part of his customer by
failing to infer, the moment he mentioned her shoes, that she wore a
good quality, had good taste, or common sense, or some such thing. His
reply could have been vastly improved by an exercise of the social
instinct. To answer her with some non-committal, tactful response would
open up cordial relations at once and afford the chance easily and
gracefully to lead the talk to another brand of polish.
_Dealer_--"Do you prefer 'Cobra' polish, madam? For high-grade shoes
such as you wear we find this brand more generally serviceable and
liked."
Telling expression, whether in business or in the drawing-room, depends
as much upon how one says a thing as upon what one says; as much upon
what one refrains from saying as upon what one does say.
What is the secret of the ability to put thought into tactful as well as
vivid words? Or is there a secret? There are those who invariably say
the right word in the right way. The question is: how have they found it
possible to do this; how have they learned; how have they brought the
faculty of expression to a perfected art? Or was this ability born in
them? Or, if there is a secret of proficiency, do the adroit managers
of words guard their secret carefully? And if so, why?
Piano artists, and violin artists, and canvas artists, and singing
artists, are uniformly proud of the persevering practise by which they
win success. Why should not ready writers and ready talkers be just as
proud of honest endeavor? Are they so vain of the praise of "natural
facility for expression" that they seldom acknowledge the steps of
progression by which they falteringly but tenaciously climb the ladder
of their attainment? A few great souls and masters of words have been
very honest about the ways and means by which they became skilful
phrase-builders. Robert Louis Stevenson, as perfect in his talk as in
his written expression, said of himself: "Tho considered an idler at
school, I was always busy on my own private ends, which was to learn to
use words. I kept two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
As I walked my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words.
As I sat by the roadside a penny version book would be in my hand, to
note down the features of the scene. Thus I lived with words. And what I
thus wrote was written consciously for practise. I had vowed that I
would learn to write; it was a proficiency that tempted me, and I
practised to acquire it. I worked in other ways also; often accompanied
my walks with dialogs and often exercised myself in writing down
conversations from memory. This was excellent, no doubt; but there was
perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more effort, in my secret
labors at home.[B] That is the way to learn expression. It was so Keats
learned, and there was never a finer temperament for literature than
Keats's; it was so, if we could trace it out, that all men have
learned."
What, then, is the essential training necessary to the nice handling of
words? The idea is quite general that an extensive vocabulary alone
makes thought flow exactly off the tip of one's tongue or pen. But is
this true? One should have a command of words, to be sure; one should
know more descriptive words than "awful, fierce, fine, charming"--terms
used in an unthinking way by people who do not concern themselves with
specific adjectives. But to know how to use a vocabulary is of even more
importance than to possess one. Indeed, merely to possess a vocabulary
without the ability to weave the words into accurate, characterized
designs on an effective background is ruinous to the success of any
talker or writer. To employ an extensive vocabulary riotously is worse
than to own none.
When the poet Keats wrote those well-known lines,
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Its loveliness increases,"
the first line stood originally:
"A thing of beauty is a constant joy."
The poet knew that this was the thought he wanted, but he felt that it
had not the simple, virile swing he coveted. And so the line remained
for many months, "A thing of beauty is a constant joy," in spite of the
author's many attempted phrasings to improve it. Finally the simple word
"forever" came to him, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Then he had
it, and he knew he had it--the essential note, the exact word. Certainly
the word "forever" was a part of Keats's vocabulary; he undoubtedly
knew this simple word. It was not the word, but adroitness in using it,
which made Keats's lines complete in their polished and natural
perfection.
One of the world's worshiped piano virtuosi, who has quite as
intellectual a comprehension of words as of music, was asked by the
editor of a magazine to contribute biographical data and photographs for
an article on musical composers. The pianiste had published no
compositions, and the gracious answer swung readily into line: "If your
article is to deal exclusively with musical composers, I cannot be
included. I have never published any of my compositions because I feel
that they cannot add anything to my reputation as a pianiste, of which I
am----" Just here, as with Keats's line, vocabulary could not serve the
purpose. The pianiste could have said "of which I am proud." No, a
modest phrase must express honest pride--"my reputation as a pianiste
which I guard sedulously," or "defend zealously." No, this the exactness
and simplicity of true art rejected. Then came the simple, perfect
phrasing--"my reputation as a pianiste, of which I am somewhat jealous."
Unquestionably, as with Keats's word "forever," the word "jealous" was
perfectly familiar. It was not any one exceptional word which was
necessary, but a weaving of simple words--if I may be permitted the
expression. Here, in order to get the effect desired this master-mind
refrained from using a vocabulary. Words came readily enough; but the
tongue was in command of silence because pretentious words failed the
end. This perfection of expression is not a matter of vocabulary alone.
It is more than vocabulary; it is a grappling after the really subtle
and intellectual elements of the art of expression and persuasion.
Of what use all the delicately tinted tapestry threads in the world,
spread out before a tapestry-worker, if he does not possess the ability
to weave them into faultless designs, employing his colors sparingly
here, and lavishly there?
"One's tongue and pen should be in absolute command, whether for silence
or attack," says Stevenson again; and, more than on any quality of
force, business success depends upon that same nicety in the use of
words which selects the tactful expression, the modest and simple
phrase, in the drawing-room; the sort of nicety which is unobtrusive
exactness and delicacy; an artistry which in no way labels itself
skilful. But underneath all, the woof of the process is social
skill--that skill which is the ability to go back to unadorned first
principles with the dexterity of one who has acquired the power to do
the simple thing perfectly by having mastered the entire gamut of the
complex.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote B: Even Stevenson acknowledged secrecy in his earlier
climbings.]
CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSION
_Conversation Is Reciprocal--Good Conversationalists Cannot Talk to
the Best Advantage without Confederates--As in Whist, It Is the
Combination Which Effects What a Single Whist-playing Genius Cannot
Accomplish--Good Conversation Does not Mark a Distinction among
Subjects; It Denotes a Difference in Talkability--The Different
Degrees of Talkability--Imperturbable Glibness Impedes Good
Conversation--Ease with Which One May Improve One's Conversational
Powers._
CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSION
Good conversation, then, is like a well-played game of whist. Each has
to give and take; each has to deal regularly round to all the players;
to signal and respond to signals; to follow suit or to trump with
pleasantry or jest. And neither you yourself, nor any other of the
players, can win the game if even one refuses to be guided by its rules.
It is the combination which effects what a single whist-playing genius
could not accomplish. Good conversation, therefore, consists no more in
the thing communicated than in the manner of communicating; no more than
good whist consists entirely in playing the cards without recognizing
even one of the rules of the game. One cannot talk well about either
cabbages or kings with one whose attention wanders; with one who
delivers a sustained soliloquy, or lecture, and calls it conversation;
with one who refuses to enter into amicable discussion; or, when in,
does nothing but contradict flatly; with one who makes abrupt
transitions of thought every time he opens his mouth; with one, in
short, who has never attempted to discover even a few of the thousand
and one essential hindrances and aids to conversation. As David could
not walk as well when sheathed in Saul's armor, so even nimble minds
cannot do themselves justice when surrounded by people whose every
utterance is demoralizing to any orderly and stimulating exchange of
ideas.
"For wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best players,"
said Sir Foppling Flutter; and few would refuse to admit that fortunate
circumstances of companionship are as much a factor of good conversation
as is native cleverness. Satisfactory conversation does not depend upon
whether it is between those intellectually superior or inferior, or
between strangers or acquaintances; but upon whether, mentally superior
or inferior, known or unknown, each party to the conversation talks with
due recognition of its first principles. There are, to be sure,
different classes of talkers. There are those of the glory of the sun
and others of the glory of the moon. It is easy enough to catch the note
of the company in which one finds one's self; but the most entertaining
and captivating person in the world is petrified when he can not put his
finger on one confederate who understands the simplest mandates of his
art, whether talking badinage or wisdom. Without intelligent listeners,
the best talker is at sea; and any good conversationalist is defeated
when he is the only member of a crowd of interrupters who scream each
other down.
Conversation is essentially reciprocal, and when a good converser flings
out his ball of thought he knows just how the ball should come back to
him, and feels balked and defrauded if his partner is not even watching
to catch it, much less showing any intention of tossing it back on
precisely the right curve. "The habit of interruption," says Bagehot,
"is a symptom of mental deficiency; it proceeds from not knowing what is
going on in other people's minds." It is impossible for a good talker to
talk to any advantage with a companion who does not concern himself in
the least with anybody's mental processes--not even his own.
Given conversation which is marked by conformity to all its unwritten
precepts, "Men and women then range themselves," says Henry Thomas
Buckle, "into three classes or orders of intelligence. You can tell the
lowest class by their habit of talking about nothing else but persons;
the next by the fact that their habit is always to talk about things;
the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas." Discussion
is the most delightful of all conversation, if the company are _up to
it_; it is the highest type of talk, but suited only to the highest type
of individuals. Therefore, a person who in one circle might observe a
prudent silence may in another very properly be the chief talker. Highly
bred and cultured people have attained a certain unity of type, and are
interested in the same sort of conversation. "Talk depends so wholly on
our company," says Stevenson. "We should like to introduce Falstaff and
Mercutio, or Falstaff and Sir Toby; but Falstaff in talk with Cordelia
seems even painful. Most of us, by the Protean quality of man, can talk
to some degree with all; but the true talk that strikes out all the
slumbering best of us comes only with the peculiar brethren of our
spirits.... And hence, I suppose, it is that good talk most commonly
arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the scene and the instrument
of friendship."
On the whole, then, the very best social intercourse is possible only
when there is equality. Hazlitt in one of his delightful essays has said
that, "In general, wit shines only by reflection. You must take your cue
from your company--must rise as they rise, and sink as they fall. You
must see that your good things, your knowing allusions, are not flung
away, like the pearls in the adage. What a check it is to be asked a
foolish question; to find that the first principles are not understood!
You are thrown on your back immediately; the conversation is stopt like
a country-dance by those who do not know the figure. But when a set of
adepts, of _illuminati_, get about a question, it is worth while to hear
them talk."
If we are to have a rising generation of good talkers, by our own choice
and deliberate aim social intercourse should be freed from the
barbarisms which so often hamper it. Conversation at its highest is the
most delightful of intellectual stimulants; at its lowest the most
deadening to intellect. Better be as silent as a deaf-mute than to
indulge carelessly in imperturbable glibness which impedes rather than
encourages good conversation. Really clever people dislike to compete in
a race with talkers who rarely speak from the abundance of their hearts
and often from the emptiness of their heads. On the other hand, one can
easily imagine a sage like Emerson the victim of conceited prigs,
listening to their vapid conversational performances, and can readily
understand why he considered conversation between two congenial souls
the only really good talk.
Marked conversational powers are in some measure natural and in some
acquired; "and to maintain," says Mr. Mahaffy, "that they depend
entirely upon natural gifts is one of the commonest and most
widely-spread popular errors.... 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....
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 children out of a thousand made a fair attempt, you would
attribute this either to special genius or special training--and why?
because the child had really approached nature." Just as a child, either
with talent for drawing or without it, can draw a better picture of a
man after he has been trained, than before, so can those not endowed by
nature with ready speech polish and amend their natural defects. Neither
need there be artificiality or affectation in talk that is consciously
cultivated; no more indeed than it is affectation to eat with a fork
because one knows that it is preferable to eating with a knife.
The faculty of talking is too seldom regarded in the light of a talent
to be polished and variously improved. It is so freely employed in all
sorts of trivialities that, like the dyer's hand, it becomes subdued to
that it works in. Canon Ainger has declared positively that
"Conversation might be improved if only people would take pains and have
a few lessons." Nearly two hundred years before Canon Ainger came to
this decision, Dean Swift contended that "Conversation might be reduced
to perfection; for here we are only to avoid a multitude of errors,
which, altho a matter of some difficulty, may be in every man's power.
Therefore it seems that the truest way to understand conversation is to
know the faults and errors to which it is subject, and from thence every
man to form maxims to himself whereby it may be regulated, because it
requires few talents to which most men are not born, or at least may
not acquire, without any great genius or study. For nature has left
every man a capacity for being agreeable, tho not of shining in company;
and there are hundreds of people sufficiently qualified for both, who,
by a very few faults that they might correct in half an hour, are not so
much as tolerable." It is recorded of Lady Blessington by Lord Lennox in
his _Drafts on My Memory_ that in youth she did not give any promise of
the charms for which she was afterwards so conspicuous, and which, in
the first half of the nineteenth century, made Gore House in London
famous for its hospitality. A marriage at an early age to a man subject
to hereditary insanity was terminated by her husband's sudden death, and
in 1818 she married the Earl of Blessington. Everything goes to prove
that, in those few years during her first husband's life, she set
herself earnestly to cultivating charm of manner and the art of
conversation.
Talking well is given so little serious consideration that the average
person, when he probes even slightly into the art, is as surprized as
was Moliere's _bourgeois gentilhomme_ upon discovering that he had
spoken prose for forty years. Plato says: "Whosoever seeketh must know
that which he seeketh for in a general notion, else how shall he know it
when he hath found it?" And if what I write on this subject enables
readers to know for what they seek in good conversation, even in
abstract fashion, I shall be grateful. When all people cultivate the art
of conversation as assiduously as the notably good talkers of the world
have done, there will be a general feast of reason and flow of soul;
each will then say to the other, in Milton's words,
"With thee conversing, I forget all time."
IN PREPARATION:
_The Art of Drawing Others Out_
_Conversation versus Mere Talk_
_Following the Trend of the Conversation; Abrupt Transitions of
Thought_
_Listening in Conversation_
_Some Common Errors in Making Introductions_
_Raconteurs and Their Anecdotes_
_Commonplaces of Conversation_
_Subjects for Conversation; Book Talk_
_The Give and Take of Talk_
_Distinction Between Inquisitive Questioning and "Interest
Questions"_
_Justifiable Limits of Wit, Raillery, and Humor_
_The Use and Abuse of Slang_
_Small Talk: Glib Talkers_
_Adjusting "Shop" to the Time, the Place, and the Situation_
_Giving and Accepting Compliments_
_Joking and Jesting; Difference Between Pleasantry and Buffoonery_
_A Softened Mode of Speech_
_Brutal Frankness and Intellectual Honesty_
_Thrusting and Parrying in Conversation_
_The Value in Conversation of Knowing "Who's Who"_
* * * * *
Transcriber's note
The following changes have been made to the text:
Page 41: "it isn't so" changed to "It isn't so".
Page 65: "Tannhaueser" changed to "Tannhaeuser".