reputations of the present hour is indeed sufficiently notorious to all
who have the pleasure of Mr. Villiers's acquaintance; and nowhere is his
mastery of the art of conversation more conspicuous than in his knack of
implying dislike and insinuating contempt without crude abuse or noisy
denunciation. He has a delicate sense of fun, a keen eye for
incongruities and absurdities, and that genuine cynicism which springs,
not from the poor desire to be thought worldly-wise, but from a lifelong
acquaintance with the foibles of political men. To these gifts must be
added a voice which age has not robbed of its sympathetic qualities, a
style of diction and a habit of pronunciation which belong to the
eighteenth century, and that formal yet facile courtesy which no one
less than eighty years old seems capable of even imitating.
I have instanced Mr. Villiers as an eminent talker. I now turn to an
eminent man who talks--Mr. Gladstone.[17] An absurd story has long been
current among credulous people with rampant prejudices that Mr.
Gladstone was habitually uncivil to the Queen. Now, it happens that Mr.
Gladstone is the most courteous of mankind. His courtesy is one of his
most engaging gifts, and accounts in no small degree for his power of
attracting the regard of young men and undistinguished people generally.
To all such he is polite to the point of deference, yet never
condescending. His manners to all alike--young and old, rich and
poor--are the ceremonious manners of the old school, and his demeanour
towards ladies is a model of chivalrous propriety. It would therefore
have been to the last degree improbable that he should make a departure
from his usual habits in the case of a lady who was also his Sovereign.
And, as a matter of fact, the story is so ridiculously wide of the mark
that it deserves mention only because, in itself false, it is founded on
a truth. "I," said the Duke of Wellington on a memorable occasion, "have
no small talk, and Peel has no manners." Mr. Gladstone has manners but
no small talk. He is so consumed by zeal for great subjects that he
leaves out of account the possibility that they may not interest other
people. He pays to every one, and not least to ladies, the compliment of
assuming that they are on his own intellectual level, engrossed in the
subjects which engross him, and furnished with at least as much
information as will enable them to follow and to understand him. Hence
the genesis of that absurd story about his demeanour to the Queen.
"He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting," is a complaint which is
said to have proceeded from illustrious lips. That most successful of
all courtiers, the astute Lord Beaconsfield, used to engage her Majesty
in conversation about water-colour drawing and the third-cousinships of
German princes. Mr. Gladstone harangues her about the polity of the
Hittites, or the harmony between the Athanasian Creed and
Homer. The Queen, perplexed and uncomfortable, tries to make a
digression--addresses a remark to a daughter or proffers biscuit to a
begging terrier. Mr. Gladstone restrains himself with an effort till the
Princess has answered or the dog has sat down, and then promptly
resumes: "I was about to say--" Meanwhile the flood has gathered force
by delay, and when it bursts forth again it carries all before it.
No image except that of a flood can convey the notion of Mr. Gladstone's
table-talk on a subject which interests him keenly--its rapidity, its
volume, its splash and dash, its frequent beauty, its striking effects,
the amount of varied matter which it brings with it, the hopelessness of
trying to withstand it, the unexpectedness of its onrush, the subdued
but fertilized condition of the subjected area over which it has passed.
The bare mention of a topic which interests Mr. Gladstone opens the
floodgates and submerges a province. But the torrent does not wait for
the invitation. If not invited it comes of its own accord; headlong,
overwhelming, sweeping all before it, and gathering fresh force from
every obstacle which it encounters on its course. Such is Mr.
Gladstone's table-talk. For conversation, strictly so called, he has no
turn. He asks questions when he wants information, and answers them
copiously when asked by others. But of give-and-take, of meeting you
half-way, of paying you back in your own conversational coin, he has
little notion. He discourses, he lectures, he harangues. But if a
subject is started which does not interest him it falls flat. He makes
no attempt to return the ball. Although, when he is amused, his
amusement is intense and long sustained, his sense of humour is highly
capricious. It is impossible for even his most intimate friends to guess
beforehand what will amuse him and what will not; and he has a most
disconcerting habit of taking a comic story in grim earnest, and arguing
some farcical fantasy as if it was a serious proposition of law or
logic. Nothing funnier can be imagined than the discomfiture of a
story-teller who has fondly thought to tickle the great man's fancy by
an anecdote which depends for its point upon some trait of baseness,
cynicism, or sharp practice. He finds his tale received in dead silence,
looks up wonderingly for an explanation, and finds that what was
intended to amuse has only disgusted. Mr. Browning once told Mr.
Gladstone a highly characteristic story of Disraelitish duplicity, and
for all reply heard a voice choked with indignation:--"Do you call that
amusing, Browning? _I call it devilish_."[18]
FOOTNOTES:
[17] This was written before the 19th of May, 1898, on which day "the
world lost its greatest citizen;" but it has not been thought necessary,
here or elsewhere, to change the present into the past tense.
[18] I give this story as I received it from Mr. Browning.
XV.
CONVERSATION--_continued_.
More than thirty years have passed since the festive evening described
by Sir George Trevelyan in _The Ladies in Parliament_:--
"When, over the port of the innermost bin,
The circle of diners was laughing with Phinn;
When Brookfield had hit on his happiest vein.
And Harcourt was capping the jokes of Delane."
The sole survivor of that brilliant group now[19] leads the Opposition;
but at the time when the lines were written he had not yet entered the
House of Commons. As a youth of twenty-five he had astonished the
political world by his anonymous letters on _The Morality of Public
Men_, in which he denounced, in the style of Junius, the Protectionist
revival of 1852. He had fought a plucky but unsuccessful fight at
Kirkcaldy; was making his five thousand a year at the Parliamentary Bar;
had taught the world international law over the signature of
"Historicus," and was already, what he is still, one of the most
conspicuous and interesting figures in the society of London. Of Sir
William Harcourt's political alliances this is not the place nor am I
the person to treat:
"Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
We are but mortals, and must sing of Man."
My theme is not Sir William Harcourt the politician, but Sir William
Harcourt the man, the member of society--above all, the talker. And,
although I have thus deliberately put politics on one side, it is
strictly relevant to my purpose to observe that Sir William is
essentially and typically a Whig. For Whiggery, rightly understood, is
not a political creed but a social caste. The Whig, like the poet, is
born, not made. It is as difficult to become a Whig as to become a Jew.
Macaulay was probably the only man who, being born outside the
privileged enclosure, ever penetrated to its heart and assimilated its
spirit. The Whigs, indeed, as a body have held certain opinions and
pursued certain tactics which have been analyzed in chapters xix. and
xxi. of the unexpurgated _Book of Snobs_. But those opinions and those
tactics have been mere accidents, though perhaps inseparable accidents,
of Whiggery. Its substance has been relationship.
When Lord John Russell formed his first Administration his opponents
alleged that it was mainly composed of his cousins, and one of his
younger brothers was charged with the impossible task of rebutting the
accusation in a public speech. Mr. Beresford-Hope, in one of his novels,
made excellent fun of what he called "the sacred circle of the
Great-Grandmotherhood." He showed--what, indeed, the Whigs themselves
knew uncommonly well--that from a certain Earl Gower, who flourished in
the eighteenth century, and was great-great-great-grandfather of the
present Duke of Sutherland, are descended all the Levesons,[20] Gowers,
Howards, Cavendishes, Grosvenors, Russells, and Harcourts, who walk on
the face of the earth. Truly a noble and a highly favoured progeny.
"They _are_ our superiors," said Thackeray; "and that's the fact. I am
not a Whig myself (perhaps it is as unnecessary to say so as to say I'm
not King Pippin in a golden coach, or King Hudson, or Miss
Burdett-Coutts). I'm not a Whig; but oh, how I should like to be one!"
From this illustrious stock Sir William Harcourt is descended through
his grandmother, Lady Anne Harcourt--born Leveson-Gower, and wife of
the last Prince-Archbishop of York (whom, by the way, Sir William
strikingly resembles both in figure and in feature). When one meets Sir
William Harcourt for the first time in society, perhaps one is first
struck by the fact that he is in aspect and bearing a great gentleman of
the old school, and then that he is an admirable talker. He is a true
Whig in culture as well as in blood. Though his conversation is never
pedantic, it rests on a wide and strong basis of generous learning. Even
those who most cordially admire his political ability do not always
remember that he is an excellent scholar, and graduated as eighth in the
First Class of the Classical Tripos in the year when Bishop Lightfoot
was Senior Classic. He has the _Corpus Poetarum_ and Shakespeare and
Pope at his finger-ends, and his intimate acquaintance with the
political history of England elicited a characteristic compliment from
Lord Beaconsfield. It is his favourite boast that in all his tastes,
sentiments, and mental habits he belongs to the eighteenth century,
which he glorifies as the golden age of reason, patriotism, and liberal
learning. This self-estimate strikes me as perfectly sound, and it
requires a very slight effort of the imagination to conceive this
well-born young Templar wielding his doughty pen in the Bangorian
Controversy, or declaiming on the hustings for Wilkes and Liberty;
bandying witticisms with Sheridan, and capping Latin verses with Charles
Fox; or helping to rule England as a member of that "Venetian Oligarchy"
on which Lord Beaconsfield lavished all the vials of his sarcasm. In
truth, it is not fanciful to say that whatever was best in the
eighteenth century--its robust common sense, its racy humour, its
thorough and unaffected learning, its ceremonious courtesy for great
occasions, its jolly self-abandonment in social intercourse--is
exhibited in the demeanour and conversation of Sir William Harcourt. He
is an admirable host, and, to borrow a phrase from Sydney Smith,
"receives his friends with that honest joy which warms more than dinner
or wine." As a guest, he is a splendid acquisition, always ready to
amuse and to be amused, delighting in the rapid cut-and-thrust of
personal banter, and bringing out of his treasure things new and old for
the amusement and the benefit of a later and less instructed generation.
Extracts from the private conversation of living people, as a rule, I
forbear; but some of Sir William's quotations are so extraordinarily apt
that they deserve a permanent place in the annals of table-talk. That
fine old country gentleman, the late Lord Knightley (who was the living
double of Dickens's Sir Leicester Dedlock), had been expatiating after
dinner on the undoubted glories of his famous pedigree. The company was
getting a little restive under the recitation, when Sir William was
heard to say, in an appreciative aside, "This reminds me of Addison's
evening hymn--
'And Knightley to the listening earth
Repeats the story of his birth.'"
Surely the force of apt citation can no further go. When Lord Tennyson
chanced to say in Sir William Harcourt's hearing that his pipe after
breakfast was the most enjoyable of the day, Sir William softly murmured
the Tennysonian line--
"The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds."
Some historians say that he substituted "bards" for "birds," and the
reception accorded by the poet to the parody was not as cordial as its
excellence deserved.
Another capital talker is Sir George Trevelyan. He has been, from the
necessities of his position, a man of the world and a politician, and he
is as ready as Mr. Bertie-Tremaine's guests in _Endymion_ to talk of
"that heinous subject on which enormous fibs are ever told--the
Registration." But, after all, the man of the world and the politician
are only respectable parts which he had been bound to assume, and he has
played them--with assiduity and success: but the true man in Sir George
Trevelyan is the man of letters. Whenever he touches a historical or
literary theme his whole being seems to undergo a transformation. The
real nature flashes out through his twinkling eyes. While he muses the
fire burns, and, like the Psalmist, he speaks with his tongue. Dates and
details, facts and traditions, cantos and poetry, reams of prose,
English and Latin and Greek and French, come tumbling out in headlong
but not disorderly array. He jumps at an opening, seizes an illusion,
replies with lightning quickness to a conversational challenge, and is
ready at a moment's notice to decide any literary or historical
controversy in a measured tone of deliberate emphasis which is not
wholly free from exaggeration. Like his uncle Lord Macaulay, Sir George
Trevelyan has "his own heightened and telling way of putting things,"
and those who know him well make allowance for this habit. For the rest,
he is delightful company, light-hearted as a boy, full of
autobiographical chit-chat about Harrow and Trinity, and India and Holly
Lodge, eagerly interested in his friends' concerns, brimming over with
enthusiasm, never bored, never flat, never stale. A well-concerted party
is a kind of unconscious conspiracy to promote cheerfulness and
enjoyment, and in such an undertaking there can be no more serviceable
ally than Sir George Trevelyan.
Mr. John Morley's agreeableness in conversation is of a different kind.
His leading characteristic is a dignified austerity of demeanour which
repels familiarity and tends to keep conversation on a high level; but
each time one meets him there is less formality and less restraint, and
the grave courtesy which never fails is soon touched with friendliness
and frank good-humour in a singularly attractive fashion. He talks, not
much, but remarkably well. His sentences are deliberate, clear-cut,
often eloquent. He excels in phrase-making. His quotations are apt and
novel. His fine taste and varied reading enable him to hold his own in
many fields where the merely professional politician is apt to be
terribly astray. His kindness to social and literary beginners is one of
his most engaging traits. He invariably finds something pleasant to say
about the most immature and unpromising efforts, and he has the knack of
so handling his own early experience as to make it an encouragement and
a stimulus, and not (as the manner of some is) a burden and a bogey. Mr.
Morley never obtrudes his own opinions, never introduces debatable
matter, never dogmatizes. But he is always ready to pick up the
gauntlet, especially if a Tory flings it down; is merciless towards
ill-formed assertion, and is the alert and unsparing enemy of what Mr.
Ruskin calls "the obscene empires of Mammon and Belial."
Lord Salisbury goes so little into general society that his qualities as
a talker are not familiarly known. He is painfully shy, and at a club or
in a large party undergoes the torments of the lost. Yet no one can
listen, even casually, to his conversation without appreciating the fine
manner, full both of dignity and of courtesy; the utter freedom from
pomposity, formality, and self-assertion, and the agreeable dash of
genuine cynicism, which modifies, though it does not mask, the flavour
of his fun. After a visit to Hatfield in 1868, Bishop Wilberforce wrote
in his diary: "Gladstone how struck with Salisbury: 'Never saw a more
perfect host.'" And again--"He remarked to me on the great power of
charming and pleasant hosting possessed by Salisbury." And it is the
universal testimony of Lord Salisbury's guests, whether at Hatfield or
in Arlington Street, that he is seen at his very best in his own house.
The combination of such genuine amiability in private life with such
calculated brutality in public utterance constitutes a psychological
problem which might profitably be made the subject of a Romanes Lecture.
Barring the shyness, from which Mr. Balfour is conspicuously free, there
is something of Lord Salisbury's social manner about his accomplished
nephew. He has the same courtesy, the same sense of humour, the same
freedom from official solemnity. But the characteristics of the elder
man are exaggerated in the younger. The cynicism which is natural in
Lord Salisbury is affected in Mr. Balfour. He cultivates the art of
indifference, and gives himself the airs of a jaded Epicurean who craves
only for a new sensation. There is what an Irish Member, in a moment of
inspiration, called a "toploftiness" about his social demeanour which is
not a little irritating. He is too anxious to show that he is not as
other men are. Among politicians he is a philosopher; among
philosophers, a politician. Before that hard-bitten crew whom Burke
ridiculed--the "calculators and economists"--he will talk airily of golf
and ladies' fashions; and ladies he will seek to impress by the Praise
of Vivisection or the Defence of Philosophic Doubt. His social
agreeableness has, indeed, been marred by the fatuous idolatry of a
fashionable clique, stimulating the self-consciousness which was his
natural foible; but when he can for a moment forget himself he still is
excellent company, for he is genuinely amiable and thoroughly well
informed.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] 1897.
[20] Cromartie, 4th Duke.
XVI.
CONVERSATION--_continued_.
The writer of these chapters has always felt some inward affinity to the
character of Lord St. Jerome in _Lothair_, of whom it is recorded that
he loved conversation, though he never conversed. "There must be an
audience," he would say, "and I am the audience." In my capacity of
audience I assign a high place to the agreeableness of Lord Rosebery's
conversation. To begin with, he has a delightful voice. It is low, but
perfectly distinct, rich and sympathetic in quality, and singularly
refined in accent. It is exactly the sort of voice which bespeaks the
goodwill of the hearer and recommends what it utters. In a former
chapter we agreed that the chief requisite of good conversation is to
have something to say which is worth saying, and here Lord Rosebery is
excellently equipped. Last week the newspapers announced with a flourish
of rhetorical trumpets that he had just celebrated his fiftieth
birthday.[21] Some of the trumpeters, with a laudable intention to be
civil, cried, "Is it possible that he can be so old?" Others, with
subtler art, professed themselves unable to believe that he was so
young. Each compliment contained its element of truth. In appearance,
air, and tastes Lord Rosebery is still young. In experience, knowledge,
and conduct he is already old. He has had a vivid and a varied
experience. He is equally at home on Epsom Downs and in the House of
Lords. His life has been full of action, incident, and interest. He has
not only collected books, but has read them; and has found time, even
amid the engrossing demands of the London County Council, the Turf, and
the Foreign Office, not only for study, but--what is much more
remarkable--for thought.
So far, then, as substance goes, his conversation is (to use Mr.
Gladstone's quaint phrase) "as full of infinitely varied matter as an
egg is full of meat;" and in its accidents and ornaments it complies
exactly with the conditions laid down in a former chapter--a manner
which knows how to be easy and free without being free-and-easy;
habitual deference to the tastes and prejudices of other people; a
courteous desire to be, or at least to seem, interested in their
concerns; and a recollection that even the most patient hearers (among
whom the present writer reckons himself) may sometimes wish to be
speakers. To these gifts he adds a keen sense of humour, a habit of
close observation, and a sub-acid vein of sarcasm which resembles the
dash of Tarragon in a successful salad. In a word, Lord Rosebery is one
of the most agreeable talkers of the day; and even if it is true that
_il s'écoute quand il parle_, his friends may reply that it would be
strange indeed if one could help listening to what is always so
agreeable and often so brilliant.
A genial journalist recently said that Mr. Goschen was now chiefly
remembered by the fact that he had once had Sir Alfred Milner for his
Private Secretary. But whatever may be thought of the First Lord of the
Admiralty as a politician and an administrator, I claim for him a high
place among agreeable talkers. There are some men who habitually use the
same style of speech in public and in private life. Happily for his
friends, this is not the case with Mr. Goschen. Nothing can be less
agreeable than his public style, whether on the platform or in the House
of Commons. Its tawdry staginess, its "Sadler's Wells sarcasm," its
constant striving after strong effects, are distressing to good taste.
But in private life he is another and a much more agreeable man. He is
courteous, genial, perfectly free from affectation, and enters into the
discussion of social banalities as eagerly and as brightly as if he had
never converted the Three per Cents, or established the ratio between
dead millionaires and new ironclads. His easiness in conversation is
perhaps a little marred by a Teutonic tendency to excessive analysis
which will not suffer him to rest until he has resolved every subject
and almost every phrase into its primary elements. But this philosophic
temperament has its counterbalancing advantages in a genuine openness of
mind, willingness to weigh and measure opposing views, and
inaccessibility to intellectual passion. It is true that on the platform
the exigencies of his position compel him to indulge in mock-heroics and
cut rhetorical capers for which Nature never designed him; but these are
for public consumption only, and when he is not playing to the gallery
he can discuss his political opponents and their sayings and doings as
dispassionately as a microscopist examines a black-beetle. Himself a
good talker, Mr. Goschen encourages good talk in other people; and in
old days, when the Art of Conversation was still seriously cultivated,
he used to gather round his table in Portland Place a group of intimate
friends who drank '34 port and conversed accordingly. Among these were
Lord Sherbrooke, whose aptness in quotation and dexterity in repartee
have never, in my experience, been surpassed; and Lord Chief Justice
Cockburn, whose "sunny face and voice of music, which lent melody to
scorn and sometimes reached the depth of pathos," were gracefully
commemorated by Lord Beaconsfield in his sketch of Hortensius. But this
belongs to ancient history, and my business is with the conversation of
to-day.