§ 32. We have now exhausted all the conditions which lie in the speaker,
which must be brought by him into a society as the subjective conditions
of good conversation. Let us turn to the company, regarded as the object
with which he is to deal, and see what an analysis of its varieties may
teach us in the way of practical direction.
The very first and most obvious division is that of quantity. You may be
required to converse either with one person, with a few, or with many.
And though no agreeable person may take the trouble to think about it,
he nevertheless makes considerable modifications in his talk according
to these circumstances. Thus a colloquy with a single person, which is
the easiest form, for it is usually with some one who is not a stranger,
and it allows far more personality, should consist in a direct
interchange of serious opinion, in which each seeks to make the other
speak out in confidence his inmost character. You should turn the
conversation upon the other person’s life, inquire into his or her
history, so far as that can be done with good taste and without
impertinence, and so induce him (or her) to give personal recollections
or confessions, which are to the teller of them generally of the deepest
interest. But you will not elicit these without some frankness on your
own part, sometimes without volunteering some slight confession which
may induce the other to open the flood-gates of his inner life. When
this is once attained there must ensue good conversation; for to have a
volume of human character laid open before you, and to turn over its
pages at leisure, is one of the highest and most intense recreations
known to an intelligent mind. Such confessions will hardly ever be made
to more than one person at a time, and a sympathetic freedom in
encouraging the timid by giving parallel experiences in your own life
will often make a silent and reserved person agreeable who could never
be induced to speak out in a larger company.
As our manners and customs determine these things, it is not usual to
have a long _tête-à-tête_ with another person of the same sex without
choosing your companion and seeking out the opportunity; but, on the
contrary, two people of different sexes are often brought together and
ordered (so to speak) to converse, for no other reason than the command
of society. Thus a young man is introduced to a partner at a ball, or a
man of soberer age is directed to take a lady down to dinner. Here,
though the company is large, the conversation is really of the kind
before us—a dialogue between two persons only, of different sexes, and
often comparative strangers. There is no case more frequent where
conversation is imperative, and where failures are common and
conspicuous. It is bad enough to begin with truisms about the weather—an
excusable exordium; it is far worse and more disgraceful to end with
them, and positively many people get no further. And yet this failure is
not from mere emptiness of mind. These very same people, young and old,
could be brought into circumstances where almost any of them would be
interesting—not a few of them eloquent.
I have spent an evening shut up with a very unpromising commercial
traveller in a remote country inn, and yet by trying honestly to find
out what he knew and liked, succeeded in drawing from him a most
interesting account of his experiences, first in tea-tasting, then in
tea-selling to the Irish peasants in the remote glens of Donegal. What
he told me was quite worthy to make an article in a good magazine. Yet a
more unpromising subject for a long dialogue could hardly be found. He
and I had apparently not a single interest in common. But when the right
vein was touched one had to supply nothing but assent, or an occasional
question; the man flowed on with an almost natural eloquence. People
said that others had found him morose and unapproachable. It was
certainly their fault. This case is cited as an instance that almost
anybody can be made to talk, unless he has determined positively that he
will not do so, and is moreover a very obstinate person.
§ 33. In the cases with which we started no such obstinacy exists; the
people are really ready to talk, but don’t know how. The beginning is
evidently the difficulty, and surely here, if anywhere, people who have
no natural facility should think out some way of opening the
conversation, just as chessplayers have agreed on several formal
openings in their game. Nothing is easier than to do this, and to do it
in such a general manner as will not be ridiculous. It must always be
remembered that the most domestic men and women are often the most
difficult to rouse into conversation. Their very virtues in home life
have dulled their interests in outer things, and the best of mothers
have sometimes forgotten to talk about anything except the education of
their children. But it is always better worth probing a sound nature
than hearing the ready chatter of idleness. For this reason, some
serious topic ought to be the best, even for talking with a stranger,
since our conversation errs more frequently through frivolity than
through gravity.
But it is not the object of this book to give any special directions.
They are only useful when framed by each man and woman for their own
private use, and any stock proceeding becomes a mere commonplace, and as
such contemptible. Yet no intelligent person who thinks over it can fail
to make out some general lines to be followed on such occasions, and so
thousands of men and women will save themselves from the punishment of a
dull and tedious evening beside a person whom they might easily find
lively and agreeable.
As there are some people who require to be encouraged by finding out
their daily interests, and inquiring into them, so there are others who
are only to be excited by the stimulus of opposition, by suggesting some
opinion adverse to what they believe or advocate, and so tempting them
to a friendly controversy. If you enter such a controversy with
perfectly good temper, with a desire to be convinced by good arguments,
and no further interest than to bring out the latent fire in the other
person, it may produce a very good conversation. But the moment you find
the points of difference too strongly accentuated, the moment you
perceive the dissatisfaction which is so common in people who are losing
ground, or who feel they are making no impression, you should turn the
stream into another channel, in which you anticipate at least partial
agreement.
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