§ 38. Conversation with a crowd, or even with a large number of people,
is almost a contradiction in terms. How can there be interchange of
thought or repartee where so many clashing fancies make confusion rather
than harmony? In ordinary society, therefore, it is the obvious solution
to break up a large company into couples or small groups, and so reduce
this case to one of the preceding. Two exceptional forms may be noted,
which come, perhaps, upon the verge of conversation proper: the one
where a good story-teller, or person who has had some wonderful
experience, is ready to talk for the benefit of the whole company, and
receive occasional support from questions put to him by various people.
But even in this case the number must be limited, and usually such a
talker will seem to his audience egotistical, for people who want to
have their little private say, and tell their little modest story, feel
ousted by the monopoly of the leading spirit.
Perhaps the pleasantest form into which to lead such a conversation, is
a sort of public dialogue, in which one or two querists will draw from
the real object of attention his views, or question his statements in
such a way as to provoke the exercise of his powers. This is the kind of
conversation to be found in Plato’s _Dialogues_, which are quite fitted
for a large company, though but few speakers share in them. But I will
not be bound to admire these immortal compositions as specimens of
conversation. To the modern reader, they cease to be such as soon as
they become serious, and I may even venture to say that in any modern
society they would justly be voted tedious.
§ 39. The second case worth noticing here is when a leading person, king
or viceroy, or princess, or political magnate, entertains a crowd of
people mostly inferior in station, and has to perform the duty of going
through the rooms and talking in succession to all sorts and conditions
of men. If on the one hand the people addressed are sure to be flattered
by such attention, and therefore responsive and anxious to be pleased,
on the other there is no social duty which gives more scope for all the
mental and moral perfections already enumerated, and therefore there is
no more certain test of conversational ability. For here the talk is not
really with many at a time, nor again is it the conversation with one
person, in which the main element is the sustaining of interest for a
considerable time; it is a series of brief successive dialogues, in
which the two great difficulties of conversation, the starting of it and
the breaking off, are perpetually recurring. The speaker is even
debarred from the use of any fixed formula or method of overcoming these
difficulties, for the people addressed will be sure to compare notes,
and will reject as insincere any politenesses which are administered
according to a formula, however graceful it may appear.
Here then, if anywhere, the art must consist in concealing the art. But
let none imagine that art has no place here. A sympathetic nature, which
readily apprehends the interests of other minds, is not more useful to
the great man or woman than a careful previous study of the company, who
they are, what they have done, what the distinction or the hobby of each
of them may be. Nothing is easier than to acquire such information from
the staff whose duty is to furnish it. A great natural aptitude or a
specially trained memory is required to remember the various scraps of
information about each, and to fit them to the proper names. It is said
that royal personages often inherit an exceptional power of remembering
names and persons from the exercise of this faculty by a long line of
successive ancestors. But the suggestion of an equerry or a
lord-in-waiting is in such cases the usual and more obvious cause of
this apparent genius, which the flattery of courtiers exaggerates with
shameless effrontery.
However this may be, the knowledge, inspired or acquired, of the name
and circumstances of an inferior is the great key to smoothing over the
difficulty of beginning a conversation, for any personal question will
be taken as a compliment, and evidence of a friendly interest on the
part of the prince. The breaking off with ease and grace is more
difficult, for I do not count the formal bow of dismissal or the
prearranged interruption by a new presentation as more than awkward
subterfuges. Some form of expressing regret that the moment does not
admit of fuller discussion of the subject already commenced, and a hope
to resume it, is of course an obvious and polite way of closing the
interview, or a question as to some one else who must receive attention,
or a complaint that duty must oust pleasure—there are myriad
possibilities, as may be seen from the conversation of the few great
ladies in England who have the gift or have attained the art. I mention
ladies because the traditional bluntness and simplicity inherited,
respected, assumed, affected by most Englishmen makes them very averse
to this social grace. It is no accident that those of our great houses
who have adopted public life after a considerable experience of French
manners, and with a ready knowledge of the French language, are the most
brilliant exceptions. Perhaps, too, Irish vivacity has in most of these
cases added life and brightness to their talk. But, as a rule, it is to
women that we look for this talent, and to older French society for the
best examples of it. One often hears it said that since Lady
Waldegrave’s death no one in London knows how to have a _salon_. This,
whether true or false, is the popular recognition of that social
excellence in conversing with many, to which I have devoted the last few
pages.
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