The other day I went to dine at a house known for the brilliancy of the conversation. I confess that I found the experience a little trying. In conversation I am naturally rather a pedestrian person. The talk I like is the talk which Washington Irving had in mind when he said that “that is the best company in which the jokes are rather small and the laughter abundant.” I do not want to be expected to be brilliant or to be dazzled by verbal pyrotechnics. I like to talk in my slippers as it were, with my legs at full stretch, my mind at ease, and with all the evening before me. Above all, I like the company of people who talk for enjoyment and not for admiration. “I am none of those who sing for meat, but for company,” says Izaak Walton, and therein is the secret of good talk as well as of cheerful song.
But at this dinner table the conversation flashed around me like forked lightning. It was so staccato and elusive that it seemed like talking in shorthand. It was a very fencing match of wit and epigram, a sort of game of touch-and-go, or tip-and-run, or catch
as-catch-can, or battledore and shuttlecock, or demon patience, or anything you like that is intellectually and physically breathless and baffling. I thought of a bright thing to say now and then, but I was always so slow in getting away from the mark that I never got it out. It had grown stale and out of date before I could invest it with the artistic merit that would enable it to appear in such brilliant company. And so, mentally out of breath, I just sat and felt old fashioned and slow, and tried to catch the drift of the sparkling dialogue. But I looked as wise as possible, just to give the impression that nothing was escaping
me, and that the things I did not say were quite worth saying. That was Henry Irving’s way when the conversation got beyond him. He just looked wise and said nothing.
There are few things more enviable than the quality of good talk, but this was not good talk. It was clever talk, which is quite a different thing. There was no “stuff” in it. It was like trying to make a meal off the east wind, which it resembled in its hard brilliancy and lack of geniality. It reminded me of the tiresome witticisms of Mr. Justice Darling, who always gives the impression of having just come into court from the study of some jest book or a volume of appropriate quotations. The foundation of good talk is good sense, good nature, and the gift of fellowship. Given these things you may serve them up with the sauce of wit, but wit alone never made good conversation. It is like mint-sauce without the lamb.
Fluent talkers are not necessarily good conversationalists. Macaulay talked as though he were addressing a public meeting, and Coleridge as though he were engaged in an argument with space and eternity. “If any of you have got anything to say,” said Samuel Rogers to his guests at breakfast one morning, “you had better say it now you have got a chance. Macaulay is coming.” And you remember that whimsical story of Lamb cutting off the coat button that Coleridge held him by in the garden at Highgate, going for his day’s work into the City, returning in the
evening, hearing Coleridge’s voice, looking over the hedge and seeing the poet with the button between forefinger and thumb still talking into space. His life was an unending monologue. “I think, Charles, that you never heard me preach,” said Coleridge once, speaking of his pulpit days. “My dear boy,” answered Lamb, “I never heard you do anything else.”
Johnson’s talk had the quality of conversation, because, being a clubbable man, he enjoyed the give-and-take and the cut-and-thrust of the encounter. He liked to “lay his mind to yours” as he said of Thurlow, and though he was more than a little “huffy” on occasion he had that wealth of humanity which is the soul of hearty conversation. He quarrelled heartily and forgave heartily—as in that heated scene at Sir Joshua’s when a young stranger had been too talkative and knowing and had come under his sledge hammer. Then, proceeds Boswell, “after a short pause, during which we were somewhat uneasy;—Johnson: Give me your hand, Sir. You were too tedious and I was too short.— Mr. : Sir, I am honoured by your attention in any way.—Johnson: Come, Sir, let’s have no more of it. We offended one another by our contention; let us not offend the company by our compliments.”
He always had the company in mind. He no more thought of talking alone than a boxer would think of boxing alone, or the tennis player would think of rushing up to the net for a rally alone. He wanted something to hit and something to parry, and the harder he hit and the quicker he parried the more he loved the other fellow. That is the way with all the good talkers of our own time. Perhaps Mr. Belloc is too cyclonic and scornful for perfect conversation, but his energy and wit are irresistible.
I find Mr. Bernard Shaw far more tolerant and much less aggressive in conversation than on paper or on the platform. But the princes of the art, in my experience, are Mr. Birrell, Lord Morley, and Mr. Richard Whiteing, the first for the rich wine of his humour, the second for the sensitiveness and delicacy of his
thought, the third for the deep love of his kind that warms the generous current of his talk. I would add Mr. John Burns, but he is really a soloist. He is too interesting to himself to be sufficiently interested in others. When he is well under way you simply sit round and listen. It is capital amusement, but it
is not conversation.
And I like in my company of talkers the good listener, the man who contributes an eloquent silence which envelops conversation in an atmosphere of vigilant but friendly
criticism. Addison had this quality of eloquent silence. Goldsmith, on the other hand, would have liked to shine, but had not the gift of talk. Among the eloquent listeners of our day I place that fine writer and critic, Mr. Robert Lynd, whose quiet has a certain benignant graciousness, a tolerant yet vigilant
watchfulness, that adds its flavour to the more eager
talk of others.
It was a favourite fancy of Samuel Rogers that “perhaps in the next world the use of words may be dispensed with—that our thoughts may stream into each other’s minds without any verbal communication.” It is an idea which has its attractions. It would save time and effort, and would preserve us from the misunderstandings which the clumsy instrument of speech
involves. I think as I sit here in the orchard by the
beehive and watch the bees carrying out their myriad
functions with such disciplined certainty that there must be the possibility of mutual understanding without speech—an understanding such as that which Coleridge believed humanity would have discovered and exploited if it had been created mute.
And yet I do not share Rogers’s hope. I fancy the next world will be like this, only better. I think it will resound with the familiar speech of our earthly pilgrimage, and that in any shady walk or among any of the fields of asphodel over which we wander we may light upon the great talkers of history, and share in their eternal disputation. There, under some spreading oak or beech, I shall hope to see Carlyle and Tennyson, or Lamb and Hazlitt and Coleridge, or Johnson laying down the law to Langton and Burke and Beauclerk, with Bozzy taking notes, or Ben Jonson and Shakespeare continuing those combats of the Mermaid Tavern described by Fuller—the one mighty and lumbering like a Spanish galleon, the other swift and supple of movement like an English frigate—or Chaucer and his Canterbury pilgrims still telling tales on an eternal May morning. It is a comfortable
thought, but I cannot conceive it without the old, cheerful din of contending tongues. I fancy edging myself into those enchanted circles, and having a modest share in the glorious pow-wows of the masters. I hope they won’t vote me a bore and scatter at my approach.
About the Author
A.G. Gardiner (1865-1946) was a prolific British writer, journalist, and social critic whose works had a lasting impact on the literary and intellectual landscapes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Gardiner’s unique writing style and philosophical ideas inspired him to choose the pen name “Alpha of the Plough.”
His intelligent and thought-provoking pieces, which included a distinct combination of wit, wisdom, and social critique, gained him a loyal following and a place of distinction in the field of English literature.
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