CONVERSATION
The first rule of speaking well is to think well. – Mme. de Lambert.
Attention is a tacit and continual compliment. – Mme. Swetchine.
Gravity is a stratagem invented to conceal the poverty of the mind. – La Rochefoucauld.
To discuss an opinion with a fool is like carrying a lantern before a blind man. – De Gaston.
To use many circumstances ere you come to matter is wearisome; and to use none at all is blunt. – Bacon.
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but only a calm, quiet interchange of sentiment. – Johnson.
If you your lips
Would keep from slips,
Five things observe with care:
Of whom you speak,
To whom you speak,
And how, and when, and where.
If you your ears
Would save from jeers,
These things keep meekly hid:
Myself and I,
And mine and my,
And how I do or did.
Though there are not many persons that seem to think so, still it is true that the value of no other accomplishment can be compared with that of a thorough knowledge of one’s mother tongue, be that tongue what it may. The most of us do more or less talking in the course of every one of our waking hours, and we impress those that hear us, favorably or unfavorably – as far as our culture is concerned – according to the manner in which we express ourselves. The tones of the voice, the construction of our sentences, the choice of our words, and the manner in which we pronounce and articulate them – all have their influence in impressing, either favorably or unfavorably, even the most unlettered. How desirable then it is that we should cultivate the graces of speech, which are first among the rudiments of the Art of Conversation!
“There is a part of our education,” says a clever English writer, “so important and so neglected in our schools and colleges, that it cannot be too highly impressed on the young man that proposes to enter society. I mean the part that we learn first of all things, yet often have not learned well when death eases us of the necessity – the art of speaking our own language. In every-day life the value of Greek and Latin, French and German is small, when compared with that of English. We are often encouraged to raise a laugh at Doctor Syntax and the tyranny of grammar, but we may be certain that many misunderstandings arise from a want of grammatical precision.
“There is no society without interchange of thought, and since the best society is that in which the best thoughts are interchanged in the best and most comprehensible manner, it follows that A PROPER MODE OF EXPRESSING OURSELVES IS INDISPENSABLE IN GOOD SOCIETY.”
“The commonest thought well put,” says another English writer, “is more useful, in a social point of view, than the most brilliant idea jumbled out. What is well expressed is easily seized, and therefore readily responded to; the most poetic fancy may be lost to the hearer if the language that conveys it is obscure. Speech is the gift that distinguishes man from the lower animals and makes society possible. He has but a poor appreciation of his privilege as a human being who neglects to cultivate ‘God’s great gift of speech.’”
“The manner in which things are said,” says a French philosopher, “is almost as important as the things themselves. For one man that judges you by your thought there are twenty that judge you by the manner in which your thought is presented. Not only should your words be well chosen, but your bearing should be self-possessed and the tones of your voice agreeable.”
M. L. H., in Lippincott’s Magazine for February, 1883, writes very instructively on the art of conversation as follows: “How seldom it is that one enjoys the pleasure of a real conversation, taking the word to mean something more than the casual chat of calling acquaintances, and something different from the confidential intercourse of familiar friends!
“There is no pastime more delightful in its way than the leisurely talk of a company of congenial persons met for the simple enjoyment of one another’s society, the agreeable interchange of ideas and sentiments, and it would seem that this pleasure should be an easily attainable one. As a matter of fact, however, the entertainment is not so cheap and easy to be had as might be supposed.
“It is a privilege restricted mostly to the dwellers in our larger cities, where, although social life may have a tendency to form itself into separate circles, yet each of these has a circumference great enough to include a sufficient number of persons disposed to draw together by natural affinities. In our smaller provincial cities and towns there is, generally speaking, nothing that can be called society, and conversation is not a lost art, but an art unknown. In such places as these the hostess who should offer her guests no other entertainment than the conversation of their equals would, I fear, be thought to provide for them but badly. If this be true, it certainly is a reflection upon those who compose this provincial society so called: it seems to argue a lack of brains, culture, and social tact, when the result of their gathering together is only a common boredom.
“Yet, on second thoughts, this inability to make conversation a mutually agreeable thing has its partial explanation in the circumstances of the case. Each unit of the small provincial whole lives in a narrow round of his own; his occupations and interests are necessarily much the same as those of his neighbor, and it is not possible for either of them to bring anything very novel or amusing by way of contribution to the social repast. The daily life of the resident of a large city is, by comparison, infinitely varied and full of incident; he dines to-day with B. and meets C. and D., but to-day is not the simple repetition of yesterday, for then it was A. that entertained him, and the guests were E. and F.
“Doubtless there is an ideal of conversation that is not commonly realized. It implies the gathering together of a certain – not too large – number of men and women, each of whom is both able and willing to play his individual part. It does not need the possession of brilliant gifts in every member, nor even in any one member of the company; it needs only a fair amount of intelligence and culture, and of that ready perception of the drift and meaning of the words of others, which may be called a sort of intellectual tact. ‘The whole force of conversation,’ it has been said, ‘depends upon how much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play the game out.’
“More than anything else, conversation implies individual self-abnegation, the putting out of sight of large egotisms and small vanities, and contentment with one’s due share of attention only. There need not be agreement of opinion, but there must be mutual tolerance.
“It also implies individual responsibility and the obligation of every one to give of his best. Intellectual sloth has no place at the feast of reason.
“One need not shine in the talk, but one must at least be able to listen intelligently.
“How much of the charm of words lies in the manner in which they are spoken! Our thoughts and sentiments have not one mode of expression, but a hundred; the tone of the voice interprets the meaning of the word, the glance and the smile soften or intensify it.
“Conversation is seldom so agreeable as around a dinner-table of the right size, where the talk is general and lively without confusion. At a large gathering, where the company inevitably breaks up into groups, conversation may flourish more or less brightly, but never quite so well as where the guests are few and congenial and form but a single circle.
“I often wonder why it is that there is such difficulty in getting people to unite in making the talk general. Some perverse instinct seems to drive them to split apart; the force of repulsion is stronger than that of attraction; six or eight persons are engaged in four duets, and, if the talk begins to flag between numbers one and two, nothing better occurs to them than to exchange partners with three and four and raise a distracting cross-fire. If I want to see a friend alone, it is usually easy to accomplish it; but if I try to hold a pleasant conversation with three or four other friends at the same time, they too often appear to conspire together to defeat my wish.”
If one would have an agreeable manner in conversation, there are certain things that must be attended to:
1. One must cultivate repose. The man that fidgets, tugs at his beard, runs his fingers through his hair, rubs his hands, cracks his finger-joints, grates his teeth, or indulges in much gesticulation, while very likely he sits cross-legged and swings one foot, is never an agreeable person to talk with. This restlessness is always an evidence of weakness. That kind of strength that brings with it a feeling that one is equal to the situation is always accompanied with that quiet self-possession that we call repose.
2. One must avoid interrupting. Always let your interlocutor finish what he has to say. Note the points that you would reply to, and wait patiently till it is your turn to speak. The world is full of ill-bred persons that have the habit of breaking in on the speaker as soon as he says anything they would reply to, or that suggests a thought. Wait, I repeat, and wait patiently and respectfully, as the American Indian always does, till your interlocutor has finished. Men that continually interrupt are always men whose early training was very faulty. With such men conversation is impossible.
3. One must learn to listen. It is not sufficient to keep silent. You should be attentive, seem to be interested and not wear the expression of a martyr. There are those whose mien when they listen seems to say: “Will he ever get through and let me give breath to the words of wisdom!” or, “Poor me, how long will this torture last!” or, “When you get through, I’ll show you in a word or two what nonsense you talk!” Such listeners are generally persons that think their utterances much more heavily freighted with wisdom than other people think them.
4. One must learn not to speak too long at a time. The social monologist is one of the most disagreeable characters one ever meets with. There are two species of them. To the one belong those egotistic, patronizing creatures that seem to take pity on you and do all the talking in order to put you at ease in their august presence. To the other belong those men that talk much and say little; that go over a deal of surface and never get below it; that go round and round, and up and down in search of some way to get at the pith of the matter, until they finally give up the chase in despair. Of the two species, the first is the least tiresome – and the least numerous – as there is always something ludicrous, and consequently amusing, in their coxcombry.
5. One must learn – if one can – to stick to the subject under consideration. Pausing to remark upon the irrelevant that may be suggested in the course of a conversation is a characteristic of the female mind. Many men, however, are as great sinners in this direction as are women generally. This is a fault peculiar to persons of hazy mental vision, and is very trying to those of clearer perceptions.
6. One must learn not to laugh at one’s own wit, nor to chuckle at one’s own remarks. There are men that cannot take part in a conversation without falling into a broad grin, which frequently develops into a chuckle that renders their articulation indistinct. This is a habit that is among the easiest to correct.
7. One must learn to control one’s temper. There are those that habitually – and involuntarily, perhaps – take refuge in indignation the moment they are opposed, and especially if they are opposed with reasons that are too weighty for their logic. Then there are others that have so exalted an opinion of their own opinions that they think it presumption on the part of another to question their correctness and resent any opposition as an indignity. It is not the wise that are least respectful to those that venture to differ from them.
8. One must be careful to avoid a certain labial gesticulation, and a certain “Jakey” toss of the head that some unbred people indulge in, when they talk. Of all the vulgar habits that vulgar people indulge in in conversation, this is one of the most vulgar.
9. Never, anywhere or under any circumstances, talk with a toothpick, a cigar, or a cigarette in your mouth. Anything more disrespectful or more thoroughly low we rarely have to complain of. And yet we sometimes see men standing in the street talking to women – not ladies, for a lady does not allow herself to be treated with such disrespect – with cigars in their mouths.
The author of “Mixing in Good Society” says: “We must not bring our gloomy moods or irritable temper with us into society. To look pleasant is a duty we owe to others. One is bound to listen with the appearance of interest even to the most inveterate proser who fastens upon us in society; to smile at a twice-told tale; and, in short, to make such minor sacrifices of sincerity as good manners and good feeling demand.
“In conversation the face should wear something that is akin to a smile; a smile, as it were, below the surface.
“We should always look at the person who addresses us, and listen deferentially to whatever he says. When we make answer, we should endeavor to express our best thoughts in our best manner. A loose manner of expression injures ourselves more than our interlocutor; since, if we talk carelessly to those whom we will not take the trouble to please, we shall feel at a loss for apt words and correct elocution when we need them.
“Always think before you speak; as thus only can you acquire the habit of speaking to the purpose.”
Good talkers are generally deliberate talkers.
“Polite vulgarisms must be scrupulously guarded against. A well-educated person proclaims himself by the simplicity and terseness of his language. It is only the half-educated who indulge in fine language, and think that long words and high-sounding phrases are distingué.
“Everything approaching to extravagance in conversation is objectionable. We should endeavor to ascertain the precise meaning of the words we employ, and employ them at the right time only. Such phrases as ‘awfully hot,’ ‘immensely jolly,’ ‘abominably dull,’ ‘disgustingly mean,’ etc. etc., are used in the most reckless manner. This hyperbolical way of speaking is mere flippancy, without wit or novelty to recommend it.”
The late Dr. George Ripley was wont to say that the secret of being agreeable in conversation was to be hospitable to the ideas of others. He affirmed that some people only half listened to you, because they were considering, even while you spoke, with what fine words, what wealth of wit, they should reply, and they began to speak almost before your sentence had died from your lips. Those people, he said, might be brilliant, witty, dazzling, but never could they be agreeable. You do not love to talk to them. You feel that they are impatient for their turn to come, and that they have no hospitality toward your thoughts – none of that gentle friendliness that asks your idea in and makes much of it.
“Dean Swift,” says an English writer, “with his keen eye for the foibles of his fellows, has put on record some faults in conversation that every one that wishes to be an agreeable talker should make it his business to avoid.
“He justly condemns the habit of talking too much. No man in a company has a right to predominate in length and frequency of speech, any more than a player in an orchestra has a right to convert the performance into a solo. Even if a man can talk as well as a Macaulay, he has no right to prevent others from talking. They have come not to hear a lecture, but to converse; to talk as well as to listen; to contribute as well as to receive. Even the listeners and admirers that gathered around Macaulay sometimes longed for a ‘flash of silence.’ Oh, the misery of it, when some inordinate gossip gets you by the buttonhole and drums away at your aching tympanum with an incessant crash of prattle!
“Still more wearisome is the talk of those who will talk only of themselves; whose everlasting ‘I’ recurs in their speech as certainly as the head of Charles the First turned up in the speech of Mr. Dick. They deluge their hearers with the milk-and-water history of their sayings and doings from childhood upward; and relate the annals of their diseases with all the symptoms and attendant circumstances. To a talker of this sort to have the measles is a delight – the small-pox a boon. A gentleman will never admit that his constitution is anything but sound – in conversation. Of all bores the greatest is he that carries his pills, powders, and plasters into the society of his friends; that bids the world listen when he sneezes, and thinks his rheumatism a matter of national concern.
“Others, as the Dean remarks, are more dexterous, and with great art will lie on the watch to hook in their own praise: ‘They will call a witness to remember they always foretold what would happen in such a case, but none would believe them; they advised such a man from the beginning, and told him the consequences just as they happened, but he would have his own way. Others make a vanity of telling their own faults; they are the strangest men in the world; they cannot dissemble; they own it is a folly; they have lost abundance of advantages by it; but if you should give them the world they could not help it; there is something in their nature that abhors insincerity and constraint – with many other insufferable topics of the same altitude.’
“The most successful talker is the man that has most to say that is sensible and entertaining on the greatest number of subjects. A specialist can never make a good conversationist; his mind runs always in one groove.
“Swift comments upon two faults in conversation that appear very different, yet spring from the same root and are equally blamable; the first, an impatience to interrupt others; the second, a great uneasiness when we are ourselves interrupted. The chief objects of all conversation, whether conversation proper or small talk, are to entertain and improve our companions, and in our own persons to be improved and entertained. If we steadily aim at these objects, we shall certainly escape the two faults indicated by the dean. If any man speak in company, we may suppose he does it for his hearers’ sake, and not for his own; so that common discretion will teach him not to force their attention if they are unwilling to lend it, nor, on the other hand, to interrupt him who is in possession, because that is the grossest manner to indicate his conviction of his own superiority.
“There are some people,” says Swift, “whose good manners will not suffer them to interrupt you; but, what is almost as bad, they will discover abundance of impatience, and be upon the watch until you have done, because they have started something in their own thoughts that 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 fully as good and that might be much more naturally introduced.
“I think that wit must be introduced into conversation with great reserve. Such a caution seems, however, little called for, considering the limited number of persons to whom it applies; but there is a cheap form of wit that most ill-natured persons can plagiarize, and in a mixed company its effects are not seldom disagreeable; that is, the repartee, or smart answer, which assuredly does not turn away wrath; the epigrammatic impertinence that young speakers suppose to be wit. ‘It now passes for raillery,’ says Swift, ‘to run a man down in discourse, to put him out of countenance and make him ridiculous; sometimes to expose the defects of his person or understanding; on all which occasions he is obliged not to be angry, to avoid the imputation of not being able to take a jest. It is admirable to observe one who is dexterous at this art singling out a weak adversary, getting the laugh on his side, and then carrying all before him. The French, whence we borrow the word ‘raillery,’ have a quite different idea of the thing, and so had we in the politer ages of our fathers. Raillery was to say something that at first appeared a reproach or reflection, but by some turn of wit, unexpected and surprising, ended always in a compliment, and to the advantage of the person it was addressed to. And, surely, one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing that any of the company can reasonably wish we had left unsaid; nor can there well be anything more contrary to the ends for which people meet together than to part dissatisfied with one another or with themselves.
“This fatal kind of smartness, which all may master who have no regard for the feelings of others, is very much more common now, I imagine, than in Swift’s time, when people could hardly be persuaded that wit and rudeness were synonymous. It has found its way into the House of Commons, where it is assiduously practised by men that have little hope by more worthy means of achieving a reputation; and on the stage, where, in ‘drawing-rooms richly upholstered,’ the characters pass their time in saying impertinent things to one another. That such flippancy should pass muster as wit cannot, however, be wondered at in a generation that mistakes sensuousness for poetry, æstheticism for art, and charlatanism for statesmanship!
“I have already made a distinction between conversation and small talk; but after all, the cautions that apply to the one have a distinct reference to the other. I presume that a good conversationist is also a good small-talker; though, of course, the reverse does not follow; a man may shine in small talk, and prove very dull in conversation. It is not my object or desire to depreciate small talk, which, in the present condition of society, is a substitute for conversation, and in any condition would be a necessary complement of it. We cannot always be passing our five-pound notes; we must sometimes descend to inferior currency, and not only sovereigns, but crowns and two-shilling pieces have their value. Besides, we cannot afford to carry on an exchange by which we always lose. We cannot give our five-pound notes when others stake but shillings and sixpences. Barter is fair and profitable only when we get as much as we give. Our pockets may be full of sovereigns, and yet we shall hesitate to give one for a penny roll; but to a man that has nothing but counters in his pocket, it does not matter whether the roll cost a penny or a shilling. The moral of this is, that we must put pence into our purse as well as pounds. For want of such a precaution, the meditative scholar is often, in society, at a loss to find topics of conversation; he has nothing small enough to give, and his companions have nothing with which to conduct an exchange. It is wisdom, therefore, to pay close attention to this matter of small talk, and endeavor to arrive at a certain command of and proficiency in it. Men of the highest gifts cannot dispense with it if they wish to be at no disadvantage in their ordinary intercourse with mankind.
“There are many spheres in which, I grant, the small-talker would be out of place. He would make a sorry figure in an assembly of scholars and thinkers, engaged in the discussion of subjects as momentous and as profound as those with which Goethe overwhelmed the hapless Excelmann. His true arena is the dinner-table. It is there he can make the best use of the old, familiar weapons. He does not shun the traditional allusions to the weather or the crops; and, indeed, it is clear that he must begin on some topic that he and his companions have in common. That once found, others will naturally spring out of it; but in passing to and from them, much dexterity is required. If the small-talker shows any doubt of his own powers, or puts himself forward too obtrusively, he will come to grief, as we all instinctively rebel against an attempt to drag us into conversation. The string that leads us must be invisible. The exchange of small talk is like a game of battledoor in which an accomplished player will sometimes designedly drop his shuttlecock, partly to flatter and propitiate his partner, and partly for the sake of a prospective advantage. When once he has full command of the game, he will quietly take the lead, and guide it surely but gently into the direction best adapted for the display of his powers. The attractiveness of skilfully managed talk of this kind is felt by everybody; and we remember with pleasure the evening when, unwittingly, we were taken captive by some man or woman whose intellectual superiority, perhaps, we should not be willing to admit, but who, we readily own, enabled us to pass some very pleasant hours.
“But this small talk that so agreeably flavors conversation is different indeed from that very small talk in which society nowadays indulges so unblushingly, go where you will – not necessarily, as Mr. Hale remarks, into the society of the suburban ‘Row’ or ‘Terrace’ of semi-detached villas, nor into that of the small provincial town, or the colonial garrison; but into that found in the homes and among the families of English gentlemen. Mr. Hale does not, I think, exaggerate when he says it is painful to listen to the general conversation; the name of a common friend is mentioned, and something that he or she has said or done is commented upon with a freedom that, to be in any way justifiable, presupposes a thorough knowledge of all sides of the case; and the minor worries of life, servants, babies, and the like, furnish the theme for a multifarious and protracted discussion. If there is talk that should disgust all refined tastes and ordinarily intelligent minds, it is the farrago of trivialities that makes the daily staple of conversation in some of our English homes. As a proof that I do not exaggerate, let any one refrain for four-and-twenty hours from dealing with such ‘small beer,’ and observe how great a difficulty he will experience in discovering subjects for conversation. This shows how injurious the habit is. We feed so long on infant’s food that we can digest nothing more substantial. Our small talk resembles a hand-organ, which is set to a certain number of airs, and grinds through these with monotonous regularity.
“I have dwelt at some length on this subject, because it seems to me of great importance. The whole tone of society would be raised if we could raise its conversational standard; if we could lift it from very small talk to small talk and thence to conversation. Women especially may help toward a satisfactory result, for at present women are the great manufacturers of very small talk. Let them rise to the measure of their duties; men will soon follow their example, and we shall live to see the end of the very small-talk era.
“In certain ‘Hints upon Etiquette,’ by Αγωγος, published nearly half a century ago, but characterized by a good sense that must always render them valuable, I find a wise caution in reference to ‘talking shop,’ which I may add to my own emphatic warning against this particularly disagreeable custom. ‘There are few things,’ he says, ‘that display worse taste than the introduction of professional topics in general conversation, especially if there be ladies present; the minds of those men must be miserably ill-stored who cannot find other subjects for conversation than their own professions. Who has not felt this on having been compelled to listen to “clerical slang,” musty college jokes, and anecdotes divested of all interest beyond the atmosphere of a university; or “law-jokes,” with “good stories” of “learned counsel;” “long yarns,” or the equally tiresome muster-roll of “our regiment” – colonels dead, maimed majors retired on pensions, subs lost or “exchanged,” gravitating between Boulogne and the “Bankruptcy Court”?
“‘All such exclusive topics are signs either of a limited intellect or the most lamentable ignorance.’ They are signs, too, of exceedingly bad breeding; for the introduction of a topic on which no one can discourse but the speaker necessarily chokes out the life of a conversation, and for the lively talk of the many substitutes a dreary monologue. They imply an almost supernatural egotism, as if the speaker believed that all the world must perforce be interested in whatever concerns him. Needless to say that these remarks do not apply to the case of an acknowledged ‘expert’ whose opinion has been invited on the questions that of right fall within his special province. Now, as a rule, society cares nothing for the individual; and there can be no greater error than for a man to put forward in conversation his individual tastes, opinions, views, unless he has attained to a position that entitles him to speak as one having authority. And even then what he says should be general in tone and application, with as little allusion as possible to himself. Nor should he suffer his remarks to assume the form and proportions of an oration, lest his hearers, in spite of themselves, betray their weariness. A St. Paul may preach, and yet Eutychus fall asleep! In spite of his reputation as the Aristarchus of his day, Samuel Johnson could irritate his hearers into administering a rebuke to his verbosity.
“The colloquial inferiority of the present generation is attributed by Mr. Hannay purely to the action of the press. Newspapers, novels, magazines, reviews, he says, gather up the intellectual elements of our life like so many electric machines, drawing electricity from the atmosphere into themselves. Everything, he adds, is recorded and discussed in print, and subjects have lost their freshness long before friends have assembled for the evening. And he concludes: ‘Where there is talk of a superior character, it appears to affect the epigrammatic form; and this is an unhealthy sign. If there were no other objection, how rarely can it avoid that appearance of self-consciousness and effort that is fatal to all elegance and ease.’