Compromises

To C. F.

The Luxury of Conversation	[1]
The Gayety of Life	[20]
The Point of View	[34]
Marriage in Fiction	[49]
Our Belief in Books	[66]
The Beggar’s Pouch	[88]
The Pilgrim’s Staff	[105]
A Quaker Diary	[125]
French Love-Songs	[153]
The Spinster	[170]
The Tourist	[185]
The Headsman	[199]
Consecrated to Crime	[219]
Allegra	[240]

THE LUXURY OF CONVERSATION

Of indoor entertainments, the truest and most human is conversation.—Mark Pattison.

In an age when everybody is writing Reminiscences, and when nothing is left untold, we hear a great deal about the wit and brilliancy of former days and former conversations. Elderly gentlemen, conscious of an ever increasing dulness in life, would fain have us believe that its more vivacious characteristics vanished with their youth, and can never be tempted to return. Mournful prophecies anent the gradual decay of social gifts assail us on every side. Mr. Justin McCarthy, recalling with a sigh the group of semi-distinguished men who were wont to grace George Eliot’s Sunday afternoons, can “only hope that the art of talking is not destined to die out with the art of letter-writing.” Mr. George W. E. Russell entertains similar misgivings. He found his ideal talker in Mr. Matthew Arnold, “a man of the world without being frivolous, and a man of letters without being pedantic;” and he considers this admirable combination as necessary as it is rare. American chroniclers point back to a little gleaming band of Northern lights, and assure us sadly that if we never heard these men in their prime, we must live and die uncheered by wit or wisdom. We are born in a barren day.

But conversation, the luxury of conversation, as De Quincey happily phrases it, does not depend upon one or two able talkers. It is not, and never has been, a question of stars, but of a good stock company. Neither can it decay like the art—or the habit—of letter-writing. The conditions are totally different. Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure. Conversation in its happiest development is a link, equally exquisite and adequate, between mind and mind, a system by which men approach one another with sympathy and enjoyment, a field for the finest amenities of civilization, for the keenest and most intelligent display of social activity. It is also our solace, our inspiration, and our most rational pleasure. It is a duty we owe to one another; it is our common debt to humanity. “God has given us tongues,” writes Heine, “wherewith we may say pleasant things to our neighbours.” To refuse a service so light, so sweet, so fruitful, is to be unworthy of the inheritance of the ages.

It is claimed again, by critics disposed to be pessimistic, that our modern development of “specialism” is prejudicial to good conversation. A man devoted to one subject can seldom talk well upon any other. Unless his companions share his tastes and his knowledge, he must—a sad alternative—either lecture or be still. There are people endowed with such a laudable thirst for information that they relish lectures,—professional and gratuitous. They enjoy themselves most when they are being instructed. They are eager to form an audience. Such were the men and women who experienced constant disappointment because Mr. Browning, a specialist of high standing, declined to discuss his specialty. No side-lights upon “Sordello” could be extracted from him. We realize how far the spirit of the lecture had intruded upon the spirit of conversation forty years ago, when Mr. Bagehot admitted that, with good modern talkers, “the effect seems to be produced by that which is stated, and not by the manner in which it is stated,”—a reversal of ancient rules. We are aware of its still further encroachment when we see a little book by M. Charles Rozan, characteristically christened “Petites Ignorances de la Conversation,” and find it full of odds and ends of information, of phrases, allusions, quotations, facts,—all the minute details which are presumably embodied in the talk of educated men. The world to-day devoutly believes that everything can be taught and learned. When we have been shown how a thing is done, we can of course do it. There are even little manuals composed with serious simplicity, the object of which is to enable us to meet specialists on their own grounds; to discuss art with artists, literature with authors, politics with politicians, science with scientists,—the last, surely, a dangerous experiment. “Conversation,” I read in one of these enchanting primers, “cannot be entirely learned from books,”—a generous admission in a day given over to the worship of print.

CONTENTS

COMPROMISES

THE LUXURY OF CONVERSATION