‘Veneri donatae a virgine puppae,’
and I have not the least doubt that if he had been allowed to proceed, he would have told us who was the Chenevix of ancient Rome, and the name of the first baby that ever handled a doll.”
This was indeed more information than society required. It is not surprising that Sydney Smith, perhaps the most charming talker of his day, was quickly silenced by such an avalanche of words, and sat mute and limp in the historian’s company. Upon one occasion Greville went to visit the Marquis of Lansdowne at Bowood, and found Macaulay among the guests. “It was wonderful how quiet the house seemed after he had gone,” comments the diarist grimly, “and it was not less agreeable.”
That a rude invasion of the field is fatal to the enjoyment of intercourse we know from the sentiment of revolt expressed on every side. How little the people who heard Mme. de Staël’s brilliant conversation appear to have relished the privilege! Mackintosh admitted that she was agreeable in a tête-à-tête, but too much for a general assembly. Heine hated her, as a hurricane in petticoats. “She hears but little, and never the truth, because she is always talking.” Byron, who felt a genuine admiration for her cleverness, and was grateful for her steadfast friendship, confessed ruefully that she overwhelmed him with words, buried him beneath glittering snow and nonsense. The art of being amusing in a lovable way was not hers; yet this is essentially the art which lifted French conversation to its highest level, which made it famous three hundred years ago, and which has preserved it ever since as a rational and engaging occupation. A page of history lies revealed and elucidated in Saint-Simon’s little sentence anent Mme. de Maintenon’s fashion of speech. “Her language was gentle, exact, well chosen, and naturally eloquent and brief.”
No wonder she reigned long. Eloquent and brief! What a magnificent “blend”! How persuasive the “well-chosen” words, immaculately free from harsh emphasis and the feminine fault of iteration! Who would not be influenced by a woman who talked always well, and never too much; who, knowing the value of flattery, administered it with tact and moderation; and who shrank instinctively from the exaggerated terms which destroy balance and invite defeat? From the reign of Louis the Fourteenth to the Revolution, conversation was cultivated in France with intelligent assiduity. Its place in the fabric of civilization was clearly understood. No time was begrudged to its development, no labour was spared to its perfecting. Mr. Henry James is of the opinion that it flowered brilliantly in the middle of the eighteenth century. “This was surely,” he says, “in France at least, the age of good society, the period when the right people made haste to be born in time. The sixty years that preceded the Revolution were the golden age of fireside talk, and of those amenities that are due to the presence of women in whom the social art is both instinctive and acquired. The women of that period were, above all, good company. The fact is attested in a thousand documents. Chenonceaux offered a perfect setting to free conversation; and infinite joyous discourse must have mingled with the liquid murmur of the Cher.”
“Joyous discourse” is a beguiling phrase. It carries with it the echo of laughter long since silenced,—light laughter following the light words, so swiftly spoken, yet so surely placed. The time was coming fast when this smooth graciousness of speech would inspire singular mistrust, and when Rousseau—ardently embracing nature—would write of the “fine and delicate irony called politeness, which gives so much ease and pliability to the intercourse of civilized man, enabling him to assume the appearance of every virtue without the reality of one.” Later on, illusions being dispelled, the painful discovery was made that the absence of politeness does not necessarily imply the presence of virtue, and that taciturnity may be wholly disassociated with the truth. We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation. It can never languish in an age like ours, teeming with new interests widely shared, and with new wonders widely known. We must talk, because we have so much to talk about; and we ought to talk well, because our inspirations are of a noble order. Each new discovery made by science, each fresh emotion awakened by contemporaneous history, each successive pleasure yielded by literature or by art is a spur to rational speech. These things are our common heritage, and we share them in common, through the medium of the aptly spoken word.
THE GAYETY OF LIFE
Grief is the sister of doubt and ill-temper, and, beyond all spirits, destroyeth man.—Shepherd of Hermas.
In the beginning of the last century an ingenious gentleman, Mr. James Beresford, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, diverted himself and—let us hope—his friends, by drawing up and publishing an exhaustive list of the minor miseries of life. It is a formidable document, realistic in character, and ill calculated to promote the spirit of content. No one would ever imagine that so many disagreeable things could happen in the ordinary course of existence, until the possibilities of each and every one are plainly and pitilessly defined. Some of these possibilities have passed away in the hundred years that lie between King George’s day and ours; but others remain for our better discipline and subjection. Political discussions at the dinner-table rank high among Mr. Beresford’s grievances; also weak tea,—“an infusion of balm, sage, and rosemary,” he calls it,—and “being expected to be interested in a baby.”
A great deal of modern literature, and not a little modern conversation, closely resemble this unhappy gentleman’s “black list.” There is the same earnest desire to point out what we would rather not observe. Life is so full of miseries, minor and major; they press so close upon us at every step of the way, that it is hardly worth while to call one another’s attention to their presence. People who do this thing on a more imposing scale than Mr. Beresford are spoken of respectfully as “unfaltering disciples of truth,” or as “incapable of childish self-delusion,” or as “looking with clear eyes into life’s bitter mysteries;” whereas in reality they are merely dwelling on the obvious, and the obvious is the one thing not worth consideration. We are all painfully aware of the seamy side, because we are scratched by the seams. What we want to contemplate is the beauty and the smoothness of that well-ordered plan which it is so difficult for us to discern. When Burke counselled a grave and anxious gentleman to “live pleasant,” he was turning him aside from the ordinary aspects of existence.