It is surely a misfortune that contemporary descriptions of the conversazione should be generally satirical in tone; but it is natural enough, for conversation, unsupported by other entertainment, tends, in large groups, to pedantry on the one hand, and to frivolousness on the other. English literature produced no Molière to satirize the salons; but the conversazione did give both character and title to one great comedy, the School for Scandal. Although this play is not, like the Critique de l’École des Femmes, an adequate criticism of the literary drawing-room, it does nevertheless preserve prominent aspects of it, and we shall have occasion to refer to it repeatedly in illustrating the nature of the conversazione.[182] Another criticism of this entertainment is found in a book now totally forgotten, entitled, Modern Manners, or the Country Cousins, in a series of Poetical Epistles. This is the work of the Rev. Samuel Hoole, son of the translator of Tasso and Ariosto, and appeared in the year 1782. The poems describe the visit of a north-English family to London, somewhat after the manner of Smollett in Humphry Clinker, and of Anstey in the New Bath Guide. The tenth epistle is an account of Lady Chattony’s conversazione.[183] At that assembly old Mr. Ralph Rusty is served with lukewarm coffee and tea and a minute bit of cake, which made him long for more. The company splits up into groups, each with their backs turned on the rest. The first party which he joins is (naturally) talking scandal:
‘My lovely Miss Wagtail,’ says pretty Beau Brisker,
‘I’ve seen your dear friend, sweet Miss Fatty Fanfrisker.’
‘—Dear creature!—she’s truly what all men adore so’—
‘—Faith not quite so charming but some I know more so’—
‘—You difficult thing! you’re as rude as a bear,
You think nobody handsome I vow and declare!
What fault can you find?—to be sure, her hair’s sandy,
And Scapegrace declares that her legs are quite “bandy.”’
His second visit is to a group engaged in musical gossip: