Our vary worst foe could have written no more;
In thot he insinuates, tho’ he canna’ see
Twa yards, that we’ve na sic a thing as a tree,
Tho’ just by the road there were saxteen or twanty,
And, if he’d gone more to the laft, he’d found planty;
Nay, troth, it’s a fact, Sir, that’s weel understood,
Au’ Scotland was antiently covered with wood.’
Mr. Rusty’s unhappy evening was concluded by listening to the tales of a young lord just returned from his travels, a buck who wishes to fight a duel with him because he laughs at incredible stories.
There is nothing very witty in this poem, as the quotations may show; and the satires no doubt sank of their own weight; but in spite of its dulness, the account would appear to be, in the main, a fair picture of the conversazione. We may notice, in the first place, that Lady Chattony has followed the best traditions of the salon in reducing her refreshments to a minimum, depending for the success of her reception entirely upon the conversation of her guests.[184] The talk, again, is not confined to a large circle; but is broken up, after Mrs. Vesey’s manner, into a series of small groups. We have the usual references to gossip, scandal, and chatter about clothes, politics, and the opera, with occasional approaches to Sheridan’s method of satire, but with none of his cleverness.
It is inevitable that any satire on the conversazione should dwell on the tendency to scandal and gossip. So inevitable is their presence in the salons that it seems hardly necessary to point it out; but it is essential to be at the true explanation of their prevalence, which no satire is likely to point out. Scandal, and its sister, Gossip, are the short cuts to cleverness, and cleverness is the one indispensable thing to the frequenters of salons. This is abundantly evident in the School for Scandal. It is wit for which Lady Sneerwell’s guests are striving, and they will mar a character that they may make a mot. ‘There is no possibility,’ says Lady Sneerwell, ‘of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick,’[185] and Lady Teazle is in practical agreement with her; ‘I vow I bear no malice against the people I abuse; when I say an ill-natured thing ’tis out of pure good humour.’