Sir Frederic. The widow Twinkle, as usual, talked a vast deal about reputation.
Lady Morden. One is apt to admire a thing one wants.
Lord Morden. She always takes infinite pains to place her reputation, like broken china in a buffet, with the best side outward.
Lady Morden. She may plaister, and cement, but will never bring it to bear handling.
Other aspirants to conversational fame adopted the less questionable habit of talking sentiments. Here again the School for Scandal reveals the trick of the salons, for Joseph Surface has won himself a place in the group by virtue of his philosophical and ethical maxims. Sheridan’s brilliant satire of a reigning fad in literature and society was anticipated by Goldsmith in She Stoops to Conquer, in which, when Kate Hardcastle wishes to speak like a fine lady, she at once begins to talk sentiments.[187] This habit of lending a semblance of depth to one’s conversation by the introduction of philosophical aphorisms is no doubt as old as the salon itself. At its best, there is nothing contemptible in the sentiment, as the long and brilliant history of the maxim in French literature may prove. The reputation of Mme. de Sablé’s salon was largely made by the maxim or pensée, and all the later salons afford examples of its vitality. Madame Geoffrin was famous for it. ‘Madame Geoffrin,’ wrote Mme. Necker, ‘a mis toute sa raison en maximes,’[188] and the same writer praises the work of English authors for their successful production of this type, finding these authors otherwise deficient in moral principles.[189] The maxim, ethical sentiment, or philosophical truth sententiously expressed, did indeed attain substantial existence in the essays of Samuel Johnson, who fancied that mankind might come in time to ‘write all aphoristically;’ but in English conversation it never found a thoroughly congenial soil. ‘Sentiments’ were popular, but, like much that was popular, they were hollow too. The Dowager Countess Gower writes to Mrs. Delany that the bluestockings are at Sunning Wells, where they ‘sport sentiments from morn tell noon, from noon to dewy eve.’[190] The pages of the Wit’s Magazine teemed with collections of them: ‘Flattery, like a cameleon, assumes the colours of the object it is nearest to.’ The record of bluestocking maxims and sentiments preserved in letters and diaries is amazing, but not because of its brilliance. Mrs. Montagu wrote the following to Miss Burney, in reference to the character of Mr. Vesey, ‘A frippery character, like a gaudy flower, may please while it is in bloom; but it is the virtuous only that, like the aromatics, preserve their sweet and reviving odour when withered.’[191] This is exactly in the style of Julia, the once-fashionable heroine of The Rivals, who, in respect of her conversation, might be own sister to Joseph Surface: ‘When hearts deserving of happiness would unite their fortunes, Virtue would crown them with an unfading garland of modest hurtless flowers; but ill-judging Passion will force the gaudier Rose into the wreath, whose thorn offends them when its leaves are dropped.’
Closely akin to the neatly-turned sentiment is the epigram and this, in all its forms, the salon, following Continental models, sought to stimulate. One thinks immediately of the poetical epigrams of Sir Benjamin Backbite, his impromptu verses on Lady Frizzle’s feather catching fire, his rebuses, the charade which he made at Mrs. Drowsie’s conversazione, and, above all, of that sprightly extempore conceit on Lady Betty Curricle’s ponies:
Sure never were seen two such beautiful ponies;
Other horses are Clowns—and these macaronies;
Nay, to give ’em this title I’m sure isn’t wrong,
Their legs are so slim and their tails[192] are so long.