At dinner the talk turned on plays. Mr. H.A. Jones had sent him "Judah", which he thought good, though] "there must be some hostility—except in the very greatest writers—between the dramatic and the literary faculties. I noticed many points I objected to, but felt sure they met with applause. Indeed in the theatre I have noticed that what I thought the worst blots on a piece invariably brought down the house."
[He remarked how the French, in dramatic just as in artistic matters, are so much better than the English in composition, in avoiding anything slipshod in the details, though the English artists draw just as well and colour perhaps better.
The following sketch of human character is not actually a fragment of conversation, though it might almost pass for such; it comes from a letter to Mrs. W.K. Clifford, of February 10, 1895:—]
Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of horse-nervousness, ass-stubbornness and camel-malice—with an angel bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the posset, and when they can do exactly as they please, they are very hard to drive.
[Whatever he talked of, his talk never failed to impress those who conversed with him. One or two such impressions have been recorded. Mr. Wilfrid Ward, whose interests lie chiefly in philosophy and theology, was his neighbour at Eastbourne, and in the "Nineteenth Century" for August 1896 has given various reminiscences of their friendly intercourse.
His conversation (he writes) was singularly finished, and (if I may so express it) clean cut; never long-winded or prosy; enlivened by vivid illustrations. He was an excellent raconteur, and his stories had a stamp of their own which would have made them always and everywhere acceptable. His sense of humour and economy of words would have made it impossible, had he lived to ninety, that they should ever have been disparaged as symptoms of what has been called "anecdotage."
One drawback to conversation, however, he began to complain of during the later seventies.]
It is a great misfortune [he remarked to Professor Osborn] to be deaf in only one ear. Every time I dine out the lady sitting by my good ear thinks I am charming, but I make a mortal enemy of the lady on my deaf side.
[In ordinary conversation he never plunged at once into deep subjects. His welcome to the newcomer was always of the simplest and most unstudied. He had no mannerisms nor affectation of phrase. He would begin at once to talk on everyday topics; an intimate friend he would perhaps rally upon some standing subject of persiflage. But the subsequent course of conversation adapted itself to his company. Deeper subjects were reached soon enough by those who cared for them; with others he was quite happy to talk of politics or people or his garden, yet, whatever he touched, never failing to infuse into it an unexpected interest.
In this connection, a typical story was told me by a great friend of mine, whom we had come to know through his marriage with an early friend of the family. "Going to call at Hodeslea," he said, "I was in some trepidation, because I didn't know anything about science or philosophy; but when your mother began to talk over old times with my wife, your father came across the room and sat down by me, and began to talk about the dog which we had brought with us. From that he got on to the different races of dogs and their origin and connections, all quite simply, and not as though to give information, but just to talk about something which obviously interested me. I shall never forget how extraordinarily kind it was of your father to take all this trouble in entertaining a complete stranger, and choosing a subject which put me at my ease at once, while he told me all manner of new and interesting things."