Conversation by Mary Greer Conklin (best book club books of all time .TXT) 📕

It goes without saying that a people who have assimilated all the foregoing tenets of good conversation are never disjointed in their talk. Their consummate art of listening is responsible for their skill in following the logical trend of the discourse. This may be considered a national trait. In decent French society there are no abrupt transitions of thought in the different speeches. The speech of each speaker grows naturally out of what some one of his conversational partners has just been saying, or it is duly prefaced by an introductory sentence connecting it with a certain preceding speech. They know that, once embarked, no converser can tell where the give and take of talk will carry him; but they also know that this does not necessitate awkward and direct changes of subject. The weakness of inattention and of unconscious shunting in conversation is virtually unknown in good society in France.

Is it any wonder that in a country where conversation is considered an art capable of cultivation and having certain fixt principles, so many French women of humble birth, like Sophie Arnould and Julie Lespinasse, have earned their way to fame by their conversational powers? Is it any wonder that in France polite discussion is made the most exhilarating and delightful exercise in the world?

One reason there is so little acceptable conversational discussion is the indisposition of people in society to say what they think; their unwillingness to express their whole minds on any one subject. It is this element of unfettered expression or revelation which makes literature entertaining; why then withhold thought too cautiously from conversation? The habit of evasion is cowardly as well as unsocial; and nothing so augments conversation as being pleasantly downright; letting people know where to find you. The most preposterous views get respect if uttered intrepidly. Sincere speech is necessary to good conversation of any kind, and especially is it essential to discussion. One of the stupidest of conversational sins is quibbling—talking insincerely, just for the sake of using words, and shifting the point at issue to some incidental, subordinate argument on which the decision does not at all depend. It is the intellectually honest person who sparkles in discussion.

Another reason why discussion is waning is the disrespect we feel for great subjects. We only mention them, or hint at them; and this cannot lead to very brilliant talk. Tho prattle and persiflage have their place in conversation, talkers of the highest order tire of continually encouraging chit-chat. "What a piece of business; monstrous! I have not read it; impossible to get a box at the opera for another fortnight; how do you like my dress? It was immensely admired yesterday at the B——s; how badly your cravat is tied! Did you know that —— lost heavily by the crash of Thursday? That dear man's death gave me a good fit of crying; do you travel this summer? Is Blank really a man of genius? It is incomprehensible; they married only two years ago." This sort of nimble talk is all very well; but because one likes sillibub occasionally is no proof that one is willing to discard meat entirely. Conversational topics can be too trivial for recreation as well as too serious; and even important subjects can be handled in a light way if necessary. "Clever people are the best encyclopedias," said Goethe; and the great premier Gladstone was a charming man in society, though he never talked on any but serious subjects. He was noted for his ability to pump people dry without seeming in the least to probe. "True conversation is not content with thrust and parry, with mere sword-play of any kind, but should lay mind to mind and show the real lines of agreement and the real lines of divergence. Yet this is the very kind of conversation which seems to me so very rare." In order that a great subject shall be a good topic of conversation, it must provoke an enthusiasm of belief or disbelief; people must have decided opinions one way or the other. I believe with Stevenson that theology, of all subjects, is a suitable topic for conversational discussion, and for the reason he gives: that religion is the medium through which all the world considers life, and the dialect in which people express their judgments. Try to talk for any length of time with people to whom you must not mention creeds, morals, politics, or any other vital interest in life, and see how inane and fettered talk becomes.

The tranquil and yet spirited discussion of great subjects is the most stimulating of all talk. The thing to be desired is not the avoidance of discussion but the encouragement of it according to its unwritten codes and precepts. "The first condition of any conversation at all," says Professor Mahaffy of Dublin, "is that people should have their minds so far in sympathy that they are willing to talk upon the same subject, and to hear what each member of the company thinks about it. The higher condition which now comes before us is, that the speaker, apart from the matter of the conversation, feels an interest in his hearers as distinct persons, whose opinions and feelings he desires to know.... Sympathy, however, should not be excessive in quality, which makes it demonstrative. We have an excellent word which describes the over-sympathetic person, and marks the judgment of society, when we say that he or she is gushing. To be too sympathetic makes discussion, which implies difference of opinion, impossible." Those who try to discover how far conversation is advanced by sympathy and hindered by over-sympathy; those who attempt to detect to what extent wholesome discussion is degraded by acrid controversy, need not be afraid of vigorous intellectual buffeting. Discussion springs from human nature when it is under the influence of strong feeling, and is as much an ingredient of conversation as the vocalizing of sounds is a part of the effort of expressing thought.

Gossip in Literature—Gossip Comes from Being of One Kindred Under God—Gossip and the Misanthrope—Personal History of People We Know and People We Don't Know—Gossip of Books of Biography—Interest in Others Gives Fellowship and Warmth to Life—Essential Difference Between Slander and Innocent Gossip—The Psychology of the Slanderer—The Apocryphal Slanderer—"Talking Behind Another's Back"—Personal Chat the Current Coin of Conversation.

It seems strange that, in all the long list of brilliant dissertations on every subject under the sun, no English essayist should have yielded a word under the seductive title of "Gossip." Even Leigh Hunt, who wrote vivaciously and exquisitely on so many light topics, was not attracted by the enticing possibilities of this subject to which both the learned and the unlearned are ready at all times to bestow a willing ear or eye. One usually conceives gossip as something to which one lends only one's ear, and never one's eye; but what are "Plutarch's Lives" but the right sort of gossip? That so many literary men and women have vaguely suspected the alluring tone-color of the word "gossip" is proved by: A Gossip in Romance, Robert Louis Stevenson; Gossip in a Library, Edmund William Gosse; Gossip of the Caribbees, William R. H. Trowbridge, Jr.; Gossip from Paris During the Second Empire, Anthony North Peet; Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign, Jane West; Gossip of the Century, Julia Clara Byrne; Gossiping Guide to Wales, Askew Roberts and Edward Woodall; Gossip with Girls and Maidens Betrothed and Free, Blanche St. John Bellairs. Yet no one has ever thought of writing about gossip for its own sweet sake.

Among every-day words perhaps the word "gossip" is more to be reckoned with than any other in our language. The child who runs confidingly to mother to report his grievance is a gossip; he is also an historian. Certainly gossip is in its tone familiar and personal; it is the familiar and personal touch which makes Plutarch's Lives interesting. At the root of the word "gossip," say etymologists, there lies an honest Saxon meaning, "God's sib"—"of one kindred under God."

It would be only a misanthrope who would assert that he has no interest in his fellows. He is invariably a selfish person who shuns personality in talk and refuses to know anything about people; who says: "What is it to me whether this person has heard Slezak in Tannhäuser; what do I care whether Mrs. So-and-So has visited the French play; what concern is it of mine if Mr. Millions of eighty marries Miss Beautiful of eighteen; what is it to me whether you have watched the agonies of a furnishing party at Marshall Field's and have observed the bridegroom of tender years victimized by his wife and mother-in-law with their appeals to his excellent taste; of what interest to me are the accounts of the dissolute excesses which interspersed the wild outbreaks of religious fanaticism of Henry the Third of France?" This selfish person is also very stupid, for nothing so augments conversation as a normal interest in other people.