Conversation Part 4

To tell a customer abruptly, "We do not carry such-and-such a brand in stock" has the effect of leading her immediately to turn to go. This is not cordial, nor gracious, nor diplomatic; hence it is unbusiness-like.

Furthermore, to tell a customer that the brand she mentions is seldom asked for is immediately to question her judgment. The dealer, in this case, lost a chance to get attention on the part of his customer by failing to infer, the moment he mentioned her shoes, that she wore a good quality, had good taste, or common sense, or some such thing. His reply could have been vastly improved by an exercise of the social instinct. To answer her with some non-committal, tactful response would open up cordial relations at once and afford the chance easily and gracefully to lead the talk to another brand of polish.

_Dealer_--"Do you prefer 'Cobra' polish, madam? For high-grade shoes such as you wear we find this brand more generally serviceable and liked."

Telling expression, whether in business or in the drawing-room, depends as much upon how one says a thing as upon what one says; as much upon what one refrains from saying as upon what one does say.

What is the secret of the ability to put thought into tactful as well as vivid words? Or is there a secret? There are those who invariably say the right word in the right way. The question is: how have they found it possible to do this; how have they learned; how have they brought the faculty of expression to a perfected art? Or was this ability born in them? Or, if there is a secret of proficiency, do the adroit managers of words guard their secret carefully? And if so, why?

Piano artists, and violin artists, and canvas artists, and singing artists, are uniformly proud of the persevering practise by which they win success. Why should not ready writers and ready talkers be just as proud of honest endeavor? Are they so vain of the praise of "natural facility for expression" that they seldom acknowledge the steps of progression by which they falteringly but tenaciously climb the ladder of their attainment? A few great souls and masters of words have been very honest about the ways and means by which they became skilful phrase-builders. Robert Louis Stevenson, as perfect in his talk as in his written expression, said of himself: "Tho considered an idler at school, I was always busy on my own private ends, which was to learn to use words. I kept two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

As I walked my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words.

As I sat by the roadside a penny version book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was written consciously for practise. I had vowed that I would learn to write; it was a proficiency that tempted me, and I practised to acquire it. I worked in other ways also; often accompanied my walks with dialogs and often exercised myself in writing down conversations from memory. This was excellent, no doubt; but there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more effort, in my secret labors at home.[B] That is the way to learn expression. It was so Keats learned, and there was never a finer temperament for literature than Keats's; it was so, if we could trace it out, that all men have learned."

What, then, is the essential training necessary to the nice handling of words? The idea is quite general that an extensive vocabulary alone makes thought flow exactly off the tip of one's tongue or pen. But is this true? One should have a command of words, to be sure; one should know more descriptive words than "awful, fierce, fine, charming"--terms used in an unthinking way by people who do not concern themselves with specific adjectives. But to know how to use a vocabulary is of even more importance than to possess one. Indeed, merely to possess a vocabulary without the ability to weave the words into accurate, characterized designs on an effective background is ruinous to the success of any talker or writer. To employ an extensive vocabulary riotously is worse than to own none.

When the poet Keats wrote those well-known lines,

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases,"

the first line stood originally:

"A thing of beauty is a constant joy."

The poet knew that this was the thought he wanted, but he felt that it had not the simple, virile swing he coveted. And so the line remained for many months, "A thing of beauty is a constant joy," in spite of the author's many attempted phrasings to improve it. Finally the simple word "forever" came to him, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Then he had it, and he knew he had it--the essential note, the exact word. Certainly the word "forever" was a part of Keats's vocabulary; he undoubtedly knew this simple word. It was not the word, but adroitness in using it, which made Keats's lines complete in their polished and natural perfection.

One of the world's wors.h.i.+ped piano virtuosi, who has quite as intellectual a comprehension of words as of music, was asked by the editor of a magazine to contribute biographical data and photographs for an article on musical composers. The pianiste had published no compositions, and the gracious answer swung readily into line: "If your article is to deal exclusively with musical composers, I cannot be included. I have never published any of my compositions because I feel that they cannot add anything to my reputation as a pianiste, of which I am----" Just here, as with Keats's line, vocabulary could not serve the purpose. The pianiste could have said "of which I am proud." No, a modest phrase must express honest pride--"my reputation as a pianiste which I guard sedulously," or "defend zealously." No, this the exactness and simplicity of true art rejected. Then came the simple, perfect phrasing--"my reputation as a pianiste, of which I am somewhat jealous."

Unquestionably, as with Keats's word "forever," the word "jealous" was perfectly familiar. It was not any one exceptional word which was necessary, but a weaving of simple words--if I may be permitted the expression. Here, in order to get the effect desired this master-mind refrained from using a vocabulary. Words came readily enough; but the tongue was in command of silence because pretentious words failed the end. This perfection of expression is not a matter of vocabulary alone.

It is more than vocabulary; it is a grappling after the really subtle and intellectual elements of the art of expression and persuasion.

Of what use all the delicately tinted tapestry threads in the world, spread out before a tapestry-worker, if he does not possess the ability to weave them into faultless designs, employing his colors sparingly here, and lavishly there?

"One's tongue and pen should be in absolute command, whether for silence or attack," says Stevenson again; and, more than on any quality of force, business success depends upon that same nicety in the use of words which selects the tactful expression, the modest and simple phrase, in the drawing-room; the sort of nicety which is un.o.btrusive exactness and delicacy; an artistry which in no way labels itself skilful. But underneath all, the woof of the process is social skill--that skill which is the ability to go back to unadorned first principles with the dexterity of one who has acquired the power to do the simple thing perfectly by having mastered the entire gamut of the complex.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote B: Even Stevenson acknowledged secrecy in his earlier climbings.]

CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

_Conversation Is Reciprocal--Good Conversationalists Cannot Talk to the Best Advantage without Confederates--As in Whist, It Is the Combination Which Effects What a Single Whist-playing Genius Cannot Accomplish--Good Conversation Does not Mark a Distinction among Subjects; It Denotes a Difference in Talkability--The Different Degrees of Talkability--Imperturbable Glibness Impedes Good Conversation--Ease with Which One May Improve One's Conversational Powers._

CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

Good conversation, then, is like a well-played game of whist. Each has to give and take; each has to deal regularly round to all the players; to signal and respond to signals; to follow suit or to trump with pleasantry or jest. And neither you yourself, nor any other of the players, can win the game if even one refuses to be guided by its rules.

It is the combination which effects what a single whist-playing genius could not accomplish. Good conversation, therefore, consists no more in the thing communicated than in the manner of communicating; no more than good whist consists entirely in playing the cards without recognizing even one of the rules of the game. One cannot talk well about either cabbages or kings with one whose attention wanders; with one who delivers a sustained soliloquy, or lecture, and calls it conversation; with one who refuses to enter into amicable discussion; or, when in, does nothing but contradict flatly; with one who makes abrupt transitions of thought every time he opens his mouth; with one, in short, who has never attempted to discover even a few of the thousand and one essential hindrances and aids to conversation. As David could not walk as well when sheathed in Saul's armor, so even nimble minds cannot do themselves justice when surrounded by people whose every utterance is demoralizing to any orderly and stimulating exchange of ideas.

"For wit is like a rest Held up at tennis, which men do the best With the best players,"

said Sir Foppling Flutter; and few would refuse to admit that fortunate circ.u.mstances of companions.h.i.+p are as much a factor of good conversation as is native cleverness. Satisfactory conversation does not depend upon whether it is between those intellectually superior or inferior, or between strangers or acquaintances; but upon whether, mentally superior or inferior, known or unknown, each party to the conversation talks with due recognition of its first principles. There are, to be sure, different cla.s.ses of talkers. There are those of the glory of the sun and others of the glory of the moon. It is easy enough to catch the note of the company in which one finds one's self; but the most entertaining and captivating person in the world is petrified when he can not put his finger on one confederate who understands the simplest mandates of his art, whether talking badinage or wisdom. Without intelligent listeners, the best talker is at sea; and any good conversationalist is defeated when he is the only member of a crowd of interrupters who scream each other down.

Conversation is essentially reciprocal, and when a good converser flings out his ball of thought he knows just how the ball should come back to him, and feels balked and defrauded if his partner is not even watching to catch it, much less showing any intention of tossing it back on precisely the right curve. "The habit of interruption," says Bagehot, "is a symptom of mental deficiency; it proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds." It is impossible for a good talker to talk to any advantage with a companion who does not concern himself in the least with anybody's mental processes--not even his own.

Given conversation which is marked by conformity to all its unwritten precepts, "Men and women then range themselves," says Henry Thomas Buckle, "into three cla.s.ses or orders of intelligence. You can tell the lowest cla.s.s by their habit of talking about nothing else but persons; the next by the fact that their habit is always to talk about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas." Discussion is the most delightful of all conversation, if the company are _up to it_; it is the highest type of talk, but suited only to the highest type of individuals. Therefore, a person who in one circle might observe a prudent silence may in another very properly be the chief talker. Highly bred and cultured people have attained a certain unity of type, and are interested in the same sort of conversation. "Talk depends so wholly on our company," says Stevenson. "We should like to introduce Falstaff and Mercutio, or Falstaff and Sir Toby; but Falstaff in talk with Cordelia seems even painful. Most of us, by the Protean quality of man, can talk to some degree with all; but the true talk that strikes out all the slumbering best of us comes only with the peculiar brethren of our spirits.... And hence, I suppose, it is that good talk most commonly arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the scene and the instrument of friends.h.i.+p."

On the whole, then, the very best social intercourse is possible only when there is equality. Hazlitt in one of his delightful essays has said that, "In general, wit s.h.i.+nes only by reflection. You must take your cue from your company--must rise as they rise, and sink as they fall. You must see that your good things, your knowing allusions, are not flung away, like the pearls in the adage. What a check it is to be asked a foolish question; to find that the first principles are not understood!

You are thrown on your back immediately; the conversation is stopt like a country-dance by those who do not know the figure. But when a set of adepts, of _illuminati_, get about a question, it is worth while to hear them talk."

If we are to have a rising generation of good talkers, by our own choice and deliberate aim social intercourse should be freed from the barbarisms which so often hamper it. Conversation at its highest is the most delightful of intellectual stimulants; at its lowest the most deadening to intellect. Better be as silent as a deaf-mute than to indulge carelessly in imperturbable glibness which impedes rather than encourages good conversation. Really clever people dislike to compete in a race with talkers who rarely speak from the abundance of their hearts and often from the emptiness of their heads. On the other hand, one can easily imagine a sage like Emerson the victim of conceited prigs, listening to their vapid conversational performances, and can readily understand why he considered conversation between two congenial souls the only really good talk.

Marked conversational powers are in some measure natural and in some acquired; "and to maintain," says Mr. Mahaffy, "that they depend entirely upon natural gifts is one of the commonest and most widely-spread popular errors.... It is based on the mistake that art is opposed to nature; that natural means _merely_ what is spontaneous and unprepared, and artistic what is _manifestly_ studied and artificial....

Ask any child of five or six years old, anywhere over Europe, to draw you the figure of a man, and it will always produce very much the same kind of thing. You might therefore a.s.sert that this was the _natural_ way for a child to draw a man, and yet how remote from nature it is. If one or two children out of a thousand made a fair attempt, you would attribute this either to special genius or special training--and why?

because the child had really approached nature." Just as a child, either with talent for drawing or without it, can draw a better picture of a man after he has been trained, than before, so can those not endowed by nature with ready speech polish and amend their natural defects. Neither need there be artificiality or affectation in talk that is consciously cultivated; no more indeed than it is affectation to eat with a fork because one knows that it is preferable to eating with a knife.

The faculty of talking is too seldom regarded in the light of a talent to be polished and variously improved. It is so freely employed in all sorts of trivialities that, like the dyer's hand, it becomes subdued to that it works in. Canon Ainger has declared positively that "Conversation might be improved if only people would take pains and have a few lessons." Nearly two hundred years before Canon Ainger came to this decision, Dean Swift contended that "Conversation might be reduced to perfection; for here we are only to avoid a mult.i.tude of errors, which, altho a matter of some difficulty, may be in every man's power.

Therefore it seems that the truest way to understand conversation is to know the faults and errors to which it is subject, and from thence every man to form maxims to himself whereby it may be regulated, because it requires few talents to which most men are not born, or at least may not acquire, without any great genius or study. For nature has left every man a capacity for being agreeable, tho not of s.h.i.+ning in company; and there are hundreds of people sufficiently qualified for both, who, by a very few faults that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable." It is recorded of Lady Blessington by Lord Lennox in his _Drafts on My Memory_ that in youth she did not give any promise of the charms for which she was afterwards so conspicuous, and which, in the first half of the nineteenth century, made Gore House in London famous for its hospitality. A marriage at an early age to a man subject to hereditary insanity was terminated by her husband's sudden death, and in 1818 she married the Earl of Blessington. Everything goes to prove that, in those few years during her first husband's life, she set herself earnestly to cultivating charm of manner and the art of conversation.

Talking well is given so little serious consideration that the average person, when he probes even slightly into the art, is as surprized as was Moliere's _bourgeois gentilhomme_ upon discovering that he had spoken prose for forty years. Plato says: "Whosoever seeketh must know that which he seeketh for in a general notion, else how shall he know it when he hath found it?" And if what I write on this subject enables readers to know for what they seek in good conversation, even in abstract fas.h.i.+on, I shall be grateful. When all people cultivate the art of conversation as a.s.siduously as the notably good talkers of the world have done, there will be a general feast of reason and flow of soul; each will then say to the other, in Milton's words,

"With thee conversing, I forget all time."