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THE ART OF CONVERSATION.

Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise:

Laugh when we must, be candid when we can.

It is only since I came to live in London, some six months ago, that I have seriously thought about the art of conversation.

My father and mother are both fond of talking, yet I never remember hearing what I now recognise as conversation at home. This may be partly accounted for by the fact of my father taking in none of our leading reviews and magazines, Sunday at Home and the Gardener's Chronicle hardly filling the intellectual void thus wilfully created. At the same time the dulness of their lives may have something to say to this; country surroundings and pursuits provide poor material for conversation, and, outside a charmed circle in London society, to talk agreeably about nothing, or almost nothing, does not come easily to ordinary people. Shut out, then, as they are from the stimulating influences of the periodical press, and of a second post-no second post meaning the London papers a day old— it will readily be imagined that my parents talk of little worth talking about, and that I have learned little from them. My father's attempts are limited to what are familiarly styled travellers' tales, collated from a wide reading of travels, particularly polar travels; my mother's to fairly accurate observations upon the obvious, such, for instance, as the abundance of our apple blossom, or the scarceness of good plain cooks.

Sometimes, however-indeed, oftener than is supposed-a parent's example becomes useful as a warning when it breaks down as a model; and in this indirect way I have been able to turn both my father's and my mother's quasi conversation to good account. They have illustrated for me two different but equally certain methods of what has been finely called beheading conversation.

I am afraid I must pass over my mother's method as radically vicious to all time; my father's, however, may certainly have had its vogue, for on more than one occasion I have heard him cited by gentlemen of his own age and standing in our neighbourhood as a valuable addition to their social gatherings on the ground of his

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being full of information. There is a Rip Van Winkleishness about this idea which is amusing. As all know, conversation is subject to sentimental regulations which the lapse of every few years recasts. Thus the art of conversation varies with the mental habit of the day, and its most agreeable expression is that which best reflects the mental needs and interests of its day. My poor father and his simple admirers are sadly out of date. In the society I am anxious. to frequent, to be full of information, particularly of the outlandish information my sire deals in, is, as I am told, to be voted quite a bore. But to admit that the tone of our conversation changes with the shifting needs of our contemporary thought, or that the taste of one time is the distaste of another time, is not of itself enough. seriously consider the art of conversation of our own day, we must also bear in mind that the character of conversation itself has changed much in the same way as the character of a business changes, when from a private concern it becomes a company, and when-to use the technical expression-its shares are offered to the public. The reason for this change of character is not far to seek. The possibilities of social intercourse and social culture-integral parts, as we must suppose them to be, both of a polite society and a polite style of conversation-have already so increased, and are daily so facilitated and so increasing, that we are being forced out of one into many social groups, according to our social circumstances, tastes, and ambitions; like the Kingdom of Heaven, society and the conversation of society now boast of many mansions. These social. groups are knit together by their common allegiance to the taste and tone of the time, to what is styled the spirit of the age. They all observe and respect fundamental points of agreement. But, admitting, as it were, the principle of an Act of Uniformity in social æsthetics, each group interprets the Act very much to its own liking and requirements. It is this expansion of society into societies which has brought about the change in the character of our conversation upon which I am insisting. Conversation, from being almost a private concern, has become a public concern.

Thence comes it that the art of conversation now has its different schools; just as the arts of painting, of music, and of literature have their schools-every school affecting its own method, its own tests, its own jargon-so many different means to one and the same end, the best expression of art. Take painting: the French school insists on a standard of drawing and enjoins a method of colour which the English school does not insist upon and does not enjoin, yet the expression of the best art is the result both schools are honestly striving to attain. In this way the method and tests and jargon of conversation vary with the school, or rather the society, applying them. They vary as that society is leisured or professional, educated or highly educated, grave or gay. With this variation the

student of the art of conversation will do well to reckon. He has to study the method of the society in which he hopes to enjoy the fruit of his labour, but to gather figs and grapes he need not perplex himself with the botany of thorns and thistles. He need only master the tillage of fig trees and vines.

The society whose conversational method I have decided to study is essentially leisured, and seems to me wholly sympathetic. Professional and learned social circles command my respect, but not my inclination. I cannot project myself into their atmosphere. They appeal to none of my instincts, they awaken no impression. Lord Byron used to say that the man who made the best first impression upon him he ever met subsequently picked his pocket; but favourable first impressions are things which I for one refuse to ignore. Now the first step in all æsthetic criticism, as Mr. Oscar Wilde says, is to realise our impressions. Of themselves, impressions are rather shadowy things; they want focussing into distinct and distinguishing opinions. From being to all practical purposes supine and dimsighted, they must become active, discerning, and articulate. This activity, clear-sightedness, and articulation can only be given them by exercise and practice. All the treatises in the world,' says somebody somewhere, are not equal to giving one a view in a moment.' Nor will the most imperative first impressions. We must get into actual touch with them. To have impressions about charity is not the same thing as being charitable: we are only charitable when we have realised our impressions about charity, got into actual touch with charity, by giving something away. In the same way, to have vivid impressions about the charm of smart society's conversation will never of themselves make me proficient in the art of charming smart society. I must realise these impressions. I must be given a real view of smart society.

How is this to be done? As I have tried to show, different societies have different standards of taste. As pabulum for conversation, what is meat at Melton may be thought poison, or at all events garbage, at Oxford. What to eat, what to drink, and what to avoid in the social and conversational climate you prefer, can only be learned by noticing what the individuals who thrive best in that climate eat, drink, and avoid. Even then, unless, as Mr. Carlyle read books 'with the flash of the eye,' you pick up things with a flash of the understanding, this noticing of others before setting up on your own account is not the affair of a moment, it is an affair of special training, and it may become as tedious as working at the antique and the skeleton before being allowed to attack the life-model becomes. to an art student. But, further, the people whose observances you mean to copy, the models upon whom you hope to model yourself, must be got at; and here I am met by a veritably disagreeable difficulty.

Had it been a school of painting or a school of music, whose method I yearned to master, its theory in print and its palpable expressions on canvas or in sound are certain, humanly speaking, to be accessible. If I wish to realise my impressions of Velasquez at the pains of a long journey and a horrid hotel, I can do so at Madrid. If I wish to realise my impressions of Wagner, I can subscribe to the Richter concerts, or, better still, fare to Bayreuth. Then painting and music have an imposing literature: their several schools, their several scribes and critics. But this art of conversation has no foundations laid on the rock of time, force, and opinion. The particular school of the art of conversation I wish to study has neither galleries nor concert rooms, neither an historic nor a contemporary critical literature.

Conversation, with its schools, is itself a branch of the science and art of speech. Rhetoric, elocution, and debate are branches of this great science each with their several schools. But the schools of rhetoric, and elocution, and debate are, as it were, free schools, open to the general public; whereas the schools of polite conversation are not free-indeed, so far from being free, they are exclusive, and in some degree exquisite. We cannot, because we wish to do so, or because our idiosyncrasy or turn of mind sways us thither, 'abonner' ourselves to a school of literary or beau monde, of artistic or sporting society and conversation. Unless the accident of birth or of circumstances places us within the radius of a literary or fashionable circle, admission to its intimate fellowship becomes a question in the former case of merit or repute, in the latter of wealth or invitation.

Now in my own case, that of a candidate for admission to the latter by invitation, this question of invitation-confusing enough of itself—is further perplexed by the facts that the only two families I know in London live in what I heard rather picturesquely called the wildest part of South Kensington, and that they are given neither to hospitality nor to going out. Indeed, had it not been that I lately received some assistance and stimulus from an unexpected quarter, I should seriously think of taking back my defeated social gifts to the local breeds of sheep and cattle, the local littlenesses of a clay district, the apple blossom and polar travels of home. To have no engagements in London is an unchartered freedom, not only of a tiring, but a depressing kind, and I begin to feel the weight of vain desires.' But a fortnight ago I ran up against my old schoolfellow, Sebastian P. I remembered him perfectly, whilst his pleasure at seeing me again would have gratified a pelican in the wilderness.

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Sebastian—we all called him by his christian name—went up tɔ the top of the school very quickly, but as lower boys we happened twice to be in the same form together. He was a peculiar-looking boy, with very fat thighs, which the boys immediately next him in form pinched at all decent and possible intervals during school-time.

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Sebastian was not a Spartan youth, and this generally ended in his having to go down to the bottom of the form for interrupting the 'school.' For my part I honestly liked Sebastian, and I often got him to lend me a tizzy,' as we called a sixpence, after school. But I always pinched him, not because I liked pinching him, as himself, as Sebastian, but because I always pinched any boy whom all the other boys pinched. This just now is rather interesting, for I suppose it to have been the young embryo of my present strong social instinct.

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There is a tenderness about old associations to which few persons can be quite insensible, so within the last few days Sebastian and I have seen a good deal of each other. I still like him, and it is very pleasant to like a person without any incumbency to pinch him. Indeed, from a social point of view, the incumbency lies all the other way, for I find Sebastian moves much in society, and is metaphorically petted, and not pinched. Both his looking-glasses are crammed with invitation cards to parties. I was struck with the number of invitations from 4 to 7'; but Sebastian has since explained that these are parties solely got up for purposes of conversation, conversational orgies' he happily styled them. These gatherings appear to be, from his description, the modernised equivalent of the 'salons' of which we hear so much in memoirs and elsewhere—now, happily, things of the past. All this, it will readily be imagined, was of special and opportune interest for me; and I am pleased to say that, without showing the weakness of my own hand, I managed -much as I used to manage to borrow the tizzy-to get a good deal out of Sebastian.

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After several talks around the subject of conversation generally, and what constitutes success in conversation, Sebastian showed me yesterday what he variously calls the implements of the trade,' and his 'box of tricks.' They consist of a neatly shelved accumulation of reviews and magazines, the collection extending over two years or more. Sebastian has discriminatingly marked passages in particular articles in every number; and, to use his own metaphor of a man's conversation being like an empty room which he has to furnish, these marked passages are the fond d'ameublement of my Mentor's conversation. But,' said Sebastian, 'my room wants enrichment and originality,' and he handed me a 'Golden Treasury,' and a well-known compilation of extracts from our national prose and poetry; both heavily marked. But Sebastian did not content himself with showing me over this well-stored arsenal of implements. He was kind enough to give me some practical hints as to their employment, and that in a way which delighted me from its gay wisdom.

In the first place, Sebastian warned me to let a full three months go by from the time of an article's appearance to the time of adapting either its thought, its images, or its expressions to my conversa

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