II
In the last paper there was perhaps too much about mere debate; and
there was nothing said at all about that kind of talk which is merely
luminous and restful, a higher power of silence, the quiet of the
evening shared by ruminating friends. There is something, aside from
personal preference, to be alleged in support of this omission. Those
who are no chimney-cornerers, who rejoice in the social thunderstorm,
have a ground in reason for their choice. They get little rest indeed;
but restfulness is a quality for cattle; the virtues are all active,
life is alert, and it is in repose that men prepare themselves for
evil. On the other hand, they are bruised into a knowledge of
themselves and others; they have in a high degree the fencer's
pleasure in dexterity displayed and proved; what they get they get
upon life's terms, paying for it as they go; and once the talk is
launched, they are assured of honest dealing from an adversary eager
like themselves. The aboriginal man within us, the cave-dweller, still
lusty as when he fought tooth and nail for roots and berries, scents
this kind of equal battle from afar; it is like his old primaeval days
upon the crags, a return to the sincerity of savage life from the
comfortable fictions of the civilised. And if it be delightful to the
Old Man, it is none the less profitable to his younger brother, the
conscientious gentleman. I feel never quite sure of your urbane and
smiling coteries; I fear they indulge a man's vanities in silence,
suffer him to encroach, encourage him on to be an ass, and send him
forth again, not merely contemned for the moment, but radically more
contemptible than when he entered. But if I have a flushed, blustering
fellow for my opposite, bent on carrying a point, my vanity is sure to
have its ears rubbed, once at least, in the course of the debate. He
will not spare me when we differ; he will not fear to demonstrate my
folly to my face.
For many natures there is not much charm in the still, chambered
society, the circle of bland countenances, the digestive silence, the
admired remark, the flutter of affectionate approval. They demand more
atmosphere and exercise; "a gale upon their spirits," as our pious
ancestors would phrase it; to have their wits well breathed in an
uproarious Valhalla.[30] And I suspect that the choice, given their
character and faults, is one to be defended. The purely wise are
silenced by facts; they talk in a clear atmosphere, problems lying
around them like a view in nature; if they can be shown to be somewhat
in the wrong, they digest the reproof like a thrashing, and make
better intellectual blood. They stand corrected by a whisper; a word
or a glance reminds them of the great eternal law. But it is not so
with all. Others in conversation seek rather contact with their
fellow-men than increase of knowledge or clarity of thought. The
drama, not the philosophy, of life is the sphere of their intellectual
activity. Even when they pursue truth, they desire as much as possible
of what we may call human scenery along the road they follow. They
dwell in the heart of life; the blood sounding in their ears, their
eyes laying hold of what delights them with a brutal avidity that
makes them blind to all besides, their interest riveted on people,
living, loving, talking, tangible people. To a man of this
description, the sphere of argument seems very pale and ghostly. By a
strong expression, a perturbed countenance, floods of tears, an insult
which his conscience obliges him to swallow, he is brought round to
knowledge which no syllogism would have conveyed to him. His own
experience is so vivid, he is so superlatively conscious of himself,
that if, day after day, he is allowed to hector and hear nothing but
approving echoes, he will lose his hold on the soberness of things and
take himself in earnest for a god. Talk might be to such an one the
very way of moral ruin; the school where he might learn to be at once
intolerable and ridiculous.
This character is perhaps commoner than philosophers suppose. And for
persons of that stamp to learn much by conversation, they must speak
with their superiors, not in intellect, for that is a superiority that
must be proved, but in station. If they cannot find a friend to bully
them for their good, they must find either an old man, a woman, or
some one so far below them in the artificial order of society, that
courtesy may be particularly exercised.
The best teachers are the aged. To the old our mouths are always
partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They
sit above our heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our
respect and pity. A flavour of the old school, a touch of something
different in their manner--which is freer and rounder, if they come of
what is called a good family, and often more timid and precise if they
are of the middle class--serves, in these days, to accentuate the
difference of age and add a distinction to gray hairs. But their
superiority is founded more deeply than by outward marks or gestures.
They are before us in the march of man; they have more or less solved
the irking problem; they have battled through the equinox of life; in
good and evil they have held their course; and now, without open
shame, they near the crown and harbour. It may be we have been struck
with one of fortune's darts; we can scarce be civil, so cruelly is our
spirit tossed. Yet long before we were so much as thought upon, the
like calamity befell the old man or woman that now, with pleasant
humour, rallies us upon our inattention, sitting composed in the holy
evening of man's life, in the clear shining after rain. We grow
ashamed of our distresses new and hot and coarse, like villainous
roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, under the heavens
of faith; and out of the worst, in the mere presence of contented
elders, look forward and take patience. Fear shrinks before them "like
a thing reproved," not the flitting and ineffectual fear of death, but
the instant, dwelling terror of the responsibilities and revenges of
life. Their speech, indeed, is timid; they report lions in the path;
they counsel a meticulous[31] footing; but their serene, marred faces
are more eloquent and tell another story. Where they have gone, we
will go also, not very greatly fearing; what they have endured
unbroken, we also, God helping us, will make a shift to bear.
Not only is the presence of the aged in itself remedial, but their
minds are stored with antidotes, wisdom's simples, plain
considerations overlooked by youth. They have matter to communicate,
be they never so stupid. Their talk is not merely literature, it is
great literature; classic in virtue of the speaker's detachment,
studded, like a book of travel, with things we should not otherwise
have learnt. In virtue, I have said, of the speaker's detachment--and
this is why, of two old men, the one who is not your father speaks to
you with the more sensible authority; for in the paternal relation the
oldest have lively interests and remain still young. Thus I have known
two young men great friends; each swore by the other's father; the
father of each swore by the other lad; and yet each pair of parent and
child were perpetually by the ears. This is typical: it reads like the
germ of some kindly[32] comedy.
The old appear in conversation in two characters: the critically
silent and the garrulous anecdotic. The last is perhaps what we look
for; it is perhaps the more instructive. An old gentleman, well on in
years, sits handsomely and naturally in the bow-window of his age,
scanning experience with reverted eye; and chirping and smiling,
communicates the accidents and reads the lesson of his long career.
Opinions are strengthened, indeed, but they are also weeded out in the
course of years. What remains steadily present to the eye of the
retired veteran in his hermitage, what still ministers to his content,
what still quickens his old honest heart--these are "the real
long-lived things"[33] that Whitman tells us to prefer. Where youth
agrees with age, not where they differ, wisdom lies; and it is when
the young disciple finds his heart to beat in tune with his
grey-bearded teacher's that a lesson may be learned. I have known one
old gentleman, whom I may name, for he is now gathered to his
stock--Robert Hunter, Sheriff of Dumbarton,[34] and author of an
excellent law-book still re-edited and republished. Whether he was
originally big or little is more than I can guess. When I knew him he
was all fallen away and fallen in; crooked and shrunken; buckled into
a stiff waistcoat for support; troubled by ailments, which kept him
hobbling in and out of the room; one foot gouty; a wig for decency,
not for deception, on his head; close shaved, except under his
chin--and for that he never failed to apologise, for it went sore
against the traditions of his life. You can imagine how he would fare
in a novel by Miss Mather;[35] yet this rag of a Chelsea[36] veteran
lived to his last year in the plenitude of all that is best in man,
brimming with human kindness, and staunch as a Roman soldier under his
manifold infirmities. You could not say that he had lost his memory,
for he would repeat Shakespeare and Webster and Jeremy Taylor and
Burke[37] by the page together; but the parchment was filled up, there
was no room for fresh inscriptions, and he was capable of repeating
the same anecdote on many successive visits. His voice survived in its
full power, and he took a pride in using it. On his last voyage as
Commissioner of Lighthouses, he hailed a ship at sea and made himself
clearly audible without a speaking trumpet, ruffing the while with a
proper vanity in his achievement. He had a habit of eking out his
words with interrogative hems, which was puzzling and a little
wearisome, suited ill with his appearance, and seemed a survival from
some former stage of bodily portliness. Of yore, when he was a great
pedestrian and no enemy to good claret, he may have pointed with these
minute guns his allocutions to the bench. His humour was perfectly
equable, set beyond the reach of fate; gout, rheumatism, stone and
gravel might have combined their forces against that frail tabernacle,
but when I came round on Sunday evening, he would lay aside Jeremy
Taylor's _Life of Christ_ and greet me with the same open brow, the
same kind formality of manner. His opinions and sympathies dated the
man almost to a decade. He had begun life, under his mother's
influence, as an admirer of Junius,[38] but on maturer knowledge had
transferred his admiration to Burke. He cautioned me, with entire
gravity, to be punctilious in writing English; never to forget that I
was a Scotchman, that English was a foreign tongue, and that if I
attempted the colloquial, I should certainly be shamed: the remark was
apposite, I suppose, in the days of David Hume.[39] Scott was too new
for him; he had known the author--known him, too, for a Tory; and to
the genuine classic a contemporary is always something of a trouble.
He had the old, serious love of the play; had even, as he was proud to
tell, played a certain part in the history of Shakespearian revivals,
for he had successfully pressed on Murray, of the old Edinburgh
Theatre, the idea of producing Shakespeare's fairy pieces with great
scenic display.[40] A moderate in religion, he was much struck in the
last years of his life by a conversation with two young lads,
revivalists. "H'm," he would say--"new to me. I have had--h'm--no such
experience." It struck him, not with pain, rather with a solemn
philosophic interest, that he, a Christian as he hoped, and a
Christian of so old a standing, should hear these young fellows
talking of his own subject, his own weapons that he had fought the
battle of life with,--"and--h'm--not understand." In this wise and
grateful attitude he did justice to himself and others, reposed
unshaken in his old beliefs, and recognised their limits without anger
or alarm. His last recorded remark, on the last night of his life, was
after he had been arguing against Calvinism[41] with his minister and
was interrupted by an intolerable pang. "After all," he said, "of all
the 'isms, I know none so bad as rheumatism." My own last sight of him
was some time before, when we dined together at an inn; he had been on
circuit, for he stuck to his duties like a chief part of his
existence; and I remember it as the only occasion on which he ever
soiled his lips with slang--a thing he loathed. We were both Roberts;
and as we took our places at table, he addressed me with a twinkle:
"We are just what you would call two bob."[42] He offered me port, I
remember, as the proper milk of youth; spoke of "twenty-shilling
notes"; and throughout the meal was full of old-world pleasantry and
quaintness, like an ancient boy on a holiday. But what I recall
chiefly was his confession that he had never read _Othello_ to an
end.[43] Shakespeare was his continual study. He loved nothing better
than to display his knowledge and memory by adducing parallel passages
from Shakespeare, passages where the same word was employed, or the
same idea differently treated. But _Othello_ had beaten him. "That
noble gentleman and that noble lady--h'm--too painful for me." The
same night the boardings were covered with posters, "Burlesque of
_Othello_," and the contrast blazed up in my mind like a bonfire. An
unforgettable look it gave me into that kind man's soul. His
acquaintance was indeed a liberal and pious education.[44] All the
humanities were taught in that bare dining-room beside his gouty
footstool. He was a piece of good advice; he was himself the instance
that pointed and adorned his various talk. Nor could a young man have
found elsewhere a place so set apart from envy, fear, discontent, or
any of the passions that debase; a life so honest and composed; a soul
like an ancient violin, so subdued to harmony, responding to a touch
in music--as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter chatting at the
eleventh hour, under the shadow of eternity, fearless and gentle.
The second class of old people are not anecdotic; they are rather
hearers than talkers, listening to the young with an amused and
critical attention. To have this sort of intercourse to perfection, I
think we must go to old ladies. Women are better hearers than men, to
begin with; they learn, I fear in anguish, to bear with the tedious
and infantile vanity of the other sex; and we will take more from a
woman than even from the oldest man in the way of biting comment.
Biting comment is the chief part, whether for profit or amusement, in
this business. The old lady that I have in my eye is a very caustic
speaker, her tongue, after years of practice, in absolute command,
whether for silence or attack. If she chance to dislike you, you will
be tempted to curse the malignity of age. But if you chance to please
even slightly, you will be listened to with a particular laughing
grace of sympathy, and from time to time chastised, as if in play,
with a parasol as heavy as a pole-axe. It requires a singular art, as
well as the vantage-ground of age, to deal these stunning corrections
among the coxcombs of the young. The pill is disguised in sugar of
wit; it is administered as a compliment--if you had not pleased, you
would not have been censured; it is a personal affair--a hyphen, _a
trait d'union,_[45] between you and your censor; age's philandering,
for her pleasure and your good. Incontestably the young man feels very
much of a fool; but he must be a perfect Malvolio,[46] sick with
self-love, if he cannot take an open buffet and still smile. The
correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have
transgressed, and your friend says nothing and avoids your eye. If a
man were made of gutta-percha, his heart would quail at such a moment.
But when the word is out, the worst is over; and a fellow with any
good-humour at all may pass through a perfect hail of witty criticism,
every bare place on his soul hit to the quick with a shrewd missile,
and reappear, as if after a dive, tingling with a fine moral reaction,
and ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-third loath, for a
repetition of the discipline.
There are few women, not well sunned and ripened, and perhaps
toughened, who can thus stand apart from a man and say the true thing
with a kind of genial cruelty. Still there are some--and I doubt if
there be any man who can return the compliment.
The class of men represented by Vernon Whitford in _The Egoist_,[47]
says, indeed, the true thing, but he says it stockishly. Vernon is a
noble fellow, and makes, by the way, a noble and instructive contrast
to Daniel Deronda; his conduct is the conduct of a man of honour; but
we agree with him, against our consciences, when he remorsefully
considers "its astonishing dryness." He is the best of men, but the
best of women manage to combine all that and something more. Their
very faults assist them; they are helped even by the falseness of
their position in life. They can retire into the fortified camp of the
proprieties. They can touch a subject and suppress it. The most adroit
employ a somewhat elaborate reserve as a means to be frank, much as
they wear gloves when they shake hands. But a man has the full
responsibility of his freedom, cannot evade a question, can scarce be
silent without rudeness, must answer for his words upon the moment,
and is not seldom left face to face with a damning choice, between the
more or less dishonourable wriggling of Deronda and the downright
woodenness of Vernon Whitford.
But the superiority of women is perpetually menaced; they do not sit
throned on infirmities like the old; they are suitors as well as
sovereigns; their vanity is engaged, their affections are too apt to
follow; and hence much of the talk between the sexes degenerates into
something unworthy of the name. The desire to please, to shine with a
certain softness of lustre and to draw a fascinating picture of
oneself, banishes from conversation all that is sterling and most of
what is humorous. As soon as a strong current of mutual admiration
begins to flow, the human interest triumphs entirely over the
intellectual, and the commerce of words, consciously or not, becomes
secondary to the commercing of eyes. But even where this ridiculous
danger is avoided, and a man and woman converse equally and honestly,
something in their nature or their education falsifies the strain. An
instinct prompts them to agree; and where that is impossible, to agree
to differ. Should they neglect the warning, at the first suspicion of
an argument, they find themselves in different hemispheres. About any
point of business or conduct, any actual affair demanding settlement,
a woman will speak and listen, hear and answer arguments, not only
with natural wisdom, but with candour and logical honesty. But if the
subject of debate be something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse
for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater instantly
abandon hope; he may employ reason, adduce facts, be supple, be
smiling, be angry, all shall avail him nothing; what the woman said
first, that (unless she has forgotten it) she will repeat at the end.
Hence, at the very junctures when a talk between men grows brighter
and quicker and begins to promise to bear fruit, talk between the
sexes is menaced with dissolution. The point of difference, the point
of interest, is evaded by the brilliant woman, under a shower of
irrelevant conversational rockets; it is bridged by the discreet woman
with a rustle of silk, as she passes smoothly forward to the nearest
point of safety. And this sort of prestidigitation, juggling the
dangerous topic out of sight until it can be reintroduced with safety
in an altered shape, is a piece of tactics among the true drawing-room
queens.
The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place; it is so by our
choice and for our sins. The subjection of women; the ideal imposed
upon them from the cradle; and worn, like a hair-shirt, with so much
constancy; their motherly, superior tenderness to man's vanity and
self-importance; their managing arts--the arts of a civilised slave
among good-natured barbarians--are all painful ingredients and all
help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of that amusing
artificial scene that genuine relations are founded, or ideas honestly
compared. In the garden, on the road or the hillside, or _tête-à-tête_
and apart from interruptions, occasions arise when we may learn much
from any single woman; and nowhere more often than in, married life.
Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes. The disputes
are valueless; they but ingrain the difference; the heroic heart of
woman prompting her at once to nail her colours to the mast. But in
the intervals, almost unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the
whole material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck out
and shared, the two persons more and more adapt their notions one to
suit the other, and in process of time, without sound of trumpet, they
conduct each, other into new worlds of thought.
NOTES
The two papers on _Talk and Talkers_ first appeared in the _Cornhill
Magazine_, for April and for August, 1882, Vol. XLV, pp. 410-418, Vol.
XLVI, pp. 151-158. The second paper had the title, _Talk and Talkers_.
(_A Sequel_.) For Stevenson's relations with the Editor, see our note
to _An Apology for Idlers_. With the publication of the second part,
Stevenson's connection with the _Cornhill_ ceased, as the magazine in
1883 passed from the hands of Leslie Stephen into those of James Payn.
The two papers next appeared in the volume _Memories and Portraits_
(1887). The first was composed during the winter of 1881-2 at Davos in
the Alps, whither he had gone for his health, the second a few months
later. Writing to Charles Baxter, 22 Feb. 1882, he said, "In an
article which will appear sometime in the Cornhill, 'Talk and
Talkers,' and where I have full-lengthened the conversation of Bob,
Henley, Jenkin, Simpson, Symonds, and Gosse, I have at the end one
single word about yourself. It may amuse you to see it." (_Letters_,
I, 268.) Writing from Bournemouth, England, in February 1885 to Sidney
Colvin, he said, "See how my 'Talk and Talkers' went; every one liked
his own portrait, and shrieked about other people's; so it will be
with yours. If you are the least true to the essential, the sitter
will be pleased; very likely not his friends, and that from various
motives." (_Letters_, I, 413.) In a letter to his mother from Davos,
dated 9 April 1882, he gives the real names opposite each character in
the first paper, and adds, "But pray regard these as secrets."
The art of conversation, like the art of letter-writing, reached its
highest point in the eighteenth century; cheap postage destroyed the
latter, and the hurly-burly of modern life has been almost too strong
for the former. In the French Salons of the eighteenth century, and in
the coffeehouses and drawing-rooms of England, good conversation was
regarded as a most desirable accomplishment, and was practised by many
with extraordinary wit and skill. Swift's satire on _Polite
Conversation_ (1738) as well as the number of times he discusses the
art of conversation in other places, shows how seriously he actually
regarded it. Stevenson, like many persons who are forced away from
active life, loved a good talk. Good writers are perhaps now more
common than good talkers.
