Table Talk

“ DID you ever hear me preach ? ” said Coleridge to Lamb, seizing him one day in Bloomsbury, as his own Ancient Mariner did the wedding - guest. “ I never he-heard you d - do anything else! ” was the reply, as, drawing a knife from his pocket, he cut off the button by which he was detained and marched away. Coming back, hours after, Lamb found his friend standing on the same spot, twirling between thumb and forefinger the button he had removed by a surgical operation and still preaching to an imaginary audience.

This, I take it, is a symbolical incident, a prophetic and indeed pathetic shadow of the dark age in which the very brightest conversational lights had no better chance of shining than their farthing-dip neighbors, and were finally to be extinguished by the relentless snuffers of a dull and impatient generation. Table talkers there may be still somewhere in the world, blankly contemplating the button by means of which they once secured a hearing, but where are the listeners ?

Where are the successors of the young men and maidens, old men and children, who rushed from all parts of the United Kingdom to Mr. Gilman’s house at Highgate to hear Coleridge “ discourse on every subject, human and divine, for hours ” night after night, and, dazzled by the rays of a splendid intellect, assented to everything, were converted to anything, wept in the right place, never laughed in the wrong one, followed intelligently all his metaphysical speculations, appreciated the most subtle niceties of thought and expression, and at last went home enraptured with the poet and lamenting the loss of the weekly conversazione like so many Peris on whom the gates of Paradise had been closed ? And what of the people who used to assemble around Mrs. Thrale’s tea-table and listen with awe and rapture to the dogmatic utterances of the Great Bear, only too charmed to be effaced, really gratified by snubs, and never dreaming of interrupting the feast of reason and the flow of soul, never objecting to any proposition, and scarcely ever interpolating so much as a single phrase ? Boswell in a revolutionary, daring mood once got so far as, “ I wonder ” — after the Doctor had got off about two pages of close print on some topic of the day, but was instantly and very properly suppressed. “ Don’t wonder, Boswell!” commanded the great man with stern repressiveness; and if the company dared to indulge in the forbidden luxury after that, we may be sure that it was at the impertinence of Boswell’s attempting to palm off a conversational sixpence and small beer on a company waiting to be paid vast sums in the gold of Guinea and the wine of ecstasy.

The more we read of the celebrated côteries of past times, the more amazing do we find the difference between, not the talkers, but the listeners of this and that period; the people who skipped nimbly from bon mots to Essays on the Genius of Christianity in the wake of the wits of the Parisian salons ; assisted greedily at the tremendous conferences of the Klopstockian and Wertherian school of philosophers at Weimar; and intrigued to be allowed to join the delightful conclave at Holland House. Listeners are the great stumbling-block in the way of such institutions being revived. Some faint echo of them is to be found in the immense enthusiasm of the King of Bavaria and the other disciples of Wagner, and the attitudes of devotion expressed in twisted legs and clasped hands, “ the rapt soul sitting in the eyes ” of the æsthetics groveling at the feet of their Gamaliels, — Burne-Jones, Rossetti, and Morris, — but the spirit of the age is so opposed to such demonstrations that they excite considerably more ridicule than admiration.

Indeed, the world seems to have rushed to the opposite extreme. It has not only run away from the table talkers, but stuffed its fingers in its ears and refused to listen, charm they never so wisely. The men best worth hearing have found this out long ago, and taken their cases to that supreme and final court of appeal, the Press. Morse himself cannot telegraph without a wire; it must be properly insulated ; the connection must be perfect; the operator at the other end of the line must have a certain degree of intelligence, must be in a receptive attitude, and pay close attention to the workings of the divine current, before genius can flash its message through the world. What can have destroyed the essential conditions in which the table talker lived, and moved, and made his reputation ? Can any one tell ? Can it be railroads, telegraphs, steamboats, telephones, the public school system, the Declaration of Independence and the triumph of republican principles, nihilism or communism that has played us the scurvy trick ? Can human nature have changed, along with everything else in this changeful age ?

In the golden age of table talk the listener seems to have had all the virtues and none of the faults of the tribe, as we know them. He was able to grasp any subject, however abstruse. He always understood the first time. He never had a post-mortem appreciation of jokes, and burst out in a guffaw long after everybody had forgotten all about them. He never kindly translated what had been said and made it mean something totally different from what was intended. He never rejected the slow march of demonstration and leaped to the wrong conclusion, thereby utterly routing the raconteur, and putting him to flight horse and foot. He never proclaimed a statute of limitation, and said, “ Very true, my dear Jones, up to a certain point. But you go too far. Your theory carried to its logical conclusion would ” — (Here twenty minutes of illogical absurdities and niggling objections follow.) He never stopped you in the middle of a good story to insist with painful accuracy that some town incidentally alluded to was not fifteen miles from Carlisle, but fourteen and three quarters, or begged pardon for interrupting you but your mention of Scotch whiskey reminded him of one of the most amusing episodes in his whole life, which he related at great length and bored everybody to extinction, besides killing the original story outright. He never abstracted himself from the conversation while he hunted up his arguments and epigrams, and then inserted them violently in the first pause that occurred, or made an opportunity if none existed. He never wrecked a rich freight-train of ideas by a feeble pun or a hackneyed quotation. He thrilled at an impassioned appeal, melted over a noble sentiment, understood every classical allusion, withered under sarcasm, delighted in brilliant imagery, and never resented the most caustic wit. He was a luminous, gifted, patient creature, all soul (except what was ears), and we shall ne’er look upon his like again. The poor relation who corroborates every utterance with fulsome additions of her own did not exist then. The people who pay no attention to what is being said and burn to get in their reply had not been invented. The man who habitually invalidates every statement that has not had the honor of emanating from him, who would contradict Faraday flatly about the influence of magnetism on light, and could not be convinced that he was mistaken in any scientific conclusion, by Sir David Brewster, Cuvier, Hugh Miller, Herschel, Humboldt, Laplace, Playfair, Darwin, and Huxley combined, had not yet reared his ignorant, obstinate, dogmatic crest. It was the Age of Listeners, and listening is a lost art.

I appeal to you, sir, who have a fund of information, a quickness at repartee, a wealth of anecdote not often met with, and can tell a story as well as any man in America, to confirm this statement. How often do you get off that delightful experience of yours in a Bulgarian café during the Russo-Turco war, in which you imitate officers of six nationalities so inimitably, before an even fairly attentive and appreciative audience ?

Suppose yourself dining out, not at your friend Sowerby’s where the seven children are all at the table, and their fond mamma dribbles out a dreary domestic record of bad servants and abnormally clever children at one end, and the father, with a note-to-meet-inBank-and-no-money-to-do-it-with expression, growls out a few sentences at the other, and the Irish maid gives her views when the conversation flags, and drops the leg of mutton on the threshold, and finally retires to the adjoining kitchen to rake the ashes out of the furnace noisily, and sing The Wearing of the Green. No, take American life under its most favorable conditions, and fancy yourself breaking Vienna bread at the table of some hospitable millionaire. Do you suppose that all the company is going to sit silent, attentive, entranced, while you express your opinion of the Egyptian situation ? No, not if you were Ebers or Sir Garnet Wolseley. No, not if it were the late Arctic Expedition instead, and you were Lieutenant Danenhower.

Sentimental lady opposite, addressing the chandelier apparently, would murmur, " Oh, those poor dear Egyptians ! I do hope they won’t get hurt. I’ve always doted upon the Egyptians. I always keep a crocodile paper-weight on my writing table, and dear papa thinks me so like his print of Cleopatra.”

Gentleman on the left would say, “ Have you seen the leaders in the Tribune and the Herald, and Smith’s article, The Land of the Pharoahs, in the South American Review ? Covers the whole ground.” You have seen Smith’s paper, and are about to take issue with him on several points, when a conversational non-combatant below you makes a deprecating appeal to you as the superior man of the party, “ Is it true, sir, that the Nile overflows its banks every year ? How do they get it back again ? ” You begin : “ As far back as the days of Moses ” — Irreverent youth breaks in with “ Moses in the bulrushes keeping off the mosquitoes ! ” as a perfectly pertinent and welcome addendum, and you retire disgusted. On leaving the room the wouldbe-intellectual young lady stops you and says, “ Thank you, dear Mr. Powell, for talking so very beautifully about Egypt. I was taking notes of what you said all the time, behind the épergne, and shall put it all down in my diary to-night.” You grind your teeth and pull your moustache and try to look pleased as you mutter, “ Delighted, I’m sure ! ” But shades of Hazlitt, Coleridge, Dr. Johnson, Sydney Smith, and Macaulay, what would you say to such table talk ? Many years ago, the writer was breakfasting one morning in London with a friend, and among other guests was the late Matthew F. Maury of Virginia (the simplest and best, as well as one of the most distinguished of savants), and a very handsome, bumptious young fellow, a nephew of the host, just up from Oxford, with all the world in a sling, and a strong disposition to give the sun a black eye on the smallest possible provocation. He was placed at table just opposite Commodore Maury, whom he knew very well by reputation, but had never associated with the quiet, kindly old gentleman across the mahogany. The conversation turning upon the origin and influence of the Gulf Stream the Commodore was appealed to, and with the beautiful modesty and simplicity for which he was noted began to make his statement. I say began, for he was never allowed to finish it. Young Oxford objected to, sniffed at, and utterly pooh-poohed every proposition, and it was charming to see the old man laying no claim whatever to superior knowledge, but mildly asking if it had “ occurred to him to look at it in this light,” gently deprecating his conclusions, and patiently explaining his own position. But all in vain ; he was only trampled the more under the heel of assertion, and at last meekly retired from the contest, bowed, and followed the ladies into the library, leaving his antagonist swelling with a sense of victory. All this time the host had been fretting and fuming at the other end of the table, out of range, and now burst out in a turkey-cock fury with, “Frank, do you know that you have been making a consummate ass of yourself ? Do you know who you have been talking to ? That is Maury ! ” Poor young Oxford’s face, on hearing this, expressed an amount of amazement and mortification that spoke well for its ingenuousness. His rosy cheeks turned quite purple, and he gasped out in a horrified way, “ Good Heavens ! You don’t mean it,” and, napkin in hand, jumped up, rushed after the Commodore, and made the most profuse apologies in a red-heat of contrition, and was then dismissed with a kindly pat on the shoulder and a “ Never mind, never mind, my dear boy. You are very young,” that was pulverizing in the extreme. Women are supposed to have more tact and finer sensibilities than the grosser sex, yet how few of them resemble Madame de Staël “ qui savait bien écouter.”

Conceding, then, that there are no listeners who hear through every pore and sympathize in every fibre of their being, have we lost so much, after all, by the decadence of table talk? Hazlitt confesses that he was often dreadfully bored by the guild ; and Scott told Lockhart that he would rather hear the simple thoughts and tales of his poor, uneducated neighbors, from whom he heard higher sentiments than he had ever met with, out of the pages of the Bible. If a great deal of the talk was wonderfully brilliant, a considerable portion was dull and forced ; and if some of the witticisms recorded had come down to us C. O. D., like our parcels, iconoclastic as it sounds, I dare say they would have been sold at a literary express office as so much waste paper. Most of us know a half-dozen people who say better things every day in the week, and do not lie awake at night fancying themselves geniuses either. Is there not plenty of pleasant, bright exchange of ideas nowadays ? There is very little that is Shakespeare and the musical glasses in most cultivated households. Universal education, incessant travel, the faculties for girdling the earth in a way Puck little dreamed of, and a multitude of publications have brought about a quite millennial state of general intelligence, though there will always exist rich veins of ignorance in certain directions, and mountain fastnesses of prejudice and superstition in which individuals and nations can take refuge. Mention Timbuctoo or Kamschatka in one of the great capitals at your club, and four or five men can be found to give an accurate account of its climate, customs, population, productions, etc., with a mass of other information the result of personal experience. If we have not the eloquence of “ the inspired charity boy,” Macaulay’s flashes of silence, Sydney Smith saying that his idea of heaven is to eat paté de fois gras to the sound of trumpets, or the “ puns and punch of bread-and-cheesetime ” in Inner Temple Lane, and dear Elia’s stuttered whimsicalities, we escape a great deal, too. Our guests do not riddle us like Swift, or get tipsy like Burns, or call the lady of the house by her Christian name and sprawl fulllength on the sofa like Hogg, or sit speechless for hours like De Quincey. They are sober, decent folk, not malignantly dull, by any means, but able to discourse pleasantly on a variety of topics. And at any rate, like Mrs. Poyser, when we come to die, we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that we have “ said our say.”

Poor music that we make ourselves, it has been said, is more enjoyed than the finest that can be made for us, and a friendly conversational chorus is vastly preferable to an intellectual solo. To look on and see the lion toss his mane grows monotonous after a while, and what right has he to silence with his roar the pleasant chirp of birds, the baa

of lambs, or even the hisses of geese in a world which was not made for giants and elephants alone but for all God’s creatures ? Causons-nous done, mes frères. Ainsi soit-il !

F. C. Baylor.