Conversation, Mary Greer Conklin [popular books to read txt] 📗

Thus Miss Black was not only drawn out, she was also drawn into the conversation and became the center of an extended general discussion on the very impersonal and interesting subject of punning. As the talk on punning diverged, the conversation gradually fell back into private chats between dinner-companions.

A host or hostess will know intuitively when the conversation has remained tête-à-tête long enough, and will once more make it general. When guests pay due attention to their host and hostess, the talk will naturally be carried into general channels, especially where guests are seated a little distance away. Even in general conversation a good story, if short and crisp, is no doubt a good thing; but when either a host or a guest does nothing but "anecdote" from the soup to the coffee, story-telling becomes tiresome. Anecdotes should not be dragged in by the neck, but should come naturally as the talk about many different subjects may suggest them.

It is the duty of the host and hostess, and certainly their pleasure, to make conversational paths easy for any strangers in a strange land. It does not follow that a host and hostess are always well acquainted with all their guests. There are instances where they have never even met some of them. An invitation is extended to the house-guest of a friend; or some person of distinction temporarily in the vicinity is invited, the formality of previous calls being waived for this reason or that. Unless a hostess can feel perfectly safe in delegating to some one else the entertaining of a stranger, it is wise to seat this guest as near to herself as possible, even tho he is not made a guest of honor. She can thus learn something about her new acquaintance and put the stranger on an equal conversational footing with the guests who know each other well.

In their zeal to give their friends pleasure, a host or hostess often tells a guest that he is to take a particularly brilliant woman in to dinner, and the woman is informed that she is to be the neighbor of a notably clever man. To one whose powers are brought out by being put on his mettle this might prove the best sort of conversational tonic; on the other hand it might be better tact to say that tho a certain person has the reputation of being exceptionally clever, he is, in truth, as natural as an old shoe; that all one has to do to entertain him is to talk ordinarily about commonplace topics. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this is so. Some one is responsible for the epigram: "A great man always lives a great way off"; and it is true that when we come to know really great people we find that they are as much interested as any one else in the commonplaces of life. Indeed, the more intellectual people are, the more the homely things of life interest them. When Tennyson was once a passenger on a steamer crossing the English Channel, some people who had been assigned to seats opposite him in the dining saloon learned that their neighbor at table was the great poet. In a flutter of interest they listened for the wisdom which would drop from the distinguished man's mouth and heard the hearty words, "What fine potatoes these are!" This particular point requires nice discernment on the part of host and hostess; they should know when they may safely impress one guest with the cleverness of the other, and when it would be disastrous to do so. Suppose the consequence is that each guest waits for the sparkling flow of wit from the other, and to the consternation of the host and hostess there is profound silence between two really interesting people on whose cleverness they had counted to make their dinner a success!

It is also the province of a host and hostess tactfully to steer the drift of general table-talk away from topics likely to offend the sensibilities of any one guest. Hosts owe not only attention but protection to every person whom they ask to their home, and it devolves upon them to interpose and come to the rescue if a guest is disabled in any way from doing himself any sort of conversational justice. Swaying conversation round and over topics embarrassing to any guest requires the utmost tact and delicacy on the part of a host and hostess; for in keeping one guest from being wounded or embarrassed, the offender himself must not be made to feel conscious of his misstep. Indeed he may be, and usually is, quite unconscious of the effect his words are having on those whom he does not know well. Any subject which is being handled dangerously must be juggled out of sight, and the determination to juggle it must be concealed. Tho it is quite correct for one to say one's self, "I beg pardon for changing the subject abruptly," nothing is worse form than to say to another, "Change the subject," or, "Let us change the subject." To do this is both rude and crude. Directing conversation means leading talkers unconsciously to talk of something else. Any guest, as well as a host or hostess, may graciously steer conversation when it touches a subject some phase of which is likely to offend sensitive and unsophisticated people. At a series of dinners given to a circle of philosophic minds religious intolerance was largely the subject of discussion. The circle, for the most part well known to each other, was of liberal belief. A guest appeared among them, and it was known only to one or two that this man was a sincere Catholic. As the talk turned upon religious discussion, one of the guests so directed the conversation as to bring out the information that the stranger was a Catholic by faith and rearing. This was a very kind and appropriate thing to do. It acquainted the hostess with a fact of which she was ignorant; and it gave all present a feeling of security in whatever they might say.

A hospitable host and hostess will not absorb the conversation at their table. They will render the gracious service of furnishing a background for the cleverness of others, rather than display unsparingly their own brilliancy. Indeed, a man or woman does not have to be brilliant or intellectual to succeed in this most gracious of social arts. The host or hostess who possesses sympathy and tact will surpass in dinner-giving the most brilliant person in the world who selfishly monopolizes conversation at his own table. If guests cannot go away from a dinner-table feeling better pleased with themselves, that campaign of hospitality has been a failure. When the self-satisfaction on their faces betrays the subtle art of the host and hostess in having convinced all their guests that they have made themselves interesting, then the acme of hospitality has been achieved. One of the most good-natured but most inane of men was one day chuckling at having been royally diverted at a dinner-party.

"He was at Mrs. X's," said some one.

"How do you know that?"

"Indeed! Don't I know her way? She'd make a raven go home rivaling the nightingale."

To be able to make your guests better pleased with themselves is the greatest of all social accomplishments.

"An ideal dinner party," says a famous London hostess, "resembles nothing so much as a masterpiece of the jeweler's art in the center of which is some crystalline gem in the form of a sparkling and sympathetic hostess round whom the guests are arranged in an effective setting." It would seem quite as necessary that a host prove a crystalline gem in this masterpiece of