Prepare to Talk and Feast

Lord Ribblesdale held his friend up to ridicule, laughed at his stores of neatly assorted anecdotes, pooh-poohed at his collection of old magazine articles, and in general scoffed at the thought of preparation for conversation.
 —Public domain image of Lord Ribblesdale

Why Shouldn't People Prepare Themselves to Talk as Well as to Feast?

We remember reading in the Nineteenth Century an article by Lord Ribblesdale on “The Art of Conversation.” Just what was in the article we do not altogether clearly remember. That there was some description therein of the methods of a certain friend of the writer who had attained to some distinction in London drawing-rooms as a conversationalist, we remember very well. 

This gentleman, it seemed, prepared himself for “tea fights” and “muffin-scrambles,” as we have heard them called in England, and for other social functions where tea, women, and conversation were the staple, much as an undergraduate prepares himself by “cramming” for an examination. Lord Ribblesdale held his friend up to ridicule, laughed at his stores of neatly assorted anecdotes, pooh-poohed at his collection of old magazine articles, and in general scoffed at the thought of preparation for conversation.

To those, however, who are much dined and tead, and drawn into the social labyrinths where conversation obtains as the main relaxation, the thought of preparation for conversation— on the part of other people— comes as a very welcome suggestion. When a man goes to another man's house as his guest he usually prepares himself as to everything except his mind. But he goes ofttimes as a whited intellectual sepulcher, cleansed and shining without; dull, tired, eaten up with worries within. Nor is he usually in the least conscience-stricken to go thus mentally naked into the presence of his friends. Just why one should not take fifteen minutes or a half hour in a easy chair to collect one’s self and to prepare one's self to drop honey here and salt there, and thus do his share at feast or function, we know not.

If men and women were so constructed that the business of life could go on interminably and thus be the staple product of conversation wherever they met together, it were well enough to trust to “shop” for all one’s needs. But this is not so. It is not merely agreeable to have change and rest, it is a necessity of human existence, and wherever and whenever man or woman lifts the curtain upon a new scene, or provides a new picture of life, or leads one beside the still waters or into pastures fresh and green, there is a new impetus given to life; and of the innumerable ways in which such inspiration may spend itself for the good of humanity, no one can calculate or determine. 

It may or may not be a heroic part to play, but wielding a sword is not so efficacious in a case of fainting as waving a fan. Just to give a little freshness to the social air is often enough to do a very good deed in a tired world. No one need be ashamed, therefore, we should think, to give himself a little private coaching with this end in view. The beasts rush at their meals and rend and tear and chew and swallow, but this is neither wholesome nor proper for men and women. And yet in some households the gathering together about the table is a sullen, silent affair, where no one feels responsible for cheerfulness, and where, in consequence, the clouds and thick darkness of dyspepsia settle down, without a flash of social lightning or a roar of conversational thunder to break the dull dripping of the monotonous shower. 

We remember very distinctly, on the other hand, an establishment where from ten to fifteen members of a large family gathered daily at the table and where it was a mark of infamy almost upon each one who did not make an effort to add to the general fund of conversation. They were busy people, too— the men busy with affair sometimes of large dimensions, the women busy with the care of a large establishment and the demands of a widely varied social life. They all had cares and disappointments, and some of them very real sorrows but when they met together they gave in, each one, something to the store of general happiness.—Boston Gazette, 1891

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