Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
his conversations as recorded by Eckermann; and the “Table-Talk” of
Coleridge is one of the best remains of his genius.
In the Norse legends, the gods of Valhalla, when they meet the Jotuns,
converse on the perilous terms that he who cannot answer the other’s
questions forfeits his own life. Odin comes to the threshold of the
Jotun Waftrhudnir in disguise, calling himself Gangrader; is invited
into the hall, and told that he cannot go out thence unless he can
answer every question Waftrhudnir shall put. Waftrhudnir asks him the
name of the god of the sun, and of the god who brings the night; what
river separates the dwellings of the sons of the giants from those of
the gods; what plain lies between the gods and Surtur, their adversary,
etc.; all which the disguised Odin answers satisfactorily. Then it is
his turn to interrogate, and he is answered well for a time by the
Jotun. At last he puts a question which none but himself could answer:
“What did Odin whisper in the ear of his son Balder, when Balder
mounted the funeral pile?” The startled giant replies: “None of the
gods knows what in the old time THOU saidst in the ear of thy son: with
death on my mouth have I spoken the fate-words of the generation of the
Æsir; with Odin contended I in wise words. Thou must ever the wisest
be.”
And still the gods and giants are so known, and still they play the
same game in all the million mansions of heaven and of earth; at all
tables, clubs, and _tête-à-têtes_, the lawyers in the court-house,
the senators in the capitol, the doctors in the academy, the wits in
the hotel. Best is he who gives an answer that cannot be answered
again. _Omnis definitio periculosa est_, and only wit has the secret.
The same thing took place when Leibnitz came to visit Newton; when
Schiller came to Goethe; when France, in the person of Madame de Staël,
visited Goethe and Schiller; when Hegel was the guest of Victor Cousin
in Paris; when Linnæus was the guest of Jussieu. It happened many
years ago, that an American chemist carried a letter of introduction
to Dr. Dalton of Manchester, England, the author of the theory of
atomic proportions, and was coolly enough received by the Doctor in the
laboratory where he was engaged. Only Dr. Dalton scratched a formula
on a scrap of paper and pushed it towards the guest,--“Had he seen
that?” The visitor scratched on another paper a formula describing
some results of his own with sulphuric acid, and pushed it across the
table,--“Had he seen that?” The attention of the English chemist was
instantly arrested, and they became rapidly acquainted. To answer a
question so as to admit of no reply, is the test of a man,--to touch
bottom every time. Hyde, Earl of Rochester, asked Lord-Keeper Guilford,
“Do you not think I could understand any business in England in a
month?” “Yes, my Lord,” replied the other, “but I think you would
understand it better in two months.” When Edward I. claimed to be
acknowledged by the Scotch (1292) as lord paramount, the nobles of
Scotland replied, “No answer can be made while the throne is vacant.”
When Henry III. (1217) plead duress against his people demanding
confirmation and execution of the Charter, the reply was: “If this were
admitted, civil wars could never close but by the extirpation of one of
the contending parties.”
What can you do with one of these sharp respondents? What can you do
with an eloquent man? No rules of debate, no contempt of court, no
exclusions, no gag-laws can be contrived, that his first syllable will
not set aside or overstep and annul. You can shut out the light, it may
be; but can you shut out gravitation? You may condemn his book; but
can you fight against his thought? That is always too nimble for you,
anticipates you, and breaks out victorious in some other quarter. Can
you stop the motions of good sense? What can you do with Beaumarchais,
who converts the censor whom the court has appointed to stifle his
play into an ardent advocate? The court appoints another censor, who
shall crush it this time. Beaumarchais persuades him to defend it. The
court successively appoints three more severe inquisitors; Beaumarchais
converts them all into triumphant vindicators of the play which is
to bring in the Revolution. Who can stop the mouth of Luther,--of
Newton?--of Franklin,--of Mirabeau,--of Talleyrand?
These masters can make good their own place, and need no patron. Every
variety of gift--science, religion, politics, letters, art, prudence,
war, or love--has its vent and exchange in conversation. Conversation
is the Olympic games whither every superior gift resorts to assert
and approve itself,--and, of course, the inspirations of powerful
and public men, with the rest. But it is not this class,--whom the
splendor of their accomplishment almost inevitably guides into the
vortex of ambition, makes them chancellors and commanders of council
and of action, and makes them at last fatalists,--not these whom we
now consider. We consider those who are interested in thoughts, their
own and other men’s, and who delight in comparing them, who think it
the highest compliment they can pay a man, to deal with him as an
intellect, to expose to him the grand and cheerful secrets perhaps
never opened to their daily companions, to share with him the sphere of
freedom and the simplicity of truth.
But the best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to
treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple
lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds,--as a religious or
intellectual seeker,--finds himself a stranger and alien.
It is possible that the best conversation is between two persons who
can talk only to each other. Even Montesquieu confessed that, in
conversation, if he perceived he was listened to by a third person,
it seemed to him from that moment the whole question vanished from
his mind. I have known persons of rare ability who were heavy company
to good, social men who knew well enough how to draw out others of
retiring habit; and, moreover, were heavy to intellectual men who ought
to have known them. And does it never occur that we, perhaps, live with
people too superior to be seen,--as there are musical notes too high
for the scale of most ears? There are men who are great only to one or
two companions of more opportunity, or more adapted.
It was to meet these wants that in all civil nations attempts have been
made to organize conversation by bringing together cultivated people
under the most favorable conditions. ’Tis certain there was liberal
and refined conversation in the Greek, in the Roman, and in the Middle
Age. There was a time when in France a revolution occurred in domestic
architecture; when the houses of the nobility, which, up to that time,
had been constructed on feudal necessities, in a hollow square,--the
ground-floor being resigned to offices and stables, and the floors
above to rooms of state and to lodging-rooms,--were rebuilt with new
purpose. It was the Marchioness of Rambouillet who first got the horses
out of and the scholars into the palaces, having constructed her
_hôtel_ with a view to society, with superb suites of drawing-rooms
on the same floor, and broke through the _morgue_ of etiquette by
inviting to her house men of wit and learning as well as men of rank,
and piqued the emulation of Cardinal Richelieu to rival assemblies,
and so to the founding of the French Academy. The history of the Hôtel
Rambouillet and its brilliant circles makes an important date in French
civilization. And a history of clubs from early antiquity, tracing the
efforts to secure liberal and refined conversation, through the Greek
and Roman to the Middle Age, and thence down through French, English,
and German memoirs, tracing the clubs and coteries in each country,
would be an important chapter in history. We know well the Mermaid
Club, in London, of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Chapman, Herrick, Selden,
Beaumont and Fletcher; its “Rules” are preserved, and many allusions
to their suppers are found in Jonson, Herrick, and in Aubrey. Anthony
Wood has many details of Harrington’s Club. Dr. Bentley’s Club held
Newton, Wren, Evelyn, and Locke; and we owe to Boswell our knowledge of
the club of Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Gibbon, Reynolds, Garrick,
Beauclerk, and Percy. And we have records of the brilliant society that
Edinburgh boasted in the first decade of this century. Such societies
are possible only in great cities, and are the compensation which these
can make to their dwellers for depriving them of the free intercourse
with Nature. Every scholar is surrounded by wiser men than he--if they
cannot write as well. Cannot they meet and exchange results to their
mutual benefit and delight? It was a pathetic experience when a genial
and accomplished person said to me, looking from his country home to
the capital of New England, “There is a town of two hundred thousand
people, and not a chair in it for me.” If he were sure to find at No.
2000 Tremont Street what scholars were abroad after the morning studies
were ended, Boston would shine as the New Jerusalem to his eyes.
Now this want of adapted society is mutual. The man of thought, the man
of letters, the man of science, the administrator skilful in affairs,
the man of manners and culture, whom you so much wish to find,--each
of these is wishing to be found. Each wishes to open his thought,
his knowledge, his social skill to the daylight in your company and
affection, and to exchange his gifts for yours; and the first hint of a
select and intelligent company is welcome.
But the club must be self-protecting, and obstacles arise at the
outset. There are people who cannot well be cultivated, whom you must
keep down and quiet if you can. There are those who have the instinct
of a bat to fly against any lighted candle and put it out,--marplots
and contradictors. There are those who go only to talk, and those
who go only to hear: both are bad. A right rule for a club would
be,--Admit no man whose presence excludes any one topic. It requires
people who are not surprised and shocked, who do and let do, and let
be, who sink trifles, and know solid values, and who take a great deal
for granted.
It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws
of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance.
Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character. The
poet Marvell was wont to say “that he would not drink wine with any
one with whom he could not trust his life.” But neither can we afford
to be superfine. A man of irreproachable behavior and excellent sense
preferred on his travels taking his chance at a hotel for company, to
the charging himself with too many select letters of introduction. He
confessed he liked low company. He said the fact was incontestable,
that the society of gypsies was more attractive than that of bishops.
The girl deserts the parlor for the kitchen; the boy, for the wharf.
Tutors and parents cannot interest him like the uproarious conversation
he finds in the market or the dock. I knew a scholar, of some
experience in camps, who said that he liked, in a bar-room, to tell a
few coon stories, and put himself on a good footing with the company;
then he could be as silent as he chose. A scholar does not wish to be
always pumping his brains: he wants gossips. The black-coats are good
company only for black-coats; but when the manufacturers, merchants,
and ship-masters meet, see how much they have to say, and how long the
conversation lasts! They have come from many zones; they have traversed
wide countries; they know each his own arts, and the cunning artisans
of his craft; they have seen the best and the worst of men. Their
knowledge contradicts the popular opinion and your own on many points.