conversation

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Conversation/Wit

A London Coffeehouse.⁵³

Men frequented coffee houses and taverns to exchange news, gossip, and information and to debate, discuss, and drink. Coffee houses, a seventeenth-century novelty, were found throughout London by the beginning of the eighteenth-century. John Brewer writes: "The coffee-house was the precursor of the modern office, but once you were there you were as likely to talk about matters of general interest-the latest play, sexual scandal, or political quarrel-as carry on business."⁵² They also served as libraries, places of rest for the weary traveler, exhibition halls, and sometimes even as theaters. Lively arguments regarding politics, culture, and society arose in these places and, as a result, coffee houses were distrusted by the crown and its Tory supporters as a place of sedition and unrest. Two popular periodicals of the time, the Tatler and the Spectator, spoke rapturously of the coffee house as centers of "polite conversation."

Yet women rarely frequented the coffee houses. Indeed, the conversation discussed by the Female Tatler is that of the drawing room. Gender distinctions are drawn and enforced even here. As Mrs. Crackenthorpe notes, men not infrequently think themselves greater wits than women. She requests that men not believe they are greater wits than they are and that women not converse foolishly: "Nothing is so amazing to me as the choice of some women's conversation who dream away their time in incoherent stuff which makes 'em useless to the world" (no. 11). Although we should pity somewhat any

person who makes a fool of himself through indecorous or unattractive conversation, we should pity completely a person who is unaware that his conversation is so unacceptable. She writes with usual alacrity and acridity: "Amongst all the species of different degrees, ranks and orders of human species, there can be no greater object of compassion, nor any one more worthy the regard of the sensible part of mankind, than he that, in spite of natural simplicity, and amidst the frowns of an unaccountable fortune, has the additional curse of imagining himself to be a wit" (no. 22). The ability to converse widely and to converse well not only exhibited one's intelligence but was a sign of class as well. After all, only the truly well bred and refined (see Decorum) would be heard above the noise and squabble of the multitude, both in the streets and on the "sheets" (printed pamphlets, periodicals, etc.).

The art of conversation extends from the spoken to the written word. Artesia writes of the virtues of simplicity and clarity. No qualification has all along been more deservedly esteemed among the learned men than the easiness and plainness with which great men are observed to express themselves and to unfold the result of their studious thoughts. What benefit would the most excellent system of the creation have been to us in the brain of Descartes if that famous man had not laid it down so intelligibly? And not only in philosophy, but in all arts and sciences, a man's knowledge can do but little good either to himself or others if nobody besides himself is acquainted with his possessing of it (no. 58).

She wisely notes that conversation (in person or through print) is meant to foster understanding and questions the point of possessing knowledge that cannot be shared.

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