LONDON AT LEISURE
thing good. Much attrition has worn every sentence to a bullet."
An American writing that passage to-day would be accused of irony, since we no longer utter sentences at dinners. Yet when we consider the ages of Johnson, of the Prince Regent, even when we think of the Table Talk of Shirley, we must remember—and we must wonder what has become of that mighty stream. And we must wonder why we will no longer listen to talkers: why a talker is something we resent; why, in fact, a conversational artist strikes us nowadays as "a bounder".
The really good raconteurs of the Brummel type did survive in London, as very old men, into the late 'eighties: the mild, splendid, whiskered creatures of the Crimea still talked; the mild, splendid, and bearded creatures of the 'seventies still told anecdotes "à propos of" some general idea or other; nowadays we tell a "good story" with diffidence, being afraid of being taken for a sort of Theodore Hook or professional diner out. But, as a general rule, London limits itself to: "Did you see that extraordinary case in the So-and-so to-day? . . . " or "Have you read Such-and-such a novel? Seen such a play? Or such a picture show?" and it comments: "Rotten, I think", without reason given for the condemnation.
Partly, no doubt, it is because we have become so "democratic", as Emerson puts it, that society resents any monopolist of talk. Perhaps, too, the Englishman never did really enjoy being talked to or "entertained".
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