Caroline Taggart - Her Ladyships Guide to the Art of Conversation

LIZA [to Freddy, who is in convulsions of suppressed laughter]:

Here! what are you sniggering at?

FREDDY: The new small talk. You do it so awfully well.

LIZA: If I was doing it proper, what was you laughing at?

George Bernard Shaw

I n a famous scene from Shaws 1913 play Pygmalion, the inspiration for the musical My Fair Lady, the Cockney flower-girl Eliza is making her first foray into polite society and trying to pass herself off as a lady. Her mentor, Professor Higgins, has given her strict instructions on what to talk about: The weather and everybodys health. He intends her to stick to Fine day and How do you do. Eliza, however, adheres to the letter rather than the spirit of his advice: she manages to tell a shocked upper-class tea party about a gin-addicted aunt who allegedly died of influenza, but whom she believes was murdered by them she lived with for the sake of a straw hat.

This was in the time when the art of conversation was part of every young lady and gentlemans education. So if it could go so disastrously wrong when etiquette was widely understood and firmly enforced, how much more difficult is it now that we are generally left to muddle through as best we can?

More recently, a friend of Her Ladyships reported her bitter experiences of the sort of dinner party organised to help single people meet one another. Time after time she had found it impossible to draw her companions out, despite the fact that they had come deliberately in order to meet people like her. What should have been harmless conversational openings (What do you do?, Where do you come from?) turned into something like an interrogation, because the responses were so brief and werent followed by, And what about you? It makes you realise why some of these people cant get partners, she said between gritted teeth. They just dont know the rules.

So what, in todays easy-going society, are the rules?

Perhaps the best way to begin is by considering what conversation is and what it is not. A friend of Her Ladyships remembers fondly a snippet she overheard in her student days: two Oxford dons were crossing a college quadrangle and one was heard to say firmly to the other, And nineteenthly

Her Ladyship confesses to considerable admiration for anyone who can follow a train of thought so clearly that they can keep tabs on nineteen points of it. But, she ventures to suggest, these two academics were not having a conversation. One, despite the informal setting, was delivering a lecture; the other was listening either meekly or with growing indignation and almost certainly waiting for his companion to pause for breath so that he could edge a word in.

Conversation, Her Ladyship believes, is like a game in whichthe ball is batted around among the participants: not rigidly back and forth, back and forth, as in tennis, but in a more relaxed, beach-volleyball style.

Another friend reflected on a conversation he once had at a party with a woman who talked entirely about herself. Her activities, her holidays, her plans for moving house whatever she had to say, she was at the centre of it. I dont like this woman, Her Ladyships friend thought, because she clearly has no interest in me. That woman wasnt having a conversation either.

From those two negative examples, we can move on to a positive one, summed up by Dr Johnsons maxim that the happiest conversation is one where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments. Its an invitation to someone else to engage with you, and an opportunity for you to engage with them. Conversation, Her Ladyship believes, is like a game in which the ball is batted around among the participants: not rigidly back and forth, back and forth, as in tennis, but in a more relaxed, beach-volleyball style. Everyone puts a hand on the ball when it comes their way, contributing their bit when they are in the best position to do so. No one hogs the ball the rules of the game dont permit it. But no one is entirely left out either. Good players and good conversationalists seem to know instinctively how to pass, making it easy for others to take over. Weaker players may fumble or drop the ball, or hit it in an odd direction so that someone else has to go out of their way to retrieve it. This can be annoying or embarrassing, so its important to keep the ball in play. Finally, and to revert to the its not like tennis analogy, there is no place in this game for aces, smashes or double faults.

It has often been said not least by Her Ladyship that the essence of good manners is to make the other person feel comfortable.

But even if we basically understand these rules, the truth is that most of us hate the idea of walking into a room full of strangers, all of whom seem to know each other. Its worst if we are on our own, but even if were not, it seems cowardly and somehow wrong to spend the entire evening talking to a partner or colleague. Yet whether we are on our own or part of a couple, it is often difficult to strike up conversations with people we have never met before. We dont know what to say or how to say it and we cant believe that anyone is going to care anyway. But there are tricks and techniques we can learn that will turn a potential ordeal into a source of enjoyment or even, in a business context, profit.

Conversation isnt or shouldnt be a painful duty or an albatross around anyones neck. It isnt a test in which you pass or fail, achieve distinction or just scrape through. It can be about anything from Bach to Brussels sprouts, photography to the Periodic Table, and its a potentially joyous, life-enriching experience. Most of this book will be about social conversation the kind you have with a stranger at a party but it will also take in dos and donts of work conversation and a few tips on dating.

It has often been said not least by Her Ladyship that the essence of good manners is to make the other person feel comfortable. If so, then the essence of good conversation is to make the other person feel interesting. But it helps if you can make yourself sound interesting too. How to achieve these two objectives is the purpose of this book.

If the very idea has you squirming in your chair with embarrassment, please read on.