Delphi complete works of.., p.137
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 137
“Catching the name” is a necessary part of this social encounter. If not caught the first time it must be put over again. The peculiar merit of this introduction is that it lets Miss Summerside understand clearly that Mr. O’Hara never heard of her before. That helps to keep her in her place.
In superior circles, however, introduction becomes more elaborate, more flattering, more unctuous. It reaches its acme in what everyone recognizes at once as
The Clerical Method
This is what would be instinctively used in Anglican circles — as, for example, by the Episcopal Bishop of Boof in introducing a Canon of the Church to one of the “lady workers” of the congregation (meaning a lady too rich to work) who is expected to endow a crib in the Diocesan Home for Episcopal Cripples. A certain quantity of soul has to be infused into this introduction. Anybody who has ever heard it can fill in the proper accentuation, which must be very rich and deep.
“Oh, Mrs. Putitover, may I introduce my very dear old friend, Canon Cutitout? The Canon, Mrs. Putitover, is one of my dearest friends. Mrs. Putitover, my dear Canon, is quite one of our most enthusiastic workers.”
After which outburst of soul the Bishop is able to add, “Will you excuse me, I’m afraid I simply must run.”
Personally, I have never known or met a Bishop in society in any other situation than just about to run. Where they run to, I do not know. But I think I understand what they run from.
The Lounge Room of the Club
Equally high in the social scale but done quite differently is the Club Introduction. It is done by a club man who, for the life of him, can’t remember the names of either of the two club men whom he is introducing, and who each, for the life of him, can’t think of the name of the man they are being introduced by. It runs —
“Oh, I say, I beg your pardon — I thought, of course, you two fellows knew one another perfectly well — let me introduce — urr —— — wurr —— —”
Later on, after three whiskey-and-sodas, each of the three finds out the names of the other two, surreptitiously from the hall porter. But it makes no difference. They forget them again anyway.
Now let us move up higher, in fact, very high. Let us approach the real thing.
Introduction to H. E. the Viceroy of India,
K.C.B., K.C.S.I., S.O.S.
The most exalted form of introduction is seen in the presentation of Mr. Tomkins, American tourist, to H. E. the Viceroy of India. An aide-de-camp in uniform at the foot of a grand staircase shouts, “Mr. Tomkins!” An aide-de-camp at the top (one minute later) calls “Mr. Thompson”; another aide, four feet further on, calls “Mr. Torps.”
Then a military secretary, standing close to His Excellency, takes Mr. Tomkins by the neck and bends him down toward the floor and says very clearly and distinctly, “Mr. Torpentine.” Then he throws him out by the neck into the crowd beyond and calls for another. The thing is done. Mr. Tomkins wipes the perspiration from his hair with his handkerchief and goes back at full speed to the Hoogli Hotel, Calcutta, eager for stationery to write at once to Ohio and say that he knows the Viceroy.
The Office Introduction, One-sided
This introduction comes into our office, slipping past whoever keeps the door with a packet of books under its arm. It says —
“Ledd me introduze myself. The book proposition vidge I am introduzing is one vidge ve are now pudding on the market . . .”
Then, of two things, one —
Either a crash of glass is heard as the speaker is hurled through the skylight, or he walks out twenty minutes later, bowing profusely as he goes, and leaving us gazing in remorse at a signed document entitling us to receive the “Masterpieces of American Poetry” in sixty volumes.
On the Stage
Everything on the stage is done far better than in real life. This is true of introductions. There is a warmth, a soul, in the stage introduction not known in the chilly atmosphere of everyday society. Let me quote as an example of a stage introduction the formula used, in the best melodramatic art, in the kitchen-living-room (stove right centre) of the New England farm.
“Neighbour Jephson’s son, this is my little gal, as good and sweet a little gal, as mindful of her old father, as you’ll find in all New England. Neighbour Jephson’s son, she’s been my all in all to me, this little gal, since I laid her mother in the ground five Christmases ago—” The speaker is slightly overcome and leans against a cardboard clock for strength: he recovers and goes on— “Hope, this is Neighbour Jephson’s son, new back from over the seas, as fine a lad, gal, if he’s like the folk that went before him, as ever followed the sea. Hope, your hand. My boy, your hand. See to his comfort, Hope, while I go and read the Good Book a spell in the barnyard.”
The Indian Formula
Many people, tired of the empty phrases of society, look back wistfully to the simple direct speech of savage life. Such persons will find useful the usual form of introduction (the shorter form) prevalent among our North American Indians (at least as gathered from the best literary model):
“Friends and comrades who are worthy,
See and look with all your eyesight,
Listen with your sense of hearing,
Gather with your apprehension —
Bow your heads, O trees, and hearken.
Hush thy rustling, corn, and listen;
Turn thine ear and give attention;
Ripples of the running water,
Pause a moment in your channels —
Here I bring you, — Hiawatha.”
The last line of this can be changed to suit the particular case. It can just as easily read, at the end, “Here is Henry Edward Eastwood,” or, “Here is Hal McGiverin, Junior,” or anything else. All names fit the sense. That, in fact, was the wonderful art of Longfellow — the sense being independent of the words.
The Platform Introduction
Here is a form of introduction cruelly familiar to those who know it. It is used by the sour-looking villain facetiously called in newspaper reports the “genial chairman” of the meeting. While he is saying it the victim in his little chair on the platform is a target for the eyes of a thousand people who are wondering why he wears odd socks.
“The next speaker, ladies and gentlemen, is one who needs no introduction to this gathering. His name” (here the chairman consults a little card) “is one that has become a household word. His achievements in” (here the chairman looks at his card again, studies it, turns it upside down and adds) “in many directions are familiar to all of you.” There is a feeble attempt at applause and the chairman then lifts his hand and says in a plain business-like tone— “Will those of the audience who are leaving kindly step as lightly as possible.” He is about to sit down, but then adds as a pleasant afterthought for the speaker to brood over— “I may say, while I am on my feet, that next week our society is to have a real treat in hearing — et cetera and so forth—”
II
HOW TO OPEN A CONVERSATION
After the ceremony of introduction is completed the next thing to consider is the proper way to open a conversation. The beginning of conversation is really the hardest part. It is the social equivalent to “going over the top.” It may best be studied in the setting and surroundings of the Evening Reception, where people stand upright and agonise, balancing a dish of ice-cream. Here conversation reaches its highest pitch of social importance. One must talk or die. Something may be done to stave it off a little by vigorous eating. But the food at such affairs is limited. There comes a point when it is absolutely necessary to say something.
The beginning, as I say, is the hardest problem. Other communities solve it better than we do.
The Chinese System
In China conversation, between strangers after introduction, is always opened by the question, “And how old are you?” This strikes me as singularly apt and sensible. Here is the one thing that is common ground between any two people, high or low, rich or poor — how far are you on your pilgrimage in life?
The Penetentiary Method
Compare with the Chinese method the grim, but very significant formula that is employed (I believe it is a literal fact) in the exercise yards of the American penitentiaries. “What have you brought?” asks the San Quentin or Sing Sing convict of the new arrival, meaning, “And how long is your sentence?” There is the same human touch about this, the same common ground of interest, as in the Chinese formula.
Polite Society
But in our polite society we have as yet found no better method than beginning with a sort of medical diagnosis— “How do you do?” This admits of no answer. Convention forbids us to reply in detail that we are feeling if anything slightly lower than last week, but that though our temperature has risen from ninety-one-fifty to ninety-one-seventy-five, our respiration is still normal.
Still worse is the weather as an opening topic. For it either begins and ends as abruptly as the medical diagnosis, or it leads the two talkers on into a long and miserable discussion of the weather of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, of last month, of last year and the last fifty years.
Let one beware, however, of a conversation that begins too easily.
The Mutual Friends’ Opening
This can be seen at any evening reception, as when the hostess introduces two people who are supposed to have some special link to unite them at once with an instantaneous snap, as when, for instance, they both come from the same town.
“Let me introduce Mr. Sedley,” said the hostess. “I think you and Mr. Sedley are from the same town, Miss Smiles. Miss Smiles, Mr. Sedley.”
Off they go at a gallop. “I’m so delighted to meet you,” says Mr. Sedley. “It’s good to hear from anybody who comes from our little town.” (If he’s a rollicking humourist, Mr. Sedley calls it his little old “burg.”)
“Oh, yes,” answers Miss Smiles. “I’m from Winnipeg too. I was so anxious to meet you to ask if you knew the McGowans. They’re my greatest friends at home.”
“The — who?” asks Mr. Sedley.
“The McGowans — on Selkirk Avenue.”
“No-o, I don’t think I do. I know the Prices on Selkirk Avenue. Of course you know them.”
“The Prices? No, I don’t believe I do — I don’t think I ever heard of the Prices. You don’t mean the Pearsons? I know them very well.”
“No, I don’t know the Pearsons. The Prices live just near the reservoir.”
“No, then I’m sure I don’t know them. The Pearsons live close to the college.”
“Close to the College? Is it near the William Kennedys?”
“I don’t think I know the William Kennedys.”
This is the way the conversation goes on for ten minutes. Both Mr. Sedley and Miss Smiles are getting desperate. Their faces are fixed. Their sentences are reduced to —
“Do you know the Petersons?”
“No. Do you know the Applebys?”
“No. Do you know the Willie Johnsons?”
“No.”
Then at last comes a rift in the clouds. One of them happens to mention Beverley Dixon. The other is able to cry exultingly —
“Beverley Dixon? Oh, yes, rather. At least, I don’t know him, but I used often to hear the Applebys speak of him.”
And the other exclaims with equal delight —
“I don’t know him very well either, but I used to hear the Willie Johnsons talk about him all the time.”
They are saved.
Half an hour after they are still standing there talking of Beverly Dixon.
The Etiquette Book
Personally I have suffered so much from inability to begin a conversation that not long ago I took the extreme step of buying a book on the subject. I regret to say that I got but little light or help from it. It was written by the Comtesse de Z —— . According to the preface the Comtesse had “moved in the highest circles of all the European capitals.” If so, let her go on moving there. I for one, after trying her book, shall never stop her. This is how the Comtesse solves the problem of opening a conversation:
“In commencing a conversation, the greatest care should be devoted to the selection of a topic, good taste demanding that one should sedulously avoid any subject of which one’s vis-a-vis may be in ignorance. Nor are the mere words alone to be considered. In the art of conversation much depends upon manner. The true conversationalist must, in opening, invest himself with an atmosphere of interest and solicitude. He must, as we say in French, be prepared to payer les rais de la conversation. In short, he must ‘give himself an air.’ ”
There! Go and do it if you can. I admit that I can’t. I have no idea what the French phrase above means, but I know that personally I cannot “invest myself with an atmosphere of interest.” I might manage about two per cent on five hundred dollars. But what is that in these days of plutocracy?
At any rate I tried the Comtesse’s directions at a reception last week, on being introduced to an unknown lady. And they failed. I cut out nearly all the last part, and confined myself merely to the proposed selection of a topic, endeavouring to pick it with as much care as if I were selecting a golf club out of a bag. Naturally I had to confine myself to the few topics that I know about, and on which I can be quite interesting if I get started.
“Do you know any mathematics?” I asked.
“No,” said the lady.
This was too bad. I could have shown her some good puzzles about the squares of the prime numbers up to forty-one.
I paused and gave myself more air.
“How are you,” I asked, “on hydrostatics?”
“I beg your pardon,” she said. Evidently she was ignorant again.
“Have you ever studied the principles of aerial navigation?” I asked.
“No,” she answered.
I was pausing again and trying to invest myself with an air of further interest, when another man was introduced to her, quite evidently, from his appearance, a vapid jackass without one tenth of the brain calibre that I have.
“Oh, how do you do?” he said. “I say, I’ve just heard that Harvard beat Princeton this afternoon. Great, isn’t it?”
In two minutes they were talking like old friends. How do these silly asses do it?
When Dressed Hogs are Dull
An equally unsuccessful type of conversation, often overheard at receptions, is where one of the two parties to it is too surly, too stupid, or too self-important and too rich to talk, and the other labours in vain.
The surly one is, let us say, a middle-aged, thick-set man of the type that anybody recognizes under the name Money Hog. This kind of person, as viewed standing in his dress suit, mannerless and stupid, too rich to have to talk and too dull to know how to, always recalls to my mind the head-line of the market reports in the newspapers, “Dressed Hogs are Dull.”
The other party to the conversation is a winsome and agreeable woman, trying her best to do her social duty.
But, tenez, as the Comtesse of Z —— would say, I can exactly illustrate the position and attitude of the two of them from a recollection of my childhood. I remember that in one of my nursery books of forty years ago there was a picture entitled “The Lady in Love with A Swine.” A willowy lady in a shimmering gown leaned over the rail of a tessellated pig-sty, in which an impossibly clean hog stood in an attitude of ill-mannered immobility. With the picture was the rhyming legend,
There was a Lady in love with a swine,
“Honey,” said she, “will you be mine?
I’ll build you a silver sty
And in it you shall lie.”
“Honk!” said He.
There was something, as I recall it, in the sweet willingness of the Lady that was singularly appealing, and contrasted with the dull mannerless passivity of the swine.
In each of the little stanzas that followed, the pretty advances of the Lady were rebuffed by a surly and monosyllabic “honk” from the hog.
Here is the social counterpart of the scene in the picture-book. Mr. Grunt, capitalist, is standing in his tessellated sty, — the tessellated sty being represented by the hardwood floor of a fashionable drawing-room. His face is just the same as the face of the pig in the picture-book. The willowy lady, in the same shimmering clothes and with the same pretty expression of eagerness, is beside him.
“Oh, Mr. Grunt,” she is saying, “how interesting it must be to be in your place and feel such tremendous power. Our hostess was just telling me that you own practically all the shoemaking machinery factories — it is shoe-making machinery, isn’t it? — east of Pennsylvania.”
“Honk!” says Mr. Grunt.
“Shoe-making machinery,” goes on the willowy lady (she really knows nothing and cares less about it) “must be absolutely fascinating, is it not?”
“Honk!” says Mr. Grunt.
“But still you must find it sometimes a dreadful strain, do you not? I mean, so much brain work, and that sort of thing.”
“Honk!” says Mr. Grunt.
“I should love so much to see one of your factories. They must be so interesting.”
“Honk!” says Mr. Grunt. Then he turns and moves away sideways. Into his little piggy eyes has come a fear that the lady is going to ask him to subscribe to something, or wants a block of his common stock, or his name on a board of directors. So he leaves her. Yet if he had known it she is probably as rich as he is, or richer, and hasn’t the faintest interest in his factories, and never intends to go near one. Only she is fit to move and converse in polite society and Mr. Grunt is not.
Heroes and Heroines
“WHAT ARE YOU reading?” I asked the other day of a blue-eyed boy of ten curled up among the sofa cushions.
He held out the book for me to see.
“Dauntless Ned among the Cannibals,” he answered.
“Is it exciting?” I enquired.
“Not very,” said the child in a matter-of-fact tone. “But it’s not bad.”
