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DYLAN THOMAS

THE ART OF CONVERSATION:

A LECTURE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS & A MORAL

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(Noise of audience settling down. Rustling of programmes; creaking of chairs;

coughs; sneezes; blowings of noses; conversation in whispers)

LECTURER: (speaking through the noise) Ladies and gentlemen. (The noise

increases slightly. He speaks more loudly) Men and women. (Noise rises again. He

speaks very loudly) Chatterers and gossipers of both sexes. (Immediate silence) Thank

you. The subject of my lecture this evening is the Art of Conversation, to be

illustrated by what I may – I may? Thank you – call the lantern slides of sound, at

considerable expense, and with the aid of innumerable mechanical devices, I have

arranged for microphones to be set up in the private (and public) houses of many of

the most typical of today’s tame – but, in some cases, none the less dangerous -

conversationalists. A cross-section – and, in some cases, very cross – of English

intimate talk from Oscar Wilde the poet, who could talk the hind legs off a horse, to

Mr Humphrey Clack, the armchair-strategist, or carpet-general who could probably

have talked the hind legs off a Wilde. I intend that you shall hear the voices of the

famous paradoxical and platitude-inverting monologuists of the Yellow past; the

drones and rumbles of the best club bores wrestling, at St. James’s windows, with an

inadequate vocabulary and an open copy of The Times; the noises of vanity,

exhibitionism, pique, and desire to please; the rasp, or saw-voice of ‘that dreadful

woman who always holds the floor’; the whinny of the self-congratulatory and

facietious raconteur; the jolly bluster, or verbal backslap, of the blind-man-bluffer or

wishful-blinker; the squeaks and clacks of the cliques of the hearsayers and

professional rumourists; and the non-stop monotonous mince and moan of those queer

English natives beating, across the suburban wilds, their peeping Tom-Toms of

credulity, suspicion, and misinformation.

(Chattering and whispering, soft)

Now let us go back, through the whispering galleries of time, to a more dignified, but

hardly a less talkative, century than our own, when Victoria, and peace, reigned over

England and Oscar Wilde held quite another court. Please observe that one of the

principal sources of conversation at this time was – Conversation. Now Conversation.

. .

(Fade into chatter, the popping of corks and the clinking of glasses)

WILDE: Conversation, my dear Aubrey, is the art of putting the cart before the horse

and then putting it in a nutshell. Will you pass the decanter? I must confess, the grape

has a lot to answer for, but fortunately most of its conversation is off the point. Thank

you, no more. Too much is quite enough for anybody. Too much is as good as a feast.

BEARDSLEY: What leads to the road of excess, Oscar?

WILDE: The influence of inferiors, and one foot in the grave. I speak from long

inexperience. The art of conversation resembles in many ways the art of excess. In

both you leap before you look and in neither do you listen to any voice but your own.

Always take your own advice, which is invariably wrong. Excess and conversation

should be conducted as a game of skill against an opponent doomed to lose from the

beginning, one’s better self.

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DOWSON: Do you believe, then, in Conscience?

WILDE: Conscience, my dear Ernest, is the still, small voice that invites the wolf in

through the door. I should no more disbelieve in Conscience than I should in the

Devil. Did I tell you of my extraordinarily uninteresting dream last night? I have been

sleeping with such extravagance lately, that I never seem to have a wink awake. I

dreamed I went to Hell with the Marquese d’Orioli and Miss Plimsoll, and the Devil

took us all out to tea. Or it may have been ether. He was always a devil for the ladies.

I met his second wife only yesterday, impersonating Lady Matlock in the Strand. An

infernally good figure. The eyes of Helen. . .

BEARDSLEY: . . . Or Hell in the eye. . .

WILDE: Neat, Aubrey, neat. Too neat. You need a little soda-water in your wit, to

make it bubble. However, I shall remind myself to think of your remark,

spontaneously, tomorrow. Conversation. . .

(fade into the noise of whispering and muted chatter)

LECTURER: Conversation, ladies and gentlemen, is the politest art, pedantic,

dogmatic, abusive, cantankerous it may be, but always it must be polite. When the

great Dr. Johnson went out to dinner. . .

(whispering fades into)

DR JOHNSON: When I go out to dinner, Madam, I regard the tenderness of the

feelings of the company as studiously as I do that of this most excellent meat. Though

I set upon it with knife and fork, as heartily as a penurious scandalmonger upon a

reputation hitherto thought unassailable, I do not neglect to keep in mind the question

of cut and grain. Why, it would be barbarous indeed to inflict a wound except upon

that part which is most properly and eminently woundable: the pride and folly of

one’s neighbours.

MRS THRALE: Why now, Doctor Johnson, would you have the company think you a

wounding man?

DR JOHNSON: Madam, I wound nobody but myself if I set my wit upon the

goodness of a neighbour; my wit would go blunt, for virtue is unpiercable as Sir John

Hawkins’ generosity: it would buckle a butcher’s knife, for it has grown a double hide

to thwart the ravening appetite…

MRS THRALE: Then pride and folly you must find tender, Doctor? I confess, I find

them tough enough. . .

DR JOHNSON: It is the resilience of despair, madam; for cut you deep enough, and

in the right grain and, to be sure, folly is tender as a sucking pig, though in no ways so

sweet. Folly is nurtured in adiposity, and is as lean itself as the goodwill of a Scotch

dunce. . . You may converse with a Scotchman about everything under the sun save

charity and sense. Conversation. . .

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(fade into whispering etc which fades into)

LECTURER: Conversation of men of letters of the past has become familiar to the

serious student through the indefatigible labour of their attendant satellites. But what

of the voices of our men of letters of today? Must we remain satisfied that, always at

their elbows, go the Eckermans and Boswells, the Thrales and the Burneys of these

more strident, disrespectful times? Or shall we pay a visit, now and for posterity, to

the conversaziones of the modern intelligensia? Whatever your answer, it has all been

arranged. At this very moment, two established novelists of middle-age – both have

had recent publications selected by the Backward and Forward Book Clubs – are

talking in a well-appointed study not a book’s throw from Hampstead Underground

Station. If only there were television! One novelist, in an old corduroy smoking-coat

and a pair of ink-stained flannels, woolen tie carefully disarranged, is smoking a large,

curved pipe and skimming through his proofs; the other wears thick, horn-rimmed

glasses and enough hair to cover a sheepdog. There is sherry on the occasional table:

the best sherry.

(whispering etc fading into)

NOVELIST I: I always say this is the best sherry in London, Jack.. Lord knows what

you’ll do when it comes to an end. This uncivilised war. . .

NOVELIST II: I’ve got some rather good claret to carry me over the invasion.

Gordon left it to me. “To a sensitive mind and a rare palate”. Perhaps you read his

will in the Bookworm?

NOVELIST I: He left me an ebony-handled stick, you know “To a man with all

Sussex in his heart. Good walking!” It moved me. . . I’m not interrupting you, am I,

old man? See you’re pretty busy with the galleys. . .

NOVELIST II: Just skimming over ’em, Tom. Salmon and Finch want ’em for the

winter list Through the Dark Tunnel. It’s all rather topical. . .

NOVELIST I: Good terms?

NOVELIST II: One and a half on the first five thou. . . I think the Book of the

Second Club’ll take it up. I saw Glossop yesterday about it. . .

NOVELIST I: Hear he’s getting a commission.

NOVELIST II: Yes, and just when he’s coming round to using the bracket properly

for the first time. He’s pretty sick, I can tell you. After years and year of work. . .

NOVELIST I: I know, I know. I had exactly the same trouble with my colon. Rather

a good smoke this. Handmade?

NOVELIST II: I know a little place off Villiers Street. . . HG introduced me. . . only

12/6 a hundred. . . rather good value…

(whispering etc fading into )

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LECTURER: Not very good value. One expected perhaps a little less of the

commercial spirit, a little less insistence upon the minor luxuries of life and a more

explicit attitude to the intellectual and spiritual problems which must confront the

contemporary artist. Let us see what the younger men are up to. When the light

behind my head turns first pink and then green, I shall tune you in to a meeting, held

in the cocktail bar of the Blitz, of some of our most advanced poets. Not one of them

will see twenty one again. Several are sober. . .

(fade into )

POET I: No, but soberly speaking, Alistair, don’t you agree with Bryan that Peter’s

new poem leaves The Waste Land looking like an allotment in Barrow-on-Furness or

somewhere?

POET II: I have an uncle in Barrow-on-Furness. . .

POET III: Yes and no. You mustn’t underrate The Waste Land. Dialetically, it

appeared at the precisely important moment. All the Georgians were dead, or

lecturing; the Imagists were entirely exploded by Zemplar. . .

POET II: Met him in Smoky Pete’s last night; his wife’s an Arab…

POET III: And of course the whole traditional edifice. . .

POET I: (loudly) Zemplar’s not an Arab. . .

POET III: Because everything bears the seeds of its own destruction. The Waste

Land was a revolutionary organism, not a poem. . .

POET II: His wife, Julian, his wife, she’s as Arab as a horse. . .

POET III: I buried the whole subject in last month’s Advance Guard.

POET I: Basil wants an egg-nog.

BARMAN: No eggs. . .

POET I: (loudly) No eggs!

POET III: I’m taking a copy of the article back to my mess. There might be a chance

of starting a Post-Auden Discussion Group. . .

BARMAN: And no lemon!

(whispering etc fading into )

LECTURER: No lemon, ladies and gentlemen, which appears to be the answer. Now

from such depths of eloquence let me conduct you back, through the cocktail bars of

time,

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(dance music, Blue Period, begins softly)

to the sad Gay Twenties, when Young Things were called Bright and all the old things

were blush-making.

(music rises, then fades into background)

BRIGHT YOUNG THING: Oh darling, it’s too too blush-making. It was absolute

death. There was Babs, looking like something nasty in Noel Coward, absolutely

introducing me to Bobby right after the treasure-hunt. You know when Toots pinched

the heavenly policeman’s helmet and sent it back to the police station next morning

absolutely full of roses: - in the middle of winter, darling, thirty shillings a dozen.

(solo trumpet, softly)

Oh, listen to that divine singer (murmuring to the music)

And when I die my no-town Margot

Talking the low-town argot

Don’t bury me in Chicago

To the rhythm of Handel’s Largo

I ain’t that sort of cargo

Oh blow my bones

Through the saxophones

You no-town low-town nigger trash

Oh, scatter my ash

Scatter my ash on Harlem stones…

Isn’t he celestial? He’s got the cutest accent, so frightfully old-fashioned. . . He says

“vaws” and “old boy”. . . shamingly English.

(music rises, and fades into)

LECTURER: English conversation was not dead but lying down. Are we right in

supposing that it has arisen now, rhythmical and virile, from its flaccid caremants?

We are wrong. The proof lies in the hearing. The microphones shall take you quickly

from the Dreadnought Club to the Kosy Palais de Danse – I need not remind you that

the K of Kosy is hard as in Komfy Kafe -- from tea at the Laburnams to wallop in the

George & Crown. . . These conversations are going on at this very minute. The ears

of the microphones stand pricked and ready in concealed places. You will notice that,

from time to time throughout these typical snatches of English social conversation,

references are made, and made in detail, to subjects which might be of considerable

assistance to the enemy. So that no information of any possible value to our enemy

can be passed over the air during this strictly cultural programme, I have instructed

our orchestra to play a loud chord. . .

(loud chord)

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. . . yes, that is the one – whenever a conversationalist appears to be in danger of

committing a breach of the National Defence Laws. I am afraid that you will be

surprised at how many times that chord will be needed. Now, when the light behind

my head turns first purple and then blood-red we shall be going over to. . .

(whispering etc fades quickly into)

BLIMP I: The Dreadnought Club has more than its reputation to think of. One might

say that England and the Dreadnought are one and the same. Let one fall, t’other falls

too. Flat. Like that.

(bang on table. Glasses rattle)

Ha. Nearly spilt your peg, Anstey. Heard from Gerald lately?

BLIMP II: Had a letter last week. Never was much of a fellow for writing. Deeds

not words. Always used to say, ‘Let the other fellow think; I’ll carry on’. Letter took

a devil of a time. I hear its’ because there’s a break in communication between….

(loud chord)

and. . .

(loud chord)

said his regiment was moving into. . .

(loud chord)

My old regiment, the. . .

(loud chord)

He’s a chip off the old what’s the phrase?

BLIMP I: Block.

BLIMP II: Anything in the news? Can’t see for meself today. Damned horse sat on

my eyeglass. Nearly 17 hands. Lovely canter though.

BLIMP I: The Senior Peripatetic’s moved into the old Madras and Malay.

BLIMP II: Noisy young devils. Heard a fellow sing once in the Senior Peripatetic.

Fellow named Turner. Died in debt in Chile.

BLIMP I: See there’s some more talk about food. Devil if I know where all the food

goes. Gluttony, I suppose. . .

BLIMP II: They’re putting it away, you know. In case of invasion. . .

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BLIMP I: Doomed from the beginning. . .

BLIMP II: As a matter of fact, there’s a pretty big dump, near my place down at. . .

(loud chord)

I often think of it all lying there, when the marmalade gets short at breakfast. Makes

a fellow think. All that food about, and he can’t have a second helping with his black

coffee. . .

(whispering etc, fading into)

LECTURER: Coffee and sandwiches are being served from 6 until 7 at the home of

(whispering etc very quickly into)

VICAR VOICE: Mrs Wharton, I must congratulate you upon your crab-and-lettuce.

Even more delicious than the cucumber.

MRS WHARTON: (coyly) I know your fondness for crab, Mr Farrow. Do you

remember, dear? Only at breakfast this morning I said, “Mr Farrow likes crab with

his lettuce”.

MR WHARTON: Yesterday morning, dear.

MRS WHARTON: Of course, I’m telling a lie. Yesterday breakfast. I remember I

said, “Mrs Armstead likes Marmite, Mrs Bush can’t bear fish paste, and Mr Farrow

has a real weakness for crab”.

VV: One man’s meat.

MRS WHARTON: Is another man’s, how true, Mr Farrow. We’ve been listening to

the most inventive recipes on the wireless, haven’t we, dear?

VV: A boon, a boon. A modern miracle.

MRS WHARTON: And the physical jerks and Mr Middleton and Sir Adrian Boult,

how can they do it all for ten shillings a year. I hear that. . .

VV: Leonard is joining the BBC? Quite true, Mrs Wharton. It’s his Spanish you

know. He’s going to the new transmitting studios at. . .

(loud chord)

But that’s between ourselves, of course.

MRS WHARTON: (coyly) I don’t think you’ll find Mr Hitler with a little notebook

under our table, do you?

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MR WHARTON: Wonder what they’re going to do to that man after the war. Make

him paint the League of Nations, I suppose. . .

VV: (laughing vicarly): I always told you, Mrs Wharton, that Mr Wharton ought to

write a book. “Paint the League of Nations”. It’s a thought! Ronald says that he

should be hanged in Trafalgar Square, but I think that hanging is really too English a

death. Do you know that they stopped his leave – Ronald’s, I mean. He was due

home next. . .

(loud chord)

but merely because

(chord, chord, chord)

LECTURER: Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, we are not all such. . .

(chord, rather softly)

gossipers as that. But do we all realise how important to our enemy may be any

small piece of information that, carelessly and unthinkingly, we divulge in the course

of social conversation? We do not. Let me take you over – the light behind my head

turns first henna-coloured, then navy-blue - into the Kosy Palais de Dance.

(music, “Wine, Women & Son” by Strauss)

Wine, Women and Song. There is neither wine nor song. . .

(music rises, then fades into background)

WOMAN: I like a good waltz, don’t you?

SAILOR: Depends who I’m dancing with. You’re like Eleanor Powell.

WOMAN: Go on, Fred Astaire! Didn’t know sailors could dance like this. I though

all you could do was the hornpipe. . .

SAILOR: You’ve been reading books. Don’t you know we got the wireless now?

We got a portable 4 valve, you can get anything out of it except a free drink and

packet of fags. We got it on most of the time, except when there’s a feature

programme. Nobody listens to them. Funny to hear Lew Stone when Jerries are dive-

bombing us. I was on the . . .

(loud chord)

and there they was over us like wasps. They got a sting like dynamite. Did a bit of

damage, too, but we docked okay – we was laying mines all round. . .

(loud chord)

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Secret! Nobody knew where we was, except the Old Man, until afterwards.

WOMAN: How d’you lay mines, anyway? Do you just drop ‘em in? Sounds easy as

anything. . .

SAILOR: Easy! Listen Shirley Temple. We got a new method of laying magnetic

mines, see. Easy! We. . .

(loud chord drowns the waltz, and fades into)

LECTURER: Easy, ladies and gentlemen. Too easy. Does it ever occur to you,

while listening to such artless conversation, that there may be agents anywhere and

everywhere collecting these scraps of information and passing them into the hands of

the enemy? The little details, the snippets of fact and rumour, the tiny incidentals of

one man’s trade, may all be sent to a central organisation in a neutral country from

which they are transmitted directly to enemy headquarters. Hundreds of odds and

ends of hundreds of hearsays and rumours may, and can, be brought together into

such a pattern that a whole Allied enterprise is thwarted or destroyed. A wagging

tongue may sink a ship; a stray word over a mild-and-bitter may help to murder

children.

(pub noises)

1st VOICE: That’s what they are: baby killers. Go and bomb the hospitals, he says;

go and drop a thousand pounder on St Paul’s, he says; go and machine-gun the

lifeboats, he says; and up they go like a gang of Crippens.

2nd

VOICE: Go on! Crippen only did his old woman in. That bit of dirty-whisker-

on-his-lip, he kills off a whole town of Poles like they weren’t human beings at all but

just beetles.

1s VOICE: Except that you don’t torture beetles first.

2nd

VOICE: Hitler’s pal, that Doctor bloody Frank in Poland, he’d torture anything.

He’d pull the wings of flies, before breakfast, just to keep his hand in. Nice chap to

meet in a blackout in the slaughterhouse. Here’s how!

(clink)

Wouldn’t like to dream what he dreams about at night.

1st VOICE: He wouldn’t be dreaming much if he was in Germany. He’d be listening

to the Sterlings and trembling in his nightie. . .You should have seen the new

American fighter that came along to our drome this week.

(technical talk, interrupted by loud chords, to follow here)

Talk about protection! Our drome’s like the Maginot Line ought to have been.

There’s fifty. . .

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(loud chord)

and. . .

(loud chord)

and all camouflaged to look like. . .

(loud chord)

2nd

VOICE: I seen a bit of camouflaging too. Though I’d have to walk through

some trees and gawd! a couple of steps and there I was sitting on a propeller!

1st VOICE: They’ll be making trees to look like aeroplanes next, that’s what they’ll

be doing. Climb into the bloody cockpit and you sit in a bird’s next… Good luck.

2nd

VOICE: ‘Nother thousand a year.

(pub noises rise and fade)

LECTURER: Good luck to the - enemy, perhaps. Perhaps another thousand a year -

dead. What makes these people, people who 2mean no harm”, people with “the best

intentions”, people who would laugh or fly into a rage if they heard themselves called

Enemies of the people, what makes them talk so foolishly and dangerously? The

causes are simple. Can you spare a few more minutes of your time to hear, over the

back wall of a provincial villa. . .

WOMAN’S VOICE: Can you spare me a little drop of sugar, Mrs Rowlands? I’ve

got Mrs Wilcox coming in to tea and you know she always has two spoonfuls war or

no war. And cup after cup too. Regular teapot. I’ve got a sweet tooth myself but if

one teaspoonful’s enough for the Queen of England, it’s good enough for me, that’s

what I tell Sid. Yes, I read it in the paper, she never has more than one. And she

never smokes either. Mrs Wilcox’s a regular chimney. I always tell her, “You blow

the smoke through a handkerchief, Mrs Wilcox, and look at the yellow stain, that’s

what your inside’ll look like”, I tell her. And all she says is, “Well, nobody’s going to

see, are they?” and then she lights another one. . . The King and the Queen are going

to. . .

(loud chord)

next week. Sid heard it from one of the reporters. He’s a proper Court Circular, Sid

is. You marry a man on a newspaper, he says, and then you’ll know all the news

before it happens. Remember I told you about Winston going to meet that Mr

Roosevelt nearly a week before they put it in the paper? I can tell you something else,

too, but don’t say a word, mind. I promised Sid I’d never. . . Well, Sid tells me that

that factory up the top of. . .

(loud chord)

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Street, you know, the one that’s got “Laboratory Equipment” or something outside,

well what they really make is. . .

(loud chord)

It’s a terribly dangerous thing to have just up the street, isn’t it?

(whispering etc fading into)

LECTURER: But the really dangerous things in the street are the loose tongues and

the featherbrained boasts, the desire to show off to neighbours and to score off

friends. Men who would, if necessary, die for their country appear to see nothing

unpatriotic in divulging, to anyone willing to listen in pub or bus, cafe or drawing

room, train or office, what little information they might possess of their country’s

secrets and defences. To such a low level has the art of conversation fallen in

England today that many people in responsible positions, who are employed upon the

most confidential work, cannot talk even to a casual acquaintance without talking

shop. ‘Shop’ is all very well, but not if you work in a bomb shop. There are so many

things to tell, without telling secrets. The institution of free speech is not an

Information Bureau. It is more important to keep the eyes open than the mouth. . .

Let the people talk? Nothing will stop them, anyway. But let them, too, - for their

own protection and the safety of the country – remember that though our enemy is

blind to reason he is not deaf to gossip. . . And now, to end, I shall tune you in to

fragments of conversation from all over the place. . . Time burbles on!

(whispering etc rises and fades into background)

1st VOICE: Now take Japan. This teacup is the Japanese army in the south, and the

sugar bowl’s the army in the north. I move them thus, in a pincer movement. What

did you say? What’s the teapot? Oh, that’s General Kai Shek’s army in the west of

course; I was coming to that. Now let’s stop a moment….

2nd

VOICE: Stop me if you’ve hear this one. They were telling it in the office today,

when the Old Man was out for a coffee. Coffee! Pretty strong coffee, I can tell you: a

bob a nip. Well, it seems that Hitler and Goering were up in an aeroplane – I laughed

till I was sick – and Goering says. . .

3rd

VOICE (WOMAN’S): I’m not unduly pessimistic, dear, but don’t you think

Rover had better sleep in the coal cellar now that the winter’s coming on. Every time

he hears a bomb, he moults. . .

4th

VOICE: Every time I hear a bomb, I say, “That’s one of ours”. Of course I know

it isn’t, but you’d be surprised how much it helps.

5th

VOICE: Help yourself to the cigars. I was reading most curious paragraph in a

Defence pamphlet this morning: Apparently a fellow mustn't talk about the

“operational heights of blimps”. Insulting, I thought.

13

6th

VOICE (GIRL’S) (speaking very quickly): You should have heard the insulting

things she said, she was working at the same table as me and she said “So you’re

going out with your soldier friend – that’s Ken – on Wednesday are you”, she said, “I

bet he only takes you to the pictures. I bet he never takes you to the theatre”, she said,

“he’s got a mean kind of face”. “Oh, he never takes me to the theatre, doesn’t he”, I

said, “let me tell you he takes me to theatre every Wednesday night and then he takes

me out to supper afterwards”, I said, and I know it isn’t true but I just had to say it to

her. “And it isn’t a mean kind of face at all”, I said, “it’s just that he’s got small eyes

and. . .”

7TH

VOICE (YOUNG MAN’S): Oh, do be quiet. Do be quiet, darling. Don’t talk so

much. Everybody talks too much (almost shouting) Every body talks too much.

Don’t talk so much.

(the whispering, the chattering, the gossiping rise to climax)

ANNOUNCER: You have just been listening to “The Art of Conversation: A

Lecture with Illustrations and a Moral” by ……..

The time is exactly…… And the weather is……………………

(Very loud chord)

[c] 2008 by the Trustees for the copyright of the late Dylan Thomas