Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-02-06
WIT AROUND THE BOARDS.
Is 1t OF a Higher Order Today Than
in 0lden Times?
Prof. David Swing of the Opinion That
the Intellectual Dinner PartyOr
Tea Party Has not Made
Much Progress.

parties and similar social meetings differ
essentially from the social affairs of the
same kind In the present There has come
down to Us all a rumor that there were
wonderful conversations, wonderful bursts
OF wit and eloquence In the olden time
when friends of the higher order met
around the dinner-table or at an evening
reunion; but we all know the power of
hundred years to ornament past landscape.
1t seems easier for the human mind to saw,
How great he wasl'' than How great he
Isl How beautiful she was!" than
How beautiful she Isl" Hope is no great
er painter than memory-neither of them
being affected much by realism.
Some assume greater change to the
disadvantage of the present; and having
assumed this decline of the conversational
art they find a reason In the growth at
tanned by the newspaper and the review
and magazine. 1t is alleged that these
have made readers and writer's out of those
who were takers in the days of the fathers
in letters. Constant reading creates a
disposition to be alone and to be silent;
and furthermore, men who have much to
say keep their lips closed at dinner parties
because they are full of the intention to
make of out their thoughts a ffty-dollar
paper for some popular publication. Thus
argue those wko feel that our dinners
and teas" are poor things compared with
those given at the Holland House. and
at similar famous resorts of the day. At
the Holland House assembled, according to
Macaulay, wits, beauties, painters and
poets, scholars, philosophers, and states
men.
AS MUCH WIT AND WISDOM NOW AS LONG
AGO.
True! true! But the particulars as to
what was said and done by those persons
when they were thus grouped are not Civ
en- US by Macaulay nor by any painstaking
annalist. 1t is on recoad that many fine
things were said-things witty and things
wlse-but witty and wise things are said
In Boston when her leading men and wo-
men are at dinner with each other; and
even In Washington at entertainments
where Chase, Cox, Sumner and Lincoln sat
down for four hour feast and chat there
were words spoken of frst-class wit or
wisdom. The truth is that cultivated
minds are much alike. be they at Athens,
around the table of Socrates; in Rome,
around the viands and wines of Cicero; in
the times of Elizabeth, which produced
the Shakespeares and Addisons; in the
times of Victoria, which produced Dick
ems Thackeray, D'Israeli, and Gladstone:
and in the times of Abraham Lincoln
which could point to Emerson, Holmes,
Hawthorne, and a small army of such in
tellects. A social meeting among cultivat-
ed people has always implied fun, laugh
ter, jokes wit, wisdom, food and wine.
We do not see that any of the modern in
ventions have taken away or added much
1t is probable that Socrates walked three
Or four miles to a dinner, ate with his
fingers, spilled the wine over his half-nak-
ed BOSOM while the recent Londoner goes
In cab, eats with fork, does not waste
any wine, and wears d white shirt with
with ample white space in the foreground.
The SOcratlc symposium expected at times
the appearance of a clown or a dancing
girl or a beautiful boy to afford a new SEN
sation; while at the Cicero dinners the
Roman was himself as full of ancedote as
was our Abraham Lincoln, Cicero even
made puns. At one of his dinners Julius
Caesar was present, and from the quantity
he ate and drank we may infer that the
literary powers which composed the Com
mentarles were quite dormant for at
least that one long evening. The essential
oneness of the educated mind compels us
to imagine that an evening with Pericles
or Socrates or Cicero was much like an
evening at the Holland House in London
or at Dr. Holmes in Boston.
DULL PARTY AT LADY BLEssINGTON s.
From what we can learn of the Holland
House meetings they were not so full of
beauty, wit, and wisdom as to be peculiar.
At Lady Blessington's affairs had once
been dragging perhaps all the evening
when the beautiful woman urged Theodore
Hook to wake up and let them have some
of his wit. His reply was that he was like
her canary bird unable to lay an egg when
anyone was looking at him. 1t would
seem from this reply that the great Hook
was not so witty in crowd as when in his
room along with lead pencil; and it also
appears that Lady Blessington's parties
sometimes put those present into long
ing for the hour of the homeward move
ment.
History and memory are so full of char
ity that they permit unpleasant things to
drop out of the story quietly as dumbheads
drop out of the college course. When the
September term opens there are many stu
dents who are not seen returning with
cane and valise. No questions are asked
Thus history comes back again and again
and at each return the picture of the past
is wonderfully toned down. So the men
who meet in the Holland House are now
seen as just ready to die over the wit of
some one or dumb with amazement over
the brilliancy of another. But this was not
the exact state of the case in some of the
drawing-rooms where the poet Rogers was
principal figure. At Grote's he blurts out,
who is that fellow over there with red
hair?" That is Mr. Chorley." ''Oh, |
never heard of him before" and then
Rogers would go at his soup as though it
were some valuable acquaintance
Now, this seems within the reach of an
American intellect. How easy it is to in
quire at a dinner: who is that man or
that woman with red head?" The
answer having been satisfactory, how easy
it is to return to the soup or the quail on
toast So at a musical soiree this great
Samuel Rogers expressed his perfect con-
tempt for ''iddlers' and for Beethoven
music. He was blunt, rude, when Mrs
Sartoris sang a song for a little company,
the gentleman who had composed the
music playing the accompaniment himself
He told Mrs Sartoris that 1T was no tune
at all.
NOT so REFINED THEN AS NOW.
There were many rude and egotistical
men and ladies' too In those literary meet
ings. Lady Morgan ridiculed the female
side of the symposium, at least in one IN
stance.
There, said she, was Jane Porter
dressed like shabby Canoness, there was
Mrs Somerville in an astronomical cap. |
dashed in, In my blue satin and point lace.
L 1 Il L L I