Explore "The Upton Letters" by A.C. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
MY DEAR HERBERT, -- I came down, as soon as the term was over, to Oxford, where I have come in the way of a good deal of talk. I find that I become somewhat of a connoisseur in the matter of conversation as I grow older; and I must also confess that such powers as I possess in that direction are of the tete-a-tete order. A candid friend of mine, a gracious lady, who wields some of the arts of a salon, lately took the wind out of my sails, on an occasion when I formed one of a large and rather tongue-tied party at her house. I had flung myself, rather strenuously, into the breach, and had talked with more valour than discretion. Later in the evening I had a little confabulation with herself, at the end of which she said to me, with a vaguely reminiscent air, "What a pity it is that you are only a tete-a-tete talker!"
To be a salon talker indeed requires a certain self-possession, a kind of grasp of the different individuals which surround you, which is of the nature of Napoleonic strategy.