talks that I have
had with men, rather than with women. There is a kind of simple
openness, an equal comradeship in talks with men, which I find it
difficult to attain in the case of women. I suppose that some
unsuspected mystery of sex creeps in, and that with women there is a
whole range of experiences and emotions that one does not share, so
that there is an invisible and intangible barrier erected between the
two minds. I feel, too, in talking with women, that I am met with
almost too much sympathy and tact, so that one falls into an
egotistical mood. It is difficult, too, I find, to be as frank in
talking with women as with men; because I think that women tend more
than men to hold a preconceived idea of one's character and tastes; and
it is difficult to talk simply and naturally to any one who has formed
a mental picture of one, especially if one is aware that it is not
correct. But men are slower to form impressions, and thus talk is more
experimental; moreover, in talking with men, one encounters more
opposition, and opposition puts one more on one's mettle.

Thus a tete-a-tete with a man of similar tastes, who is just and yet
sympathetic, critical yet appreciative, whose point of view just
differs enough to make it possible for him to throw sidelights on a
subject, and to illumine aspects of it that were unperceived and
neglected--this is a high intellectual pleasure, a potion to be
delicately sipped at leisure.

But after all it is impossible to say what makes a conversationalist.
There are people who seem to possess every qualification for conversing
except the power to converse. The two absolutely essential things are,
in the first place, a certain charm of mind and even manner, which is a
purely instinctive gift; and, in the second place, real sympathy with,
real interest in the deuteragonist.

People can be useful talkers, even interesting talkers, without these
gifts. One may like to hear what a man of vigorous mind may have to say
on a subject that he knows well, even if he is unsympathetic. But then
one listens in a receptive frame of mind, as though one were prepared
to attend a lecture. There are plenty of useful talkers at a
University, men whom it is a pleasure to meet occasionally, men with
whom one tries, so to speak, a variety of conversational flies, and who
will give one fine sport when they are fairly hooked. But though a
University is a place where one ought to expect to find abundance of