Louis Roney: Conversation: Pros' prose

A while back, I suggested to a passel of pals that we meet once a week in different local restaurants. We labelled this activity our “Tuesday Evening Eating Meetings” and have enjoyed much good conversation since.

The art of conversation is not just talk, but talk that conveys an exchange of ideas worthy of listeners who know a thing or two. The most famous “talker” in our language may have been London’s Samuel Johnson, whose “gab” in the 18th century drew flocks of people who wanted only to engage conversation with him, and to listen to his linguistic eloquence. A young sidekick of Johnson’s named James Boswell took notes on Johnson’s plethora of utterances, and left to the world one of the giant biographical works of English literature, “The Life of Samuel Johnson.” It takes a wordsmith to memorialize an expert in words. In the 18th century, coffee was coming into London as a drink to rival tea. And coffee is a drink that is stimulating and conversation-producing. Coffee houses that Johnson frequented began to draw clientele of people hoping to hear the great language master hold forth on any provocative subject he chose. Johnson was, of course, fortunate in having a “Boswell” who faithfully jotted down much of Johnson’s brilliant talk that otherwise might have been lost. Coffee drinkers have been with us for the better part of a millennium, but few of them have left us conversational jewels equal to those that Boswell latched onto as his “raison d’être.”

Some more recent “talkers” who have continued the art of conversation became famous as New York’s “Algonquin Hotel Round Table” and included publishers, writers, playwrights and actors: Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Franklin P. Adams, Heywood Hale Broun, Robert Sherwood, Edna Ferber, Marc Connelly, Harold Ross, John Peter Toohey and Ruth Hale, all frequented the august group, and on those occasions brought spice, charm, wit and logic to conversations. The Round Table existed from 1919 to about 1930. Wikipedia says, “Daily association with each other, both at luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Roundtable to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, to create a revue called ‘No Sirree!’ which helped launch a Hollywood career for Round Tabler Robert Benchley. In its ten years of association, the Round Table and a number of its members acquired national reputations, both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit displayed in highly popular radio broadcasts.”

The Round Table group dubbed themselves, “The Vicious Circle.” Others who joined in the group on occasion were: Tallulah Bankhead, Margalo Gillmore, Beatrice Kaufman, Margaret Leech, Harpo Marx, Alice Duer Miller, Frank Sullivan, Deems Taylor, Estelle Winwood and Peggy Wood.

My own little roundtable: I, myself, have had the pleasure of knowing and conversing with: Douglas Southall Freeman, Sloan Wilson, James Dickey, Henry Miller, John Finley, John Charles Thomas, and John Silber — “talkers all.” Two time Pulitzer Prize winner and editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and News-Leader, Douglas Southall Freeman sat with me on his front porch at his home in Richmond and chatted on several delightful occasions. College classmate Sloan Wilson — author of “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” — and I lived in Eliot House at Harvard, and often dined together. Coincidentally, Sloan lived for several years in Winter Park with his wife Betty and daughter Jessica. I spent many hours boating with Sloan and joined him in many conversations on politics and literature. Old Georgia friend James Dickey, poet laureate to the Library of Congress, and author of “Deliverance,” loved to play guitar and sing while sitting on the floor of my Central Park South apartment in New York City many years ago. Texan John Silber, president of Boston University, an unforgettable conversationalist/speaker, immersed b.w. and I in an hour-long conversation about damn near everything! He was a remarkable recaller of classical quotations and of people he had known. I remember saying to Dr. Silber that his elocution reminded me of my late, great housemaster at Harvard, John Finley. Silber remarked that he held Finley in high regard, having heard him speak on several occasions, and was spellbound at his “communicative powers with words.”