The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [24]
Well, of course: If nothing else, drawing out other people is canny social politics. Stefano Guazzo, author of Civile Conversation , advised:
Keepe the mouth more shut, and the ears more open. . . . In companie [ye] shall get the good will and favour of others, as well by giving eare courteously, as by speaking pleasantly. For wee think, they thinke wel of us, which are attentive to our talke.
It can be the path to power. Witness the career of eighteenth-century courtesan Elizabeth Armitstead, who began in brothels yet bagged a top politician hubby, slinking into polite society by the grace less of her “arts of display and seduction,” than being a “sympathetic listener,” able to “make every man believe himself the centre of the universe.”
And for any misguided person who imagines this is just for girls, another lady (opinion is divided as to whether she was Winston Churchill’s mother or Queen Victoria’s granddaughter) captured the difference between captivating talkers and heart-stealing listeners in two prime ministers:
When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.
Whom would you prefer? In short, stuff duty. Far from talk’s demure shadow, listening is its creative partner, able to shape conversation, forestall faux pas, forge connections, direct discussion, reap information and joy.
See how easily Dolly Parton bewitched this middle-aged magazine interviewer:
She totally focuses on me: how many female superstars could I say that about?
Or was it Parton’s opening gambit that won her over?
“I saw you in the corridor and I thought, ‘Who is that attractive young woman?’ ”
Actually, both.
Great listeners are irresistible because they sense what we want to hear. Soothing noises are part of their art. At its heart lie techniques to seduce purses, votes, and minds.
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE EAR
Ears aren’t just acoustic channels or pincushions for fashion statements. Their use and abuse as symbols throughout history tell a tale of social change. Where once power lay with gods, kings, and armies, whom ordinary mortals had to placate, in our rackety world, with the assiduous propitiations of advertisers and other media, everyone seems to be grabbing at our attention, and we seem to listen less and less.
Ancient Egyptians exalted the aural organ to combat deities’ and monarchs’ indifference. Statues of pharaohs had jumbo flaps to display—and doubtless encourage—their willingness to heed the people. In hieroglyphics, the ear represented divine hearing, and worshippers left votive ear sculptures at temples to implore the gods to lend them theirs. Hear the longing in this three-thousand-year-old hymn (etched with forty-four ears) to the god Ptah: lord of Truth, great of strength, the Hearer.
Christ’s final miracle before crucifixion was to replace the ear of the high priest’s servant Malchus after the enraged disciple Peter struck it off: an act of forgiveness that serves as an emblem of Christ’s openness to hear the prayers of all.
More sinister iconography adorns the Rainbow portrait of Elizabeth I, a branding exercise that depicts the childless monarch as divinely youthful (aged sixty-seven) and all-seeing, in a cloak spangled with ears and eyes; a baldly coded warning to any subject minded to foment dissent at a time when the succession remained uncertain. No wonder, condemned after a disastrous colonial exploit, Elizabeth’s erstwhile pet Sir Walter Ralegh instructed his son:
Publicke affaires are rockes, private conversacions are whirlepooles and quickesandes. It is a like perilous to doe well and to doe ill.
(Likewise,