The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [93]
“Elvis?”
“Memory trouble?”
“I’d rather not.”
“No, who do you think you are?”
“Yes, but I’m prepared to overlook it.”
RUDE ART
Excoriation has a riotous history. Here is an inspirational selection:
Putdowns
Beethoven to another composer:
I liked your opera. I think I will set it to music.
Ninon de Lenclos, liberated lover, on toffy-nosed Marquis de Sévigné:
He has the heart of a cucumber fried in snow.
Sydney Smith to garrulous historian Thomas Babington Macaulay:
You know, when I am gone, you will be sorry you never heard me speak.
Woodrow Wilson on Warren Harding:
He has a bungalow mind.
Poet Robert Burns, dissing an anonymous critic:
Thou eunuch of language . . . thou pimp of gender . . . murderous accoucheur of infant learning . . . thou pickle-herring in the puppet show of nonsense [etc.]
Model Jean Shrimpton, on being asked about her relationship with snapper David Bailey:
Sex has never been high on my list of priorities.
Old Lancashire favorite (not for hot pots):
A waste of skin.
Disraeli, converting dour political rival William Gladstone’s virtue into a vice:
He has not a single redeeming defect.
Retorts
Lewis Morris, poet: It is a conspiracy of silence against me, a conspiracy of silence. What should I do?
Oscar Wilde: Join it.
Oscar Wilde to painter James Whistler: I wish I had said that. Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.
Lord Sandwich to libertarian John Wilkes: Sir, you will die either of the pox or on the gallows.
Wilkes: Depending on whether I embrace your mistress or your principles.
Waiter in Annabel’s nightclub to an elderly patron, upon being asked to help find false teeth, which had fallen onto the dance floor: Certainly, sir. What color are they?
Winston Churchill’s contretemps with fellow politico Nancy Astor are notorious, but worth repeating.
Astor: Winston, you are drunk, horribly drunk.
Churchill: And madam, you are ugly, terribly ugly, but in the morning I shall be sober.
Astor: If I were your wife I’d put poison in your coffee.
Churchill: If I were your husband, I’d drink it.
Clare Boothe Luce, letting Dorothy Parker enter a door first: Age before beauty.
Parker: And pearls before swine.
William Wordsworth to Charles Lamb: I believe that I could write like Shakespeare, if I had a mind to try it.
Lamb: Yes. Nothing wanting but the mind.
Elizabeth I, greeting jester Pace on his return to court after brief banishment for being rude: Come now, Pace, let us hear more of our faults.
Pace: No, madam, I never talk of what is discoursed by all the world.
But perhaps the boldest retort, certainly the most learned, came from ninth-century Scottish scholar John Scotus, dining opposite the Emperor Charlemagne.
“What is there,” asked the emperor, “between Sottum and Scottum ?” (Meaning, “between a fool and a Scot.”)
In a flash, the scholar replied, “The width of this table, sire.”
TYPOLOGY OF BORES, CHORES, AND OTHER CONVERSATIONAL BEASTS
SAYING SORRY Coprophagy
Jaded representatives of the world’s press gathered in Vancouver for an up-close-and-personal at the dress rehearsal for the first show on the Spice Girls’ comeback tour. Only, no girls. Then:
Suddenly, the five appeared in a flurry, like a flock of goldfinches alighting. They had come to offer their apologies for the delay, explain the frazzled condition of their nerves, promise that none of their costumes would fall apart, and hope we enjoyed ourselves. In a long lifetime of attending large concerts, I have never witnessed anything remotely as charming. Some might say this was the work of conniving minxes, but then they weren’t there.
Stunt or not, this keep ’em waiting, treat ’em nice maneuver is highly effective, building expectation, then earning honesty credits from an inconvenience of your own making. Not that I’m suggesting you contrive any such thing. My point is: What is lovelier than humility?
When you cause offense, how you acknowledge it, or don