On the New Books shelves at my friendly local public library I found and have enjoyed reading the 2024 book by Eric Weiner titled Ben & Me: In search of a founder’s formula for a long and useful life. Chapter 11 is titled Social Ben, and beginning on page 85 he discusses the art of conversation in some detail:
“…The Age of Enlightenment was also the Age of Conversation. These gabfests took place in the coffeehouses of London and the salons of Paris, in the learned company of the Royal Society, and in the rough-and-tumble dockyards of Glasgow, where Adam Smith developed many of his economic theories.
A good conversationalist doesn’t necessarily make a good public speaker. Awkward and faltering, Benjamin Franklin was not a gifted public speaker, and he knew it. In larger groups or among strangers, he hardly uttered a word.
But Franklin was a superb conversationalist. On this point, everyone agreed. Chatting with Ben ‘was always a feast with me,’ recalled James Madison, who was young enough to be Franklin’s grandson. ‘I never passed half an hour in his company without some observation or anecdote worth remembering.’ No frivolous anecdotes, either. Franklin’s stories and jokes were intended not only to entertain but to illuminate.
While still in his twenties, Franklin wrote a brief essay about the art of conversation. I’ve read it and reread it and every time I marvel at how relevant and contemporary it feels. Franklin was writing at a time before telegraphs and telephones, Facetime and Zoom, Slack and Snapchat. Yet his observations about the art of conversation are just as applicable as when he wrote them nearly three hundred years ago – a reminder that despite our many technological advances, conversation still amounts to one person talking to another, hoping to connect.
Most people believe they excel in conversation, he said, but they deceive themselves (just as today most people claim to be above-average drivers, a statistical impossibility). In conversation, people tend to go to extremes, either focusing exclusively (and annoyingly) on themselves or mercilessly probing their hapless conversant for some dirt. Some people wrangle and dispute incessantly; ‘thus every trifle becomes a serious business.’ Some people dwell on one topic too long, while others ‘leap from one thing to another with so much rapidity … that what they say is a mere chaos of noise and nonsense.’
The biggest mistake people make, Franklin thought, was ‘talking overmuch, and robbing others of their share of the discourse.’ I love that phrase, talking overmuch, and plan to use it the next time I find myself straining to get a word in with an overtalker. A good conversationalist is a good listener. ‘Observe, the precept is hear much, not speak much,’ he declared from behind his Poor Richard mask. The mask was no act, though. Franklin was genuinely interested in people, and that’s not something that can be faked, not even by the Old Conjurer. No matter how busy, he always had time to talk, recalled a medical student who knew Franklin during his stay in France. ‘Whenever one found him, he was available … he always had an hour to devote to you.’
Franklin knew Westerners had no monopoly on good conversation hygiene. He expressed admiration for the ‘profound silence’ observed by Native Americans when someone else was speaking. Compare that, he said, to the raucous British House of Commons or the so-called polite company of Europe, ‘where if you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it.’
A good conversationalist doesn’t simply master a bundle of clever techniques. He possesses a generosity of spirit, a genuine willingness to better, not best, the person at the other end of the table. This demands a ‘readiness to overlook or excuse their foibles,’ Franklin said. Overlooking is different from not seeing. You see and hear your interlocutor’s flaws, but choose to move past them, for now, so the conversation is freed to elevate both of you.
Being a good conversationalist doesn’t mean swallowing your opinions and beliefs. Franklin had many but never used them as a cudgel. They arrived Bubble-Wrapped. If asked what he thought about a subject, Franklin typically replied by asking a question or raising a doubt, engaging his interlocutor rather than alienating him. You could surmise where he stood, but he never allowed opinions, even strong ones, to come between people. Preserving a friendship was more important than scoring points, a useful truth that argumentative people fail to grasp. ‘They get victory sometimes,’ he said, ‘but they never get goodwill, which would be of more use to them.’ For Ben, the relationship was always more important than the problem.”
Eric Weiner didn’t specifically mention the title of that essay or where it appeared (even in his Notes at the back of the book). It is On Conversation, and was printed in The Pennsylvania Gazette on October 15, 1730. You can find the full text in a web page at the National Archives, Founders Online titled On Conversation 15 October 1730. Ben’s use of Capitalization, italics, and spelling differs from ours. After a Latin quote he begins:
“To please in Conversation is an Art which all People believe they understand and practise, tho’ most are ignorant or deficient in it. The Bounds and Manner of this Paper will not allow a regular and methodical Discourse on the Subject, and therefore I must beg Leave to throw my Thoughts together as they rise.
The two grand Requisites in the Art of Pleasing, are Complaisance and Good Nature. Complaisance is a seeming preference of others to our selves; and Good Nature a Readiness to overlook or excuse their Foibles, and do them all the Services we can. These two Principles must gain us their good Opinion, and make them fond of us for their own Sake, and then all we do or say will appear to be the best Advantage, and be well accepted. Learning, Wit, and fine Parts, with these, shine in full Lustre, become wonderfully agreeable and command Affection, but without them, only seem an Assuming over others, and occasion Envy and Disgust. The common Mistake is, that People think to please by setting themselves to View, and shewing their own Perfections, whereas the easier and more effectual Way lies quite contrary. Would you win the Hearts of others, you must not seem to vie with, but admire them: Give them every Opportunity of displaying their own Qualifications, and when you have indulg’d their Vanity, they will praise you too in Turn, and prefer you above others, in order to secure to themselves the Pleasure your Commendation gives.
But above all, we should mark out those Things which cause Dislike, and avoid them with great Care. The most common amongst these is, talking overmuch, and robbing others of their Share of the Discourse. This is not only Incivility but Injustice, for every one has a natural Right to speak in turn, and to hinder it is an Usurpation of common Liberty, which never fails to excite Resentment. Beside, great Talkers usually leap from one thing to another with so much rapidity, and so ill a Connection, that what they say is a mere Chaos of Noise and Nonsense; tho’ did they speak like Angels they still would be disagreeable. It is very pleasant when two of these People meet the Vexation they both feel is visible in their Looks and Gestures; you shall see them gape and stare, and interrupt one another at every Turn, and watch with the utmost Impatience for a Cough or a pause, when they may croud a Word in edgeways; neither hears nor cares what the other says; but both talk on at any Rate, and never fail to part highly disgusted with each other. I knew two Ladies gifted this Way, who by Accident travelled in a Boat twenty Miles together, in which short Journey they were both so extreamly tired of one another, that they could never after mention each others Name with any Temper, or be brought in Company together, but retained a mutual Aversion which could never be worn out.”
When I read the phrase “mere Chaos of Noise and Nonsense” I instantly thought of numerous statements made by Donald Trump in conversations!
A portrait of Franklin by Joseph Siffrein Duplessis came from here at Wikimedia Commons.
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