After all it seems probable that Milnes himself, and not the lion of the hour, was the chief attraction at those parties. He delighted in the best sort of conversation—that which he called ‘the rapid counterplay and vivid exercise of combined intelligences,’ and he did his best to revive the practice of that almost forgotten art—_l’art de causer_. As Mr Reid says:
‘How brilliant and amusing he was over the dinner-table or the breakfast-table was known to all his friends. Overflowing with information, his mind was lightened by a bright wit, whilst his immense stores of appropriate anecdotes enabled him to give point and colour to every topic which was brought under discussion’ (vol. i. p. 189).
At the same time he did not fall into the fatal error of taking the talk into his own hands, and delivering a monologue, as too many social celebrities have done before and since. He had the happy art of making his guests talk, while he listened, and threw in a remark from time to time, to give new life when the conversation seemed to flag. Carlyle, in a letter written to his wife during his first visit to Fryston, gives us a lifelike portrait of Milnes when thus engaged:
‘Richard, I find, lays himself out while in this quarter to do hospitalities, and of course to collect notabilities about him, and play them off one against the other. I am his trump-card at present. The Sessions are at Pontefract even now, and many lawyers there. These last two nights he has brought a trio of barristers to dine, producing champagne, &c.... Last night our three was admitted to be a kind of failure, three greater blockheads ye wadna find in Christendee. Richard had to exert himself; but he is really dexterous, the villain. He pricks you with questions, with remarks, with all kinds of fly-tackle to make you bite, does generally contrive to get you into some sort of speech. And then his good humour is extreme; you look in his face and forgive him all his tricks’ (vol. i. p. 256).
As a pendant to this we will quote Mr Forster’s description of Milnes and Carlyle together:
‘Monckton Miles came yesterday and left this morning—a pleasant, companionable little man—delighting in paradoxes, but good-humoured ones; defending all manner of people and principles in order to provoke Carlyle to abuse them, in which laudable enterprise he must have succeeded to his heart’s content, and for a time we had a most amusing evening, reminding me of a naughty boy rubbing a fierce cat’s tail backwards, and getting in between furious growls and fiery sparks. He managed to avoid the threatened scratches’ (vol. i. p. 387).