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IX

GOSSIP

LET no man smile. The subject to which I now address myself is no trivial one. We are approaching a theme of first-class importance. One has only to look up a good etymological dictionary in order to discover that the very word ‘gossip’ is one of the most sacred and solemn compositions in our vocabulary. Its first two letters are an abbreviation of that august Name that no thoughtful man ever mentions without reverence. Let us take our shoes from off our feet, for the place whereon we stand is holy ground. Gossip may be a matter of life or of death. 

‘Do you think, Catherine,’ asked Mrs. Cardew, taking her friend’s hand in hers, ‘do you think I could learn how to talk?’

It seemed an innocent enough question on the face of it ; but those who have read Mark Rutherford’s great story know that the unutterable anguish of a stricken soul vibrated through every syllable. Poor Mrs. Cardew felt that she and her husband were drifting apart. He lived in one world and she in another. It is the tragedy that Tennyson describes in In Memoriam : 

He thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
  He reads the secret of the star,
  He seems so near and yet so far,
He looks so cold : she thinks him kind 

She keeps the gift of years before,
  A withered violet is her bliss:
  She knows not what his greatness is.
For that, for all, she loves him more. 

For him she plays, to him she sings
  Of early faith and plighted vows;
  She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things. 

Her faith is fixt and cannot move.
  She darkly feels him great and wise.
  She dwells on him with faithful eyes,
‘I cannot understand: I love.’ 

Mrs. Cardew felt that, if only her talk could match her husband’s talk, their souls would once more rush to each other as in the sweet old days of their courtship. But was it possible?’ Do you think I could learn how to talk?’

Or, look at the matter from another angle. Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen, the Danish explorer, has recently paid an eloquent testimony to the practical value of gossip. Captain Mikkelsen was entrusted, as all the world knows, with the charge of the expedition sent out to recover the bodies of Mylius Erichsen, Hagen, and the Greenlander, Brorlund. Captain Mikkelsen, accompanied by Engineer Iversen, left the main party in June, 1909, and plunged into the snowy silences of the far North. For nearly two years and a half nothing further was heard of them. Indeed, the wonder is that they escaped with their lives. Death many times stared them in the face ; and on one memorable occasion they had shot their last dog and eaten the last morsel that their little store could furnish. But the captain tells us that the most trying of the ordeals through which he and his brave companions passed was neither the paralysing intensity of the Arctic cold, nor the increasing anxiety about provisions, but the weird silence and the maddening monotony of the snowy desolations amidst which those interminable months were passed. ‘Our only remedy,’ continues the captain, ‘was talk, talk, talk, and plenty of it. Iversen and I discussed continually subjects that would never have interested us under any other conditions.’ Captain Mikkelsen doubts whether either of them would have escaped with sound minds but for the stimulus and relief that this constant flow of cheerful conversation perennially afforded them. 

These two witnesses — Mrs. Cardew and Captain Mikkelsen — prove conclusively that we have embarked upon no trivial theme. ‘Gossip may be a matter of life or of death!’ I said just now. ‘It may be more than that,’ says Captain Mikkelsen, ‘it may be a matter of sanity or insanity!’ ‘It may be more even than that,’ adds poor Mrs. Cardew; but Mrs. Cardew bursts into tears before she can explain how that can be. 

I have often heard old men say that we cannot talk nowadays as our grandfathers did.’ You don’t know what it is, ‘a revered grey-beard said to me the other day,’ to sit down and talk. There is nothing in what you say. Somebody asks somebody else what he thinks of such and such a thing. He replies that it is very good, and the matter drops. Then in desperation somebody tells a story ; somebody else caps it ; and thus a spurious imitation of our old-fashioned gossip is made to do duty as a wretched substitute. But it isn’t the real thing. No, no ; you don’t know how to talk!’ 

The impeachment deserves investigation. Is it true that we are losing the knack of talking well? Is the art of good conversation, which loomed so largely in the intellectual development of an earlier and more leisurely age, falling into decay?

Dr. Johnson had a pitiless way of judging the intelligence of the company in which he chanced to find himself by the quality of their conversation; and those discussions in which Reynolds and Garrick, Gibbon and Goldsmith, Burke and the great doctor himself took part were kept up to high-water mark, without forfeiting anything of their ease and informality, by the commanding influence of the great lexicographer’s extraordinary personality. ‘There is great solace in talk,’ the doctor used to say; ‘we have minds, memories, varied experiences, different opinions. Let us stretch out our legs and talk!’ And those who, with Boswell’s help, have cultivated the doctor’s intimate acquaintance, will recall the way in which his companions winced when, after an aimless and desultory chatter, their leader would turn from them with a grunt and a scowl of ineffable disgust. ‘It was a very pretty company,’ he would remark, ‘and plenty of talk; but there was no real conversation ; nothing was discussed.’

Now, say what you will about it, gossip is one of the real luxuries of life. Abuse it to your heart’s content, but it still remains true that there are few things more delightful than a good talk. Go for a walk with your friend, and, when the wholesome exercise and the rich open air have set your blood bounding vigorously through your veins, you find that the exhilaration loosens your tongue ; and what feast can compare with the chat that then ensues? Or sit beside a fire, and when the cheerful flame has cast a similar charm over your spirit, what confidences, what criticisms, what confessions ensue!

But we must come to closer grips. As a rule, one great law holds true. It is this: when you have discovered something essentially human, you have generally discovered something essentially divine. I mean that if a thing appeals to the inmost heart of a man, if it lays a resistless hand upon his strongest affections, if it breaks up the very depths and fountains of his soul, it is because it was devised and ordained for that very purpose. If a thing touches my spirit to the very quick, it is because it was divinely designed so to do. Here, then, is the sanction of gossip. We all love gossip, revel in it, find our souls becoming involuntarily aroused and in-flamed as we indulge in it. Is it not probable, therefore, that gossip is a divine institution, of heavenly origin, sent into the world on high and sacramental service? 

The classical instance is, of course, the story of John Bunyan and the three or four poor women sitting in the sun. Dr. Alexander Whyte says that ‘the husbands of those women were away at their work; their children were off to school; their beds were all made, and their floors were all swept, and they all came out, as if one spirit had moved them, and they met and sat down on a doorstep together to enjoy for a little the forenoon sun. And they plunged immediately into their old subject: God and their own souls. And even when the young tinker came along with his satchel of tools on his shoulder, and stopped and leaned against the door-post beside them, they did not much mind him, but went on with the things of God that so possessed them.’ Bunyan never forgot the gossip he heard that day. ‘I heard,’ he says, ‘I heard but I under- stood not, for they were far above, out of my reach. Their talk was about a new birth, the work of God on their hearts, also how they were convinced of their miserable state by nature. They talked how God had visited their souls with His love in the Lord Jesus, and with what words and promises they had been refreshed, comforted, and supported against the temptations of the devil And methought they spake as if joy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had found a new world, as if they were people that dwelt alone and were not to be reckoned amongst their neighbours.’ Nobody can think of that little knot of poor women sitting together that spring morning without feeling that there is a place for gossip under the sun. 

No man is better than his gossip. He may preach like an archangel; he may work like a Trojan ; he may sing like a Gabriel ; he may give like a prince. But it is by his gossip that he must be judged. It is in his gossip that the man himself stands revealed. When he sits in congenial company, when the fire crackles on the hearth, when he stretches out his legs and talks, it is then that you have the measure of the man. If his gossip is questionable, you may be sure that the canker-worm is in his soul. If his gossip is elevating, you may be sure that his heart is in the right place. If his gossip, being free of all suspicion of artificiality and sanctimoniousness, is nevertheless sacred and beautiful, you may know him at once for a saint. 

The Old Testament closes with a lovely picture. In those dark days of rapid national declension and spiritual decay, we are told that ‘they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon His name.’ If that graceful record means anything, it means that One august Eavesdropper overhears all our familiar chatter and easy gossip; that by our gossip He can most readily tell those who really fear His name; and that earth becomes heaven to Him when He overhears a talk like that which John Bunyan heard from the four poor women on the doorstep. I said in setting out that my theme was no trivial one, and I fancy I have proved my case. 

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