If there were no such bird as a stormy petrel, those two words would spring together to describe Elinor Wylie. Her appearance was beautiful, brittle and tragic, like ‘The Venetian Glass Nephew’ of whom she wrote, and she was extremely touchy. She was also the most egotistical person I ever knew; but egotism, if joined to intelligence, gives great point to conversation. Elinor’s talk was always exciting, because one never knew when she would fly at a tangent into a sudden fury, or quarrel most violently with someone with whom she had, a moment before, been conversing serenely on some high literary topic. I remember one such instantaneous squall when she and Harold Acton were discussing Shelley’s poetry. My attention wandered for a moment and then I heard them screaming at each other like fish-wives. She shrieked at him that Roman Catholics never read the Bible, and he hurled back at her that Shelley’s face was covered with spots. I never learnt how these two poisoned darts came to fit each other as the appropriate ripostes, but they certainly both struck home and roused their opponent to fury. The mention of Edward Garnett’s name was also quite certain to break up any conversation in which Elinor Wylie was engaged. He advised her not to write that fictional sequel to the drowning of Shelley in the Mediterranean Sea, which she eventually published as Mortal Image. Mr. Garnett thought that this might jar upon the feelings of some of Shelley’s admirers, but Elinor knew that she loved Shelley herself so much that no one could be more sensitive about him than she. She could not forgive a criticism which seemed to her to put her outside the circle of Shelley’s true intimates, and to speak of Edward Garnett before her was certain to strike a flint which would light a bonfire.
When she was not in this inflammable mood, Elinor was a very poetic talker; her conversation was full of uncommon words and individual turns of phrase. She delighted to find poetry on side-tracks, and, picking up some little casual allusion that someone had let fall, she would play with it and beautify it till it became the chief subject of the conversation. Then again she enjoyed nothing more than a serious discussion of her own personal appearance. We talked for hours about her each separate feature—her nose, eyes, mouth, cheekbones, wrists, or hair. Each part of her became like a separate person to be discussed and argued over with heated agreement or disagreement.
Stephen Tennant is the most sparkling talker who ever comes to my house, and perhaps the most amusing. He dances like a will-o’-the-wisp where other people stick in the mud. Though his really kindred spirits are the most exotic people he can find, he also greatly enjoys a talk with some extremely commonplace person, when he pretends that he thinks they mean something which they never thought of in their lives. He can be by turns poetic, malicious, and nonsensical. His talk is very pictorial and he handles words as if they were paint on a brush. When Stephen is alone with one friend he is often drawn to speak of very grave and profound subjects, and then he becomes unhappy, for he is never sure about what he loves and believes in, and he would like to love and believe in so much.
On the other hand, when David Cecil talks, his words rush out like rockets and turn into stars because of the fire of faith within. He is so passionately interested in his subject that he might be expected to become a monologuist, but as a matter of fact he is completely the opposite, and when he is in the room he makes everyone else talk well. He seems to care intensely, not only for the subject which is being discussed, but also for what every person in the room thinks about it, looking eagerly from one to the other, and drawing from everyone his best. David is the most sympathetic talker I know, and he always succeeds in making the conversation general. He also has a delightful gift for bringing the talk round, without any apparent effort, to any subject on which he happens to know that someone present will be able to shine. This makes the talk leap about the room with great variety and freshness. Such talk is for me quite impossible to report. Writing it down always rubs off its bloom; but even apart from that, one only remembers the outstanding things that are said in an evening’s talk, although the little remarks thrown in by one and another have given it half its charm. They have in fact made it into ‘talk’. One night, for instance, David made us speculate
