Polite Conversation ed. by Toby Litt (review)

67 it up into the air. Ms. Robinson sees Gulliver’s fright at being buffeted by the eagle’s flight, not knowing where he is being transported, as an allegory of the plight of thousands of African slaves, shackled deep in the cargo holds of the slaving vessels. Gulliver’s petrified complaint about being ‘‘four Hours under these circumstances’’ only elicits the chilly reprimand: ‘‘What’s four hours compared to four months in the hold of a slave ship?’’ While Gulliver as a Slave Trader represents an arresting statement of a particular thesis about Swift’s book, it seems to me to be vitiated by overstating the case, by zealously crushing all aspects of the work into a single thesis. Moreover, Ms. Robinson confuses a thesis with indisputable fact. On p. 2, she announces ‘‘the fact that the Travels is a protest at white supremacy and the African slave trade’’ (italics added), and on page 27 associates this fact with her own personal discovery, made in the early eighties. Later Gulliver’s supposed participation in slaving is escalated into his ‘‘insatiable desire’’ for the slave trade. Some of Ms. Robinson’s later critical remarks and rhetorical flights are explicitly and rather incautiously based on the absolute and unavoidable rectitude of her principal claim. Part of this overstatement concerns the yahoos, who are seen as closely and uniquely representing African blacks, so much so that Ms. Robinson, in quoting the text, is not above actually excising the word ‘‘yahoos ’’ and replacing it with ‘‘black people .’’ Equally dubious is her habit of responding to Gulliver as a real person rather than a fictional character. She looks to catch Gulliver for being less than frank about what he must have known as a hardened slaver, and some of her speculations (such as what happens to all the slaves when Gulliver is shipwrecked off the coast of Lilliput) scarcely seem warranted by what is actually in the text. What seems most questionable, however, is that Swift’s motivation in depicting Gulliver in such repugnant terms is to foster ‘‘white selfhatred ,’’ an attitude that Ms. Robinson sees as being both justified and to be encouraged . Richard Terry Northumbria University Polite Conversation, ed. Toby Litt. London : Hesperus, 2007. Pp. x ⫹ 128.£6.99. Swift’s A Compleat Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (abbreviated here as Polite Conversation ) appeared in 1738, though much of it was conceived some thirty years earlier. It consists of an Introduction , penned by Swift’s alter-ego Simon Wagstaff, followed by three dialogues, each exhibiting the finest forms of polished and witty modern conversation. Wagstaff claims to have jotted down innumerable of the ‘‘choicest expressions ’’ picked up from a ‘‘space of thirty-six years’’ spent visiting and dining at the most fashionable London houses. The dialogues capture the aristocratic cast of characters at the morning tea table, over dinner, and finally taking after-dinner tea. Wagstaff’s collection of the finest gems of English conversation, fashioned so that no conversational newcomer should ever be bereft of topics and rejoinders , is nothing of the sort: Swift instead presents a conversational comic milieu characterized by emptiness, affectation , and scandal. The dialogue, 68 such as the debate about Lady Snuff’s age, reads convincingly like stage repartee : LD SPARKISH: . . . pray, madam, was my Lady Snuff there? They say she’s extremely handsome. LADY SMART: They must not see with my eyes that think so. NEVEROUT: She may pass muster well enough. LADY ANSW: Pray, how old do you take her to be? COL: Why, about five- or six-andtwenty . MISS: I swear she’s no chicken; she’s on the wrong side of thirty if she be a day. LADY ANSW: Depend upon it, she’ll never see five-and-thirty and a bit to spare. COL: Why, they say she’s one of the chief toasts in town. LADY SMART: Ay, when all the rest are out of it. Highly conventional, this scandalmongering nonetheless is deft. Polite Conversation is also finely attuned to the richness of English idiomatic diction and proverbial usages, such as ‘‘The parson always christens his own child’’ and ‘‘The fox is the finder .’’ At times, the characters’ banter consists...