Advice to the Beginner

Oh, yes, and while we're on the subject of technique, there are two faults which the beginner should avoid. Never be arch, by which I mean, never start like this:

'I had an interesting talk with X the other day'.

'What did she say?'

'Oh, I promised not to tell you.'

'Oh, come on!'

'No, really, I can't—!'

Etcetera, until everyone is bored. It's bad manners, like keeping people waiting for their dinner.

The other fault to avoid is the apologetic opening. Phrases like:

'I suppose it's cruel to say it, but—'

'You know I'm devoted to her, but—'

'I don't usually gossip, but—'

It's a bad style, and a sign of an unpleasant nature. Let your gossip be yea. yea. and nay nay.

The great subjects for gossip are Love, Crime, and Money. Few of us, unfortunately, know many criminals, and reliable information about other people's finances is difficult to get hold of, so we generally have to fall back on love, which is a pity, as it tends to get rather monotonous. The ideal situation for the born gossip would be a village containing a mad vicar, a squire who was the terror of every parent with a daughter, a squire's wife who was being blackmailed by her chauffeur, a cocaine-taking doctor, a beautiful blonde girl In the pay of a foreign Power, a sinister professor who never came out of his house, and an ex-convict or two; but, alas! such villages only exist in detective stories. And we must put up with our own little village where nothing more happens than that the vicar is too high-church for the vestry, the squire's son has failed in his school certificate, the doctor danced several times with the beautiful blonde girl at the village institute dance, the professor is only an unmarried old entomologist with small Independent means, and now and then someone is fined for poaching.

Well, [unclear: never] mind, [unclear: skillfully] handled, you can make quite a lot of that. Remember, never hesitate to invent but invent in detail, never gossip to people who'll run off straight away to the victim, never gossip to people with moral principles, and don't have any conscience about being a gossip. If it is a fault, which I don't believe, it is a fault that is shared by the entire human race.—[Abridged.]