Is silence no longer golden?

The late Dr. A. R. Vidler, speaking at a dinner soon after becoming dean of King's, quoted an anonymous lady who said that one does not feel at home in a house until one feels free to walk about in one's underwear.

I think it could just as well be said that one does not feel at ease in someone else's company until the two of you can sit together in silence without either feeling uneasy.

It appears that many people are so ill at ease that they feel impelled to hold conversations even in the library.

A recent news item reported that libraries were to become jollier places, where people could eat, drink, chat, and apparently do almost anything other than read a book. It was my impression that that change has been underway for a long time, but the announcement still aroused nostalgia for the libraries of my youth.

Libraries used to be oases of quiet amid the desert of idle prattle that makes up much of social life, places where I could browse through strange collections of books, and take one to a table and read it undisturbed if I didn't want to borrow it.

There are so many places people can talk, it is a pity some of them feel impelled to do it even in places where it used to be possible to think in peace and quiet.

I suppose the crux of the matter (one day I must look up 'crux' in the dictionary) is that, although conversations involve the uttering of words, the point of the activity is often not to communicate what those words mean. I once read a book called something like 'Games people Play' that analysed conversational gambits as moves in an elaborate game, in which one identified some people as members of one's 'in' group and others as outsiders, expressing solidarity with the former, and trying to exclude the latter.

Conversation is often used in much the same way that cats groom each other, and indeed groom friendly humans, sniffing, snuggling up against and licking.

It would be a great improvement if people were franker, reserving words for circumstances where they wish to assert what those words mean, and stroking each other when they just want to reassure, though if the stroking produces the loud purring that my efforts elicit from our junior cat, I'd prefer it if people wouldn't stroke in the library.