Or a Creative Work of Art?

Another objection raised to gossip is that it causes mischief. As the result of a loose tongue, someone loses his Job or divorces her husband. This is not the fault of gossip, but of the kind of people one gossips with. There are some kinds of people in whose presence you should shut up like an oyster:people with strong moral views, members of Watch-Committees or Purity Leagues, natural policemen, schoolmasters. If you really mind what people do you have no right to gossip. But there's no reason whatever why gossip should make mischief. As a game played under the right rules It's an act of friendliness, a release of the feelings, and a creative work of art.

I began by saying that an interest in one's neighbours is common to all the human race. Common, too, at least to all nice people, is a love of conversation and a dislike of being alone. There are people who would rather play bridge or tennis nr do something rather than talk, but I think that rather unfriendly, don't you? Still worse is the person who sits in the corner saying nothing, and then goes home and writes It all up in a little black diary. He is a spy, and should be treated as such. No: you can be quite sure that the person who dislikes talking dislikes the entire human race, himself included, which is worse than the person who talks shop all the time, who at least likes himself.

A friendly person is interested In other people, and tries to talk about the things which interest them. Cut out gossip and there'll be no conversation left except shop, smoke-room stories, and the most vapid kind of tea-table talk. I'd rather be dead.

Secondly, gossip is the greatest safety valve to the emotions that exists. Psychologists tell us that we all nourish secret grudges, hatreds, jealousies, resentments against even our nearest and dearest, and that the cure lies in getting them off our chests. When we gossip, we do for nothing in the street or the parlour what we should have to pay two guineas an hour for doing in the consulting room. How often I have worked off ill-feeling against friends by telling some rather malicious stories about them, and as a result met them again with the feeling quite gone. And I expect you've done the same. When one reads in the papers of some unfortunate man who has gone for his wife with a razor, one can be pretty certain that he wasn't a great gossip. Very few gossips end in asylums or the condemned cell. It is cheaper than going to a doctor, and much nicer than actually having a row with our friends.

Lastly, gossip is creative. All art is based on gossip—that is to say, on observing and telling. The artist proper is someone with a special skill in handling his medium, a skill which few possess. But all of us to a greater or less degree can talk: we can all observe, and we all have friends to talk to. Gossip is the art-[unclear: form] of the man and woman in the [unclear: street] and the proper subject for gossip, as for all art. Is the belfavlour of mankind.