Victorian Men Who Wouldn't Stop Talking | Egotists & Bores, 1878

In 1878, Chambers Edinburgh Journal catalogued the Victorian gentleman at his most tedious—while women were forbidden from mentioning themselves at all.

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This week: Lord Erskine, so consumed by self-regard he asked what the great Irish orator Grattan said "of himself"—and received one of history's most withering responses. An American in San Francisco who wouldn't stop interrogating a stranger until the stranger had the last word. Alexandre Dumas tracing his pedigree back to apes to silence a racist. And brilliant writers like Addison and Goldsmith who could fill books with eloquence yet couldn't manage a sentence in company—while mediocrities described tears as "aqueous fluids trickling from visual organs."

The men faced mockery. The women faced consequences. Features readings from Chambers Edinburgh Journal (1845 & 1878) and Mrs Beeton's Complete Etiquette for Ladies (1892).