MY OPENING LECTURE--REFLECTIONS ON AUDIENCES I HAVE HAD--THE MAN WHO
WON'T SMILE--THE ONE WHO LAUGHS TOO SOON, AND MANY OTHERS.
_Boston, January 7._
Began my second American tour under most favorable auspices last night,
in the Tremont Temple. The huge hall was crowded with an audience of
about 2500 people--a most kind, warm, keen, and appreciative audience. I
was a little afraid of the Bostonians; I had heard so much about their
power of criticism that I had almost come to the conclusion that it was
next to impossible to please them. The Boston newspapers this morning
give full reports of my lecture. All of them are kind and most
favorable. This is a good start, and I feel hopeful.
The subject of my lecture was "A National Portrait Gallery of the
Anglo-Saxon Races," in which I delineated the English, the Scotch, and
the American characters. Strange to say, my Scotch sketches seemed to
tickle them most. This, however, I can explain to myself. Scotch "wut"
is more like American humor than any kind of wit I know. There is about
it the same dryness, the same quaintness, the same preposterousness, the
same subtlety.
[Illustration: BOSTON.]
My Boston audience also seemed to enjoy my criticisms of America and the
Americans, which disposes of the absurd belief that the Americans will
not listen to the criticism of their country. There are Americans and
Americans, as there is criticism and criticism. If you can speak of
people's virtues without flattery; if you can speak of their weaknesses
and failings with kindness and good humor, I believe you can criticise
to your heart's content without ever fearing to give offense to
intelligent and fair-minded people. I admire and love the Americans. How
could they help seeing it through all the little criticisms that I
indulged in on the platform? On the whole, I was delighted with my
Boston audience, and, to judge from the reception they gave me, I
believe I succeeded in pleasing them. I have three more engagements in
Boston, so I shall have the pleasure of meeting the Bostonians again.
* * * * *
I have never been able to lecture, whether in England, in Scotland, in
Ireland or in America, without discovering, somewhere in the hall, after
speaking for five minutes or so, an old gentleman who will not smile. He
was there last night, and it is evident that he is going to favor me
with his presence every night during this second American tour. He
generally sits near the platform, and not unfrequently on the first row.
There is a horrible fascination about that man. You cannot get your eyes
off him. You do your utmost to "fetch him"--you feel it to be your duty
not to send him home empty-headed; your conscience tells you that he has
not to please you, but that _you_ are paid to please him, and you
struggle on. You would like to slip into his pocket the price of his
seat and have him removed, or throw the water bottle at his face and
make him show signs of life. As it is, you try to look the other way,
but you know he is there, and that does not improve matters.
Now this man, who will not smile, very often is not so bad as he looks.
You imagine that you bore him to death, but you don't. You wonder how it
is he does not go, but the fact is he actually enjoys himself--inside.
Or, maybe, he is a professional man himself, and no conjuror has ever
been known to laugh at another conjuror's tricks. A great American
humorist relates that, after speaking for an hour and a half without
succeeding in getting a smile from a certain man in the audience, he
sent some one to inquire into the state of his mind.
"Excuse me, sir, did you not enjoy the lecture that has been delivered
to-night?"
"Very much indeed," said the man, "it was a most clever and entertaining
lecture."
"But you never smiled----"
"Oh, no--I'm a liar myself."
* * * * *
Sometimes there are other reasons to explain the unsmiling man's
attitude.
One evening I had lectured in Birmingham. On the first row there sat the
whole time an old gentleman, with his umbrella standing between his
legs, his hands crossed on the handle, and his chin resting on his
hands. Frowning, his mouth gaping, and his eyes perfectly vacant, he
remained motionless, looking at me, and for an hour and twenty minutes
seemed to say to me: "My poor fellow, you may do what you like, but you
won't 'fetch' me to-night, I can tell you." I looked at him, I spoke to
him, I winked at him, I aimed at him; several times even I paused so as
to give him ample time to see a point. All was in vain. I had just
returned, after the lecture, to the secretary's room behind the
platform, when he entered.
"Oh, that man again!" I cried, pointing to him.
He advanced toward me, took my hand, and said:
"Thank you very much for your excellent lecture, I have enjoyed it very
much."
"Have you?" said I.
[Illustration: THE OLD GENTLEMAN WHO WILL NOT SMILE.]
"Would you be kind enough to give me your autograph?" And he pulled out
of his pocket a beautiful autograph book.
"Well," I said to the secretary in a whisper, "this old gentleman is
extremely kind to ask for my autograph, for I am certain he has not
enjoyed my lecture."
"What makes you think so?"
"Why, he never smiled once."
"Oh, poor old gentleman," said the secretary; "he is stone deaf."
Many a lecturer must have met this man.
It would be unwise, when you discover that certain members of the
audience will not laugh, to give them up at once. As long as you are on
the platform there is hope.
I was once lecturing in the chief town of a great hunting center in
England. On the first row sat half a dozen hair-parted-in-the-middle,
single-eye-glass young swells. They stared at me unmoved, and never
relaxed a muscle except for yawning. It was most distressing to see how
the poor fellows looked bored. How I did wish I could do something for
them! I had spoken for nearly an hour when, by accident, I upset the
tumbler on my table. The water trickled down the cloth. The young men
laughed, roared. They were happy and enjoying themselves, and I had
"fetched" them at last. I have never forgotten this trick, and when I
see in the audience an apparently hopeless case, I often resort to it,
generally with success.
* * * * *
There are other people who do not much enjoy your lecture: your own.
[Illustration: THE CHAPPIES WHO WOULD NOT LAUGH.]
Of course you must forgive your wife. The dear creature knows all your
lectures by heart; she has heard your jokes hundreds of times. She comes
to your lectures rather to see how you are going to be received than to
listen to you. Besides, she feels that for an hour and a half you do not
belong to her. When she comes with you to the lecture hall, you are both
ushered into the secretary's room. Two or three minutes before it is
time to go on the platform, it is suggested to her that it is time she
should take her seat among the audience. She looks at the secretary and
recognizes that for an hour and a half her husband is the property of
this official, who is about to hand him over to the tender mercies of
the public. As she says, "Oh, yes, I suppose I must go," she almost
feels like shaking hands with her husband, as Mrs. Baldwin takes leave
of the Professor before he starts on his aerial trip. But, though she
may not laugh, her heart is with you, and she is busy watching the
audience, ever ready to tell them, "Now, don't you think this is a very
good point? Well, then, if you do, why don't you laugh and cheer?" She
is part and parcel of yourself. She is not jealous of your success, for
she is your helpmate, your kind and sound counselor, and I can assure
you that if an audience should fail to be responsive, it would never
enter her head to lay the blame on her husband; she would feel the most
supreme contempt for "that stupid audience that was unable to appreciate
you." That's all.
But your other own folk! You are no hero to them. To judge the effect of
anything, you must be placed at a certain distance, and your own folks
are too near you.
One afternoon I had given a lecture to a large and fashionable audience
in the South of England. A near relative of mine, who lived in the
neighborhood, was in the hall. He never smiled. I watched him from the
beginning to the end. When the lecture was over he came to the little
room behind the platform to take me to his house. As he entered the room
I was settling the money matters with my _impresario_. I will let you
into the secret. There was fifty-two pounds in the house, and my share
was two-thirds of the gross receipts, that is about thirty-four pounds.
My relative heard the sum. As we drove along in his dog-cart he nudged
me and said:
"Did you make thirty-four pounds this afternoon?"
"Oh, did you hear?" I said. "Yes, that was my part of the takings. For a
small town I am quite satisfied."
"I should think you were!" he replied. "If you had made thirty-four
shillings you would have been well paid for your work!"
Nothing is more true to life than the want of appreciation the
successful man encounters from relatives and also from former friends.
Nothing is more certain than when a man has lived on terms of perfect
equality and familiarity with a certain set of men, he can never hope to
be anything but "plain John" to them, though by his personal efforts he
may have obtained the applause of the public. Did he not rub shoulders
with them for years in the same walk of life? Why these bravos? What was
there in him more than in them? Even though they may have gone so far as
to single him out as a "rather clever fellow," while he was one of
theirs, still the surprise at the public appreciation is none the less
keen, his advance toward the front an unforgivable offense, and they are
immediately seized with a desire to rush out in the highways and
proclaim that he is only "Jack," and not the "John" that his admirers
think him. I remember that, in the early years of my life in England,
when I had not the faintest idea of ever writing a book on John Bull, a
young English friend of mine did me the honor of appreciating highly all
my observations on British life and manners, and for years urged me hard
and often to jot them down to make a book of. One day the book was
finished and appeared in print. It attracted a good deal of public
attention, but no one was more surprised than this man, who, from a kind
friend, was promptly transformed into the most severe and unfriendly of
my critics, and went about saying that the book and the amount of public
attention bestowed upon it were both equally ridiculous. He has never
spoken to me since.
[Illustration: THE MAN WHO LAUGHS.]
A successful man is very often charged with wishing to turn his back on
his former friends. No accusation is more false. Nothing would please
him more than to retain the friends of more modest times, but it is they
who have changed their feelings. They snub him, and this man, who is in
constant need of moral support and _pick-me-up_, cannot stand it.
* * * * *
But let us return to the audience.
The man who won't smile is not the only person who causes you some
annoyance.
There is the one who laughs too soon; who laughs before you have made
your points, and who thinks, because you have opened your lecture with a
joke, that everything you say afterward is a joke. There is another
rather objectionable person; it is the one who explains your points to
his neighbor, and makes them laugh aloud just at the moment when you
require complete silence to fire off one of your best remarks.
There is the old lady who listens to you frowning, and who does not mind
what you are saying, but is all the time shaking for fear of what you
are going to say next. She never laughs before she has seen other people
laugh. Then she thinks she is safe.
All these I am going to have in America again; that is clear. But I am
now a man of experience. I have lectured in concert rooms, in lecture
halls, in theaters, in churches, in schools. I have addressed embalmed
Britons in English health resorts, petrified English mummies at
hydropathic establishments, and lunatics in private asylums.
I am ready for the fray.