MARCUS AURELIUS IN AMERICA--CHAIRMEN I HAVE HAD--AMERICAN, ENGLISH,
AND SCOTCH CHAIRMEN--ONE WHO HAD BEEN TO BOULOGNE--TALKATIVE AND
SILENT CHAIRMEN--A TRYING OCCASION--THE LORD IS ASKED TO ALLOW THE
AUDIENCE TO SEE MY POINTS.
_New York, January 22._
There are indeed very few Americans who have not either tact or a sense
of humor. They make the best of chairmen. They know that the audience
have not come to hear them, and that all that is required of them is to
introduce the lecturer in very few words, and to give him a good start.
Who is the lecturer that would not appreciate, nay, love, such a
chairman as Dr. R. S. MacArthur, who introduced me yesterday to a New
York audience in the following manner?
"Ladies and Gentlemen," said he, "the story goes that, last summer, a
party of Americans staying in Rome paid a visit to the famous
Spithoever's bookshop in the Piazza di Spagna. Now Spithoever is the most
learned of bibliophiles. You must go thither if you need artistic and
archaeological works of the profoundest research and erudition. But one
of the ladies in this tourists' party only wanted the lively travels in
America of Max O'Rell, and she asked for the book at Spithoever's. There
came in a deep guttural voice--an Anglo-German voice--from a spectacled
clerk behind a desk, to this purport: 'Marcus Aurelius vos neffer in te
Unided Shtaates!' But, ladies and gentlemen, he is now, and here he is."
With such an introduction, I was immediately in touch with my audience.
What a change after English chairmen!
A few days before lecturing in any English town, under the auspices of a
Literary Society or Mechanics' Institute, the lecturer generally
receives from the secretary a letter running somewhat as follow:
DEAR SIR:
I have much pleasure in informing you that our Mr. Blank, one of our
vice-presidents and a well-known resident here, will take the chair at
your lecture.
Translated into plain English, this reads:
My poor fellow, I am much grieved to have to inform you that a
chairman will be inflicted upon you on the occasion of your lecture
before the members of our Society.
In my few years' lecturing experience, I have come across all sorts and
conditions of chairmen, but I can recollect very few that "have helped
me." Now, what is the office, the duty, of a chairman on such occasions?
He is supposed to introduce the lecturer to the audience. For this he
needs to be able to make a neat speech. He has to tell the audience who
the lecturer is, in case they should not know it, which is seldom the
case. I was once introduced to an audience who knew me, by a chairman
who, I don't think, had ever heard of me in his life. Before going on
the platform he asked me whether I had written anything, next whether I
was an Irishman or a Frenchman, etc.
[Illustration: "MARCUS AURELIUS VOS NEFFER IN TE UNIDED SHTAATES!"]
Sometimes the chairman is nervous; he hems and haws, cannot find the
words he wants, and only succeeds in fidgeting the audience. Sometimes,
on the other hand, he is a wit. There is danger again. I was once
introduced to a New York audience by General Horace Porter. Those of my
readers who know the delightful general and have heard him deliver one
of those little gems of speeches in his own inimitable manner, will
agree with me that certainly there was danger in that; and they will not
be surprised when I tell them that after his delightfully witty and
graceful little introduction, I felt as if the best part of the show was
over.
Sometimes the chair has to be offered to a magnate of the neighborhood,
though he may be noted for his long, prosy orations--which annoy the
public; or to a very popular man in the locality who gets all the
applause--which annoys the lecturer.
"Brevity is the soul of wit," should be the motto of chairmen, and I
sympathize with a friend of mine who says that chairmen, like little
boys and girls, should be seen and not heard.
Of those chairmen who can and do speak, the Scotch ones are generally
good. They have a knack of starting the evening with some droll Scotch
anecdote, told with that piquant and picturesque accent of theirs, and
of putting the audience in a good humor. Occasionally they will also
make _apropos_ and equally droll little speeches at the close. One
evening, in talking of America, I had mentioned the fact that American
banquets were very lively, and that I thought the fact of Americans
being able to keep up such a flow of wit for so many hours, was perhaps
due to their drinking Apollinaris water instead of stronger things after
dessert. At the end of the lecture, the chairman rose and said he had
greatly enjoyed it, but that he must take exception to one statement the
lecturer had made, for he thought it "fery deeficult to be wutty on
Apollinaris watter."
Another kind of chairman is the one who kills your finish, and stops all
the possibility of your being called back for applause, by coming
forward, the very instant the last words are out of your mouth, to
inform the audience that the next lecture will be given by Mr.
So-and-So, or to make a statement of the Society's financial position,
concluding by appealing to the members to induce their friends to join.
Then there is the chairman who does not know what you are going to talk
about, but thinks it his duty to give the audience a kind of summary of
what he imagines the lecture is going to be. He is terrible. But he is
nothing to the one who, when the lecture is over, will persist in
summing it up, and explaining your own jokes, especially the ones he has
not quite seen through. This is the dullest, the saddest chairman yet
invented.
Some modest chairmen apologize for standing between the lecturer and the
audience, and declare they cannot speak, but do. Others promise to speak
a minute only, but don't.
[Illustration: THE CHAIRMAN.]
"What shall I speak about?" said a chairman to me one day, after I had
been introduced to him in the little back room behind the platform.
"If you will oblige me, sir," I replied, "kindly speak about--one
minute."
Once I was introduced to the audience as the promoter of good feelings
between France and England.
"Sometimes," said the chairman, "we see clouds of misunderstanding arise
between the French--between the English--between the two. The lecturer
of this evening makes it his business to disperse these clouds--these
clouds--to--to---- But I will not detain you any longer. His name is
familiar to all of us. I'm sure he needs no introduction to this
audience. We all know him. I have much pleasure in introducing to you
Mr.--Mosshiay--Mr. ----" Then he looked at me in despair.
It was evident he had forgotten my name.
"Max O'Rell is, I believe, what you are driving at," I whispered to him.
* * * * *
The most objectionable chairmen in England are, perhaps, local men
holding civic honors. Accustomed to deliver themselves of a speech
whenever and wherever they get a chance, aldermen, town councilors,
members of local boards, and school boards, never miss an opportunity of
getting upon a platform to address a good crowd. Not long ago, I was
introduced to an audience in a large English city by a candidate for
civic honors. The election of the town council was to take place a
fortnight afterward, and this gentleman profited by the occasion to air
all his grievances against the sitting council, and to assure the
citizens that if they would only elect him, there were bright days in
store for them and their city. This was the gist of the matter. The
speech lasted twenty minutes.
[Illustration: "HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE YOUR NAME?"]
Once the chair was taken by an alderman in a Lancashire city, and the
hall was crowded. "What a fine house!" I remarked to the chairman as we
sat down on the platform.
"Very fine indeed," he said; "everybody in the town knew I was going to
take the chair."
I was sorry I had spoken.
More than once, when announced to deliver a lecture on France and the
French, I have been introduced by a chairman who, having spent his
holidays in that country once or twice, opened the evening's proceedings
by himself delivering a lecture on France. I have felt very tempted to
imitate a _confrere_, and say to the audience: "Ladies and Gentlemen, as
one lecture on France is enough for an evening, perhaps you would rather
I spoke about something else now." The _confrere_ I have just mentioned
was to deliver a lecture on Charles Dickens one evening. The chairman
knew something of Charles Dickens and, for quite a quarter of an hour,
spoke on the great English novelist, giving anecdotes, extracts of his
writings, etc. When the lecturer rose, he said: "Ladies and Gentlemen,
two lectures on Charles Dickens are perhaps more than you expected to
hear to-night. You have just heard a lecture on Charles Dickens. I am
now going to give you one on Charles Kingsley."
Sometimes I get a little amusement, however (as in the country town of
X.), out of the usual proceedings of the society before whose members I
am engaged to appear. At X., the audience being assembled and the time
up, I was told to go on the platform alone and, being there, to
immediately sit down. So I went on, and sat down. Some one in the room
then rose and proposed that Mr. N. should take the chair. Mr. N., it
appeared, had been to Boulogne (_to B'long_), and was particularly
fitted to introduce a Frenchman. In a speech of about five minutes
duration, all Mr. N.'s qualifications for the post of chairman that
evening were duly set forth. Then some one else rose and seconded the
proposition, re-enumerating most of these qualifications. Mr. N. then
marched up the hall, ascended the platform, and proceeded to return
thanks for the kind manner in which he had been proposed for the chair
and for the enthusiasm (a few friends had applauded) with which the
audience had sanctioned the choice. He said it was true that he had been
in France, and that he greatly admired the country and the people, and
he was glad to have this opportunity to say so before a Frenchman. Then
he related some of his traveling impressions in France. A few people
coughed, two or three more bold stamped their feet, but he took no heed
and, for ten minutes, he gave the audience the benefit of the
information he had gathered in Boulogne. These preliminaries over, I
gave my lecture, after which Mr. N. called upon a member of the audience
to propose a vote of thanks to the lecturer "for the most amusing and
interesting discourse, etc."
Now a paid lecturer wants his check when his work is over, and although
a vote of thanks, when it is spontaneous, is a compliment which he
greatly appreciates, he is more likely to feel awkwardness than pleasure
when it is a mere red-tape formality. The vote of thanks, on this
particular occasion, was proposed in due form. Then it was seconded by
some one who repeated two or three of my points and spoiled them. By
this time I began to enter into the fun of the thing, and, after having
returned thanks for the vote of thanks and sat down, I stepped forward
again, filled with a mild resolve to have the last word:
"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said, "I have now much pleasure in proposing
that a hearty vote of thanks be given Mr. N. for the able manner in
which he has filled the chair. I am proud to have been introduced to you
by an Englishman who knows my country so well." I went again through the
list of Mr. N.'s qualifications, not forgetting the trip to Boulogne and
the impressions it had left on him. Somebody rose and seconded this. Mr.
N. delivered a speech to thank the audience once more, and then those
who had survived went home.
Some Nonconformist societies will engage a light or humorous lecturer,
put him in their chapel, and open his mouth with prayer. Prayer is good,
but I would as soon think of saying grace before dancing as of beginning
my lecture with a prayer. This kind of experience has been mine several
times. A truly trying experience it was, on the first occasion, to be
accompanied to the platform by the minister, who, motioning me to sit
down, advanced to the front, lowered his head, and said in solemn
accents: "Let us pray." After I got started, it took me fully ten
minutes to make the people realize that they were not at church. This
experience I have had in America as well as in England. Another
experience in this line was still worse, for the prayer was supplemented
by the singing of a hymn of ten or twelve verses. You may easily imagine
that my first remark fell dead flat.
I have been introduced to audiences as Mossoo, Meshoe, and Mounzeer
O'Reel, and other British adaptations of our word _Monsieur_, and found
it very difficult to bear with equanimity a chairman who maltreated a
name which I had taken some care to keep correctly spelt before the
public. Yet this man is charming when compared with the one who, in the
midst of his introductory remarks, turns to you, and in a stage whisper
perfectly audible all over the hall, asks: "How do you pronounce your
name?"
Passing over chairman chatty and chairman terse, chairman eloquent and
chairman the reverse, I feel decidedly most kindly toward the silent
chairman. He is very rare, but he does exist and, when met with, is
exceedingly precious. Why he exists, in some English Institutes, I have
always been at a loss to imagine. Whether he comes on to see that the
lecturer does not run off before his time is up, or with the water
bottle, which is the only portable thing on the platform generally;
whether he is a successor to some venerable deaf and dumb founder of his
Society; or whether he goes on with the lecturer to give a lesson in
modesty to the public, as who should say: "I could speak an if I would,
but I forbear." Be his _raison d'etre_ what it may, we all love him. To
the nervous novice he is a kind of quiet support, to the old stager he
is as a picture unto the eye and as music unto the ear.
* * * * *
Here I pause. I want to collect my thoughts. Does my memory serve me? Am
I dreaming, or worse still, am I on the point of inventing? No, I could
not invent such a story, it is beyond my power.
I was once lecturing to the students of a religious college in America.
Before I began, a professor stepped forward, and offered a prayer, in
which he asked the Lord to allow the audience to see my points.
Now, I duly feel the weight of responsibility attaching to such a
statement, and in justice to myself I can do no less than give the
reader the petition just as it fell on my astonished ears:
"Lord, Thou knowest that we work hard for Thee, and that recreation is
necessary in order that we may work with renewed vigor. We have to-night
with us a gentleman from France [excuse my recording a compliment too
flattering], whose criticisms are witty and refined, _but subtle_, and
we pray Thee to so prepare our minds that we may thoroughly understand
and enjoy them."
"_But subtle!_"
I am still wondering whether my lectures are so subtle as to need
praying over, or whether that audience was so dull that they needed
praying for.
Whichever it was, the prayer was heard, for the audience proved warm,
keen, and thoroughly appreciative.
[Illustration]