Introduction of Mr. Stephen Leacock Given by Sir Owen Seaman
on the Occasion of His First Lecture in London
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It is usual on these occasions for the chairman
to begin something like this: "The lecturer, I am sure, needs no
introduction from me." And indeed, when I have been the lecturer and
somebody else has been the chairman, I have more than once suspected
myself of being the better man of the two. Of course I hope I should
always have the good manners--I am sure Mr. Leacock has--to disguise
that suspicion. However, one has to go through these formalities, and I
will therefore introduce the lecturer to you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mr. Stephen Leacock. Mr. Leacock, this is
the flower of London intelligence--or perhaps I should say one of the
flowers; the rest are coming to your other lectures.
In ordinary social life one stops at an introduction and does not
proceed to personal details. But behaviour on the platform, as on the
stage, is seldom ordinary. I will therefore tell you a thing or two
about Mr. Leacock. In the first place, by vocation he is a Professor of
Political Economy, and he practises humour--frenzied fiction instead
of frenzied finance--by way of recreation. There he differs a good deal
from me, who have to study the products of humour for my living, and by
way of recreation read Mr. Leacock on political economy.
Further, Mr. Leacock is all-British, being English by birth and Canadian
by residence, I mention this for two reasons: firstly, because England
and the Empire are very proud to claim him for their own, and, secondly,
because I do not wish his nationality to be confused with that of his
neighbours on the other side. For English and American humourists have
not always seen eye to eye. When we fail to appreciate their humour they
say we are too dull and effete to understand it: and when they do not
appreciate ours they say we haven't got any.
Now Mr. Leacock's humour is British by heredity; but he has caught
something of the spirit of American humour by force of association. This
puts him in a similar position to that in which I found myself once when
I took the liberty of swimming across a rather large loch in Scotland.
After climbing into the boat I was in the act of drying myself when I
was accosted by the proprietor of the hotel adjacent to the shore. "You
have no business to be bathing here," he shouted. "I'm not," I said;
"I'm bathing on the other side." In the same way, if anyone on either
side of the water is unintelligent enough to criticise Mr. Leacock's
humour, he can always say it comes from the other side. But the truth
is that his humour contains all that is best in the humour of both
hemispheres.
Having fulfilled my duty as chairman, in that I have told you nothing
that you did not know before--except, perhaps, my swimming feat, which
never got into the Press because I have a very bad publicity agent--I
will not detain you longer from what you are really wanting to get at;
but ask Mr. Leacock to proceed at once with his lecture on "Frenzied
Fiction."