NOT only during my tour in England but for many years past it has been
my lot to speak and to lecture in all sorts of places, under all sorts
of circumstances and before all sorts of audiences. I say this, not in
boastfulness, but in sorrow. Indeed, I only mention it to establish the
fact that when I talk of lecturers and speakers, I talk of what I know.
Few people realise how arduous and how disagreeable public lecturing is.
The public sees the lecturer step out on to the platform in his little
white waistcoat and his long tailed coat and with a false air of a
conjurer about him, and they think him happy. After about ten minutes
of his talk they are tired of him. Most people tire of a lecture in ten
minutes; clever people can do it in five. Sensible people never go to
lectures at all. But the people who do go to a lecture and who get tired
of it, presently hold it as a sort of a grudge against the lecturer
personally. In reality his sufferings are worse than theirs.
For my own part I always try to appear as happy as possible while I am
lecturing. I take this to be part of the trade of anybody labelled a
humourist and paid as such. I have no sympathy whatever with the idea
that a humourist ought to be a lugubrious person with a face stamped
with melancholy. This is a cheap and elementary effect belonging to the
level of a circus clown. The image of "laughter shaking both his sides"
is the truer picture of comedy. Therefore, I say, I always try to appear
cheerful at my lectures and even to laugh at my own jokes. Oddly enough
this arouses a kind of resentment in some of the audience. "Well, I
will say," said a stern-looking woman who spoke to me after one of my
lectures, "you certainly do seem to enjoy your own fun." "Madam," I
answered, "if I didn't, who would?" But in reality the whole business of
being a public lecturer is one long variation of boredom and fatigue.
So I propose to set down here some of the many trials which the lecturer
has to bear.
The first of the troubles which any one who begins giving public
lectures meets at the very outset is the fact that the audience won't
come to hear him. This happens invariably and constantly, and not
through any fault or shortcoming of the speaker.
I don't say that this happened very often to me in my tour in England.
In nearly all cases I had crowded audiences: by dividing up the money
that I received by the average number of people present to hear me I
have calculated that they paid thirteen cents each. And my lectures are
evidently worth thirteen cents. But at home in Canada I have very often
tried the fatal experiment of lecturing for nothing: and in that case
the audience simply won't come. A man will turn out at night when he
knows he is going to hear a first class thirteen cent lecture; but when
the thing is given for nothing, why go to it?
The city in which I live is overrun with little societies, clubs and
associations, always wanting to be addressed. So at least it is in
appearance. In reality the societies are composed of presidents,
secretaries and officials, who want the conspicuousness of office, and a
large list of other members who won't come to the meetings. For such an
association, the invited speaker who is to lecture for nothing prepares
his lecture on "Indo-Germanic Factors in the Current of History." If he
is a professor, he takes all the winter at it. You may drop in at
his house at any time and his wife will tell you that he is "upstairs
working on his lecture." If he comes down at all it is in carpet
slippers and dressing gown. His mental vision of his meeting is that of
a huge gathering of keen people with Indo-Germanic faces, hanging upon
every word.
Then comes the fated night. There are seventeen people present. The
lecturer refuses to count them. He refers to them afterwards as "about a
hundred." To this group he reads his paper on the Indo-Germanic Factor.
It takes him two hours. When he is over the chairman invites discussion.
There is no discussion. The audience is willing to let the Indo-Germanic
factors go unchallenged. Then the chairman makes this speech. He says:
"I am very sorry indeed that we should have had such a very poor 'turn
out' to-night. I am sure that the members who were not here have missed
a real treat in the delightful paper that we have listened to. I want
to assure the lecturer that if he comes to the Owl's Club again we
can guarantee him next time a capacity audience. And will any members,
please, who haven't paid their dollar this winter, pay it either to me
or to Mr. Sibley as they pass out."
I have heard this speech (in the years when I have had to listen to it)
so many times that I know it by heart. I have made the acquaintance of
the Owl's Club under so many names that I recognise it at once. I am
aware that its members refuse to turn out in cold weather; that they do
not turn out in wet weather; that when the weather is really fine,
it is impossible to get them together; that the slightest
counter-attraction,--a hockey match, a sacred concert,--goes to their
heads at once.
There was a time when I was the newly appointed occupant of a college
chair and had to address the Owl's Club. It is a penalty that all new
professors pay; and the Owls batten upon them like bats. It is one of
the compensations of age that I am free of the Owl's Club forever. But
in the days when I still had to address them, I used to take it out of
the Owls in a speech, delivered, in imagination only and not out loud,
to the assembled meeting of the seventeen Owls, after the chairman had
made his concluding remarks. It ran as follows:
"Gentlemen--if you are such, which I doubt. I realise that the paper
which I have read on 'Was Hegel a deist?' has been an error. I spent
all the winter on it and now I realise that not one of you pups know who
Hegel was or what a deist is. Never mind. It is over now, and I am glad.
But just let me say this, only this, which won't keep you a minute. Your
chairman has been good enough to say that if I come again you will get
together a capacity audience to hear me. Let me tell you that if your
society waits for its next meeting till I come to address you again, you
will wait indeed. In fact, gentlemen--I say it very frankly--it will be
in another world."
But I pass over the audience. Suppose there is a real audience, and
suppose them all duly gathered together. Then it becomes the business of
that gloomy gentleman--facetiously referred to in the newspaper reports
as the "genial chairman"--to put the lecturer to the bad. In nine cases
out of ten he can do so. Some chairmen, indeed, develop a great gift for
it. Here are one or two examples from my own experience:
"Ladies and gentlemen," said the chairman of a society in a little
country town in Western Ontario, to which I had come as a paid (a very
humbly paid) lecturer, "we have with us tonight a gentleman" (here he
made an attempt to read my name on a card, failed to read it and put the
card back in his pocket)--"a gentleman who is to lecture to us on" (here
he looked at his card again)--"on Ancient Ancient,--I don't very well
see what it is--Ancient--Britain? Thank you, on Ancient Britain. Now,
this is the first of our series of lectures for this winter. The last
series, as you all know, was not a success. In fact, we came out at the
end of the year with a deficit. So this year we are starting a new line
and trying the experiment of cheaper talent."
Here the chairman gracefully waved his hand toward me and there was a
certain amount of applause. "Before I sit down," the chairman added,
"I'd like to say that I am sorry to see such a poor turn-out to-night
and to ask any of the members who haven't paid their dollar to pay it
either to me or to Mr. Sibley as they pass out."
Let anybody who knows the discomfiture of coming out before an audience
on any terms, judge how it feels to crawl out in front of them labelled
cheaper talent.
Another charming way in which the chairman endeavours to put both the
speaker for the evening and the audience into an entirely good humour,
is by reading out letters of regret from persons unable to be present.
This, of course, is only for grand occasions when the speaker has been
invited to come under very special auspices. It was my fate, not long
ago, to "appear" (this is the correct word to use in this connection) in
this capacity when I was going about Canada trying to raise some money
for the relief of the Belgians. I travelled in great glory with a pass
on the Canadian Pacific Railway (not since extended: officials of the
road kindly note this) and was most generously entertained wherever I
went.
It was, therefore, the business of the chairman at such meetings as
these to try and put a special distinction or cachet on the gathering.
This is how it was done:
"Ladies and gentlemen," said the chairman, rising from his seat on the
platform with a little bundle of papers in his hand, "before I introduce
the speaker of the evening, I have one or two items that I want to read
to you." Here he rustles his papers and there is a deep hush in the hall
while he selects one. "We had hoped to have with us to-night Sir Robert
Borden, the Prime Minister of this Dominion. I have just received a
telegram from Sir Robert in which he says that he will not be able to be
here" (great applause). The chairman puts up his hand for silence, picks
up another telegram and continues, "Our committee, ladies and gentlemen,
telegraphed an invitation to Sir Wilfrid Laurier very cordially inviting
him to be here to-night. I have here Sir Wilfrid's answer in which he
says that he will not be able to be with us" (renewed applause). The
chairman again puts up his hand for silence and goes on, picking up one
paper after another. "The Minister of Finance regrets that he will be
unable to come" (applause). "Mr. Rodolphe Lemieux (applause) will not
be here (great applause)--the Mayor of Toronto (applause) is detained
on business (wild applause)--the Anglican Bishop of the Diocese
(applause)--the Principal of the University College, Toronto (great
applause)--the Minister of Education (applause)--none of these are
coming." There is a great clapping of hands and enthusiasm, after which
the meeting is called to order with a very distinct and palpable feeling
that it is one of the most distinguished audiences ever gathered in the
hall.
Here is another experience of the same period while I was pursuing the
same exalted purpose: I arrived in a little town in Eastern Ontario,
and found to my horror that I was billed to "appear" in a church. I was
supposed to give readings from my works, and my books are supposed to be
of a humorous character. A church hardly seemed the right place to get
funny in. I explained my difficulty to the pastor of the church, a
very solemn looking man. He nodded his head, slowly and gravely, as he
grasped my difficulty. "I see," he said, "I see, but I think that I can
introduce you to our people in such a way as to make that right."
When the time came, he led me up on to the pulpit platform of the
church, just beside and below the pulpit itself, with a reading desk and
a big bible and a shaded light beside it. It was a big church, and the
audience, sitting in half darkness, as is customary during a sermon,
reached away back into the gloom. The place was packed full and
absolutely quiet. Then the chairman spoke:
"Dear friends," he said, "I want you to understand that it will be all
right to laugh tonight. Let me hear you laugh heartily, laugh right out,
just as much as ever you want to, because" (and here his voice assumed
the deep sepulchral tones of the preacher),-"when we think of the noble
object for which the professor appears to-night, we may be assured that
the Lord will forgive any one who will laugh at the professor."
I am sorry to say, however, that none of the audience, even with the
plenary absolution in advance, were inclined to take a chance on it.
I recall in this same connection the chairman of a meeting at a certain
town in Vermont. He represents the type of chairman who turns up so
late at the meeting that the committee have no time to explain to him
properly what the meeting is about or who the speaker is. I noticed
on this occasion that he introduced me very guardedly by name (from a
little card) and said nothing about the Belgians, and nothing about my
being (supposed to be) a humourist. This last was a great error. The
audience, for want of guidance, remained very silent and decorous, and
well behaved during my talk. Then, somehow, at the end, while some one
was moving a vote of thanks, the chairman discovered his error. So he
tried to make it good. Just as the audience were getting up to put on
their wraps, he rose, knocked on his desk and said:
"Just a minute, please, ladies and gentlemen, just a minute. I have just
found out--I should have known it sooner, but I was late in coming to
this meeting--that the speaker who has just addressed you has done so in
behalf of the Belgian Relief Fund. I understand that he is a well-known
Canadian humourist (ha! ha!) and I am sure that we have all been
immensely amused (ha! ha!). He is giving his delightful talks (ha!
ha!)--though I didn't know this till just this minute--for the Belgian
Relief Fund, and he is giving his services for nothing. I am sure when
we realise this, we shall all feel that it has been well worth while to
come. I am only sorry that we didn't have a better turn out to-night.
But I can assure the speaker that if he will come again, we shall
guarantee him a capacity audience. And I may say, that if there are any
members of this association who have not paid their dollar this season,
they can give it either to myself or to Mr. Sibley as they pass out."
With the amount of accumulated experience that I had behind me I was
naturally interested during my lecture in England in the chairmen who
were to introduce me. I cannot help but feel that I have acquired a fine
taste in chair men. I know them just as other experts know old furniture
and Pekinese dogs. The witty chairman, the prosy chairman, the solemn
chairman,--I know them all. As soon as I shake hands with the chairman
in the Committee room I can tell exactly how he will act.
There are certain types of chairmen who have so often been described and
are so familiar that it is not worth while to linger on them. Everybody
knows the chairman who says; "Now, ladies and gentlemen, you have not
come here to listen to me. So I will be very brief; in fact, I will
confine my remarks to just one or two very short observations." He then
proceeds to make observations for twenty-five minutes. At the end of
it he remarks with charming simplicity, "Now I know that you are all
impatient to hear the lecturer...."
And everybody knows the chairman who comes to the meeting with a very
imperfect knowledge of who or what the lecturer is, and is driven to
introduce him by saying:
"Our lecturer of the evening is widely recognised as one of the greatest
authorities on; on,--on his subject in the world to-day. He comes to
us from; from a great distance and I can assure him that it is a
great pleasure to this audience to welcome a man who has done so much
to,--to,--to advance the interests of,--of; of everything as he has."
But this man, bad as he is, is not so bad as the chairman whose
preparation for introducing the speaker has obviously been made at the
eleventh hour. Just such a chairman it was my fate to strike in the
form of a local alderman, built like an ox, in one of those small
manufacturing places in the north of England where they grow men of this
type and elect them into office.
"I never saw the lecturer before," he said, "but I've read his book." (I
have written nineteen books.) "The committee was good enough to send me
over his book last night. I didn't read it all but I took a look at the
preface and I can assure him that he is very welcome. I understand he
comes from a college...." Then he turned directly towards me and said in
a loud voice, "What was the name of that college over there you said you
came from?"
"McGill," I answered equally loudly.
"He comes from McGill," the chairman boomed out. "I never heard of
McGill myself but I can assure him he's welcome. He's going to lecture
to us on,--what did you say it was to be about?"
"It's a humorous lecture," I said.
"Ay, it's to be a humorous lecture, ladies and gentlemen, and I'll
venture to say it will be a rare treat. I'm only sorry I can't stay for
it myself as I have to get back over to the Town Hall for a meeting. So
without more ado I'll get off the platform and let the lecturer go on
with his humour."
A still more terrible type of chairman is one whose mind is evidently
preoccupied and disturbed with some local happening and who comes on to
the platform with a face imprinted with distress. Before introducing the
lecturer he refers in moving tones to the local sorrow, whatever it is.
As a prelude to a humorous lecture this is not gay.
Such a chairman fell to my lot one night before a gloomy audience in
a London suburb. "As I look about this hall to-night," he began in a
doleful whine, "I see many empty seats." Here he stifled a sob. "Nor am
I surprised that a great many of our people should prefer to-night to
stay quietly at home--"
I had no clue to what he meant. I merely gathered that some particular
sorrow must have overwhelmed the town that day.
"To many it may seem hardly fitting that after the loss our town has
sustained we should come out here to listen to a humorous lecture,--",
"What's the trouble?" I whispered to a citizen sitting beside me on the
platform.
"Our oldest resident"--he whispered back--"he died this morning."
"How old?"
"Ninety-four," he whispered.
Meantime the chairman, with deep sobs in his voice, continued:
"We debated in our committee whether or not we should have the lecture.
Had it been a lecture of another character our position would have been
less difficult,--", By this time I began to feel like a criminal. "The
case would have been different had the lecture been one that contained
information, or that was inspired by some serious purpose, or that could
have been of any benefit. But this is not so. We understand that this
lecture which Mr. Leacock has already given, I believe, twenty or thirty
times in England,--"
Here he turned to me with a look of mild reproval while the silent
audience, deeply moved, all looked at me as at a man who went around
the country insulting the memory of the dead by giving a lecture thirty
times.
"We understand, though this we shall have an opportunity of testing for
ourselves presently, that Mr. Leacock's lecture is not of a character
which,--has not, so to speak, the kind of value, in short, is not a
lecture of that class."
Here he paused and choked back a sob.
"Had our poor friend been spared to us for another six years he would
have rounded out the century. But it was not to be. For two or three
years past he has noted that somehow his strength was failing, that, for
some reason or other, he was no longer what he had been. Last month
he began to droop. Last week he began to sink. Speech left him last
Tuesday. This morning he passed, and he has gone now, we trust, in
safety to where there are no lectures."
The audience were now nearly in tears.
The chairman made a visible effort towards firmness and control.
"But yet," he continued, "our committee felt that in another sense
it was our duty to go on with our arrangements. I think, ladies and
gentlemen, that the war has taught us all that it is always our duty to
'carry on,' no matter how hard it may be, no matter with what reluctance
we do it, and whatever be the difficulties and the dangers, we must
carry on to the end: for after all there is an end and by resolution and
patience we can reach it.
"I will, therefore, invite Mr. Leacock to deliver to us his humorous
lecture, the title of which I have forgotten, but I understand it to
be the same lecture which he has already given thirty or forty times in
England."
But contrast with this melancholy man the genial and pleasing person who
introduced me, all upside down, to a metropolitan audience.
He was so brisk, so neat, so sure of himself that it didn't seem
possible that he could make any kind of a mistake. I thought it
unnecessary to coach him. He seemed absolutely all right.
"It is a great pleasure,"--he said, with a charming, easy appearance of
being entirely at home on the platform,--"to welcome here tonight our
distinguished Canadian fellow citizen, Mr. Learoyd"--he turned half
way towards me as he spoke with a sort of gesture of welcome, admirably
executed. If only my name had been Learoyd instead of Leacock it would
have been excellent.
"There are many of us," he continued, "who have awaited Mr. Learoyd's
coming with the most pleasant anticipations. We seemed from his books to
know him already as an old friend. In fact I think I do not exaggerate
when I tell Mr. Learoyd that his name in our city has long been a
household word. I have very, very great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen,
in introducing to you Mr. Learoyd."
As far as I know that chairman never knew his error. At the close of my
lecture he said that he was sure that the audience "were deeply indebted
to Mr. Learoyd," and then with a few words of rapid, genial apology
buzzed off, like a humming bird, to other avocations. But I have amply
forgiven him: anything for kindness and geniality; it makes the whole
of life smooth. If that chairman ever comes to my home town he is hereby
invited to lunch or dine with me, as Mr. Learoyd or under any name that
he selects.
Such a man is, after all, in sharp contrast to the kind of chairman who
has no native sense of the geniality that ought to accompany his office.
There is, for example, a type of man who thinks that the fitting way
to introduce a lecturer is to say a few words about the finances of the
society to which he is to lecture (for money) and about the difficulty
of getting members to turn out to hear lectures.
Everybody has heard such a speech a dozen times. But it is the paid
lecturer sitting on the platform who best appreciates it. It runs like
this:
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, before I invite the lecturer of the evening
to address us there are a few words that I would like to say. There are
a good many members who are in arrears with their fees. I am aware that
these are hard times and it is difficult to collect money but at the
same time the members ought to remember that the expenses of the society
are very heavy. The fees that are asked by the lecturers, as I suppose
you know, have advanced very greatly in the last few years. In fact I
may say that they are becoming almost prohibitive."
This discourse is pleasant hearing for the lecturer. He can see the
members who have not yet paid their annual dues eyeing him with hatred.
The chairman goes on:
"Our finance committee were afraid at first that we could not afford to
bring Mr. Leacock to our society. But fortunately through the personal
generosity of two of our members who subscribed ten pounds each out of
their own pocket we are able to raise the required sum."
(Applause: during which the lecturer sits looking and feeling
like the embodiment of the "required sum.")
"Now, ladies and gentlemen," continues the chairman, "what I feel is
that when we have members in the society who are willing to make this
sacrifice,--because it is a sacrifice, ladies and gentlemen,--we ought
to support them in every way. The members ought to think it their duty
to turn out to the lectures. I know that it is not an easy thing to do.
On a cold night, like this evening, it is hard, I admit it is hard, to
turn out from the comfort of one's own fireside and come and listen to a
lecture. But I think that the members should look at it not as a matter
of personal comfort but as a matter of duty towards this society. We
have managed to keep this society alive for fifteen years and, though I
don't say it in any spirit of boasting, it has not been an easy thing
to do. It has required a good deal of pretty hard spade work by the
committee. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I suppose you didn't come here to
listen to me and perhaps I have said enough about our difficulties and
troubles. So without more ado (this is always a favourite phrase with
chairmen) I'll invite Mr. Leacock to address the society; oh, just a
word before I sit down. Will all those who are leaving before the end of
the lecture kindly go out through the side door and step as quietly as
possible? Mr. Leacock."
Anybody who is in the lecture business knows that that introduction is
far worse than being called Mr. Learoyd.
When any lecturer goes across to England from this side of the water
there is naturally a tendency on the part of the chairman to play
upon this fact. This is especially true in the case of a Canadian like
myself. The chairman feels that the moment is fitting for one of those
great imperial thoughts that bind the British Empire together. But
sometimes the expression of the thought falls short of the full glory of
the conception.
Witness this (word for word) introduction that was used against me by a
clerical chairman in a quiet spot in the south of England:
"Not so long ago, ladies and gentlemen," said the vicar, "we used to
send out to Canada various classes of our community to help build up
that country. We sent out our labourers, we sent out our scholars and
professors. Indeed we even sent out our criminals. And now," with a wave
of his hand towards me, "they are coming back."
There was no laughter. An English audience is nothing if not literal;
and they are as polite as they are literal. They understood that I was a
reformed criminal and as such they gave me a hearty burst of applause.
But there is just one thing that I would like to chronicle here in
favour of the chairman and in gratitude for his assistance. Even at his
worst he is far better than having no chairman at all. Over in England a
great many societies and public bodies have adopted the plan of "cutting
out the chairman." Wearying of his faults, they have forgotten the
reasons for his existence and undertaken to do without him.
The result is ghastly. The lecturer steps up on to the platform alone
and unaccompanied. There is a feeble ripple of applause; he makes his
miserable bow and explains with as much enthusiasm as he can who he is.
The atmosphere of the thing is so cold that an 'Arctic expedition isn't
in it with it. I found also the further difficulty that in the absence
of the chairman very often the audience, or a large part of it, doesn't
know who the lecturer is. On many occasions I received on appearing a
wild burst of applause under the impression that I was somebody else.
I have been mistaken in this way for Mr. Briand, then Prime Minister of
France, for Charlie Chaplin, for Mrs. Asquith,--but stop, I may get into
a libel suit. All I mean is that without a chairman "we celebrities" get
terribly mixed up together.
To one experience of my tour as a lecturer I shall always be able to
look back with satisfaction. I nearly had the pleasure of killing a man
with laughing: and this in the most literal sense. American lecturers
have often dreamed of doing this. I nearly did it. The man in question
was a comfortable apoplectic-looking man with the kind of merry rubicund
face that is seen in countries where they don't have prohibition. He was
seated near the back of the hall and was laughing uproariously. All of
a sudden I realised that something was happening. The man had collapsed
sideways on to the floor; a little group of men gathered about him; they
lifted him up and I could see them carrying him out, a silent and inert
mass. As in duty bound I went right on with my lecture. But my heart
beat high with satisfaction. I was sure that I had killed him. The
reader may judge how high these hopes rose when a moment or two later a
note was handed to the chairman who then asked me to pause for a
moment in my lecture and stood up and asked, "Is there a doctor in the
audience?" A doctor rose and silently went out. The lecture continued;
but there was no more laughter; my aim had now become to kill another
of them and they knew it. They were aware that if they started laughing
they might die. In a few minutes a second note was handed to the
chairman. He announced very gravely, "A second doctor is wanted." The
lecture went on in deeper silence than ever. All the audience were
waiting for a third announcement. It came. A new message was handed to
the chairman. He rose and said, "If Mr. Murchison, the undertaker, is in
the audience, will he kindly step outside."
That man, I regret to say, got well.
Disappointing though it is to read it, he recovered. I sent back next
morning from London a telegram of enquiry (I did it in reality so as
to have a proper proof of his death) and received the answer, "Patient
doing well; is sitting up in bed and reading Lord Haldane's Relativity;
no danger of relapse."