At the risk of being severely snubbed for my presumption I venture to add a few words for the benefit of that numerous class of persons who feel an intense desire to address their fellows, but either do not possess the confidence or ability to do so. But I do realise the great difficulty of advising such people, because I am fully persuaded that there are many of them that will never be able to address an audience with any satisfaction to themselves or benefit to their hearers. And there are others who will never have any difficulty beyond the commencement. Nature has fitted them for public speakers, and the only thing necessary to their complete equipment is that they shall be thoroughly acquainted with their subject.
Now I am well aware that elocution and voice production are taught both by book and voice, but I do not know anything of the results. It has never been my lot knowingly to listen to a public speaker who has studied elocution as an art, but I may have done so unknowingly. I have, however, listened to men with a high reputation as public speakers, and have wondered mightily how anybody, not compelled thereto by any cause, could endure them for five minutes. And I have listened with sheer delight to others whom I have known to be men and women who had never even given a thought to training their voice or their gestures, but who were filled with intense love and knowledge of their subject, who apparently had only to open their mouths and let the stream of eloquence flow.
Of course; and therein lies, I fully believe, the prime principle and art of public speaking. At the same time I do fully recognise that there is a third great class between the two I have mentioned who without a little training or a little encouragement will never deliver the message they undoubtedly possess. Shyness, indolence, want of confidence in themselves: these are all heavy handicaps against a budding public speaker, and it is for such as these that I would speak now.
In the first place, I would say get rid of self-consciousness. Do not dare to allow yourself to think of your personal appearance. If you haven’t done your best for that in the solitude of your dressing-room before your mirror you are hopeless, but if you have, and then continue to wonder how you are appearing to the audience, you are equally hopeless. Forget your appearance and believe what is undoubtedly true, that if your message is worth listening to, all the better part of the audience are attending to it and are not caring a bit what you look like. At one of the most successful meetings I have ever had, one side of my dress-shirt front had a big patch of oil on it, which compared most strangely with the immaculate whiteness of the other half. My chest was very queer, and I wore a chest-protector which I had too liberally sprinkled with camphorated oil. This had come through my vest and spoiled my shirt-front. But I didn’t know anything about it until the affair was over, and then I realised that my audience didn’t know either, or if they did, it hadn’t affected their enthusiasm.
Of course, I do not in the least mean to suggest or imply that a speaker should be careless of or neglect his or her personal appearance; on the contrary, I regard it as a duty to the audience you have the honour to address that you should appear as neat and trim as possible without showing yourself eccentric or bizarre. Any fool can do that, and I may add with conviction that only fools will try by means of long hair and quaint clothing to attract the attention they could not gain otherwise. Of course, there are exceptions even to this rule. But what I do mean is that no public speaker, having dressed decently and reasonably, should thenceforth think about his appearance but should devote the entire powers of his mind to the service of his audience.
In the second place I would advise all young speakers to cultivate unconsciousness of their audience as individuals. Rather look upon and think of them as one individual with whom you are going to have an earnest confidential chat. While always cultivating that cosy air of confidence and conversational manner, beware of becoming slipshod, slangy or allusive. I know that this sounds like a counsel of perfection, but I know too how greatly it is needed. For although I hate the ultra-pessimistic assumed by so many middle-aged men with regard to manners and customs in general, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that among reasonably intelligent men of the “hupper suckles” present-day conversation is largely made up of “I meantersay, dontcherknow” and “what!” (explosive). And, alas! the upper middle-class do ape this detestable habit. I have heard men, occupying responsible positions, whose conversation was quite unintelligible from this cause, and I could only think that they used the idiotic convention because they did not want to talk—I knew that they were highly intelligent.
A great friend of mine, who was at the time managing director of a great Australasian newspaper, visited me some years ago and his comments upon this habit among our otherwise intelligent classes were continual and lurid.
“It seems to me,” he would say, “that the men I meet in England to-day have never learned how to talk, or else they have nothing to say. Their whole conversation seems to be made up of a few misapplied adverbs such as ‘frightfully, beastly, awfully’ and ‘well, I meantersay, doncherknow’ and ‘hwhatt!’ They drive me nearly crazy, and only that I do occasionally find a man who talks rationally I would not stop in the country another day.”
I told him what I gratefully acknowledged to be the fact, that the people of whom he complained, though a far too numerous class, are but the fringe of the intelligence of the nation. Still it may not be denied that in spite of reason and nature, both men and women of education and high position do cultivate this maddening convention. I certainly would not have dealt with it at the length I have were it not that I have advised a conversational manner with an audience, and I must make it clear that I mean conversation and not the silly ejaculations I have noted above.
And notwithstanding this real drawback I maintain that where a speaker can get upon those confidential conversational terms with his hearers he is absolutely sure of their attention, sure too of conveying his meaning to their minds. His speech will not be oratory. That may at once be admitted. Oratory has its distinct uses, its well-defined place, but it is not for teaching or amusement. It belongs to great occasions and to great orators. To the ordinary successful speaker or preacher it is like the panoply of Saul upon the immature shoulders of David. There may come occasions when the successful speaker will rise to the sublime heights of oratory and carry his audience with him in a torrent of enthusiasm, but with those peaks we have not to deal, we are discussing the high road.
Next I would say, avoid all mannerisms of speech or gesture as you would suggestions of the evil one. I once was told by a gentleman who had heard me lecturing that I used rather too frequently the phrase “as a matter of fact.” I am afraid I was not at all grateful, I know that I flushed hotly, but I have since often recalled that quiet remark as one of the most valuable hints I ever received. For thenceforth I was on my guard, and if I found myself (as I often did) rolling a certain expression caressingly under my tongue I immediately set a watch for it and ruthlessly cut it out. Gesture is another pitfall for some people. It cannot be taught satisfactorily, although rules for its use are in all the books. I believe that the only effective gesture is the natural one—any gesture that you have to learn and practise up is unnatural, stilted, and stagey. That last word may be misunderstood; let me explain what I mean. All great actors are nearly natural in their gestures, those who miss greatness, those whom it is right to call theatrical are not. The late Rev. Joseph Parker was an actor and a very poor one; to my mind some of his theatricalities on the City Temple platform would have got him hissed off the stage. I have known him drop his voice until he was entirely inaudible, at the same time solemnly wagging his great head from side to side, then suddenly bounding forward with impassioned gesture he would roar like a lion. It was all stagey and transpontine, but the magnetism of the man carried it off triumphantly and the people to whom he preached felt that he was the first of preachers and the rest nowhere.
In all of the foregoing I have assumed that you whom I am advising have a good voice and have had some practice in using it. There may be, yes, I remember that there are, some people who will try to speak from a public platform without possessing that first requisite, a voice. But I am not talking to idiots, but ordinarily sensible men and women who are able to make themselves heard at a considerable distance without shouting. If they have not had the opportunity as I had for fifteen years of practising the art, I suppose I may call it, of voice production in the open air, let them go to a professor of elocution, who will teach them so to use their voices that they will not have clergyman’s sore throat at the end of a short address, and feel as if they can never speak again.
When I tell you that I bear the burden of chronic laryngitis, and have done for a quarter of a century, yet never have known a “tired” throat or a clergyman’s sore throat, I am sure that if you believe me you will admit that practice has done great things for me. I have lectured with an ulcerated throat, with a severe cold, with influenza; lectured when the pain of inflammation in my throat was almost maddening; but never once can I honestly say that speaking had anything to do with my sufferings. Indeed, I have usually gone on addressing audiences each night until quite well, although told at the beginning by medical men that to address an audience in my then condition amounted to suicide.
Now this must be owing to my practical knowledge of voice production. I cannot teach it, I wish I could, because it would help my meagre finances very much just now, but I know it, and if it were necessary I could produce a great cloud of witnesses to the fact. People who have seen me crawling gaspingly up the steps of a lecture hall apparently unable to speak. One of the commonest remarks I remember during the last three or four years of my lecturing was:
“Why, Mr. Bullen, you’ll never be able to lecture to-night!” But I always was, and I am grateful to recall that I never broke an engagement for that cause, although I know that at the last I ran it very fine indeed, because I could hardly speak for coughing. But the ordinary individual with a good voice must be taught in some way how to produce it, or he will never make an efficient speaker, never be able to hit the happy mean between shouting and whispering, the audible mean between two forms of unintelligibility.
Throughout it will be noticed that I have assumed a complete knowledge of the subject in hand on the part of the would-be lecturer. That would seem to go without saying, yet strangely enough it does not. It is passing strange that any man should dream of addressing an audience upon a topic about which it is dollars to doughnuts that they know as much or more than he does, yet there are such people. Of course, they do not go very far, still they exist. One such asked me if I would kindly lend him my notes (I never had any, by the way) of the whaling lecture, and the negatives of my slides, as he felt sure he could work up quite a nice little connection for himself in South Wales. It was a subject he said that had always interested him very much. I know this hardly sounds true, but it is actually so in every detail.
Assuming then as I do that the would-be lecturer knows his subject thoroughly, in what style should he deliver an address thereupon? This is a matter upon which I hold very strong views. To copy anyone else’s style is fatal, to strain after effect equally so, and I am firmly of opinion that the only sensible plan is to tell your story naturally as if you were just yarning to a chum. In doing so, however, one must bear in mind all that I have said before, or else the talk will be a jumble. It is little short of delightful to sit and listen to a speaker who is telling you strange facts in an easy, confidential, colloquial manner, compelling you to strain neither your hearing nor intellect, but interesting you in spite of yourself; interesting you so much that when the end is suddenly reached you start with amazement, hardly able to believe that you have been listening for an hour and thirty or forty minutes, so rapidly and easily has the time flown.
Here I feel moved to interpolate a remark which does not really apply to the learner or beginner, but to men who are very fluent and enthusiastic. Gentlemen, forgive me for saying so, but the human brain is like a sponge, it will only hold so much at a time; afterwards you can pour as much liquid as you like on it, it will not absorb another drop. Also the average listener’s attention with the best of intentions will flag after ninety minutes at the outside, much quicker than that if he or she has a train to catch. I have often heard it said:
“Oh, yes, I like Mr. So-and-so very much for the first hour and a half, after that I feel that I want to kill him. I’ll never go to hear him again.”
For your own sakes, gentlemen, do not allow that to be said of you. Do not let the curse of not knowing how to leave off descend upon you and mar fatally what is otherwise your very delightful performance. You may possibly think me unfit to advise you upon this or any other subject, you may indignantly deny that you ever were or could be guilty of overstaying your welcome, but you cannot imagine that in being thus emphatic I have any other object in view than your good. And this is especially the case as regards the beginner. When a man is always well received, finds his audiences enthusiastic and listens to incessant eulogies upon himself and his messages, then he needs especially to keep his eye upon his watch. Never tire your auditors is an excellent rule, and I am perfectly certain that more harm has been done to themselves by individual lecturers in this way than in any other that can be mentioned.
I must end this chapter as I began it by humbly disclaiming any idea of presumption. I do not arrogate to myself any title to instruct except that conferred by experience and success. But I will add that I do not think that any man, however great his other qualifications as a public speaker may be, can possibly succeed as a lecturer unless he enjoys his work, unless he is able to feel that glorious thrill of sympathy emanating from his audience lifting him on to a far higher plane than he could ever reach otherwise. When he sees all those rows of faces with their hundreds of eyes uplifted to him and realises that he for the moment at any rate is the centre of attraction—well, I repeat, if this does not inspire him and lift him out of himself I would give very little for his elocution or knowledge or steadiness of nerve.
Of course, the highest form of all, when the message must be delivered at whatever personal cost, is only possible to a few of us, and is moreover not at all necessary for the equipment of a professional lecturer. Amazing though it may seem, we do, in spite of so many repetitions, maintain a great enthusiasm for our various messages, nor can anyone say truthfully that such enthusiasm is manufactured or, in vulgar parlance, pumped up. But even that is seen at its best where aptitude has been assisted by art to present the message in the most acceptable form to an eager audience.