IX.--"We Have With Us To-night"
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."
