Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 162
Thames and opening bottles of champagne and pouring them
into the river. “To think,” said one of them to me, “that
there was a time when I used to lap up a couple of quarts of
this terrible stuff every evening.” I got him to give me a
few bottles as a souvenir, and I got some more souvenirs,
whiskey and liqueurs, when the members of the Beefsteak Club
were emptying out their cellars into Green Street; so when
you come over, I shall still be able, of course, to give you
a drink.
We have, as I said, been bone dry only a month, and yet
already we are getting the same splendid results as in
America. All the big dinners are now as refined and as
elevating and the dinner speeches as long and as informal as
they are in New York or Toronto. The other night at a dinner
at the White Friars Club I heard Sir Owen Seaman speaking,
not in that light futile way that he used to have, but quite
differently. He talked for over an hour and a half on the
State ownership of the Chinese Railway System, and I almost
fancied myself back in Boston.
And the working class too. It is just wonderful how
prohibition has increased their efficiency. In the old days
they used to drop their work the moment the hour struck. Now
they simply refuse to do so. I noticed yesterday a foreman
in charge of a building operation vainly trying to call the
bricklayers down. “Come, come, gentlemen,” he shouted, “I
must insist on your stopping for the night.” But they just
went on laying bricks faster than ever.
Of course, as yet there are a few slight difficulties and
deficiencies, just as there are with us in America. We have
had the same trouble with wood-alcohol (they call it
methylated spirit here), with the same deplorable results.
On some days the list of deaths is very serious, and in some
cases we are losing men we can hardly spare. A great many of
our leading actors — in fact, most of them — are dead. And there
has been a heavy loss, too, among the literary class and in
the legal profession.
There was a very painful scene last week at the dinner of
the Benchers of Gray’s Inn. It seems that one of the chief
justices had undertaken to make home brew for the Benchers,
just as the people do on our side of the water. He got one
of the waiters to fetch him some hops and three raw
potatoes, a packet of yeast and some boiling water. In the
end, four of the Benchers were carried out dead. But they
are going to give them a public funeral in the Abbey.
I regret to say that the death list in the Royal Navy is
very heavy. Some of the best sailors are gone, and it is
very difficult to keep admirals. But I have tried to explain
to the people here that these are merely the things that one
must expect, and that, with a little patience, they will
have bone-dry admirals and bone-dry statesmen just as good
as the wet ones. Even the clergy can be dried up with
firmness and perseverance.
There was also a slight sensation here when the Chancellor
of the Exchequer brought in his first appropriation for
maintaining prohibition. From our point of view in America,
it was modest enough. But these people are not used to it.
The Chancellor merely asked for ten million pounds a month
to begin on; he explained that his task was heavy; he has to
police, not only the entire coast, but also the interior;
for the Grampian Hills of Scotland alone he asked a million.
There was a good deal of questioning in the House over these
figures. The Chancellor was asked if he intended to keep a
hired spy at every street corner in London. He answered,
“No, only on every other street.” He added also that every
spy must wear a brass collar with his number.
I must admit further, and I am sorry to have to tell you
this, that now we have prohibition it is becoming
increasingly difficult to get a drink. In fact, sometimes,
especially in the very early morning, it is most
inconvenient and almost impossible. The public houses being
closed, it is necessary to go into a drug store — just as it
is with us — and lean up against the counter and make a
gurgling sound like apoplexy. One often sees these apoplexy
cases lined up four deep.
But the people are finding substitutes, just as they do with
us. There is a tremendous run on patent medicines, perfume,
glue and nitric acid. It has been found that Shears’ soap
contains alcohol, and one sees people everywhere eating
cakes of it. The upper classes have taken to chewing tobacco
very considerably, and the use of opium in the House of
Lords has very greatly increased.
But I don’t want you to think that if you come over here to
see me, your private life will be in any way impaired or
curtailed. I am glad to say that I have plenty of rich
connections whose cellars are very amply stocked. The Duke
of Blank is said to have 5,000 cases of Scotch whiskey, and
I have managed to get a card of introduction to his butler.
In fact you will find that, just as with us in America, the
benefit of prohibition is intended to fall on the poorer
classes. There is no desire to interfere with the rich.
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:
