CHAPTER XI
CHAIRMEN
This ought to be a very long chapter, in spite of the fact that it has been done supremely well before. But I have not read M. Paul Blouet’s able work, nor have my experiences been his, so that I approach this very interesting part of my subject with a light heart. Let me at the outset declare that I by no means disapprove of chairmen, as so many of my colleagues do. A chairman who knows his business, and confines his share of the proceedings to a few well-chosen sentences, and the appearance of his name on the bills, is a jewel of price, and I have often been very glad to meet him. But I must admit that he is rare, and the difficulty that a secretary is always in when inviting a local celebrity to take the chair at a lecture is his inability to know whether the L.C. will not consider it a part of his functions to make a long rambling speech while the audience is waiting impatiently to hear the lecturer. As for the latter, he doesn’t count, of course, but I have often wondered what the chairman would have thought could he have known what was beneath my placidly smiling exterior, as I sat facing the audience, while the hands of the clock crept slowly round. And then the crowning outrage at about 8.25.
“But you don’t come to hear me, you come to hear the lecturer, and so I won’t stand between you and him any longer. But this I must say.” And then another five minutes of vapid twaddle. It is impossible to do justice to such people as that, and still more impossible for a lecturer to realise that there are people who really like that sort of thing. At least one would think so, judging by what they say aloud, but what they think, who can tell? However, between a chairman of that kind and no chairman at all there is a wide gap, and I cannot say that I ever grew to like the growing practice of expecting the lecturer to walk on the platform and begin his lecture as soon as eight o’clock strikes. And yet there is a further great advantage in this, you miss the absolutely nauseating votes of thanks at the end. What puny-minded person ever devised that method of giving pain to a poor man who has done them no intentional harm, to say nothing of making him and others lose their train very often, I have never been able to ascertain, but he was no friend of mine, whoever he was.
I suppose as I am writing about chairmen I ought to begin with instances where there were none, in order to fulfil modern literary requirements. Such instances, at any rate, will not take up much time, but I very well remember the first experience I ever had of the system. It was at Moseley or King’s Heath or Rotton Park, one of those suburbs of Birmingham, at any rate, which used to be famous for their Institutes, and to which we lecturers used to look forward for a consecutive list of seven or eight engagements. On arrival at the hall I saw no one except a bluff caretaker, who conducted me to a bare room, and brought me a chair. I asked him if there were no officials connected with the place whom I might expect to see before the lecture. He replied that there was no one there except himself and the audience.
“They’re in their seats all right,” he said; “and if you go on up those stairs when the clock strikes eight, you’ll find ’em before you. An’ a jolly good audience, too, they are.”
“But surely,” I demurred, “this isn’t usual. Do the lecturers never see anybody but the caretaker? And who do I look to for my fee?”
“Oh!” he laughed, “you’ll see the treasurer all right after the lecture. But that’s eight striking. This way, sir.”
I went in the direction indicated, and found myself facing a packed concourse of people, who gave me a rousing cheer. I began my lecture straight away, and was at once on the best possible terms with my audience, so that the hour and three-quarters passed like half an hour. But immediately the lights were turned up the hall began to empty, and by the time I was back in the little bare waiting-room again I think the caretaker and I were almost the only persons left in the building. He advanced towards me with a beaming smile, holding out an envelope, which he said the treasurer had asked him to hand me, because he was in a great hurry to get somewhere else.
“I suppose you can guess what’s in it,” he murmured, with a grin of pure good-fellowship.
I found it contained my cheque and a note “with the treasurer’s compts.,” and that was all. Still, although it was amply sufficient, I couldn’t help feeling that it was just a little too business-like, and said so. I was not at all surprised to hear that one lecturer who was a very big gun indeed, and whose fee was three times mine, felt himself so slighted, and his dignity so hurt, that upon meeting with similar treatment, he promptly refused to deliver his lecture, and departed as he had come. That, to my mind, was utterly indefensible conduct, punishing as it did a large number of quite innocent people. Besides the folly of it, for the lecturer would without doubt be blamed for non-appearance, and would have no chance of setting his side of the case before the audience.