The chairman then advanced to the front of the platform, and began the most extraordinary speech to which I have ever listened. I was petrified with astonishment, for the man seemed in some mysterious way to have changed. He gave utterance to an incoherent jumble of words, that made me feel dizzy with my attempts to get a clue to their meaning. Not for long, because I soon concluded that there was no meaning, but that left other things entirely unexplained. Evidently the audience were well used to him, for they sat quite still as he rambled on, obviously prepared to endure him as long as they could. And then another fact became evident: not only could the poor man only talk nonsense, but he could not find a place to leave off. And I began to worry myself seriously as the hands of the clock stole round, and still the flood of fortuitous words rolled on.
Then I noticed that the lights were being turned out. The hall was lit by large arc lamps, in pairs, and some unseen friend was switching them off two by two, until only two were left, and they were in such a position that the platform was nearly dark. And suddenly the chairman disappeared! He had fallen off the platform! And the audience applauded frantically, as if it had been a well-rehearsed effect most successfully performed. But, stranger still, the unseen friend switched off the remaining lights, the lanternist flashed on the first picture, and I plunged into my lecture. I never was listened to with more attention, nor have I ever been more appreciated, and the end of the lecture came with a suddenness that surprised me. But there were no votes of thanks, for—I never saw the chairman again. Nor to this day do I know whether his sudden descent from the platform injured him or not, for on my return to the anteroom, fully prepared to condole or excuse, whatever, in fact, seemed indicated, not a word was said by the secretary about the occurrence at all. Not that there was any awkwardness or stiffness about our intercourse, the matter simply wasn’t mentioned, that was all. But to this day it strikes me as the funniest as well as the most dramatic ending to a chairman’s speech I ever heard of or experienced.
But in this case I was warned, and consequently I did not feel at all annoyed or worried. There was an occasion, not so very long ago, though, when I was both, because in addition to what I suffered, the chairman had previously assured me that he knew nothing about the business, that it was his first time of officiating, and he begged me to tell him just what he should do. I gave him a very candid outline of what I considered to be the duties of a chairman, and he promised me fervently that he would follow my directions implicitly, thanking me heartily for what he was pleased to call my kindness. So I felt very satisfied as I whispered to my host, the pastor of the chapel, what had happened.
It is not, therefore, easy to judge of my disgust and annoyance when after an opening that was a model of what a chairman’s address should be, this worthy man slid into an anecdote about his one and only voyage, which had neither point nor wit nor moral, and took twenty-five minutes in the telling. After which the usual wicked insult about not standing between the audience and the lecturer because they all wanted to hear what Mr. Bullen had to tell them. Then the miscreant sat down, at 8.30, and I got up, boiling with indignation, and extremely hard put to it to refrain from telling them that it was impossible for me to go on now. Only my strong sense of justice enabled me to act upon what I always felt to be right, a refusal to punish all the audience for the offence of one man.
By the time the lecture was finished I had recovered my equanimity, and was quite prepared for a long and dreary period of moving, seconding and carrying votes of thanks. But I was not in the least prepared to hear my host, the parson, in moving the vote of thanks, include the chairman, and make a long eulogy of the delightful and most interesting reminiscence they had all enjoyed from the chairman! So now they were doubly indebted to him, not merely for presiding at that gathering, but for giving them so dramatic, so entertaining, so perfectly charming a description of his own experiences, and he, the parson, earnestly trusted that he, the chairman, would favour them again at the earliest opportunity. Of course after that the chairman could do no less than make another long, rambling speech, in the course of which he repeated himself six times, and I sat simmering. I had acknowledged the vote by a bow, I could not trust myself to speak, but as soon as I got the parson by himself I asked him point-blank what on earth he could have meant by what he said. His reply was somewhat incoherent, but the gist of it was that the goodwill of the chairman was important to their little community, while I didn’t matter. They might, and probably would never see me again, and anyhow it was of no consequence what I thought. He put it much nicer than that, but that was the sense of it, and I could not help acknowledging the force of his contention. So we will leave it at that.
Here it suddenly occurs to me that some folks will suppose that because of the few cranks I have endeavoured to sketch, my experiences of chairmen have been almost uniformly unpleasant. Now nothing could well be further from the truth. The chairmen whom I have had the good fortune to meet and to appear on the platform with have been with very few exceptions gentlemen with a perfect conception of their duties to the audience and the lecturer, and it has fairly often fallen to my lot to enjoy the chairman’s speech so thoroughly that I have been sorry when he has left off. But I suppose that only throws into higher relief the few cranks about whom I am writing. At any rate, having made my point clear, I hope, I will give a few more instances of chairmen who have made me wish them (or myself) elsewhere.
One gentleman in particular I remember who made me feel desperately uncomfortable, although I am sure that his intentions were as benevolent as he knew how to make them. He told the intent audience such things about me as made me go hot and cold all over. If he could have been believed, I ought never to have been sitting upon that platform, but enstatued in gold and set upon high, clear for all men to see and take pattern by. I was the fine flower not only of a blameless, strenuous and overcoming life, but the quintessence of the best of the age. Never but once have I had to listen to such encomia upon myself, and that was at second-hand in a theological college near Gisborne, New Zealand. A Maori student orated at me, and one of his fellows translated. But that was not so bad, for somehow we all understood that at least ninety per cent must be deducted for rhetoric. This Englishman, however, speaking of me—me who sat suffering there by his side—ransacked all his obviously great reading for tropes and metaphors wherewith to enrich his eulogy of me, with the net result that I never felt more exquisitely uncomfortable.
When at last he had concluded, and I stood up to address my auditors, I began by bewailing not merely my inability to justify the praises of me they had heard, but that of any son of Adam to do so. Yet as nothing on earth is evil unmixed, I had derived some benefit from the exceedingly severe trial through which I had passed, in that I had learned that it was still in my power to blush and feel uneasy at undeserved praise. This was well worth a little inconvenience to learn, for already I had heard as much flattery as any ordinary person could swallow, and had hardly turned a hair. I suppose the long years of buffeting and contumely through which I had passed—for I was over forty years of age before I ever got any praise for anything—had made that sweet incense almost savourless to me when it did come. At any rate, I can safely say that I was so toughened against it that it did me very little harm. I never grew to look for it as my due, and feel slighted if it were not paid.
But this chapter is growing to an inordinate length, and I must, for the sake of appearances, commence a new one, although it will still be upon the topic of chairmen. But I hope in the next chapter to mingle a good deal of praise with what has perhaps appeared like censure or at least sarcasm. It is not really, for I am fully convinced that each of the gentlemen I have described did his level best to fulfil what he conceived to be his duty, and it was only because he had somehow got a wrong idea of what that duty was that he made such obvious blunders.