CHAPTER XIX
ART OR APTITUDE
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.