And notwithstanding this real drawback I maintain that where a speaker can get upon those confidential conversational terms with his hearers he is absolutely sure of their attention, sure too of conveying his meaning to their minds. His speech will not be oratory. That may at once be admitted. Oratory has its distinct uses, its well-defined place, but it is not for teaching or amusement. It belongs to great occasions and to great orators. To the ordinary successful speaker or preacher it is like the panoply of Saul upon the immature shoulders of David. There may come occasions when the successful speaker will rise to the sublime heights of oratory and carry his audience with him in a torrent of enthusiasm, but with those peaks we have not to deal, we are discussing the high road.
Next I would say, avoid all mannerisms of speech or gesture as you would suggestions of the evil one. I once was told by a gentleman who had heard me lecturing that I used rather too frequently the phrase “as a matter of fact.” I am afraid I was not at all grateful, I know that I flushed hotly, but I have since often recalled that quiet remark as one of the most valuable hints I ever received. For thenceforth I was on my guard, and if I found myself (as I often did) rolling a certain expression caressingly under my tongue I immediately set a watch for it and ruthlessly cut it out. Gesture is another pitfall for some people. It cannot be taught satisfactorily, although rules for its use are in all the books. I believe that the only effective gesture is the natural one—any gesture that you have to learn and practise up is unnatural, stilted, and stagey. That last word may be misunderstood; let me explain what I mean. All great actors are nearly natural in their gestures, those who miss greatness, those whom it is right to call theatrical are not. The late Rev. Joseph Parker was an actor and a very poor one; to my mind some of his theatricalities on the City Temple platform would have got him hissed off the stage. I have known him drop his voice until he was entirely inaudible, at the same time solemnly wagging his great head from side to side, then suddenly bounding forward with impassioned gesture he would roar like a lion. It was all stagey and transpontine, but the magnetism of the man carried it off triumphantly and the people to whom he preached felt that he was the first of preachers and the rest nowhere.
In all of the foregoing I have assumed that you whom I am advising have a good voice and have had some practice in using it. There may be, yes, I remember that there are, some people who will try to speak from a public platform without possessing that first requisite, a voice. But I am not talking to idiots, but ordinarily sensible men and women who are able to make themselves heard at a considerable distance without shouting. If they have not had the opportunity as I had for fifteen years of practising the art, I suppose I may call it, of voice production in the open air, let them go to a professor of elocution, who will teach them so to use their voices that they will not have clergyman’s sore throat at the end of a short address, and feel as if they can never speak again.
When I tell you that I bear the burden of chronic laryngitis, and have done for a quarter of a century, yet never have known a “tired” throat or a clergyman’s sore throat, I am sure that if you believe me you will admit that practice has done great things for me. I have lectured with an ulcerated throat, with a severe cold, with influenza; lectured when the pain of inflammation in my throat was almost maddening; but never once can I honestly say that speaking had anything to do with my sufferings. Indeed, I have usually gone on addressing audiences each night until quite well, although told at the beginning by medical men that to address an audience in my then condition amounted to suicide.
Now this must be owing to my practical knowledge of voice production. I cannot teach it, I wish I could, because it would help my meagre finances very much just now, but I know it, and if it were necessary I could produce a great cloud of witnesses to the fact. People who have seen me crawling gaspingly up the steps of a lecture hall apparently unable to speak. One of the commonest remarks I remember during the last three or four years of my lecturing was:
“Why, Mr. Bullen, you’ll never be able to lecture to-night!” But I always was, and I am grateful to recall that I never broke an engagement for that cause, although I know that at the last I ran it very fine indeed, because I could hardly speak for coughing. But the ordinary individual with a good voice must be taught in some way how to produce it, or he will never make an efficient speaker, never be able to hit the happy mean between shouting and whispering, the audible mean between two forms of unintelligibility.
Throughout it will be noticed that I have assumed a complete knowledge of the subject in hand on the part of the would-be lecturer. That would seem to go without saying, yet strangely enough it does not. It is passing strange that any man should dream of addressing an audience upon a topic about which it is dollars to doughnuts that they know as much or more than he does, yet there are such people. Of course, they do not go very far, still they exist. One such asked me if I would kindly lend him my notes (I never had any, by the way) of the whaling lecture, and the negatives of my slides, as he felt sure he could work up quite a nice little connection for himself in South Wales. It was a subject he said that had always interested him very much. I know this hardly sounds true, but it is actually so in every detail.
Assuming then as I do that the would-be lecturer knows his subject thoroughly, in what style should he deliver an address thereupon? This is a matter upon which I hold very strong views. To copy anyone else’s style is fatal, to strain after effect equally so, and I am firmly of opinion that the only sensible plan is to tell your story naturally as if you were just yarning to a chum. In doing so, however, one must bear in mind all that I have said before, or else the talk will be a jumble. It is little short of delightful to sit and listen to a speaker who is telling you strange facts in an easy, confidential, colloquial manner, compelling you to strain neither your hearing nor intellect, but interesting you in spite of yourself; interesting you so much that when the end is suddenly reached you start with amazement, hardly able to believe that you have been listening for an hour and thirty or forty minutes, so rapidly and easily has the time flown.
Here I feel moved to interpolate a remark which does not really apply to the learner or beginner, but to men who are very fluent and enthusiastic. Gentlemen, forgive me for saying so, but the human brain is like a sponge, it will only hold so much at a time; afterwards you can pour as much liquid as you like on it, it will not absorb another drop. Also the average listener’s attention with the best of intentions will flag after ninety minutes at the outside, much quicker than that if he or she has a train to catch. I have often heard it said:
“Oh, yes, I like Mr. So-and-so very much for the first hour and a half, after that I feel that I want to kill him. I’ll never go to hear him again.”