A Frenchman in America Part 14

Some modest chairmen apologize for standing between the lecturer and the audience, and declare they cannot speak, but do. Others promise to speak a minute only, but don't.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHAIRMAN.]

"What shall I speak about?" said a chairman to me one day, after I had been introduced to him in the little back room behind the platform.

"If you will oblige me, sir," I replied, "kindly speak about--one minute."

Once I was introduced to the audience as the promoter of good feelings between France and England.

"Sometimes," said the chairman, "we see clouds of misunderstanding arise between the French--between the English--between the two. The lecturer of this evening makes it his business to disperse these clouds--these clouds--to--to---- But I will not detain you any longer. His name is familiar to all of us. I'm sure he needs no introduction to this audience. We all know him. I have much pleasure in introducing to you Mr.--Moss.h.i.+ay--Mr. ----" Then he looked at me in despair.

It was evident he had forgotten my name.

"Max O'Rell is, I believe, what you are driving at," I whispered to him.

The most objectionable chairmen in England are, perhaps, local men holding civic honors. Accustomed to deliver themselves of a speech whenever and wherever they get a chance, aldermen, town councilors, members of local boards, and school boards, never miss an opportunity of getting upon a platform to address a good crowd. Not long ago, I was introduced to an audience in a large English city by a candidate for civic honors. The election of the town council was to take place a fortnight afterward, and this gentleman profited by the occasion to air all his grievances against the sitting council, and to a.s.sure the citizens that if they would only elect him, there were bright days in store for them and their city. This was the gist of the matter. The speech lasted twenty minutes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HOW DO YOU p.r.o.nOUNCE YOUR NAME?"]

Once the chair was taken by an alderman in a Lancas.h.i.+re city, and the hall was crowded. "What a fine house!" I remarked to the chairman as we sat down on the platform.

"Very fine indeed," he said; "everybody in the town knew I was going to take the chair."

I was sorry I had spoken.

More than once, when announced to deliver a lecture on France and the French, I have been introduced by a chairman who, having spent his holidays in that country once or twice, opened the evening's proceedings by himself delivering a lecture on France. I have felt very tempted to imitate a _confrere_, and say to the audience: "Ladies and Gentlemen, as one lecture on France is enough for an evening, perhaps you would rather I spoke about something else now." The _confrere_ I have just mentioned was to deliver a lecture on Charles d.i.c.kens one evening. The chairman knew something of Charles d.i.c.kens and, for quite a quarter of an hour, spoke on the great English novelist, giving anecdotes, extracts of his writings, etc. When the lecturer rose, he said: "Ladies and Gentlemen, two lectures on Charles d.i.c.kens are perhaps more than you expected to hear to-night. You have just heard a lecture on Charles d.i.c.kens. I am now going to give you one on Charles Kingsley."

Sometimes I get a little amus.e.m.e.nt, however (as in the country town of X.), out of the usual proceedings of the society before whose members I am engaged to appear. At X., the audience being a.s.sembled and the time up, I was told to go on the platform alone and, being there, to immediately sit down. So I went on, and sat down. Some one in the room then rose and proposed that Mr. N. should take the chair. Mr. N., it appeared, had been to Boulogne (_to B'long_), and was particularly fitted to introduce a Frenchman. In a speech of about five minutes duration, all Mr. N.'s qualifications for the post of chairman that evening were duly set forth. Then some one else rose and seconded the proposition, re-enumerating most of these qualifications. Mr. N. then marched up the hall, ascended the platform, and proceeded to return thanks for the kind manner in which he had been proposed for the chair and for the enthusiasm (a few friends had applauded) with which the audience had sanctioned the choice. He said it was true that he had been in France, and that he greatly admired the country and the people, and he was glad to have this opportunity to say so before a Frenchman. Then he related some of his traveling impressions in France. A few people coughed, two or three more bold stamped their feet, but he took no heed and, for ten minutes, he gave the audience the benefit of the information he had gathered in Boulogne. These preliminaries over, I gave my lecture, after which Mr. N. called upon a member of the audience to propose a vote of thanks to the lecturer "for the most amusing and interesting discourse, etc."

Now a paid lecturer wants his check when his work is over, and although a vote of thanks, when it is spontaneous, is a compliment which he greatly appreciates, he is more likely to feel awkwardness than pleasure when it is a mere red-tape formality. The vote of thanks, on this particular occasion, was proposed in due form. Then it was seconded by some one who repeated two or three of my points and spoiled them. By this time I began to enter into the fun of the thing, and, after having returned thanks for the vote of thanks and sat down, I stepped forward again, filled with a mild resolve to have the last word:

"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said, "I have now much pleasure in proposing that a hearty vote of thanks be given Mr. N. for the able manner in which he has filled the chair. I am proud to have been introduced to you by an Englishman who knows my country so well." I went again through the list of Mr. N.'s qualifications, not forgetting the trip to Boulogne and the impressions it had left on him. Somebody rose and seconded this. Mr.

N. delivered a speech to thank the audience once more, and then those who had survived went home.

Some Nonconformist societies will engage a light or humorous lecturer, put him in their chapel, and open his mouth with prayer. Prayer is good, but I would as soon think of saying grace before dancing as of beginning my lecture with a prayer. This kind of experience has been mine several times. A truly trying experience it was, on the first occasion, to be accompanied to the platform by the minister, who, motioning me to sit down, advanced to the front, lowered his head, and said in solemn accents: "Let us pray." After I got started, it took me fully ten minutes to make the people realize that they were not at church. This experience I have had in America as well as in England. Another experience in this line was still worse, for the prayer was supplemented by the singing of a hymn of ten or twelve verses. You may easily imagine that my first remark fell dead flat.

I have been introduced to audiences as Mossoo, Meshoe, and Mounzeer O'Reel, and other British adaptations of our word _Monsieur_, and found it very difficult to bear with equanimity a chairman who maltreated a name which I had taken some care to keep correctly spelt before the public. Yet this man is charming when compared with the one who, in the midst of his introductory remarks, turns to you, and in a stage whisper perfectly audible all over the hall, asks: "How do you p.r.o.nounce your name?"

Pa.s.sing over chairman chatty and chairman terse, chairman eloquent and chairman the reverse, I feel decidedly most kindly toward the silent chairman. He is very rare, but he does exist and, when met with, is exceedingly precious. Why he exists, in some English Inst.i.tutes, I have always been at a loss to imagine. Whether he comes on to see that the lecturer does not run off before his time is up, or with the water bottle, which is the only portable thing on the platform generally; whether he is a successor to some venerable deaf and dumb founder of his Society; or whether he goes on with the lecturer to give a lesson in modesty to the public, as who should say: "I could speak an if I would, but I forbear." Be his _raison d'etre_ what it may, we all love him. To the nervous novice he is a kind of quiet support, to the old stager he is as a picture unto the eye and as music unto the ear.

Here I pause. I want to collect my thoughts. Does my memory serve me? Am I dreaming, or worse still, am I on the point of inventing? No, I could not invent such a story, it is beyond my power.

I was once lecturing to the students of a religious college in America.

Before I began, a professor stepped forward, and offered a prayer, in which he asked the Lord to allow the audience to see my points.

Now, I duly feel the weight of responsibility attaching to such a statement, and in justice to myself I can do no less than give the reader the pet.i.tion just as it fell on my astonished ears:

"Lord, Thou knowest that we work hard for Thee, and that recreation is necessary in order that we may work with renewed vigor. We have to-night with us a gentleman from France [excuse my recording a compliment too flattering], whose criticisms are witty and refined, _but subtle_, and we pray Thee to so prepare our minds that we may thoroughly understand and enjoy them."

"_But subtle!_"

I am still wondering whether my lectures are so subtle as to need praying over, or whether that audience was so dull that they needed praying for.

Whichever it was, the prayer was heard, for the audience proved warm, keen, and thoroughly appreciative.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XV.

REFLECTIONS ON THE TYPICAL AMERICAN.

_New York, January 23._

I was asked to-day by the editor of the _North American Review_ to write an article on the typical American.

The typical American!

In the eyes of my beloved compatriots, the typical American is a man with hair falling over his shoulders, wearing a sombrero, a red s.h.i.+rt, leather leggings, a pair of revolvers in his belt, spending his life on horseback, and able to shoot a fly off the tip of your nose without for a moment endangering your olfactory organ; and, since Buffalo Bill has been exhibiting his Indians and cowboys to the Parisians, this impression has become a deep conviction.

I shall never forget the astonishment I caused to my mother when I first broke the news to her that I wanted to go to America. My mother had practically never left a lovely little provincial town of France. Her face expressed perfect bewilderment.

"You don't mean to say you want to go to America?" she said. "What for?"

"I am invited to give lectures there."

"Lectures? in what language?"

"Well, mother, I will try my best in English."

"Do they speak English out there?"

"H'm--pretty well, I think."

We did not go any further on the subject that time. Probably the good mother thought of the time when the Californian gold-fields attracted all the sc.u.m of Europe, and, no doubt, she thought that it was strange for a man who had a decent position in Europe, to go and "seek fortune"

in America.

Later on, however, after returning to England, I wrote to her that I had made up my mind to go.

Her answer was full of gentle reproaches, and of sorrow at seeing that she had lost all her influence over her son. She signed herself "always your loving mother," and indulged in a postscript. Madame de Sevigne said that the gist of a woman's letter was to be found in the postscript.

My mother's was this: