A Frenchman in America Part 13
I do not think that American journalism needs an apology.
It is the natural outcome of circ.u.mstances and the democratic times we live in. The Theatre-Francais is not now, under a Republic, and probably never again will be, what it was when it was placed under the patronage and supervision of the French Court. Democracy is the form of government least of all calculated to foster literature and the fine arts. To that purpose, Monarchy, with its Court and its fashionable society, is the best. This is no reason to prefer a monarchy to a republic. Liberty, like any other luxury, has to be paid for.
Journalism cannot be now what it was when papers were read by people of culture. In a democracy, the stage and journalism have to please the ma.s.ses of the people. As the people become better and better educated, the stage and journalism will rise with them. What the people want, I repeat it, is news, and journals are properly called _news_ papers.
Speaking of American journalism, no man need use apologetic language.
Not when the proprietor of an American paper will not hesitate to spend thousands of dollars to provide his readers with the minutest details about some great European event.
Not when an American paper will, at its own expense, send Henry M.
Stanley to Africa in search of Livingstone.
Not so long as the American press is vigilant, and keeps its thousand eyes open on the interests of the American people.
_Midnight._
Dined this evening with Richard Mansfield at Delmonico's. I sat between Mr. Charles A. Dana, the first of American journalists, and General Horace Porter, and had what my American friends would call "a mighty elegant time." The host was delightful, the dinner excellent, the wine "extra dry," the speeches quite the reverse. "Speeches" is rather a big word for what took place at dessert. Every one supplied an anecdote, a story, a reminiscence, and contributed to the general entertainment of the guests.
The Americans have too much humor to spoil their dinners with toasts to the President, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the army, the navy, the militia, the volunteers, and the reserved forces.
I once heard Mr. Chauncey M. Depew referring to the volunteers, at some English public dinner, as "men invincible--in peace, and invisible--in war." After dinner I remarked to an English peer:
"You have heard to-night the great New York after-dinner speaker; what do you think of his speech?"
"Well," he said, "it was witty; but I think his remark about our volunteers was not in very good taste."
I remained composed, and did not burst.
_Newburgh, N. Y., January 21._
I lectured in Melrose, near Boston, last night, and had the satisfaction of pleasing a Ma.s.sachusetts audience for the second time.
After the lecture, I had supper with Mr. Nat Goodwin, a very good actor, who is now playing in Boston in a new play by Mr. Steele Mackaye. Mr.
Nat Goodwin told many good stories at supper. He can entertain his friends in private as well as he can the public.
To-night I have appeared in a church, in Newburgh. The minister, who took the chair, had the good sense to refrain from opening the lecture with prayer. There are many who have not the tact necessary to see that praying before a humorous lecture is almost as irreverent as praying before a gla.s.s of grog. It is as an artist, however, that I resent that prayer. After the audience have said _Amen_, it takes them a full quarter of an hour to realize that the lecture is not a sermon; that they are in a church, but not at church; and the whole time their minds are in that undecided state, all your points fall flat and miss fire.
Even without the preliminary prayer, I dislike lecturing in a church.
The very atmosphere of a church is against the success of a light, humorous lecture, and many a point, which would bring down the house in a theater, will be received only with smiles in a lecture hall, and in respectful silence in a church. An audience is greatly influenced by surroundings.
Now, I must say that the interior of an American church, with its lines of benches, its galleries, and its platform, does not inspire in one such religious feelings as the interior of a European Catholic church.
In many American towns, the church is let for meetings, concerts, exhibitions, bazaars, etc., and so far as you can see, there is nothing to distinguish it from an ordinary lecture hall.
Yet it is a church, and both lecturer and audience feel it.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XIV.
MARCUS AURELIUS IN AMERICA--CHAIRMEN I HAVE HAD--AMERICAN, ENGLISH, AND SCOTCH CHAIRMEN--ONE WHO HAD BEEN TO BOULOGNE--TALKATIVE AND SILENT CHAIRMEN--A TRYING OCCASION--THE LORD IS ASKED TO ALLOW THE AUDIENCE TO SEE MY POINTS.
_New York, January 22._
There are indeed very few Americans who have not either tact or a sense of humor. They make the best of chairmen. They know that the audience have not come to hear them, and that all that is required of them is to introduce the lecturer in very few words, and to give him a good start.
Who is the lecturer that would not appreciate, nay, love, such a chairman as Dr. R. S. MacArthur, who introduced me yesterday to a New York audience in the following manner?
"Ladies and Gentlemen," said he, "the story goes that, last summer, a party of Americans staying in Rome paid a visit to the famous Spithover's bookshop in the Piazza di Spagna. Now Spithover is the most learned of bibliophiles. You must go thither if you need artistic and archaeological works of the profoundest research and erudition. But one of the ladies in this tourists' party only wanted the lively travels in America of Max O'Rell, and she asked for the book at Spithover's. There came in a deep guttural voice--an Anglo-German voice--from a spectacled clerk behind a desk, to this purport: 'Marcus Aurelius vos neffer in te Unided Shtaates!' But, ladies and gentlemen, he is now, and here he is."
With such an introduction, I was immediately in touch with my audience.
What a change after English chairmen!
A few days before lecturing in any English town, under the auspices of a Literary Society or Mechanics' Inst.i.tute, the lecturer generally receives from the secretary a letter running somewhat as follow:
DEAR SIR:
I have much pleasure in informing you that our Mr. Blank, one of our vice-presidents and a well-known resident here, will take the chair at your lecture.
Translated into plain English, this reads:
My poor fellow, I am much grieved to have to inform you that a chairman will be inflicted upon you on the occasion of your lecture before the members of our Society.
In my few years' lecturing experience, I have come across all sorts and conditions of chairmen, but I can recollect very few that "have helped me." Now, what is the office, the duty, of a chairman on such occasions?
He is supposed to introduce the lecturer to the audience. For this he needs to be able to make a neat speech. He has to tell the audience who the lecturer is, in case they should not know it, which is seldom the case. I was once introduced to an audience who knew me, by a chairman who, I don't think, had ever heard of me in his life. Before going on the platform he asked me whether I had written anything, next whether I was an Irishman or a Frenchman, etc.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "MARCUS AURELIUS VOS NEFFER IN TE UNIDED SHTAATES!"]
Sometimes the chairman is nervous; he hems and haws, cannot find the words he wants, and only succeeds in fidgeting the audience. Sometimes, on the other hand, he is a wit. There is danger again. I was once introduced to a New York audience by General Horace Porter. Those of my readers who know the delightful general and have heard him deliver one of those little gems of speeches in his own inimitable manner, will agree with me that certainly there was danger in that; and they will not be surprised when I tell them that after his delightfully witty and graceful little introduction, I felt as if the best part of the show was over.
Sometimes the chair has to be offered to a magnate of the neighborhood, though he may be noted for his long, prosy orations--which annoy the public; or to a very popular man in the locality who gets all the applause--which annoys the lecturer.
"Brevity is the soul of wit," should be the motto of chairmen, and I sympathize with a friend of mine who says that chairmen, like little boys and girls, should be seen and not heard.
Of those chairmen who can and do speak, the Scotch ones are generally good. They have a knack of starting the evening with some droll Scotch anecdote, told with that piquant and picturesque accent of theirs, and of putting the audience in a good humor. Occasionally they will also make _apropos_ and equally droll little speeches at the close. One evening, in talking of America, I had mentioned the fact that American banquets were very lively, and that I thought the fact of Americans being able to keep up such a flow of wit for so many hours, was perhaps due to their drinking Apollinaris water instead of stronger things after dessert. At the end of the lecture, the chairman rose and said he had greatly enjoyed it, but that he must take exception to one statement the lecturer had made, for he thought it "fery deeficult to be wutty on Apollinaris watter."
Another kind of chairman is the one who kills your finish, and stops all the possibility of your being called back for applause, by coming forward, the very instant the last words are out of your mouth, to inform the audience that the next lecture will be given by Mr.
So-and-So, or to make a statement of the Society's financial position, concluding by appealing to the members to induce their friends to join.
Then there is the chairman who does not know what you are going to talk about, but thinks it his duty to give the audience a kind of summary of what he imagines the lecture is going to be. He is terrible. But he is nothing to the one who, when the lecture is over, will persist in summing it up, and explaining your own jokes, especially the ones he has not quite seen through. This is the dullest, the saddest chairman yet invented.