The Art of Public Speaking
us from cultivating perfect verbal utterance.
9. Over-precision is likewise a fault. To bring out any syllable unduly
is to caricature the word. Be _moderate_ in reading the following:
_THE LAST SPEECH OF MAXIMILIAN DE ROBESPIERRE_
The enemies of the Republic call me tyrant! Were I such they
would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should
grant them immunity for their crimes, and they would be
grateful. Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from
denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support;
there would be a covenant between them and me. Tyranny must have
tools. But the enemies of tyranny,--whither does their path
tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my
protector? To what faction do I belong? Yourselves! What
faction, since the beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and
annihilated so many detected traitors? You, the people,--our
principles--are that faction--a faction to which I am devoted,
and against which all the scoundrelism of the day is banded!
The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know
that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis
of morality. Against me, and against those who hold kindred
principles, the league is formed. My life? Oh! my life I abandon
without a regret! I have seen the past; and I foresee the
future. What friend of this country would wish to survive the
moment when he could no longer serve it,--when he could no
longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I
continue in an order of things, where intrigue eternally
triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the
most abject, or fears the most absurd, over-ride the sacred
interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices
which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid
communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have
sometimes feared that I should be sullied, in the eyes of
posterity, by the impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who
had thrust themselves into association with the sincere friends
of humanity; and I rejoice that these conspirators against my
country have now, by their reckless rage, traced deep the line
of demarcation between themselves and all true men.
Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in
all times, have been overwhelmed by calumny. But their traducers
died also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth;
but in very different conditions. O Frenchmen! O my countrymen!
Let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade
your souls, and enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette, no! Death
is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that
motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all
nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its
support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death!
Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement
of immortality!" I leave to the oppressors of the People a
terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence
befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is the awful
truth--"Thou shalt die!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: _School and College Speaker_, Mitchell.]
[Footnote 7: _School and College Speaker_, Mitchell.]
CHAPTER XV
THE TRUTH ABOUT GESTURE
When Whitefield acted an old blind man advancing by slow steps
toward the edge of the precipice, Lord Chesterfield started up
and cried: "Good God, he is gone!"
--NATHAN SHEPPARD, _Before an Audience_.
Gesture is really a simple matter that requires observation and common
sense rather than a book of rules. Gesture is an outward expression of
an inward condition. It is merely an effect--the effect of a mental or
an emotional impulse struggling for expression through physical avenues.
You must not, however, begin at the wrong end: if you are troubled by
your gestures, or a lack of gestures, attend to the cause, not the
effect. It will not in the least help matters to tack on to your
delivery a few mechanical movements. If the tree in your front yard is
not growing to suit you, fertilize and water the soil and let the tree
have sunshine. Obviously it will not help your tree to nail on a few
branches. If your cistern is dry, wait until it rains; or bore a well.
Why plunge a pump into a dry hole?
The speaker whose thoughts and emotions are welling within him like a
mountain spring will not have much trouble to make gestures; it will be
merely a question of properly directing them. If his enthusiasm for his
subject is not such as to give him a natural impulse for dramatic
action, it will avail nothing to furnish him with a long list of rules.
He may tack on some movements, but they will look like the wilted
branches nailed to a tree to simulate life. Gestures must be born, not
built. A wooden horse may amuse the children, but it takes a live one to
go somewhere.
It is not only impossible to lay down definite rules on this subject,
but it would be silly to try, for everything depends on the speech, the
occasion, the personality and feelings of the speaker, and the attitude
of the audience. It is easy enough to forecast the result of multiplying
seven by six, but it is impossible to tell any man what kind of gestures
he will be impelled to use when he wishes to show his earnestness. We
may tell him that many speakers close the hand, with the exception of
the forefinger, and pointing that finger straight at the audience pour
out their thoughts like a volley; or that others stamp one foot for
emphasis; or that Mr. Bryan often slaps his hands together for great
force, holding one palm upward in an easy manner; or that Gladstone
would sometimes make a rush at the clerk's table in Parliament and smite
it with his hand so forcefully that D'israeli once brought down the
house by grimly congratulating himself that such a barrier stood between
himself and "the honorable gentleman."
All these things, and a bookful more, may we tell the speaker, but we
cannot know whether he can use these gestures or not, any more than we
can decide whether he could wear Mr. Bryan's clothes. The best that can
be done on this subject is to offer a few practical suggestions, and let
personal good taste decide as to where effective dramatic action ends
and extravagant motion begins.
_Any Gesture That Merely Calls Attention to Itself Is Bad_
The purpose of a gesture is to carry your thought and feeling into the
minds and hearts of your hearers; this it does by emphasizing your
message, by interpreting it, by expressing it in action, by striking its
tone in either a physically descriptive, a suggestive, or a typical
gesture--and let it be remembered all the time that gesture includes
_all_ physical movement, from facial expression and the tossing of the
head to the expressive movements of hand and foot. A shifting of the
pose may be a most effective gesture.
What is true of gesture is true of all life. If the people on the street
turn around and watch your walk, your walk is more important than you
are--change it. If the attention of your audience is called to your
gestures, they are not convincing, because they _appear_ to be--what
they have a doubtful right to be in reality--studied. Have you ever seen
a speaker use such grotesque gesticulations that you were fascinated by
their frenzy of oddity, but could not follow his thought? Do not smother
ideas with gymnastics. Savonarola would rush down from the high pulpit
among the congregation in the _duomo_ at Florence and carry the fire of
conviction to his hearers; Billy Sunday slides to base on the platform
carpet in dramatizing one of his baseball illustrations. Yet in both
instances the message has somehow stood out bigger than the gesture--it
is chiefly in calm afterthought that men have remembered the _form_ of
dramatic expression. When Sir Henry Irving made his famous exit as
"Shylock" the last thing the audience saw was his pallid, avaricious
hand extended skinny and claw-like against the background. At the time,
every one was overwhelmed by the tremendous typical quality of this
gesture; now, we have time to think of its art, and discuss its
realistic power.
Only when gesture is subordinated to the absorbing importance of the
idea--a spontaneous, living expression of living truth--is it
justifiable at all; and when it is remembered for itself--as a piece of
unusual physical energy or as a poem of grace--it is a dead failure as
dramatic expression. There is a place for a unique style of walking--it
is the circus or the cake-walk; there is a place for surprisingly
rhythmical evolutions of arms and legs--it is on the dance floor or the
stage. Don't let your agility and grace put your thoughts out of
business.
One of the present writers took his first lessons in gesture from a
certain college president who knew far more about what had happened at
the Diet of Worms than he did about how to express himself in action.
His instructions were to start the movement on a certain word, continue
it on a precise curve, and unfold the fingers at the conclusion, ending
with the forefinger--just so. Plenty, and more than plenty, has been
published on this subject, giving just such silly directions. Gesture is
a thing of mentality and feeling--not a matter of geometry. Remember,
whenever a pair of shoes, a method of pronunciation, or a gesture calls
attention to itself, it is bad. When you have made really good gestures
in a good speech your hearers will not go away saying, "What beautiful
gestures he made!" but they will say, "I'll vote for that measure." "He
is right--I believe in that."
_Gestures Should Be Born of the Moment_
The best actors and public speakers rarely know in advance what gestures
they are going to make. They make one gesture on certain words tonight,
and none at all tomorrow night at the same point--their various moods
and interpretations govern their gestures. It is all a matter of impulse
and intelligent feeling with them--don't overlook that word
_intelligent_. Nature does not always provide the same kind of sunsets
or snow flakes, and the movements of a good speaker vary almost as much
as the creations of nature.
Now all this is not to say that you must not take some thought for your
gestures. If that were meant, why this chapter? When the sergeant
despairingly besought the recruit in the awkward squad to step out and
look at himself, he gave splendid advice--and worthy of personal
application. Particularly while you are in the learning days of public
speaking you must learn to criticise your own gestures. Recall them--see
where they were useless, crude, awkward, what not, and do better next
time. There is a vast deal of difference between being conscious of self
and being self-conscious.
It will require your nice discrimination in order to cultivate
spontaneous gestures and yet give due attention to practise. While you
depend upon the moment it is vital to remember that only a dramatic
genius can effectively accomplish such feats as we have related of
Whitefield, Savonarola, and others: and doubtless the first time they
were used they came in a burst of spontaneous feeling, yet Whitefield
declared that not until he had delivered a sermon forty times was its
delivery perfected. What spontaneity initiates let practise complete.
Every effective speaker and every vivid actor has observed, considered
and practised gesture until his dramatic actions are a sub-conscious
possession, just like his ability to pronounce correctly without