PRAY SILENCE . . . !
By the MARQUESS OF READING
AFTER-DINNER speeches, in most respects unlike Thomas Hobbes' description of the life of man, are normally solitary, frequently poor, sometimes nasty, occasionally brutish and seldom short. Yet in spite of their many and blatant defects they persist, and all who with any regularity inflict or endure such impositions must often ask themselves the reason for the survival of so barbaric a custom. The answer is perhaps in part physical and in part psychological.
After a spasm of sustained eating and drinking, however austere, a period of mute rumination is no doubt beneficial, more especially if it can be coupled with complete mental inertia. Now such a mood of semi-somnolent well-being is best induced by contrast. Man is a sadistic animal, and wraps himself most warmly in his own comfort when he is most aware that some of his fellows are in great discomfort. The wilder the night, the more snugly we lie in bed, and our satisfaction that we are not exposed to the impact of the storm is greatly enhanced by the knowledge that others are. So it is with public-dinner guests. They are enabled to sink the more sweetly into their boa-constrictive coma by the knowledge that somewhere in the room a chosen victim is already suffering and others are dismally awaiting torment. The desire of the audience to be lulled by rhythmic and remote sound cannot therefore be wholly satisfied by the reading of a page from Bradshaw or the recital of the items on the menu over and over again.
There is, moreover, always the Press table, and there are still ppeakers so naive as to hope that mutilated fragments of their discourses may be reproduced in the morning papers, to their own greater glory, the gratification of their families and the discomfiture of their friends. They would be wiser to acknowledge to themselves from the outset that they have little enough to say that is new and nothing that is news. But where the dinner is, there the reporters are gathered together, possibly in pursuance of a policy whereby frugal editors, rather than increase salaries for the sole benefit of the Inland Revenue,' contrive to add to the emoluments of their staffs by thus furnishing them with free meals at a third party's expense. It is therefore primarily to the reporters that after-dinner speeches are addressed, though the toast-master is also compelled by the duties of his stentorian office and the tightness of his scarlet coat to remain fitfully alert. What types of oratory, then, are they most commonly condemned to record ?
There are two main schools—that which prepares too little and that which prepares too much. Many disciples of the school of under-preparation are mumblers and stumblers, but there are some, endowed with a relentless fluency, who assure their apprehensive neighbours that they never have to bother to think anything out beforehand ; they just trust to the inspiration of the moment. When that moment comes, they are rapidly air-borne and set off confidently for an all-too-distant peroration. But how often, when they approach it, they find it enveloped in fog, and have to circle round and about it until they have used up all their verbal fuel and must risk a crash-landing ! On the other hand the pupils of the school of over-preparation so vividly recall a school speech-day that there. is always a faint sense of disappointment when the next item proves not to be a scene from Le Voyage de Monsieur Perichon or a recita- tion of the prize-winning English poem. But the worst offence of the over-prepared is that they are the inveterate anecdote-addicts. If from long use the stories have been worn into a shape in which they will fit not too awkwardly into the context, so much the better. If not, then the context must be so wrenched as to give them momentary foothold, or they may even be left dangling in mid-air.
There is apparently no upper age-limit for after-dinner stories, no pension for their ultimate retirement, no medal for their long and demeritorious service. With bland regularity one of these marrons glaces is taken out of cold storage, tossed brightly into space, caught and put away again for the next function but one, a little mouldier, a little more shop-soiled, but still good for many years' work. There is an ancient and valuable custom at some universities whereby anyone who, in his college hall, is guilty of too flagrant a solecism is promptly " sconced," the penalty consisting of payment for drinks for his immediate neighbours at table. Surely this practice might profitably be extended to after-dinner raconteurs, the toast-master's decision to be final.
Toast-masters are hors concours as a breed. All men may not yet be brothers, but 'all toast-masters certainly are. They look alike ; they gesticulate alike ; they dress alike ; they vociferate alike. They would all make ideal Speakers of the House of Commons. So dominant a presence in the Chair would soon convince the most contumelious fellow-traveller that "it is better to travel hopefully than to arise." There are few more awe-inspiring sounds than the voice of the toast-master proclaiming one's own name. The crack of doom will surely be by comparison a diffident whisper.
The mockery of a trial is over ; the citizen-judges have gone through the motions of conferring ; the inevitable sentence has been pronounced ; the tumbril waits ; the brief journey to the place of execution is at hand. All that is lacking is the fierce roar of the mob, for which a few muffled taps on the table with the cutlery are admittedly a deflating substitute. But there is always the micro- phone, between which and the guillotine there is a close and macabre kinship. Both rear their ominous metallic heads above the gloating crowd. Both are designed to strike terror into the victim's heart. Both require for their efficient operation that his head should be fixed in rigid immobility. Both symbolise the grim triumph of the machine over man.
Why should humanity suffer itself to be cowed by this infamous instrument ? There may be some few places which by reason of size and shape are acoustically so baffling that the human voice cannot be expected to prevail without external aid. A microphone may be, for example, a permissible adjunct in the Albert Hal], though the older amongst us have listened to—and heard—speeches in that monumental ice-box from statesmen who had no amplifier to rely on except their own Edwardian lungs. But nowadays no room is too small to escape its battery of microphones. True, the novice may exert himself to roar into them, but the veteran coos at them like an adenoidal dove. No effort is zequired ; the flattest, reediest voices echo around the walls like bellowings from Bashan.
Let us then shake off our subservience to the Press table and acknowledge that the whole conception of a microphone is wrong. Let us recognise that by the stage of the evening at which it is called upon to function the guests are only concerned to eschew diversion and pursue digestion, and that what is required is a device not to magnify sound but to reduce it so near to soundlessness as to anaesthetise the brain and galvanise the gastric juices. Such an invention might well be developed so as to eliminate all human agency and softly relay a gramophone record of TIM. Even if by this system guests were robbed of the soothing spectacle of one of their fellows writhing on the rack, they would at least know, when they chanced to wake up, whether or not the hour had arrived at which they could without discourtesy make for home. Only thus will after-dinner noises come to fulfil their true and healing purpose and after-dinner speakers mercifully fade out or, like old soldiers, " simply fade away."
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