We laugh at that story because we have all made mistakes owing to ignorance, and blushed for them a hundred times later. When we laugh at the squire, we are really laughing at ourselves; we are getting rid of our pent-up self-shame. That"s why a good laugh is a medicine; it allows us to get rid of psychic poison, just as a good sweat rids us of somatic poison. Charlie Chaplin has possibly cured more people than all the psycho-a.n.a.lysts in the world.
Public speaking is a most difficult thing. It is difficult enough when you know your subject, and it is almost impossible if you don"t. At a dinner someone asks you to get up and propose the health of the ladies.
I tried proposing that toast once; luckily most of the diners were under the table by that time. What can one say about the ladies?
When you have a definite subject to talk about, and when you know everything about it, even then public speaking is difficult. You stand up before a sea of faces. You see no one; you dare not catch anyone"s eye. The best plan is to fix your eye on the blurred face of the man at the back of the hall. You feel that the audience is vaguely hostile.
At one time I used to go straight into my subject . . . "Ladies and gentlemen, the subject of evolution has occupied the minds of--" Then the audience began to rustle, and the women turned to look at the hats behind them.
Nowadays I am more wary. I stand up and gaze over the sea of faces for a full minute. There is absolute silence. I put my hands into my trouser pockets and gaze at the ceiling, as if I were considering whether I should go on or give it up and go home. Even the boys at the back of the hall begin to look towards the platform.
Then I look down and find that my tie is hanging out of my waistcoat, and I adjust it. A girl of ten giggles.
"What can you expect for fivepence half-penny?" I ask, and the audience gasps.
"Why doesn"t someone invent a long tie that won"t come out at the ends?" I ask wearily, and there is a laugh. I go on from ties to collars, and there is another laugh. After that I can speak on education for two hours, and everyone in the hall will listen with great attention.
The first thing in public speaking is to get on good terms with your audience, and I claim that the best way to do this is to show them the human side of yourself. Some of your hearers are agin you; they have come out to criticise you. You disarm them at once by treating yourself as a joke. Of course you must suit your tactics to your audience. The tie remark will put me on good terms with a rural audience, but it would fail in a lecture to teachers in the Albert Hall.
An important thing to remember is that crowd humour is quite different from individual humour. A crowd will roar with delight if the lecturer accidentally knocks over the drinking gla.s.s on the table, but no individual ever laughs when a similar accident happens in a private room. Read the reports of speeches in the House of Commons. You will read that Lloyd George, in a speech, says: "And now let us turn to Ireland (loud laughter)." But in cold print it isn"t a very good joke.
Quite a good way of commencing a lecture is to tell a short story . . .
about the chairman if possible. But you must be careful. Keep off the topic of the chairman"s marital affairs; he may have lodged a divorce pet.i.tion the week before.
On second thoughts I think it better not to mention the chairman at all. Last winter the local mayor was presiding at a lecture I gave in an English town. After I had delivered the lecture, he got up.
"I came to this meeting feeling dead tired," he said, "but after Mr.
Neill"s lecture I feel as fresh as a daisy."
I rose in alarm.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I said hastily, "the mayor has been sitting behind me. Do tell me: has he been asleep?"
In the ante-room afterwards he a.s.sured me solemnly that he hadn"t been asleep.
On Friday night I began thus: "Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to talk about Forgetting." Then I put my hand in my inside coat pocket; then I tried another pocket, and got very excited while I rummaged every pocket I had.
"I must apologise," I said, "but I have forgotten my notes."
The audience laughed, and we became the best of friends.
Forgetting is very often intentional. We forget what we do not want to remember. Brown writes to me saying that he is taking the wife and kids to the seaside, and would I please pay him the fiver I owe him? I at once sit down and write: "My dear Brown, I enclose a cheque for five quid. Many thanks for the loan. Hope you all have a good time at the sea."
Three days later Brown replies.
"Thanks for your letter, old man, but you forgot to enclose the cheque."
Why did I forget the cheque? Because I did not want to pay up.
Consciously I did want to pay, for I wrote out the cheque all right, but my unconscious did not want to pay, and it was my unconscious that made me slip the cheque under the blotter.
Last summer I was invited to spend the week-end with some people at Stanmore. I did not want to go; a previous week-end with them had been most boring. However, I reluctantly consented to go out on the Sat.u.r.day morning. When Sat.u.r.day morning came I was not very much surprised to find that I had forgotten to put out my boots to be cleaned the night before.
"It looks as if I weren"t keen on this trip," I said to myself.
I went down to Baker Street and got into the train. We stopped at many stations, and after an hour"s journey I began to wonder what was wrong.
I asked another man in the compartment when we were due at Stanmore, and he looked surprised.
"Why," he said, "you"re on the wrong line; you ought to have changed at Harrow."
I got out at the next station and found that I had an hour to wait for the return train to Harrow. As I sat on the platform I took from my pocket my host"s letter.
"Remember," it ran, "to change at Harrow," and the words were underlined.
I arrived four hours late . . . and spent a pleasant week-end.
One night I was dining out in London, and I told my host the new theory of forgetting.
"That"s all bunk.u.m," he said. "Why, there is a flower growing at the front door there, and I can never remember the name of it. I am fond of flowers and never have any difficulty in remembering their names as a rule."
"What flower is it?" I asked.
He tried to recall it, and had to give it up.
"It"s the joke of the family," said his wife. "He can never remember the name Begonia."
"Begonia!" cried my host, "that"s the name! But surely you don"t mean to tell me that I want to forget it? Why should I?"
"It may be a.s.sociated with something unpleasant in your life," I said.
"Nonsense!" he laughed. "The name conveys nothing to me."
We began to talk about other things. Ten minutes later my host suddenly exclaimed:
"I"ve got it!"
"What?" I asked.
"That Begonia business. When I began business as a chartered accountant over twenty years ago, the first books I had to audit were the books of a company calling itself The Begonia Furnishing Company.
I glanced through the books and soon concluded that they were swindlers. I worried over that case for a week; you see it was my first case, and I felt a little superst.i.tious about it. However, at the end of a week I sent the books back saying that I couldn"t see my way to undertake the auditing. I"ve never given them a thought since."
I explained the mechanisms to him. The whole idea of this Begonia Company was so painful to him that he repressed it, that is, drove it down into the unconscious. Twenty years later he was unconsciously afraid to recall the name of the flower, because the name might have brought back the painful memories of the questionable books.
On Friday night during question time one man got up.
"Why is it, then," he asked, "that I cannot forget the painful time when my wife died?"