In reality his sufferings are
worse than theirs.
For my own part I always try to appear as happy as possible while I
am lecturing. I take this to be part of the trade of anybody labelled
a humourist and paid as such. I have no sympathy whatever with the
idea that a humourist ought to be a lugubrious person with a face
stamped with melancholy. This is a cheap and elementary effect
belonging to the level of a circus clown. The image of "laughter
shaking both his sides" is the truer picture of comedy. Therefore, I
say, I always try to appear cheerful at my lectures and even to laugh
at my own jokes. Oddly enough this arouses a kind of resentment in
some of the audience. "Well, I will say," said a stern-looking woman
who spoke to me after one of my lectures, "you certainly do seem to
enjoy your own fun." "Madam," I answered, "if I didn't, who would?"
But in reality the whole business of being a public lecturer is one
long variation of boredom and fatigue. So I propose to set down here
some of the many trials which the lecturer has to bear.
The first of the troubles which any one who begins giving public
lectures meets at the very outset is the fact that the audience
won't come to hear him. This happens invariably and constantly,
and not through any fault or shortcoming of the speaker.
I don't say that this happened very often to me in my tour in
England.
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