But an
Oxford audience is just as good. A gathering of business men in a
textile town in the Midlands is just as heavy as a gathering of
business men in Decatur, Indiana, but no heavier; and an audience of
English schoolboys as at Rugby or at Clifton is capable of a wild and
sustained merriment not to be outdone from Halifax to Los Angeles.
There is, however, one vital difference between American and English
audiences which would be apt to discourage at the outset any American
lecturer who might go to England. The English audiences, from the
nature of the way in which they have been brought together, expect
more. In England they still associate lectures with information. We
don't. Our American lecture audiences are, in nine cases out of ten,
organised by a woman's club of some kind and drawn not from the
working class, but from--what shall we call it?--the class that
doesn't have to work, or, at any rate, not too hard. It is largely a
social audience, well educated without being "highbrow," and tolerant
and kindly to a degree. In fact, what the people mainly want is to
see the lecturer. They have heard all about G. K. Chesterton and
Hugh Walpole and John Drinkwater, and so when these gentlemen come to
town the woman's club want to have a look at them, just as the
English people, who are all crazy about animals, flock to the zoo to
look at a new giraffe.
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