They don't expect the giraffe to do anything
in particular. They want to see it, that's all. So with the American
woman's club audience. After they have seen Mr. Chesterton they ask
one another as they come out--just as an incidental matter--"Did you
understand his lecture?" and the answer is, "I can't say I did." But
there is no malice about it. They can now go and say that they have
seen Mr. Chesterton; that's worth two dollars in itself. The nearest
thing to this attitude of mind that I heard of in England was at the
City Temple in London, where they have every week a huge gathering of
about two thousand people, to listen to a (so-called) popular
lecture. When I was there I was told that the person who had preceded
me was Lord Haldane, who had lectured on Einstein's Theory of
Relativity. I said to the chairman, "Surely this kind of audience
couldn't understand a lecture like that!" He shook his head. "No," he
said, "they didn't understand it, but they all enjoyed it."
I don't mean to imply by what I said above that American lecture
audiences do not appreciate good things or that the English lecturers
who come to this continent are all giraffes. On the contrary: when
the audience finds that Chesterton and Walpole and Drinkwater, in
addition to being visible, are also singularly interesting lecturers,
they are all the better pleased. But this doesn't alter the fact that
they have come primarily to see the lecturer.
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