MODERN FAILING

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 April 1937, Page 3

MODERN FAILING

PLAGUE OF WHISPERERS

In public, in private, everyone nowadays talks sotto voice, says Charles Bentham in the “Daily Mail.” In private houses, where conversation should be general, talking has become a matter of subdued dublogue or even monologue. Even when more than two people take part, the individual left out seems to hear no more than a murmuring. Contrast, in this regard, the social gatherings of thirty years ago. Then people spoke up in clear, robust voices. You could hear what they said, and incidentally, know what they meant. Nor were those articulate voices of long ago at all unpleasant.

They were more pleasant by far than the dreary inchoate subdued “drip” of modern social gatherings or of any present-day gatherings.

So much, for this infliction in private. There are public occasions when it becomes almost a plague. I refer particularly to Counts of Justice.

In the nineties you might wander through’ the Queen’s Bench Division and be greeted by the musical bellow ings of a Charles Russell (from Bench or Bar), the penetrating whispers of an Edward Clarke. You caught every word that fell from the lips of Carson or Rufus Issues. Even Lawson Walton, one of the earliest exponents of the modern sotto voce colloquial voice, had not progressed far enough to be inaudible. in the Chancery Division, however dull the subject, you could hear all about it from a John Rigby, who with his court voice could have coached an Oxford four from the banks of the Upper River on a windy day. Horace Davey spoke iii a lower key. But you heard all of him all the time.

To-day you wander into the courts and find yourself in the midst of draw-

ing-room conversations. Many of the “silks” give the impression of a Caruso saving his voice for the night. Well, there is my complaint. Amt now 1. will give what I believe to be the reason. I can give it m two words. The Stage! „ , ~ Modern acting, with a tew notable exceptions, is conducted sotto voice. Everything is easy, casual, lowtoned, natural, anything you like except audible. . , , And the baneful habit has spread through the theatre-going classes who provide the backbone for our draw-ing-rooms and our Counts' of Law. Searching my memory, 1 seem to recall that Alexander was a little prone to that nonchalant method of speaking. But the timbre ol his voice carried even his whispers lav. Charles Wyndham could be heard to the farthest point of the house. The same with Irving, Hare, Bancroft, James, and many more. And on the stage to-day, in the matter of careless, inaudible voices, the women are often worse than the men. It is not because they have not patterns of audibility on which they can mould themselves. You can hear Dame Sybil Thorndike, or Miss Athene Seyler, or Miss Mane Lem pest, whenever they open their mouths. If the stage would only set an example in speaking deliberately and carefully and “speaking up, the good would penetrate to those who to-daj copy what is bad'.