Oratory

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 6 November 1926, Page 11

Oratory

J_| [NTS on the part of public speaking, and especially on the a’hluc of elocution in oratory, were the themes on which Mr T. P. O’Connor, ALP., “Father of the House of Commons,” dwelt when he addressed the teachers attending the City of London vacation course in education. He gave examples from personal experience of speeches being ruined by bad delivery, and strongly urged a system of voice culture.

Mr O’Connor began by remarking that he had some experience in making speeches, listening to speeches and chronicling speeches, and he thought he might talk to teachers on the part they could play in preparing their pupils for public speaking. It was a subject, he said, that had not been sufficiently’considered, and he had seen a thousand examples of the good part, or the bad part, which knowledge or ignorance of elocution had played in making or marring tlie success of speeches. Tlie first necessity of an effective publie speaker was a good \ r oiee; and Nature had not always given that gift to men who were dowered with magnificent other qualities.

“ People succeed in the House of Commons,’’’ Mr O’Connor went on, “who get there with some startling disadvantages. People go there A\ r ho' haA r e a very imperfect education, and I have beard most powerful and effective speeches delivered by men who had a considerable amount of difficulty in knowing where ‘H’s’ should be put in or left out. (Laughter). But that was because the subject matter of the speeches was good, and wo are all charitable to our own faults. The House of Commons does learn to ignore a great man’s physical defects. Mr Winston Churchill, when he began was almost impossible. Now he has become, by sheer practice, courage and tenacity, almost the greatest parliamentary orator of to-day.’’

' “ [ have,’’ said Mr O’Connor, “heard perfectly wonderful speeches destroyed by want of elocutionary skill. Ire member listening to a speech by Lord Rosebery which was absolutely destroyed for that reason. He was Avorking himself up to a great peroration, and in working himself up he shouted and shouted, with the result that when he came to the peroration he had shouted at his audience to such an extent that the end of the speech was received in terrible silence. That was bad elocution. . I may surprise a good many people by stating that in my opinion Mr Bradlaugh was not nearly so effective in the House of Commons as ho was on the platform. My fault with Mr Bradlaugh was that he shouted so much in the House of Commons that he always suggested to me the idea of a man playing a pair of cymbals in a small drawing-room at an afternoon tea party. (Laughter).

“What, then, makes the success of the great speakers in the House of Commons, apart from other gifts? I say elocution. Take Mr Gladstone. Everything about him was artistic; not that he was artificial. If you Avatched ■his legs you suav that they gesticulated and added force and grace to AA'hat he was saying. But, above all, if you studied the use of his voice you Avoiild see that it avhs like a great gamut of music, where the low note and soft note came just at the right moment. . He would speak for an hour. During that hour there was scarcely ever the same tone.