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About Yale Alumni Magazine | View Entire Issue (March 18, 1897)
Votume VI. No. 23. NEW HAVEN, CONN., THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1897. MR. CHAMBERLAIN PROTESTS, He Takes Issue with Professor Beers on English and Oratory. To the Editor of the Yale Alumni Weekly, Sir: A gentle reference to me by Professor Beers in his article on the needs of the English Department at Yale in the Weekly of the lith inst. has given a little natural zest to my reading of his article. Professor Beers’ views are so striking—I will use no other adjective at this point—that I feel disposed to notice them briefly. I confess to a serious and unfeigned hesitation in doing so on One account, namely: I am reluctant to call atten- tion to Professor Beers’ views on at least two points. I do not like to have it known any more widely than it must now be, that a full Professor of English Literature at Yale—indeed, the senior Professor and head of his Department— thinks and is bold enough to proclaim his opinion, that there ought to be no requirement whatever of Engiish for entrance to Yale, and no required study whatever of English in college; and fur- ther, that he thinks—indeed, states it as a fact—that Yale no longer makes any provision for instruction in oratory, or public speaking. The first of these opinions I shall not discuss; in truth, I cannot. There are a few things that are settled for me and, I think, for most sane or intelli- gent people. These few things are not properly open to argument, either for er against. One such thing, I should say, is that Hnglish should be taught and required, at school and college, as early and as continuously and as iong as, and even earlier and longer than, any other study in the world. Who- ever would question or flout this iruth, as Professor Beers does, must find other audience than me. THE CONFESSION AS TO ORATORY. More humiliating, if possible, is it to have it proclaimed by the most author- itative voice on the point, that Yale has “long ceased” to give any attention to “oratory, or public speaking.’ (I here use Professor Beers’ exact words, and I am glad to see he identifies oratory with public speaking.) I had long sus- pected the practical fact to be as Pro- fessor Beers states it, but never before heard it confessed. I have had a rather active correspondence within the past year with sundry of the Faculty and Corporation of Yale in which I was by nearly all assured, and by some sharply called to order for doubting, that Yale is now doing more than she ever did, more than Harvard or Princeton is do- ing, more than Oxford or Cambridge is doing, ( am telling the literal truth, strange as it may seem!), in furnishing instruction, means, and incentives in the art of public speaking. Accepting Professor Beers’ statement as correct as to the fact—though I shall be. cu- rious to see what my very excellent friends, President Dwight and Dr. Pal- mer, have to say to it—let us consider it a moment. Professor Beers says that training for public speaking can be best “‘managed”’ by the students themselves in student debating socities. By ‘‘managed,” he means, I suppose, cultivated, acquired, learned. Would it not be remark- able beyond example, if this were true? Is not public speaking pre- eminently an art, an acquirement, largely subject to the rules which if not wholly technical, are certainly not in- stinctive or native with anyone? EDWARD EVERETT’S ART. Edward Everett, who seems to stand with Professor Beersfor the grand exem- plar, though I do not quite know what his “analogue” might be, was above all other men of his dav an artist in and in books, oratory. His oratory bore to the last the manifest marks of perfect knowl- edge and observance of the traditional and scholastic rules of the art—so much so as to point many a sneer and sarcasm. He had not quite art enough to conceal his art, as Phillips had; though for my part, I come near to agreeing with Professor Beers in his es- timate of Everett’s rank. Does any one but Professor Beersseriously think that Everett’s oratory was “managed’’ by his experience or practice in debating societies, or could have been? It is perfectly well known that it was the result of the most laborious and assid- uous study of rhetoric under teachers supplemented by un- wearied drill in elocution under in- structors, and finally by the self-im- posed, protracted study of the great masters and models of the art. To imagine that Everetts or their “analogues”? can be produced, or re- produced, by the practice alone of de- bating societies, I should call puerile, if ' Professor Beers hadnotsoinformed me. Self-cultivation must always follow the best instruction in public speaking in order to make an accomplished orator, but the foundation must be laid in the most careful instruction in the rules which are to a great extent as fixed and conceded as those of any other art... Kor -suca training. forcsuch. a foundation, debating societies alone may be said, with perfect truth, to be about the worst schools one can im- agine. So ‘managed,’ the natural faults that art was invented to over-~ come and correct, will become inveter- ate, the insurmountable obstacles, in a short time, to any high success in cultivated oratory. I do not under- value debating societies. My own rec- ord of their use in Linonia is unpar- alleled, so far as I know, ‘‘though I say it that should not say it;’ for, I was absent from its meetings, regular o1 special, or from. its. debates, ordinary or prize, .but once in my four college years. But student debating societies are properly only adjuncts. of the for- mal, class-room instructions of in- structors in rhetoric and elocution. NATURAL ORATORS. | There have been, there are, what are properly called natural orators, in dis- tinction from cultivated orators,—ora- tors who have been taught neith- 6r O18 class-rooms nor in de- bating societies. I suppose Patrick Henry and Abraham Lin- coln are good examples. But such res sults in no wise disprove what I have said. In fact, they are a high confir- mation of it, for it has been acutely observed that the rules of oratory taught in the schools are deducible al- ways from the speeches or productions of any so-called natural orator. Genius is genius. These men—the Henrys and _the J.uincolns—came at the rules of public speaking, and highly exempli- fied them, by the superior insight or instinct of genius, and that is about all we can say of it. There have been, too, natural poets, even natural mathe- maticians; but I never heard that it was supposed that for this reason po- etry or mathematics could be best “managed” for the general, by throw- ing aside books and study, instruction and instructors, and leaving our nas- cent or embryonic poets and mathema- — ticians to cultivate each other! By the way, when Professor Beers af- firms as a fact that Yale has long ceased to pay any attention to public speaking will he tell us why, then, my old friend and much-valued instructor, Mr. Bai- ley, is still borne on the Yale catalogue as “Instructor in Elocution?” ‘“Super- fluous lags the veteran on the stage?” Or has he “long ceased’? to give in. struction? If so, it strikes me forcibly that here is another chance to “release an income” for some “general uses of the college,’”? to borrow Professor Beers’ phrases on another point. Professor Beers’ article calls for more remark on other points, but this must be done, if at all, in another issue of the Weekly. D. H. Chamberlain. New York. March 15, 1897. _@& great. many public speakers. sions chosen speaker. organizers. Price TEn Cents. YALE DEBATING TEAM. E. H. Hume, (Alternate). Charles H. Studinski. C. 8S. Macfarland. F. P. Garvan (Alternate). . U. Clark. [From a photograph by Pach.| DEBATERS AT WORK. Less Faculty Assistance—The Men who Meet Harvard. The men chosen to represent Yale in the debate with Harvard on the 26th, have been working hard in preparation for the event. It is generally under- stood that their preparation will be ob- tained this year with less Faculty as- sistance than formerly, their training being obtained chiefly from trial de- bates against the alternates and other prominent members of the Union. Gov- ernor Roger Wolcott has been chosen to preside at the debate and the judges have been seleeted as follows: Prof. D. R. Dewey of the Massachusetts Insti- tute of Technology; Prof. F. H. Gid- dings of Columbia, and Judge E. A. Aldrich of the United States Court. Charles Stedman Macfarland, 97T. S., of Melrose, Mass., prepared for college at one of the public schools of Boston. In school he had taken part in the public debates and prize speaking, but received most of his training in the public institution known as the Boston Young Men’s Congress, which has. served to train After leaving there he went to the Young Men’s Congress of Melrose, of which Institution he was on several occa- Since coming to Yale he has taken an active part in debating. In his second year’ Mr. Macfarland carried off the William H. Fogg scholarship of $50, which is off- ered to Juniors of the Divinity School. During the last term he has held the Office of president of the Leonard Ba- con Club, of which he was one of the Last year he was alter- nate in the Yale-Harvard debate. Charles Upson Clark, ’97, comes from Brooklyn, N. Y. His training in de- bate consists in what he has done in the way of speaking since coming to College. In his Freshman year he took an active part in the Freshman Union but had done no speaking in public before the Princeton debate last year, which he was adjudged the best undergraduate speaker and was award- ed the Thatcher prize of $75. During the Fall term this year he has held the office of president of the Yale Union. He prepared for college at the Brooklyn Polytechnic. Charles H. Studinski, ’°97, spent the first two years of his college course at the University of California and join- ed the class of Yale ’97 in the Fall of 1895. He is class orator and president of the Yale Union. Last year he was alternate in the Yale-Harvard debate. At the recent final trials he was awarded the Thatcher prize, being the best of the debaters from the Aca- demical Department. Edward. Hicks Hume, ’97, of Bom- bay, India, and Frank Patrick Gar- van, ’97, of Hartford, Conn., were cho- sen alternates. Of the three men who are to repre- sent Yale in the coming debate with Harvard, C. H. Studinski, ’97, is the best orator. He, however, works him self up to such a pitch, in his delivery, re he becomes at times too reitera- ive. On the other hand, C. S. Macfarland, 97 T. S., is very forcible in making his points and says what he has to say in a telling manner; but is not apt to pick up quickly original points and is Slow to see the weak points in the op- ponent’s argument. Great readiness in the latter direc- tion is the particularly strong charac- teristic of C. U. Clark, ,’97, who is by far the best and mostlogical thinker on the team. He is extensively keen and notices at once the faults and weak points contained in the opposing state- ments.- His delivery, though, is not as strong and effective as that of Studin- ski.
