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.
