After Dinner

by A. P. HERBERT

1

So WROTE the poet Herbert long ago; and there is not much more to be said. It is, of course, no use saying anything on the poet’s main proposal: Cut out all the speeches. You might as well say: Cut out smoking and kissing. Civilized Man has got this bug into him for good, and it is as invincible as the common cold. Strangely, it does not attack most fiercely the cultured and the learned, who might be expected to have the most to say, and to say it most felicitously. On “Grand Nights” at the Inns of Court in London there are no speeches, though the hosts are the greatest lawyers in the land and most of their guests are from some top drawer — archbishops, statesmen, even literary men. No, it is among simple men and humble societies that the disease, the vice, has the strongest hold — the small Town Hall, or sailing club, or factory gathering, where few of the company can put two defensible sentences together. But at the annual dinner anybody can make a speech — and nearly everybody does.

I should not really, if I were World Dictator, make after-dinner speaking unlawful “on a planetary basis” (as some would say). It has made many inspiring and delicious evenings, given strength and comfort to multitudes — and will again. No, it can be a good thing, and should be a good thing always. My true complaint is that nine times out of ten it is spoiled by avoidable bungling, by laziness, by faulty command, by lack of respect for a difficult art; and so, instead of a good thing, you have a burden and a bore. The World Dictator would certainly admonish and advise the Promoters (the men, the chairmen, the secretaries, who thoughtlessly devise and vaguely organize these affairs) as follows: —

You have to think of two parties: a) your company — your diners — and b) your speakers; and if you have c) a Cause, you must think even more about a) and b).

First, your a), your dutiful diners, who have, perhaps, paid for tickets, have dressed themselves laboriously in their best, and come through rain, snow, or heavy heat to support you. You want them not merely to “go away happy” but to be happy all the time — especially if you have a Cause and intend to pass blank checks round the table after the Big Speech. To this end you make them as comfortable as you can; you choose the food and the wine with care — or as much care as the Society can afford; you have nicely printed menus, lists of the guests, plans of the tables, flowers, cigars — everything is thought of, and thought out. You would not order a dinner of too many courses so that people would pray for the eating to stop and the cigar-smoking to begin. If you hire singers or entertainers to perform after dinner, they are strictly rationed in time, and you sternly frown upon excessive encores.

But when you come to the Speech Department you seem to abandon thought and surrender all control, Your dinner is billed for 7.30 — “Carriages at 11” (as they still say sometimes in old-fashioned London Town). That is three hours and a halfquite a slice out of a life (to say nothing of an hour and a half’s dressing and traveling before it). Dinner is over at, say, 9. You now make your first big mistake. You assume, like a fussy hostess, that for the whole of the rest of the time available you must entertain the company.

Very rarely do you even allow an official interval between the end of dinner and the beginning of the speeches, so that people in need may visit the washroom. At private dinners, for many centuries, such an opportunity has been provided; but at public banquets, for some reason, the human body is supposed to stop working. The ladies, of course, are fair game - they have no bodies, and you will not give them a thought; but you might be expected to acknowledge the bodies of men. A man who is making one of the first speeches, under your nonstop régime, is imprisoned at the “Top table" for the entire evening. Not only must he be ready in his place for his own speech: he cannot, in courtesy, go out during anyone else’s. His only course is to stalk out alone during the coffee stage, and then everyone whispers, “Ah, yes, a nervous type.”

The mind, as well, requires relief. You have brought two or three hundred pleasant people together. Many of them know each other; very many of them would like to. They should be allowed to move about, talk to old friends and perhaps make new ones. But because of the endless oratory they are glued all the evening to the little group in which you have put them. They cannot talk to anyone else till the endless oratory is over; and then they are so exhausted by the endless oratory that their only wish is to hurry home. How often, after public dinners, I have seen by the list of guests that old friends were present too, and I had never a word with them, sometimes never set eyes on them!

2

THE simple rule (universally ignored) is “Don’t have too many speeches!” There are few tunes so good and important that they can stand being trumpeted for two solid hours. Only at some starry Pilgrims’ Dinner or Lord Mayor’s Banquet, where all the speakers are Churchills, Trumans, Archbishops, Eisenhowers, or Stevensons, is continuous oratory likely to be endurable, and even then it is not a safe bet. What insolence it is, then, to try to bring it off with a string of ordinary, stuttering mortals!

I do not know what happens in the United States, but in England a new horror has appeared. Not only are there too many toasts, but every toast is duplicated. At a jubilee orgy about Charles Dickens two people were charged to propose “the Immortal Memory ” (I resented this, rather, because I was Number One; and when I propose a toast I like to propose it and not act as a kind of overture or “trailer”). Two people proposed “the Dickens Fellowship" and two replied. Six speeches, where two would have been enough. There is not really all that to say about Charles Dickens. All spoke well (except myself) but at great length; and all (with variations) said the same thing over and over again. At 11.15 someone rose and began proposing the Chairman’s health. Long before that many of the company had reasonably—nay, wisely — left. I could not leave. But by that time I hated the very name of Dickens; and if there had been a subscription in aid of Dickens, they would not easily have squeezed a dollar out of me. If the dinner had been in aid of the blind, the widows, or the orphans, I should still have been more concerned with my own misfortunes than theirs.

Now, Mr. Promoter, you can’t tell me that such an affair, founded on so much good will, begun with such gaiety , was well handled - some of the guests slinking guiltily out, others angrily muttering and reluctantly remaining. What a climax!

“Ah,” you will say, “but they all spoke too long.”

Whose fault is that? You told none of them how many other people were speaking; you gave none of them a time limit. And towards the end, when it was quite clear that “Carriages at 11” was a mocking and deceitful hope, you did not act as a leader should. You did not pass notes to the last few speakers: “Sorry, but not more than five minutes, please.” True, some of them would have been bitterly offended, but that was your duty. You failed, It is just as if you allowed the chef to to serve six sweets, or six savories, all more or less the same. That would have horrified you. But when it is a question of food for the mind, anything will do.

Another thing. You know very well that in no two hotels or banqueting rooms do microphones and loud-speakers work in just the same way. Sometimes they don’t work at all. Your speakers have no notion how their particular instruments work, or whether the room is “good for sound.”Some of them thrust their muzzles into the mikes and deafen everybody in the room. Others stand off and talk confidentially, relying on the mike, but hard to hear almost everywhere, and quite inaudible at the tables under the gallery. Others do a bit of both, so that they are alternately shouting and silent. It is not their fault. Nobody has told them anything. You, sir, with the Secretary — indeed, with the whole Committee — should have made a Strategic Acoustic Survey before the dinner, found out what everyone should do to be heard everywhere — and told the speakers about it. Did you do that, sir? No, you never thought of it.

3

THAT brings us easily to b) — your Duty to Your Speakers. No one is paid for making after-dinner speeches, and heaven knows why anyone does it, except the politicians or the champions of a Cause. Nor is it a light and trifling task, even for those with much experience. It is all very well to say, “It comes easy to you. Anyhow, the boys will love it.” No one with any respect for a difficult art will go to the most modest meal without some preparation, and preparation means work and worry.

I find that the odious duty begins to nag at my mind three or four days ahead. I give two or three hours work to it the day before, and am distracted from my ordinary work most of the day of the dinner. There is often a sort of hangover of distraction next day, especially if the oration has not gone well. It does not help an author much to make a good speech, but to make a bad one may be damaging; and in either case, some odd remark may slip out, be misrepeated or misinterpreted, “hit the headlines,” add to his enemies and cause a correspondence. Yet many people are offended if a man declines to upset his life for two days in this way.

So, sir, when the Chairman “ thanks the speakers” he should mean it, and say it with fire and flowers. And long before the dinner he should watch over them with tender care. For one thing, he should make sure that they know what will be the conditions of their ordeal: the size of the room — microphones or not? — the nature and, roughly, the number of the company; what other and how many speakers there will be; at what stage in the evening they will be required to utter, and how long. Will they have to compete with singers or hired entertainers; will dancing follow the dinner; will there be women, and reporters, present; any clergymen, any politicians? — and so on. All these matters are highly important to the conscientious fellow who is preparing an after-dinner speech; and unless he makes himself a nuisance on the telephone, he is hardly ever told anything about any of them.

Then, on behalf of your speakers, Mr. Promoter, I must make a special protest about hired entertainers. By all means, if you wish, amuse your company with singers as well as speakers, but don’t mix them up. This is a dinner, not a church service. You have asked Mr. Smith to propose “the Immortal Memory,” “Art,” “Literature,” or what not, and Mr. Brown is to reply. At the end of Mr. Smith’s oration the toast is movingly honored and the atmosphere is warm and ready for Mr. Brown. Perhaps he has thought of a killing quip in reply to some remark of Mr. Smith’s, the kind of “impromptu ” all audiences enjoy, because it is evidently a genuine impromptu. The Chairman rises and Mr. Brown braces himself for battle. But the Chairman says: “We will now have a song.” A vast soprano then appears and sings two terrible songs. She likes singing and is only by rude glances prevented from singing a third. At last comes Mr. Brown’s turn, but by this time the warm, dramatic atmosphere has gone; people have forgotten what Mr. Smith said, and Mr. Brown’s killing quip seems neither clever nor quick, for during the songs he had time to think of a dozen. This arrangement, Mr. Promoter, is not only discourteous to Mr. Smith but shows your deficiency in a sense of drama. Get the speeches over first and then let loose the conjurers, baritones, jugglers, and Harmony Fours.

These, then, sir, are the rules that I, the World Dictator, lay down for you: —

1. It is not true that “anyone can make a speech.” Very few can do this thing well. Therefore, put no man down for a speech simply because “he is a very good fellow” or “has done so much for the Society.” In one intolerable ramble he may wipe out the good will of fifty years.

2. It is not true that diners want to listen to speeches all the evening. They like talking to each other too; they like going to the washroom, ordering drink, or simply wandering about. Therefore, do not have too many speeches.

3. Having decided how much time is to be taken by speeches, try to stick to it if you can, without being downright rude. Tell every speaker — a week before — how much, or how little, you want of him. If the first speakers grossly exceed their ration of time, tell the later ones to cut their speeches shorter, apologizing and explaining why. If Mr. Jones fights Mr. Smith at the end of it all, that is their affair.

4. Do all you can to assist your speakers; keep them separate from jugglers and card tricks.

5. Nearly all public dinners begin well; very few of them end well. Say to yourself: This one will be different. Not one guest shall go away bored. They shall go away saying, “I wish there had been a few more speeches.”