How I became a Public Speaker
By : -george bernard shaw
When i went with lecky to the Zeteical meeting, I had never spoken in public . I knew nothing about public meetings or their order. I had an air of impudence, but was really an arrant coward, nervous and self-conscious to a heartbreaking degree . Yet I could not hold my tougue. I started up and said something in the debate, and then feeling that I had made a fool of myself , as fact I had , Iwas so ashamed that I vowed I would join the society; go every week;speak in every debate;and became a speaker or perish in the attempt. I carried out this resolution. I suffered agonies that no one suspected. During the speech of the debater I resolved to follow , my heart, used to beat as painfully as recruit's going fire for the first time . I could not use notes; when I looked at the paper in my hand I could not collect myself enough to decipher a word, And of four or five points that were my pretext for this ghastly practice, I invariably forgot the best.
The Society must have hated me ; for to it I seemed so uppish and self-possessed that at my third meeting I was asked to take the chair . I consented as offhandedly as if I were the speaker of the house of Commons; and the Secretary probably got his first inking of my hidden terror by seeing that my hand shook so, that I could hardly sign the mintes of the previous meeting . My speeches must have been little less dreaded by the Society than they were by myself; but I noticed that they were hardly ever ignored; for the speaker of the evening , in replying ,usually addressed himself almost exclusively to my remarks, seldom in an appreciative vein. Besides , though ignorant of economics, I had read , in boyhood,mill of Liberty, on Representiative Goverment , and on the Lrish Land Question; and I was as full of Darwin , Tryndall and George Eliot as most of my audience. Yet every subject struck my mind at an angle that meeting; and several members confessed to me afterwards that it was when the society paid to art , of which it was utterly igorant , the tribute of setting an evening a side or a paper on it . I wiped the floor with that meeting; and serval members confessed to me afterwards that it was this performance that first made them reconsider their first impression of me as a bumptious discordant idiot.
I persevered doggedly. I haunted all the meetings in london where debates followed lectures . i spoke in the streets , in the parks at demonstrations , anywhere and everywhere possible . in short , i infested public meetings like an officer afflicted with cowardice , who takes every opportunity of going under fire to get over it and learn his business.
I had quiet literary evenings in University College at the meetings of the New Shakespeare Society under F.J Furnvall, and breezier ones at his Browing Society . I joined another very interseting debating society called the Bedford , founded by the Stopford Brooke, who had not then given up his pastorate at Bedford Chapel to devote himself to Literature. At all these meetings I took part in the debates . My excessive nervousness soon wore off.
I soon became sufficiently known as a Socialist orator to have no further need to seek out public debates; I was myself sought after. This began when I accepted an invitation from a Radical Club at Woolwich to lecture to it . At first I thought of reading a written lecture; for it seemed hardly possible to speak for an hour without text when I had hitherto spoken for ten minutes or so only in debates . But if I were to lectures formally on Socialism for an hour , Writting would be impossible for want of time; I must extemporize . The lecture was called Thieves , and was a demonstration that the proprietor of an unearned income inflicted on the community exactly the same injury as a burglar does. i spoke for an hour easily , and form that time always extemporized.
This went on for about twelve years , during which i sermonized on Socialism for at leastthree times a fortnight on an average . I preached whenever and wherever i was asked. It was first come first served with me ; when i got an application for a lecture, I gave the applicant the first date i had vacant, British Association, the city Temple , a cellar or a drawing room. My audiences varied form tens to thousands . i expected opposition , but got hardly any.
One of my best speeches was delivered in Hyde Park in torents of rain to six policeman sent to watch me , plus only the Secretary of the Society that had asked me to speak , hwo held an umbrella over me . I made up my mind to interest those policeman , though as they were on duty to listen to me , their usual practice , after being conviced that i was harmless was to pay no further attention. I entertained them for more than an hour . I can still see their water proof capes shining in the rain when i shut my eyes.
I never took payment for speaking . it often happened that provincial Sunday societies offered me the usuall ten guinea fee to give the usual sort of lecture, avoding controversial politices and religion , and that my fee was the price of my railway ticket third class if the place was further off than i could afford to go at my own expense. Sunday society would then assure me that on these terms , I might lecture on anything i liked and how i liked . Occasionally, to aviod embarrassing other lectures who like by lecturing , the account was settled by debit and credit entry; that is I was credited with the usual fee and expenses, and gave it back as a donation to the society . In this way I secured perfect freedom of speech and was armed against the accusation of being a professional agitator . For instance, at the election of 1892, I was making a speech in the Town hall of Dover when i was challenged by a hired professional agitator.