Lectures to My Students, Volume 3 — Second Series · Lecture 7 — Charles H. Spurgeon
THIS lecture begins at thirdly. If you remember, we have said that gesture should not be excessive, and secondly that it should be appropriate: now comes the third canon, action and gesture should never be grotesque. This is plain enough, and I shall not enforce it except by giving specimens of the grotesque, that you may not only avoid the identical instances, but all of a similar character. In all ages absurd gestures would appear to have been very numerous, for in an old author I find a long list of oddities, some of which it is to be hoped have taken their leave of this world, while others are described in language so forcible that it probably’ caricatures the actual facts. This writer says: “Some hold their heads immovable, and turned to one side, as if they were made of’ horn; others stare with their eyes as horribly as if they’ intended to frighten every one; some are continually twisting their mouths and working their chins while they are speaking, as if, all the time, they were cracking nuts; some like the apostate Julian, breathe insult, and express contempt and impudence in their countenances.. Others, as if they personated the fictitious heroes in tragedy, gape enormously, and extend their jaws as widely as if they were going to swallow up everybody: above all, when they bellow with fury, they scatter their foam about, and threaten with contracted brow, and eyes like Saturn. These, as if they were playing some game, are continually making motions with their fingers, and, by the extraordinary working of their hands, endeavor to form in the air, I may almost say, all the figures of the mathematicians: those, on the contrary, have hands so ponderous, and so fastened down by terror, that they could more easily move beams of timber. Many labor so with their elbows, that it is evident, either that they had been formerly shoemakers themselves, or had lived in no other society than that of cobblers. Some are so unsteady in the motions of their bodies, that they seem to be speaking out of a cock-boat; others again are so unwieldy’ and uncouth in their motions, that you would think them to be sacks of tow painted to look like men. I have seen some who jumped on the platform and capered nearly in measure; men that exhibited the fuller’s dance, and, as the old poet says, expressed their wit, with their feet. But who in a short compass is able to enumerate all the faults of gesture, and all the absurdities of bad delivery?” This catalogue might surely content the most voracious collector for the chamber of horrors, but it does not include the half of what may be seen in our own times by anyone who is able to ramble from one assembly to another. As children seem never to have exhausted their mischievous tricks, so speakers appear never to be at the end of their singular gestures. Even the best fall into them occasionally. The first species of grotesque action may be named the stiff; and this is very common. Men who exhibit this horror appear to have no bend in their bodies and to be rigid about the joints. The arms and legs are moved as if they were upon iron hinges, and were made of exceedingly hard metal. A wooden anatomical doll, such as artists use, might well represent their limbs so straight and stiff, but it would fail to show the jerks with which those limbs are thrown up and down. There is nothing round in the action of these brethren; everything is angular, sharp, mechanical.
If I were to set forth what I mean by putting myself into their rectangular attitudes I might be supposed to caricature more than one exceedingly able northern divine, and having the fear of this before my eyes, and, moreover, holding these brethren in supreme respect:. I dare not go into very minute particulars. Yet it is supposable that these good men are themselves aware that their legs should not be set down as if they belonged to a linen-horse, or a huge pair of tongs, and that their arms should not be absolutely rigid like pokers. Oil for the joints has been suggested, but there appears to be a want of oil in the limbs themselves, which move up and down as if they belonged to a machine rather than to a living organism.. Surely any sort of physical exercise might help to cure this mischief, which in some living preachers almost amounts to a deformity. On the platform of Exeter Hall, gentlemen afflicted with unnatural stiffness not only furnish matter for the skillful caricaturist, but unfortunately call off the attention of their auditors from their admirable speeches by their execrable action. On a certain occasion we heard five or six remarks upon the awkwardness of the doctor’s posturing, and only one or two encomiums upon his excellent speech. “People should not notice such trifles,” remarks our friend Philo; but people do notice such trifles whether they ought to do so or not, and therefore it is well not to display them. It is probable that the whole of this lecture will be regarded by some very excellent people as beneath their notice, and savoring of questionable humor, but that I cannot help; for although I do not set so much value upon action as Demosthenes did when he made it the first the second, and the third point in oratory, yet it is certain that much good speech is bereft, of power through the awkward deportment of the speaker; ant! therefore if I may in any measure redress the evil I will cheerfully bear the criticism of my more somber brethren. I am deeply in earnest, however playful my’ remarks may seem to be. These follies may be best shot at by the light arrows of ridicule, anti therefore I! employ them, not being of the same mind as those “Who think all virtue lies in gravity, And smiles are symptoms of depravity.” The second form of the grotesque is not unlike the first, and may be best distinguished as the regular and mechanical. Men in this case move as if they were not living beings possessed of will and intellect, but as if they were automatons formed to go through prescribed movements at precise intervals. At the back of the Tabernacle. a cottager has placed over his house a kind of vane, in the form of a little soldier, which ]tilts first one arm and then the other with rather an important air. It has made me smile many a time by irresistibly reminding me of — , who alternately jerks each arm, or if he allows one arm to lie still, chops the other up and down as persistently as if he; were moved by wind or by clock-work. Up and down, up and flown the hand goes, turning neither to the right nor to the left, every other movement being utterly abjured, except this one monotonous ascent and descent. It matters little how unobjectionable a movement may be in itself, it will become intolerable if it be continued without variation. Ludovicus Cresollius, of Brittany, (1620) in his treatise upon the action and pronunciation of an orator, speaks somewhat strongly of a learned and polished Parisian preacher, who had aroused his ire by the wearisome monotony of his action. “When he turned himself to the left he spoke a few words accompanied by a moderate gesture of the hand, then bending to the right he acted the