ORATORY Makers of Speeches


ROW 01 01 Martin Lewis The Orator - Madison Square , etching, 25 x 33cms ; Arthur Briscoe, The Orator 1936; an advertisisement for American Mutual Liability Insurance Company 1940 STRIKE?

ROW 02 The real thing, the pioneer American socialist Eugene Debs at work in the USA , c 1910 with a full repertoire of dynamic gestures; C.R.W.Nevinson, The Workers (Strike Demonstration) lithograph 1919, 17 x 25cms. Nevinson himself had a stony dislike of anything that smacked of Democracy and a Mass Movement. The sepulchral building behind the speakers is ominous and was meant to be."Nevinson is radically anti-democratic, 'What,' he asks,' has anybody yet succeeded in teaching a mob ? A mob will always be somebody's tool Better a thousand times that it should be the tool of the hereditory and futile aristocrat than that of the tedious and inane professional agitator. The great majority of mankind will inevitably and invariably be fools ..." K.Hare, London's Latin Quarter 1926 of the painter C.R.W.Nevinson; advert for Republican Steel July 1951 read the copy for some characteristic observations about Socialism in America ; H.M.Bateman's cartoon for the British magazine The Tatler, c 1925, captioned "A Little Disinfectant", rather summing up the standard of political comment among British cartoonists between the wars.
  

ROW 02 One of the Cuckoos listed by Baden Powell liable to distort a young man's directions in life, from Rovering to Success , Herbert Jenkins, London undated , my edition inscribed 1929. In the Market...."such was the power of the tub thumper that I only escaped by the skin of my teeth" and in the Political Arena..."the good, loud voiced political orator... with the gift of the gab he will bag at one go a whole crowd of open-mouthed wandering lads..." - "They fall like ripe plums to his shake and start forthwith to learn either The Red Flag or By Jingo if we do .., according as he is preaching red-hot communism or aggressive imperialism. He hypnotises the whole herd. But he cannot mesmerise the individual fellow who doesn't mean to be carried away by the rest." p.137 ;1937 advewrtisement for Sound Amplification equipment; Edgar Jones, The Art of the Orator. 1912 One of the many handbooks available in the first fifteen years of the century advising the politician, the after-dinner speaker and the rabble rouser how to make more effective use of the voice and the brain in making speeches.


 
 "Our Mr.Lloyd George on Tour - "That's 'im Next the Mayor" - Well it ain't much like 'is pictures" - "Ah, but you wait till you 'ear 'im speak."from the same volume as the above, Punch August 4th, 1909 p.75 18 x 25cms. And a direct reflection of the gathering unease at the power of the amplified voice to stir up the working classes. Punch explains (as it was very often wont to do) "Certain ministers, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer , are reported to have spoken their political principles into a gramophone."

Humphrey on the Stump

 

David Jagger, The Bolshevist, from Drawing and Design 1921 and comparative imagery

 

Long of Louisiana seen from behind

 

Henri Barthelemey illustration to Count Morin 1921

 

The Speech that went wrong, Nuggets 1898

 

The Orator on Work, David Wilson, The Passing Show UK 1921

 

The Communist orator's Audience 1921 The Passing Show, anti-Bolshevik imagery