Read Ebook: The Art of the Story-Teller by Shedlock Marie L

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"I'd pull it too."

Now, the reason of the total failure of this story was the inability to draw any real response from the children, partly because of the hopeless vagueness of the questions, partly because, there being no time for reflection, children say the first thing that comes into their heads without any reference to their real thoughts on the subject.

I cannot imagine anything less like the enlightened methods of the best kindergarten teaching. Had Mrs. R. B. Smith been a real, and not a fictional, person, it would certainly have been her last appearance as a raconteuse in this educational institution.

We find an example of the dramatic power of the voice in its appeal to the imagination in one of the tributes brought by an old pupil to Thomas Edward Brown, Master at Clifton College:

"My earliest recollection is that his was the most vivid teaching I ever received; great width of view and poetical, almost passionate, power of presentment. We were reading Froude's History, and I shall never forget how it was Brown's words, Brown's voice, not the historian's, that made me feel the great democratic function which the monasteries performed in England; the view became alive in his mouth." And in another passage: "All set forth with such dramatic force and aided by such a splendid voice, left an indelible impression on my mind."

A second experiment, and a much more subtle and difficult one, is to take the same group of children on another occasion, telling them a story in pantomime form, giving them first the briefest outline of the story. In this case it must be of the simplest construction, until the children are able, if you continue the experiment, to look for something more subtle.

I have never forgotten the marvelous performance of a play given in London many years ago entirely in pantomime form. The play was called "L'Enfant Prodigue," and was presented by a company of French artists. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the strength of that "silent appeal" to the public. One was so unaccustomed to reading meaning and development of character into gesture and facial expression that it was really a revelation to most of those present--certainly to all Anglo-Saxons.

I cannot touch on this subject without admitting the enormous dramatic value connected with the cinematograph. Though it can never take the place of an actual performance, whether in story form or on the stage, it has a real educational value in its possibilities of representation which it is difficult to overestimate, and I believe that its introduction into the school curriculum, under the strictest supervision, will be of extraordinary benefit. The movement, in its present chaotic condition, and in the hands of commercial management, is more likely to stifle than to awaken or stimulate the imagination, but the educational world is fully alive to the danger, and I am convinced that in the future of the movement good will predominate.

The real value of the cinematograph in connection with stories is that it provides the background that is wanting to the inner vision of the average child, and does not prevent its imagination from filling in the details later. For instance, it would be quite impossible for the average child to get an idea from mere word-painting of the atmosphere of the polar regions as represented lately on the film in connection with Captain Scott's expedition, but any stories told later on about these regions would have an infinitely greater interest.

There is, however, a real danger in using pictures to illustrate the story, especially if it be one which contains a direct appeal to the imagination of the child and one quite distinct from the stories which deal with facts, namely, that you force the whole audience of children to see the same picture, instead of giving each individual child the chance of making his own mental picture. That is of far greater joy, and of much great educational value, since by this process the child cooperates with you instead of having all the work done for him.

Queyrat, in his works on "La Logique chez l'Enfant," quotes Madame Necker de Saussure: "To children and animals actual objects present themselves, not the terms of their manifestations. For them thinking is seeing over again, it is going through the sensations that the real object would have produced. Everything which goes on within them is in the form of pictures, or rather, inanimate scenes in which life is partially reproduced. . . . Since the child has, as yet, no capacity for abstraction, he finds a stimulating power in words and a suggestive inspiration which holds him enchanted. They awaken vividly colored images, pictures far more brilliant than would be called into being by the objects themselves."

He alludes to the decoration of one of the scenes which consists of three pines, showing what can be conjured up in the mind of the spectator.

Ah, yes. Unfolding now before my eyes The views I know: the Forest, River, Sea And Mist--the scenes of Ono now expand.

I have often heard objections raised to this theory by teachers dealing with children whose knowledge of objects outside their own circle is so scanty that words we use without a suspicion that they are unfamiliar are really foreign expressions to them. Such words as sea, woods, fields, mountains, would mean nothing to them, unless some explanation were offered. To these objections I have replied that where we are dealing with objects that can actually be seen with the bodily eyes, then it is quite legitimate to show pictures before you begin the story, so that the distraction between the actual and mental presentation may not cause confusion; but, as the foregoing example shows, we should endeavor to accustom the children to seeing much more than mere objects themselves, and in dealing with abstract qualities we must rely solely on the power and choice of words and dramatic qualities of presentation, and we need not feel anxious if the response is not immediate, nor even if it is not quick and eager.

"If this be thy story, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "thou wilt not have done these two days. Tell it concisely, like a man of sense, or else say no more."

"I tell it in the manner they tell all stories in my country," answered Sancho, "and I cannot tell it otherwise, nor ought your Worship to require me to make new customs."

"Tell it as thou wilt, then," said Don Quixote, "since it is the will of fate that I should here it, go on."

Sancho continued:

"Tell me, how many have passed already?" said Sancho.

"How should I know?" answered Don Quixote.

"See there, now! Did I not tell thee to keep an exact account? There is an end of the story. I can go no further."

"How can this be?" said Don Quixote. "Is it so essential to the story to know the exact number of goats that passed over, that if one error be made the story can proceed no further?"

"Even so," said Sancho Panza.

Queyrat says: "A child has no need of seizing on the exact meaning of words; on the contrary, a certain lack of precision seems to stimulate his imagination only the more vigorously, since it gives him a broader liberty and firmer independence."

Lady Gregory, in talking to the workhouse folk in Ireland, was moved by the strange contrast between the poverty of the tellers and the splendors of the tale. She says:

"The stories they love are of quite visionary things; of swans that turn into kings' daughters, and of castles with crowns over the doors, and of lovers' flights on the backs of eagles, and music-loving witches, and journeys to the other world, and sleeps that last for seven hundred years."

I fear it is only the Celtic imagination that will glory in such romantic material; but I am sure the men and women of the poorhouse are much more interested than we are apt to think in stories outside the small circle of their lives.

I am speaking here of the public story-teller, or of the teacher with a group of children, not the spontaneous power of telling stories such as Beranger gives us in his poem, "Souvenirs du Peuple":

Mes enfants, dans ce village, Suivi de rois, il passa; Voila; bien longtemps de cela! Je venais d'entrer en menage, A pied grimpant le coteau, Ou pour voir je m'tais mise.

Il avait petit chapeau et redingote grise. Il me dit: Bon jour, ma chere. Il vous a parle, grand mere? Il vous a parle?

I am skeptical enough to think that it is not the spontaneity of the grandmother but the art of Beranger which enhances the effect of the story told in the poem.

I find it necessary to emphasize this point because people are apt to confuse simplicity of delivery with carelessness of utterance, loose stringing of sentences of which the only connections seem to be the ever-recurring use of "and" and "so," and "er . . .," this latter inarticulate sound having done more to ruin a story and distract the audience than many more glaring errors of dramatic form.

Real simplicity holds the audience because the lack of apparent effort in the artist has the most comforting effect upon the listener. It is like turning from the whirring machinery of process to the finished article, which bears no traces of the making except the harmony and beauty of the whole, which make one realize that the individual parts have received all proper attention. What really brings about this apparent simplicity which insures the success of the story? It has been admirably expressed in a passage from Henry James' lecture on Balzac:

In illustration of the first point, I recall an experience in the north of England when the head mistress of an elementary school asked me to hear a young inexperienced girl tell a story to a group of very small children.

When she began, I felt somewhat hopeless, because of the complete failure of method. She seemed to have all the faults most damaging to the success of a speaker. Her voice was harsh, her gestures awkward, her manner was restless and melodramatic; but, as she went on I soon began to discount all these faults and, in truth, I soon forgot about them, for so absorbed was she in her story, so saturated with her subject, that she quickly communicated her own interest to her audience, and the children were absolutely spellbound.

The other illustration is connected with a memorable peep behind the stage, when the late M. Coquelin had invited me to see him in the greenroom between the first and second acts of "L'abbe Constantin," one of the plays given during his last season in London, the year before his death. The last time I had met M. Coquelin was at a dinner party, where I had been dazzled by the brilliant conversation of this great artist in the role of a man of the world. But on this occasion I met the simple, kindly priest, so absorbed in his role that he inspired me with the wish to offer a donation for his poor, and, on taking leave, to ask for his blessing for myself. While talking to him, I had felt puzzled. It was only when I had left him that I realized what had happened, namely, that he was too thoroughly saturated with his subject to be able to drop his role during the interval, in order to assume the more ordinary one of host and man of the world.

Now, it is this spirit I would wish to inculcate into the would-be story-tellers. If they would apply themselves in this manner to their work, it would bring about a revolution in the art of presentation, that is, in the art of teaching. The difficulty of the practical application of this theory is the constant plea, on the part of teachers, that there is not the time to work for such a standard in an art which is so apparently simple that the work expended on it would never be appreciated.

My answer to this objection is that, though the counsel of perfection would be to devote a great deal of time to the story, so as to prepare the atmosphere quite as much as the mere action of the little drama , yet it is not so much a question of time as concentration on the subject, which is one of the chief factors in the preparation of the story.

So many story-tellers are satisfied with cheap results, and most audiences are not critical enough to encourage a high standard. The method of "showing the machinery" has more immediate results, and it is easy to become discouraged over the drudgery which is not necessary to secure the approbation of the largest number. But, since I am dealing with the essentials of really good story-telling, I may be pardoned for suggesting the highest standard and the means for reaching it.

Therefore, I maintain that capacity for work, and even drudgery, is among the essentials of story-telling. Personally, I know of nothing more interesting than watching the story grow gradually from mere outline into a dramatic whole. It is the same pleasure, I imagine, which is felt over the gradual development of a beautiful design on a loom. I do not mean machine-made work, which has to be done under adverse conditions in a certain time and which is similar to thousands of other pieces of work; but that work, upon which we can bestow unlimited time and concentrated thought.

The special joy in the slowly-prepared story comes in the exciting moment when the persons, or even the inanimate objects, become alive and move as of themselves. I remember spending two or three discouraging weeks with Andersen's story of the "Adventures of a Beetle." I passed through times of great depression, because all the little creatures, beetles, ear-wigs, frogs, etc., behaved in such a conventional way, instead of displaying the strong individuality which Andersen had bestowed upon them that I began to despair of presenting a live company at all.

There is a tendency in preparing stories to begin with detail work, often a gesture or side issue which one has remembered from hearing a story told, but if this is done before the contemplative period, only scrappy, jerky and ineffective results are obtained, on which one cannot count for dramatic effects. This kind of preparation reminds one of a young peasant woman who was taken to see a performance of "Wilhelm Tell," and when questioned as to the plot could only sum it up saying, "I know some fruit was shot at."

I realize the extreme difficulty teachers have to devote the necessary time to perfecting the stories they tell in school, because this is only one of the subjects they have to teach in an already over-crowded curriculum. To them I would offer this practical advice: Do not be afraid to repeat your stories. If you do not undertake more than seven stories a year, chosen with infinite care, and if you repeated these stories six times during the year of forty-two weeks, you would be able to do artistic and, therefore, lasting work; you would also be able to avoid the direct moral application, for each time a child hears a story artistically told, a little more of the meaning underlying the simple story will come to him without any explanation on your part. The habit of doing one's best instead of one's second- best means, in the long run, that one has no interest except in the preparation of the best, and the stories, few in number, polished and finished in style, will have an effect of which one can scarcely overstate the importance.

In the story of the "Swineherd," Hans Andersen says:

"On the grave of the Prince's father there grew a rose-tree. It only bloomed once in five years, and only bore one rose. But what a rose! Its perfume was so exquisite that whoever smelt it forgot at once all his cares and sorrows."

Lafcadio Hearn says:

"Time weeds out the errors and stupidities of cheap success, and presents the Truth. It takes, like the aloe, a long time to flower, but the blossom is all the more precious when it appears."

So deeply convinced am I of the miniature character of the story- telling art that I believe one never gets a perfectly artistic presentation of this kind in a very large hall or before a very large audience.

I have made experiments along this line, having twice told a story to an audience in America exceeding five thousand, but on both occasions, though the dramatic reaction upon oneself from the response of so large an audience was both gratifying and stimulating, I was forced to sacrifice the delicacy of the story and to take from its artistic value by the necessity of emphasis, in order to be heard by all present.

Emphasis is the bane of all story-telling, for it destroys the delicacy, and the whole performance suggests a struggle in conveying the message. The indecision of the victory leaves the audience restless and unsatisfied.

Then, again, as compared with acting on the stage, in telling a story one misses the help of effective entrances and exits, the footlights, the costume, the facial expression of your fellow-actor which interprets so much of what you yourself say without further elaboration on your part; for, in the story, in case of a dialogue which necessitates great subtlety and quickness in facial expression and gesture, one has to be both speaker and listener.

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