He
gave no thought to the composition of the speech he was to make till the
day before he was to deliver it. No matter whether the effort was to be
a long or a short one, he never wrote down a word of what he was going
to say; but when the proper time arrived for him to consider his
subject, he took a walk into the country and the thing was done. When he
returned he was all ready for his task.
He liked to talk about the audiences that came to hear him read, and he
gave the palm to his Parisian one, saying it was the quickest to catch
his meaning. Although he said there were many always present in his room
in Paris who did not fully understand English, yet the French eye is so
quick to detect expression that it never failed instantly to understand
what he meant by a look or an act. "Thus, for instance," he said, "when
I was impersonating Steerforth in 'David Copperfield,' and gave that
peculiar grip of the hand to Emily's lover, the French audience burst
into cheers and rounds of applause." He said with reference to the
preparation of his readings, that it was three months' hard labor to get
up one of his own stories for public recitation, and he thought he had
greatly improved his presentation of the "Christmas Carol" while in this
country. He considered the storm scene in "David Copperfield" one of the
most effective of his readings.
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