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Effective Storytelling Step by Step 2020 Edition Captivate
Engage and Influence Your Audience O. G. Goaz Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): O. G. Goaz
ISBN(s): 9789659276226, 9659276222
File Details: PDF, 1.74 MB
Year: 2019
Language: english
 EFFECTIVE
STORYTELLING
STEP BY STEP
(2020 EDITION)

Captivate, Engage, and Influence your

Audience
O. G. GOAZ
 Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of
copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be
grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this
book.
[email protected]
Translated from Hebrew by Nina Luskin
Editing by Robin Marcus and Dr. Mary S. Lederer
Cover by Studio Lilach Gonen

***

Copyright © 2019 Osnat Goaz

All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-965-92762-2-6
 All the clips featured in the book can be viewed at https://www.poprite.co.il/storytellingebook
Please note that each clip is preceded by a brief explanatory text. For maximum benefit, we strongly
suggest that the reader take a few moments to read it before viewing the clip.

All the links were tested prior to publication. If nonetheless you find a link that is faulty or no longer
valid, kindly notify us and we will address the problem.
Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it or found it useful, I would
be grateful if you would consider leaving a short review on Amazon.

Thank you for your support!

 CONTENTS
1 Prologue
2 A True Story
3 Telling Stories
4 The Stories That We Choose To Tell
5 The Framing Effect
6 Why Bother Telling a Story?
7 Diversion
8 Methodology
9 Schemas for Successful Storytelling
10 Structural Framework
11 Narrative Qualities
12 Narrative Seasoning
13 Promoting Agendas and Goals
14 The Devil Is in the Details
15 Putting the Storytelling Puzzle Together
16 From Theory to Practice
17 The Point Is This
18 At Your Fingertips
19 Postscript
References
About the Author
 1 Prologue

O urourlives are filled with stories – stories that define us, stories that define
existence. Stories that, time and again, as a matter of course, we tell
to ourselves and to people who surround us: at home, in the street, in a
social setting, at work. We have all experienced disappointments; we have all
experienced success; we all have aspirations, dreams, apprehensions, fears….
All these raw materials are at our disposal, the stuff that good stories are
made of.
Whether you are a leader seeking to promote an idea, a public speaker
hoping to leave a mark on the hearts and minds of your listeners, a business
owner or content marketer endeavoring to present the advantages of a product
or service – remember: If you wish to engage and influence your audience,
you must enliven your discourse with stories. And not just any stories, but
those that have the power to boost your agenda and to advance the goals and
objectives that you have set.
I could tell you about my childhood on the outskirts of Haifa, Israel; about
my grandparents’ home, where I grew up; about my coming into maturity at a
restricted military base in the south of Israel, in the middle of nowhere; about
my travels to every corner of the world that began on a ship bound for the Far
East; about my professional training at a Tel Aviv advertising agency; about
my work as a spokeswoman and communications adviser, and my encounters
with various public and political figures; about my doctoral thesis, unfinished
but not forsaken; and even about my everyday life in Israel’s capital,
Jerusalem.
Yet although, just like you, I have thousands upon thousands of stories to
tell, enough to fill reams of paper, the only stories that you will find in the
pages of this book are the ones that demonstrate the use of stories as a
strategic tool to promote one’s agenda, goals, and objectives, in life, at work,
and in business.
 2 A True Story

O ncar,November 5, 2006, while driving south on a one-way road in the family

we were hit from the left by a vehicle that had crossed the
intersection on a red light. Our car turned around on its axis several
times, shot towards a traffic island, and came to a standstill.
I remember these moments well, the moments of the crash. I remember
feeling as if time had stopped. I remember my first desperate scream – “Avi,
no! No! No!” – as if words alone could avert the inevitable. I remember
thrusting my arm forward inside the car, as if I had the power to buffer the
impact of the crash. I remember lurching out of the car and collapsing on the
traffic island; seeing strange people running in my direction – my brain
registering their movements in slow motion as one of them extricated my
daughters from their car seats and brought them to me – and that took an
eternity. I remember looking them over, from head to toe – this time, in fast
motion – and feeling calmer. The younger, age two, had a nosebleed. The
older, age five, had smashed her forehead.
I remember looking inside the car and seeing my husband Avi, his head
flat on the steering wheel and blood running down the side of his face, to his
jaw. I remember thinking that he was dead. I remember that two paramedics
rushed towards me; I saw their mouths move and understood that they were
asking me something, but I couldn’t understand what. I remember that I had
difficulty breathing, that I was placed on a stretcher and had an oxygen mask
put over my face, that a policeman approached us and after taking one look at
me addressed my older daughter, that she said something in reply, her face
contorted with confusion, or was it dread?
I remember how, afterwards, she told me that he had said her father had
asked what her and her sister’s names were.
I remember the feeling of helplessness as I was lifted into the ambulance,
my two daughters seated next to me, crying; how I looked them in the eyes in
an attempt to calm them down. I remember that, after more than two hours of
tests and X-rays, I finally saw Avi, lying on a bed, fully conscious. That
when he recognized me, he launched into a barrage of questions that seemed
to me strange and incoherent. I remember that, nevertheless, I answered every
one of them in turn. But he asked the same questions again. And again. And
again. As if I had not given him any replies at all. I remember that I couldn’t
understand what was wrong with him and burst out in uncontrollable sobs. I
remember how, on coming home – just me and my daughters – I resolved to
go on as usual, no matter what. But I also remember how extremely difficult
this turned out to be.
***
In a month or so, I went back to work for the first time and handed in my
resignation letter. I felt that the family trauma we had all gone through
compelled me to do that. That I must be disengaged. Free to take care of
myself, to take care of my daughters, to take care of my family. That I could
not continue living as if nothing had happed, continue chasing god knows
what, day after day. Resume the marathon of life, the hectic routine. Become
once more an irritable and busy mother. Take up the same petulant refrain
that holding an intensive, full-time job and being a mother is like working
two-and-a-half jobs and earning less than three-quarters of one salary. Carry
on my back – at every given moment – a thousand-ton load of guilt.
At that time, I worked as a spokeswoman for the national public authority,
and on my head, where an ear was supposed to be, was a cellphone. Attached
to my belt was a gnarled beeper. I was one of those career women who
believe that if they are not available day and night, holidays and weekends,
seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, anywhere, under any
circumstances, the world – or at the very least their job – would go to pieces.
And then, as if with the flash of a sword – everything stopped.
After nearly twenty years of zealously chasing the clock, in a matter of
hours I turned into one of those women who seemingly do little other than
hang out the wash. Scrub the surfaces in the kitchen and stack the
dishwasher. Cook and clean. I became a mother and a housewife – a full-time
one, too. And so the years passed. Another and another. And another.
And then one day, I woke up and realized that I had become my own
shadow, someone whose life does not really belong to her. That I had turned
into a type of person I had never wanted to become. And I was ashamed of
what had become of the woman who had always prided herself on her
panache.
I – who in the army had been an acclaimed sports and krav maga (self-
defense) instructor; who held an MA in communication and journalism, in
both applied and research tracks; whose name had been posted on the Dean’s
List; a student teacher at the Hebrew University; an intern at one of Israel’s
leading advertising agencies; a marketing consultant; a public relations
manager; a popular blogger; a communications adviser; a public authority
spokeswoman; someone who had raced around the Israeli Parliament
building to mastermind a neighborhood protest – I had metamorphosed into a
full-time housewife.
I felt so ashamed that soon afterwards I started a doctorate, just so that if
people on the street or in a supermarket should ask me what I did, I wouldn’t
have to say “nothing.”
For almost seven years I was, in my view, a housemaid.
And during that seventh year of “nothing,” as if I hadn’t yet had enough,
my mother passed away. She died of breast cancer at the age of sixty-four,
ten years after her own mother had succumbed to the same illness. I sank into
a kind of melancholy. I began pondering statistics, thinking of getting my
affairs in order, and wondering what my own chances might be in this
game…. In other words, when would it be my turn?
And then, one morning, I told Avi that if I didn’t do something with my
life, I would also become ill. I was feeling pain in my joints and bones, and I
truly believed that I was in an advanced stage of terminal illness.
That day, as usual, I went to the local library to exchange books for my
eldest daughter. Even though our membership covered only children’s books,
a book for adult readers displayed at the entrance to the library caught my
attention. It was a volume by Timothy Ferris, entitled The 4-Hour Workweek.
Although I had never heard of the book or its author, and although at that
time I didn’t read anything unrelated to my PhD studies, I felt a strange
compulsion to borrow that book. I picked it up and placed it between two of
the fantasy paperbacks I had picked out for my daughter, hoping the librarian
wouldn’t notice that it wasn’t a children’s book. The librarian scanned all the
books, stamped them, and reminded me to return them within thirty days. I
breathed a sigh of relief.
Soon after, for the first time in many years, I was engrossed in a volume
that was not a reference book, a textbook, or a manual. I devoured the book
in several hours, spread over three days – after all, I was still a housewife and
full-time mother. That book – or more precisely, the sequence of events in the
aftermath of my reading it – changed my life.
How is that possible? It’s as simple as this: I thought to myself that maybe
I could combine work and taking care of my children and my home. Maybe I
could be the kind of mother who is always there for her children, while at the
same time doing something with my life, something for myself. Maybe I was
able to avoid being only a mother or only a career woman. Maybe it was
possible to find a path between those two extremes, to find my own way.
Maybe I could be both, and still keep my sanity.
Yet this epiphany was immediately followed by the realization that there
was a serious problem. Even with all my experience and know-how, all my
flair, for seven whole years I had been outside the world of working life.
So how could I start using my abilities and skills after having been so
completely outside of the game? After years of sitting on the bench – and at
the age of forty-five, to boot – who would consider returning me to the
playing field?
Especially since, during those seven years, the world had changed so
fundamentally. With the advent of new technology, the entire sphere of
marketing, advertising, and public relations that had been so familiar to me
had been radically transformed. The place of traditional media – the press, the
television, the radio – had been taken over by the internet, most notably
social media. And how well was I prepared for this new era? I didn’t even
have a Facebook profile! And certainly no account on Twitter or Instagram.
So what the hell was I to do?
And then, almost in despair, I thought, why not check out what it’s all
about? Just scratch the surface? Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.
After putting my girls to bed one evening, I ensconced myself in front of
the computer, plugged in my earphones, and started searching Facebook for
clips on digital marketing. The first clip that came up was entitled “The
Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising.”
I clicked on the link and started to watch. The clip featured a woman
considered a guru on everything to do with Facebook, and in the video she
related how, from being a housewife – and a full-time mother of triplets – she
had become an expert on Facebook and the main breadwinner in the family.
What struck me most was what she said at minute 4:42 of the clip: “I found a
book called The 4-Hour Workweek. I read it … in like three days.”
That book had changed her life.
“The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising”
(Link 1)
 This was the first clip I had come across, out of the millions on YouTube.
Of the infinite amount of content on the net, on my first search, I had
gravitated to a clip whose narrator relays how, following her husband’s
breakdown, she had been transformed from a housewife into an expert on
Facebook marketing – by reading the very same book I had picked up on
instinct at the library.
Justifiably or not, I saw this as a portent – a sign from heaven – in spite of
being a secular person not in the least given to mysticism. Something about
this coincidence had caused me to raise an eyebrow and wonder: was it really
a coincidence?
Regardless of how logical it may have been, I saw a message in that
coincidence. And at that moment, I resolved to pick up the gantlet and do
what I knew best: study.
For exactly three months and twenty-one days, every second of my free
time was devoted to researching and studying advertising and marketing in
the digital age. On some days I didn’t go to bed until the small hours of the
morning. Occasionally I forgot to or didn’t have time to eat and drink. There
were nights when I slept for three or four consecutive hours at best – because
only after putting my daughters to bed in the evening was I able to catch up
on my research, and because often my overwrought mind wouldn’t stop
thinking. Even my dreams were about that stuff, and every free minute of my
time was spent surfing the internet.
I read every study, every post, every book on the subject that I could get a
hold of. I consumed every bit of content that touched upon the world of
advertising and marketing in general, and modern digital technology in
particular. I pored over research into social and human behavior, particularly
economic behavior. I participated in hands-on webinars on internet
advertising and watched innumerable YouTube clips about how to manage
campaigns on social media. I read tons of texts about advertising and
marketing in digital media: in Hebrew, in English, and even – grinding my
teeth – a few in French.
If you had given me a text in Circassian and said that it was crucial for
understanding the age of modern technology, I would have found a way to
get through it. I consumed everything within reach of my hand or mouse.
Studies and books, from all over the world, on subjects related to persuading
and motivating people; research on rationality, including works by Nobel
laureates such as Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
And then, after more than three months of in-depth study, a simple idea
occurred to me. It was a little past midnight, and the house was very still. I
had been watching a clip on YouTube, the last of many that day, but stopped
it after about forty-five seconds. I took the earphones out of my ears and
grasped my head with both hands. At that moment I understood the only
lesson that I needed to learn. As Ecclesiastes had said: “There is nothing new
under the sun.” What has been will be again.
To be sure, the platforms had changed, but the essence? Human behavior
had not changed one iota! I realized that persuading people had always been
and still was contingent on analyzing the forces make humans act in one way
and not another. That everything I had learned over more than fifteen years of
working in marketing communication was still very much valid. And most
importantly, I understood that the key to success in the age of modern
technology was exactly the same as it had been for eons – understanding
human behavior. The rest is nothing but pyrotechnics, cosmetics, and
crinkling cellophane wrapping.
I understood that the methods of persuasion and getting a message across,
which are at the core of modern marketing strategies, had not really changed,
and neither had human or social psychology. That human beings were still
human beings.
Say you have an award-winning recipe for carrot cake, but instead of
making it in your trusty rectangular Pyrex dish, you now have to use a round
metal pan and bake it in a new oven. True, you need to learn how to operate
the buttons and account for the idiosyncrasies of the new appliance, to adjust
the temperature and baking time and reckon with a few other technicalities,
but that’s it!
That same night I opened an account on Facebook, and right afterwards on
LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest… and god knows what else. The following
morning, I went to the Tax Authority and opened files with the Income Tax,
VAT, and Social Security offices. I hired the services of an accountant, and
from then on, I have been operating as a strategic storytelling adviser to
senior officers, managers, and business owners. And – oh, yes! – I have also
written the book that you are reading right now.
And now I would like you to answer a question, frankly, hand on heart:
Do you believe that the story I have just recounted really happened?
 3 Telling Stories

W ell, I’ve got news for you. The answer is no. The story I have just told
you never happened in reality, for a simple reason: stories, in general,
do not occur in reality.
Where, then, do they occur? In our minds!
Stories are, in effect, the product of our interpretation and construction of
reality – in line with our understanding of it. That is, in a story that we create,
we impose our interpretation on events, and thus actually produce another
reality.
Think for a moment. The facts and events at the core of any story that we
tell to or about ourselves make up only ten percent of it.
And the remaining ninety percent?
That’s our interpretation and understanding of the episode, and not what
has actually occurred. The stories we tell ourselves and those around us are
therefore, in effect, a reality we have constructed and created. A sort of
virtual reality, if you wish.
If the facts, the events, the ten percent – what we will call here the factual
grid, the skeleton of our story – have actually happened, and the remaining
ninety percent, the stuff that links or wraps them together – what Peter
Brooks in his 2002 work Policing Stories calls “the narrative glue” – are our
own creation, then the final product, the story itself, is more akin to fantasy
than to reality.
The narrative glue – that is, the stuff that attaches a fact or an incident to
other facts or incidents, or the plot that envelops the event grid – is also what
invests the story with internal logic, meaning, and import. Without it, there
cannot be a story at all, only a sequence of events and facts. We will discuss
this at greater length later on.
What’s more, the impact of either of these story elements is not directly
proportional to their respective size. That is, the narrative glue, which
accounts for the lion’s share of a story to begin with, has an even bigger
impact on the final product than is implied by the proportion it takes up, at
least in terms of its power to influence the addressee.
Why?
Because, in most cases, it is the wrapping that ultimately imbues a story
with meaning. The wrapping is what wields the power to convey messages,
further agendas, touch the hearts of the audience and keep them in thrall, to
promote various aims and objectives, to influence individuals and propel
them to action, to shape reality, and even to build an entire universe of
values. In other words, the wrapping in which we encase the events, data, and
facts is the element that transforms a sequence of incidental occurrences into
a story that deserves to be told.
If the narrative glue is missing, there is no story as such – only an
agglomeration of data and a sequence of dry facts.
It follows, then, that one could tell dozens of different stories based on the
same factual grid, and all of them would be equally true. That is, one can
make different covers for the same set of facts and produce a range of true
stories even though none of them has occurred in reality.
The story I told you about myself is true, even though it has never taken
place in the real world. This story is a faithful representation of events or
incidents in which I have been involved but, like all stories, it occurred only
in my mind. Put differently, this story is a reconstruction of events, in line
with my agenda and incorporating my subjective interpretation – whether I
was aware of my interpretation or not. Through this story I not only
understood what actually happened but also constructed it, thereby
effectively creating it anew. It is obvious, then, that I could have used its
factual grid, the dry data, to tell an altogether different true story. And not
just one, but scores.
Let’s try it. Let’s take the story that I told you, pull it apart, and isolate its
core facts:
1. Name: Osnat Goaz.
2. Status: Married with children.
3. Army service: Sports trainer and krav maga instructor.
4. Education: MA in communication and journalism.
5. Specialization: Public relations and advertising.
6. Experience: Student teacher at the Hebrew University, public relations
manager, spokeswoman for the public authority, communications adviser,
marketing consultant.
7. Events: Involved in a car accident, mother passed away as a result of
cancer.
8. Currently: Freelancer in marketing and consulting.
Using the above facts as a skeleton, I could tell you the following story:
 Hi, my name is Osnat Goaz, and I am a trained marketing
consultant with an MA in communication and journalism from the
Hebrew University; I am married with three children, all girls.
I started my own business, a marketing consulting company,
after having accrued thirteen years of hands-on experience in the
field of marketing communication, specializing in public relations
and advertising. My resolution to open a company of my own,
rather than go back to work for someone else, as I had done
throughout my adult life, stemmed from a number of reasons. The
main event that precipitated this decision was a car accident
approximately ten years ago in which I was involved and which
made me realize very clearly that life was too short and too
irreversible to go back to work as an employee. This, and possibly
also my mother’s sudden death from cancer at a relatively young
age, is what helped me understand that, in one’s life, one should try
to achieve some kind of personal satisfaction. As a result, after a
break of several years, I decided to return to the labor market, albeit
on my own terms.
I explored the secrets of digital advertising and discovered
that storytelling has the power to drive winning marketing strategies
for companies, businesses, and organizations. Then I opened my
own business and wrote a book about the use of story as a strategic
tool.
So what do you think?
Even a cursory comparison of the two stories shows that the facts that
constitute them are identical. What is different? The “getup,” the wrapping,
the narrative glue. Something that links facts to other facts. And voilà: two
different stories.
Are both of them true?
Definitely, even though neither has actually occurred in reality.
How come?
Because stories, in general, do not occur in reality; only the facts at their
core do.
You are probably saying to yourself, wait a minute, in the second story she
added facts that are not mentioned in the first, and omitted others that are.
And that is true: A story also contains what is omitted from it – what we
choose to leave out.
Let me illustrate what I mean. Take a look at the picture below:

Photo courtesy of veronicascornucopia.com

The missing slice defines the cake, no less than the cake itself – and if you
think about it, maybe even more so. Why is that?
Because in addition to defining the cake, the missing piece also tells us a
story about it: Someone has cut the cake and maybe has eaten a piece.
It is important to understand that when we tell a story, we do not recount
everything that has happened to us, second by second: rather, at every
juncture we decide which facts to include; we select what is important and
what is trivial to the story; we weigh what is more revealing when left out,
what will advance our storyline and what will hamper it, what will enhance
the message that we wish to get across and what will sabotage it. We consider
what will advance our agenda and our purpose and what might have the
opposite effect, what will render the story more “tellable” and what will make
it boring and fit to be shelved forever.
This rationale is based on the Aristotelian teleological principle in which
the various stages of a creative process will always be subordinate to the
purpose, which the former is designed to achieve. According to this
approach, the choice of how to present events is governed by a pre-
determined climactic point, and events are then presented in a causal
sequence that leads to this apex. According to this principle, a biased or
partial presentation of facts does not by any means constitute a flaw. In fact,
if you were to attempt to faithfully represent in detail everything that had
occurred, you’d end up with an inferior narrative texture that would appear
trivial, trite, and unfit to be told.
I place so much emphasis here because it is important to make clear that
each of us possesses a vast arsenal of stories, that each event we experience
has the potential to open up a whole world of stories.
In other words, every incident that we have experienced is loaded with a
boundless variety of possibilities, and focusing on one aspect while
disregarding others will give rise to a story that cements a particular
worldview. And if every story that we tell includes both facts that are relayed
and those that are omitted, it is possible to tell a number of substantively
different stories based on the same factual framework. Invariably, our choice
of what to tell and what to omit will be biased, whether or not we are aware
of this.
One statement that I hear over and over again from clients, colleagues and
other people interested in storytelling is “I have nothing to tell!” And that is
nothing but balderdash, stuff, and nonsense! It’s not that you have nothing to
tell; you simply don’t know why, what, or how.
But don’t worry, I will deal with that in due course.
 4 The Stories That We Choose To Tell

H owever, before I elaborate on the details and implications of the above

questions – what exactly to tell, how to tell, and why tell at all – I would
like to briefly direct the spotlight to which stories we choose to tell in any
given case. It is a crucial element in understanding the power of a story, so
let’s retrace our steps.
I have told you two personal stories about myself, based on a selection of
facts taken from real life. But even if I had included all the facts from the first
story in the second one, without adding or subtracting anything, I would still
have been able to tell you an altogether different story, convey entirely
different messages, forge different meanings, and divert the focus to different
places.
Why is all this so important? Why do I have to repeat it and drum it in?
Simply because there is great significance in which story we choose to
tell.
The act of telling stories is central to our lives. Telling stories is the most
fundamental and ancient means at our disposal as human beings to
understand reality, to make sense of events, to shape our memories, to build
our identities, whether personal or collective, to convey sensations, to
establish coherence… and to construct reality. The stories we tell serve to
transmit knowledge, define identity, account for phenomena, interpret events,
make sense of situations, set up causal relations, and justify our behaviors.
Put differently, stories are tools that impart meaning to everything that
happens to us in life, every occurrence. But remember: it is the stories that
impart meaning, not the reality as such!
Crucially, these stories we tell ultimately define us, relegate us to
categories, and stamp us with a label. That is because we tell them not only to
ourselves but also to those around us – at business meetings, social
gatherings, lectures, presentations; over coffee and cake in a local coffee
house; to friends, colleagues, passers-by; briefly, to a woman next door who
is just parking her car; to our nuclear and extended families; to those dear to
us who are far away and to strangers who are nearby; to friends and enemies;
to anyone with whom we have any kind of interaction. In any circumstances,
through any channel, in any mode – face-to-face, over the phone, by mail, via
social media, on Skype, through chats…
Even though stories have such enormous power, how come we tell them
relentlessly, using every possible medium, and without a moment’s respite?
We don’t even stop to think what it is we are telling; we don’t reflect on why
or how we are doing this. So why do we not tell our stories consciously, with
awareness, with a predefined intention?
This is a critical point.
We can and must choose what to tell – what to recount to ourselves and
what to reveal to those around us. And we may tell stories that are entirely
different from the ones we thought we were telling in the first place, possibly
without giving it much thought.
If stories have such a great impact on our lives, shouldn’t we choose
which stories to tell and thereby get a measure of control over the ways in
which they define us? What stories should we tell so as to influence how
others see us? And what stories could we tell to influence the way others see
reality – for example, our children?
But wouldn’t making such a decision mean that we are lying to ourselves?
Lying to others?
No, it wouldn’t. Because if the only true element in all stories that we tell
is their factual framework, while everything else is our interpretation, our
construction of reality, then the story is essentially a product of our
overwrought imagination! As psychologist Jerome Bruner aptly noted in his
1991 journal article “The Narrative Construction of Reality,” stories are a
means through which human cognition comprehends and interprets reality,
and they cannot be either refuted or validated. To render this philosophical
discussion less abstract, I will give you an example from real life.
Several years ago, as I mentioned earlier, I embarked on a doctorate. My
dissertation, at least in the beginning, dealt with stories in business
periodicals.
My supervisor was an eminent professor of international renown,
important and respected in academia.
After nearly one-and-a-half years of hard but frustrating work writing a
research proposal, the long-awaited day arrived when the members of my
dissertation committee – all of them likewise senior academics and leading
researchers in their respective fields – gave me the green light. Finally, I had
reached the stage at which my proposal, approved and signed by the
dissertation committee, would go to the research institute to be stamped, thus
rendering the committee’s de facto endorsement officially valid. It should be
noted that this stage is considered a procedural formality; as one academic
old-timer told me, “You can now stop worrying: this is merely a symbolic
ritual.”
As you can imagine, I was in seventh heaven.
At long last, my proposal had been approved, and now – full steam ahead!
I was very happy also (if not mainly) because I hadn’t had an easy time
getting to that point. Actually, it was quite hard. Very, very hard. I know:
Many PhD students will tell you that doing a doctorate is not easy. But in my
case it was exceptionally difficult.
Not because I was no longer in my twenties – and in fact at least twice that
age.
And not because I had a family – a husband and three children, one of
them a very young baby.
And not because, as I navigated between my home, my children, the
babysitter, diapers, the kids’ extracurricular activities, driving to and fro,
handling studies, viruses, assignments, and tutorials, I sometimes felt as if my
life were a series of somersaults, backward and forward.
And not because going back to academic studies after a break of over
fifteen years, sharing a lecture-hall bench with kids fresh from army service,
made me feel completely out of touch.
And not because finding a supervisor under such circumstances, when
your life is completely outside of the academic environment, is nearly
impossible.
And not even because my mother had just been diagnosed with breast
cancer, exactly ten years after her mother – who for all intents and purposes
had been my mother too, having raised me from the time I was a baby – had
died from the same illness.
But because, before the committee finally approved my research proposal,
I had written a number of proposals that had been rejected over and over
again.
Because during that entire period, I had lived in a continuous state of
puzzlement: Where do I go wrong, time and time again? What is it that I fail
to understand? And mainly – why?
Because at the end of that journey, I reached the inevitable conclusion that
I must be made of the wrong stuff, or maybe I had lost the strength I had
always prized. Strength that had helped me overcome, all on my own, a
serious and undiagnosed problem with writing; had won me the title of
“Outstanding Soldier” in my krav maga course, out of fifty male and five
female participants; had seen me sent to train combat soldiers before they
went to the battlefield; had helped me finish my degree with honors; had won
me the role of student teacher at the Hebrew University; had put my name on
the Dean’s List.
Or maybe I had never had it to begin with?!
This self-judgment had brought me to my knees. My self-perception as
someone who in everything related to studies had almost always had it
relatively easy was shattered against an obstacle at the most basic stage of my
degree, which I had not been able to overcome.
So when that day finally arrived – the day the documents were sent to the
research institute to be stamped as a matter of form, rendering my research
proposal officially approved – I was on cloud nine. There was no one in the
whole world happier than I.
And then, about two weeks later, came the eagerly awaited letter from the
research institute. I remember that morning well: how I opened the envelope
with trembling fingers. Not because I feared what it contained, for I knew
there was nothing to worry about, but because at long last the moment had
come for which I had worked so hard. I unfolded the letter, which laconically
informed me, in black and white, that regrettably, the research institute had
been compelled to reject my PhD research proposal.
How was that possible? Was it conceivable that five members of the
dissertation committee – leading professors among them – had approved a
proposal, and the research institute was rejecting it? By what right?
I immediately got in touch with one of the university’s lecturers whom I
knew well. He was even more shocked than I and said that, in more than
twenty years in academia, he had never heard of a case in which a research
institute failed to endorse a PhD proposal that had been approved by the
dissertation committee.
For me, that letter was a resounding slap in the face. I felt the insult
scorching my insides. I saw a story of failure sprouting within me, this time
stamped with an impervious red wax seal.
During those weeks my mother’s condition declined as well, and even
though I was still in the denial stage, deep inside I knew that this was it, this
was the end. Again I had to prepare to part from a mother, the second time
around, and because of the same accursed illness.
Shaken to the core and with a bitter taste in my mouth, I set myself to
work again, albeit without any confidence in my abilities, and tried to fix
what I believed was irreparable, to reach what I believed was inaccessible. I
told myself that everything was lost, and no PhD would come out of me. My
relationship with my supervisor deteriorated even further, becoming crippled
beyond hope.
Shortly after, following an upsetting telephone conversation with my
supervisor on the way back from dropping my youngest daughter at her
nursery school, I finally caved in. In a fluster, I wrote my supervisor an email
announcing that I wouldn’t continue to pursue the degree.
Although I was convinced that I had made the right decision, somewhere
deep in my heart I hoped that my supervisor would ask me to reconsider,
would say that she was not prepared to give up on me. That in the state I was
in at the time, I ought not to make such a decision. That I must give it a
second thought. But my email sank into oblivion like a stone in a silent sea. I
received no response, positive or negative.
Several months later, at another branch of the university, where I went to
meet a friend for a coffee, I saw my supervisor standing at the entrance to one
of the buildings. She looked at me with what I thought was resentment, and I
couldn’t understand why. I looked directly into her eyes. And then I realized
that her look was not rancorous but simply vacant – opaque and inscrutable.
A look that did not betray any recognition, as if I were a stranger. She was
looking through me: to her I was transparent.
I continued toward the coffee house, my eyes fixed on hers. Possibly, deep
down, in spite of everything, I had expected some sort of reaction, maybe a
slight nod, a flicker of recognition. Yet I couldn’t detect any response.
It wasn’t a good time for me. I spent those days walking around with a
great void inside, a feeling that, even today, years later, hits me in the core
when the subject of my doctorate comes up.
And then, one evening, several months after that encounter, I came across
a Facebook feed saying that my supervisor had passed away after a long
illness.
Alzheimer’s.
All of a sudden, the picture came into focus, and my story took a sharp
turn. At that point, I understood a lot of things about myself. About her.
About my relationship with her. At last, all the puzzle pieces fell into place,
and everything became clear, like sunlight on a bright, hot summer afternoon.
In place of anger and humiliation came sorrow and forgiveness. Heartache for
her. Heartache for myself. Grief over what might have been and never was,
and will never come to pass.
I realized that all that time – more than a year of shuttling back and forth,
of miscommunication, of the incessant ping-pong of text messages, telephone
conversations, meetings, of the breakdown in the relationship, of waiting in
vain for responses, of frustration, of feeling totally unable to understand
anything – I had been telling a harsh story about myself. And I realized that I
could have been telling myself an altogether different story. I am not saying
that the other story, when told, has eased the pain. I am still hurting, but much
less so. And above all, it is no longer the kind of pain that consumes
everything good inside you, destroys you from within. One that is always
whispering in your ear: “You are a failure.”
Does this mean that the PhD story I am telling myself today is more true
than the previous one?
By no means. It is as true as the one that I was telling myself before,
because both stories are based on events that have occurred in reality. They
differ only in my interpretation of these facts, the narrative glue, the “fabulaic
wrapping” that I used to invest the incidents with meaning in order to link
one fact to the next, each to the one that succeeded it.
If you think that all the other scholars involved in my PhD proposal would
tell you my story or, for that matter, my supervisor’s, think again.
Although facts remain facts, the wrapping through which they are
communicated will be completely different for each one of these narrators.
Each will create an entirely different story, imparting a unique meaning to
facts that are incontestable, to incidents that have occurred in reality.
And what will account for the main difference between the versions?
The framing effect!
 5 The Framing Effect

B efore discussing this phenomenon in depth, let me illustrate its far-

reaching impact on the stories we tell ourselves and others.
I need you to imagine a podium.
A podium at the Olympic Games.
The first place. The second place. The third place. Three champions mount
the podium.
Which of them is the happiest?
Quite obviously, the one who has won first prize. He is the world
champion. He will receive a gold medal. He is one of a kind. A champion
among champions.
And who is the next happiest?
The second, you will surely say.
And that’s the thing – it’s not him.
Studies have shown that the most gratified person after the first-place
winner is the one who has won third place. You heard right – the bronze
medalist is usually much happier than the silver medalist.
Maybe this will strike you as paradoxical; maybe you will think it is
illogical, but when push comes to shove, common sense and logic have
nothing to do with it.
The thing that holds sway here is the framing effect; in other words, what
is relevant is the reference point, aka the adaptation point. In this situation,
each of the three champions tells himself a different story. The same reality,
the same facts, but three different stories.
The one who finished third mounts the podium, looks down and says to
himself, “Yay!!!” or something like that. “I have made it to the top, one of
the three!” On the other hand, the one who finished second looks up and tells
himself, “Oh, shit! I could have been a world champion!”
The story that each of the athletes on the podium tells himself is
categorically different. The three stories are based on the same facts, which
are incontrovertible and indisputable. What is different is the reference point,
with the result that the story each champion tells himself is completely
different from the other two.
If you still have doubts regarding the tremendous power of the framing
effect, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the research of two Israeli
scholars, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, cognitive psychologists who
won the Nobel Prize for economics. (More precisely, it was Kahneman who
received the prize, because by that time Tversky was no longer alive.)
Tversky and Kahneman’s research demonstrates that people are
susceptible to the framing effect, in the sense that their preferences and
choices depend on the way information is presented to them.
To support that claim, they recount a case that has become known as the
“Asian Disease Problem,” involving experiments they conducted with student
participants. Results show that a person can be led to adopt a certain
perspective, or reference point, depending on how the facts are presented.
The researchers contend that the influence of framing stems from a cognitive
illusion resulting from the way a problem is formulated.
Perhaps this led Neil Postman, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death
(1985), to assert that American businessmen discovered, long before the rest
of us, that the quality and usefulness of their goods are subordinate to the art
of their display. In other words, the way one forms one’s attitudes depends on
how information is presented. And let me add here that the mantle in which
we wrap the information (the facts, the events) is what shapes the meaning of
what we are telling; it will determine our own interpretation of what caused
the events narrated and even more so the interpretation of those who will hear
our story.
This is also the premise behind a theory Peter Brooks advances in his book
Policing Stories (2002): that narration is what creates a story’s meaning, over
and above the facts it incorporates. Brooks exemplifies this thesis through a
well-known rape incident that was presented, in appellate courts in the United
States, in four totally different versions – or, to use the author’s own words,
as “different retellings of what we know is the ‘same’ story,” all based on the
same set of indisputable facts. Accordingly, they gave rise to four different
decisions “starkly opposed to one another.”
So, tell me: If we are indeed in a position to choose what to tell and what
to omit, and if we have the power to craft a framework that will induce an
interpretation of the story’s import according to our design…
How, exactly, can this be achieved? How can we put the stories that we
tell to good use and make them serve our purposes? How can we use stories
to motivate audiences and spur them to action, form worldviews, persuade
and influence others? In other words: How can we tell stories that will propel
us forward, advance our aims, produce the effect that we set out to achieve,
and bring about outcomes that we seek?
Before we attempt to answer these questions, there is one thing we need to
agree on: that it is worth our while to tell stories, to take all that trouble, and
to invest all that effort.
Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it or found it useful, I would
be grateful if you would consider leaving a short review on Amazon.

Thank you for your support!

 6 Why Bother Telling a Story?

L etthatus weassume that you are already convinced of the validity of my claim
each have an arsenal enabling us to tell hundreds, if not
thousands, of true stories that may have never occurred in reality.
Our task now is to understand why we should bother telling stories at all.
Why, in your opinion, did I take the trouble to tell you stories about
myself?
I could have skipped that part, which – I must confess – was by no means
easy to write, and come straight to the point. Yet I decided to tell you my
stories. And not just any stories but very revealing ones, stories that put me in
a pretty vulnerable position vis-à-vis the reader.
Why?
Because a story is remembered much better than any fact or other data.
Could you estimate how much easier it is to remember a story than to
remember facts?
Studies have shown that a story is retained in memory twenty-two times
better than any fact.
Here’s an example. We have a family game that we usually play on Friday
nights and during family car trips. It is a nice memory game, and we all love
playing it, especially if there are children present.
It goes like this: Every participant, in turn, says a word, but first they must
recite all the words that others have said before, in the right order. The game
continues until a long “train” of words accrues. Anyone who makes a
mistake, by either omitting a word or mixing up the order, drops out. The
winner is the last person who is able to recite all the words in the right order,
adding a new word at the end. And even though my memory is much worse
than my eldest daughter’s, I always win the game.
How do I know that my eldest daughter has a better memory than I?
Maybe because she can cite over 110 decimal digits of π, while I, no
matter how hard I try, cannot remember more than five, or at best ten. For
heaven’s sake, how can one remember dozens of random digits arranged
without any logic or order? That’s why I am sure that her memory is much
better than mine. She can also solve a Rubik’s Cube in less than thirteen
seconds. And yes, this too is related to memory, in this case, algorithmic
memory.
 Let us return to our game. In spite of my daughter’s impressive mnemonic
abilities, I invariably come out the winner in our family word game. The trick
is simple: I tell a story. And no matter how bizarre and unrealistic the story, it
creates a logical connection, a causal relation – what Nassim Taleb calls in
his book The Black Swan (2009) “a narrative fallacy.” Nevertheless, when
my turn comes, all I need to do is reconstruct in my mind the story that I have
woven together, saying out loud only the required words according to the
order they are nested in the story. Try it yourself! Below I list fifty randomly
chosen words, unconnected in any way through logic or context. As you read
the words, link them consecutively with the “narrative glue” – that is, tell a
story based on them. When you complete the story with the last word on the
list, reconstruct all of it in your mind and try to retrieve the words from your
memory – according to the sequential order of the story.
Are you ready?
Here are the words:
Morning, cat, airplane, ice cream, garden, chicken, music, computer,
path, classroom, lamp, book, earphones, strong, door, kettle, girl, dolphin,
hand, apple, soap, black, knife, chocolate, sour, big, opposite, small, plant,
blue, beautiful, years, paper, satchel, mobile, microphone, picture, cucumber,
banana, saucepan, milk, bird, sea, important, known, alone, sky, good, boat,
bathtub.
Now write down the number of words that you were able to recall in the
right order.
Below I list another fifty random words. Go over these words once in the
order they are listed, with a few seconds’ interval between each, and try to
remember them by heart. Next, take a sheet of paper, try to retrieve the words
from your memory, and write down how many you were able to recall in the
right order.
Ready?
Here are the words:
Coffee, bar, platter, vanilla, blooming, yellow, clear, phone, crooked,
highway, teacher, library, bad, here, cold, big, lovely, octopus, juice, broom,
fork, sweet, bitter, straight, bush, ugly, two, days, tissue, bag, piano, drawing,
persimmon, oil, cow, pool, dry, France, foreign, together, orange, pen, key,
jar, sugar, bottle, notebook, ticket, umbrella, glass.
 So what were the results?
By the way, feel free to add several words of your own choice or make a
completely different list.
Next time, play this game with your family or friends – you will see that
you can do better than all of them. Just don’t divulge the trick and don’t
forget to tell me what happened.
On a more serious note, when you tell a story, not only does your audience
remember better what you have recounted, but you yourself remember much
better what you need to say, because a story connects the facts together.
Stories work wonders, do they not?
Because a story can touch you deep to the core.
Let’s admit that most of us are not sprightly mathematics professors who
get excited, inspired and galvanized at the sight of data and dry facts;
accordingly, we can safely assume that it is much more difficult to “touch”
and “move” us using freestanding facts or other information of that kind.
Conversely, a story is one of the most powerful tools at the disposal of
anyone who wishes to touch people’s hearts and minds. This is because a
story brings people closer together. A story is in essence a bridge that
establishes a connection between people, a bridge that is difficult to build
using only facts and data.
Recall for a moment my story, the one I told you at the beginning of the
book. You can see for yourself that stories have the power to connect us, total
strangers. The stories that I have told you have formed between us a bridge
whose foundations are made of empathy and identification, and this bridge
has in turn created familiarity and even closeness between you and me,
closeness of the kind that couldn’t have been achieved through sharing data
or relaying an isolated fact.
Sometimes a story moves someone so deeply that it can impel them to
support something that contravenes their beliefs. To be sure, it’s not easy to
do that. It’s difficult, even using a story, to make people go along with
something that conflicts with their values, but it is within the bounds of
possibility.
Here is an incident that I heard about as a child from members of the
production team of the play Anne Frank and the actors who had taken part in
one particular performance.
I remember their story word for word. Even now, I have a mental picture
of the actors and the crew seated on the stage and speaking, thoughtfully and
soberly. The story they shared with the audience is etched deep in my
memory.
They told us how, at the end of one performance during their German tour,
an elderly German lady from the audience came up to them and said, “This is
horrible, simply horrible! The Nazis shouldn’t have killed Anne Frank.”
The story of Anne Frank had touched her so deeply that she became
convinced that the Nazis had had no business exterminating her.
What about the rest of the Jews? you are probably wondering.
Well, that’s a whole different kettle of fish. The lady probably needed to
hear their stories before she could decide.
Think about it for a moment.
All fund-raising campaigns – for disaster sites, cancer patients, young
diabetics etc. – are anchored in the principle of telling stories that create a
sense of identification, empathy, and affinity. We are told a personal story of
someone who overcame an illness, regained health and started a family, or of
a girl who must prick herself every day dozens of times in order to function
on a par with her peers, and we are asked to help her and others like her.
These personal stories bring us closer to the protagonist, compel us to
identify and empathize with her, and prompt us to help and make a donation.
Without such stories, if we are presented with dry facts alone, like “every
year, such and such number of people get the illness” and “such and such
number of people die from it,” it is plausible to assume that most of us would
contribute much less. I say “most” because making a donation could depend
on several other factors as well, such as a personal acquaintance with
someone who is sick, in which case knowing that person’s story is in itself
enough to impel us to help.
Have you ever watched a TED talk? And if so, have you ever tried to
understand the secret of this format, where its power comes from?
Well, I will reveal to you this secret. It is much simpler than you might
have thought. The secret of TED speakers’ success is their wonderful ability
to convey messages through stories. If you scrutinize the clips, you will see
that the most successful lectures are those in which the presenter tells a
moving story, one that elicits empathy and makes you identify with the
speaker, with the subject of the lecture, and with its protagonist. Watch, for
example, the following talk from Amy Purdy:
 “Living Beyond Limits | Amy Purdy | TEDxOrangeCoast” (Link 2)

I am sure that you have come across the same effect when viewing reality
TV shows.
One of my daughters once told me that whoever wants to win MasterChef
must think up for themselves a hard and miserable life story, rife with
disappointments or failures, or they won’t stand a chance of evoking the
audience’s sympathy.
But contrary to what you might believe, effective stories need not be harsh
or sad. There are many other ways to move people by telling stories, and
below I will introduce such patterns – what I call the schemas for successful
storytelling.
It is of no consequence where you happen to be at the time – with family,
friends, or strangers; at a conference facing employees or in a lecture hall in
front of a large assembly; in a personal meeting or next to the computer,
about to write a post or an article. If you want to touch the hearts and minds
of your audience, to persuade and motivate them, you must opt to tell a story
anchored in facts. It’s a vastly superior method than thesis statements marked
by bullets, as in a PowerPoint presentation aggregating dry data devoid of
internal coherence.
Because a story helps us to better process complex data.
According to studies carried out in this field, sixty-five percent of
participants comprehended and retained facts presented as part of a story,
compared with merely five percent who remembered the same facts
recounted outside a storyline. The reason is that data and facts are “absorbed”
better when woven into a story, that the story renders them part of an
associative framework nested in a context.
If we go back to the memory game I described earlier, we will see that one
of the reasons we retain facts better when they are part of a story is that
associative thinking, or causal contextualization, is humanity’s natural mode
of thought; by contrast, a sterile recitation of unrelated facts outside of a
causal context is, from the brain’s perspective, a random activity.
Moreover, a story is an optimal vehicle for conveying difficult or
convoluted information, for reducing its complexity, aggregating its
constitutive facts, and rendering it more accessible and comprehensible. In
other words, a story has the power to make things simpler.
Take, for example, the story of the Apple iPod. Sure, there were other
audio devices available before it came on the scene, but they had been
advertised using data and facts alone, such as how many giga- or megabytes
they could hold. And then came Apple, marketing its iPod with a one-
sentence story: “A thousand songs in your pocket.”
If you’re like me – like most of the general public, with the exception of a
small number of computer geeks and gadget lovers – can you really tell what
we’re supposed to take away from talk about bandwidth and gigabytes?
It’s all so abstruse.
Yet, when we are told that a small device that fits into the pocket of our
jeans can hold a thousand songs, all we can say is “Wow!”
The above should make it clear that if you want to present an audience
with facts, data or complex information, it is preferable to embed them in a
storyline.
An education system that adopts a storytelling approach in various
disciplines would in all likelihood see much better outcomes. Even in
mathematics. Well, I’m not quite sure about calculus – unless a
mathematician turns up who can tell a story in numbers.
But consider for a moment young children, at an age when they cannot yet
solve an elementary arithmetic exercise. If you formulate a simple math
problem as a story – e.g., if you have three balloons and your mom gives you
another two balloons, how many balloons will you have altogether? – rather
than in the numerical format – i.e., how much is 3 + 2? – the former will
always be easier to solve. Try it for yourself.
Because a story creates a frame.
According to sociologist Erving Goffman (1974), framing is an
interpretation schema that guides the processing of information. This term is
widely used in mass communication research, and the main claim in this
regard is that the media frames content in a way that “dictates” a specific,
intended meaning or interpretation. In other words, by using verbal and visual
means or clues to emphasize certain parts of a story while de-emphasizing or
omitting others, and by portraying characters via paradigms that define for
the addressee who is “good” and who is “bad,” who is “ugly” and so on, the
media presents the events in a biased way designed to induce processing
along the desired ideological lines.
The use of framing, therefore, makes it possible to direct the addressees’
attention to the aspects of a story that we wish to emphasize, and at the same
time to downplay, obfuscate, or whitewash those that we would prefer them
to disregard.
In other words, a story has the power to promote a preferred agenda or at
least to direct and propel processing along a desired channel. It is
understandable, then, why many scholars perceive framing as an immensely
powerful rhetorical force.
Here’s an example of how processing guides an audience towards a
preferred interpretation.
Research conducted by Craig McKenzie and Jonathan Nelson (2003)
demonstrates that people tend to describe what is presented to them based on
how it is framed. In an experiment, two groups of participants were presented
with a glass filled halfway with water. One group was told, “Here is a half-
full glass of water” and the other, “Here is a half-empty glass of water.”
Although the glasses contained the same amount of water, participants in
each group interpreted the event differently.
Those who were told that the glass was half-empty inferred that the glass
had been full to begin with, while those who were told that the glass was
half-full inferred that the glass had previously been empty. In other words,
the way the glass was described to the participants affected their
interpretation of what they had been offered.
That experiment shows that people’s understanding of what they are told
changes fundamentally depending on the way the information is framed. In
this respect, we are talking about the same framing effect as the one
demonstrated by Tversky and Kahneman, discussed earlier.
This framing effect in fact underpins an effective psychotherapy
technique: by reframing a client’s personal story over the course of several
sessions, the therapist changes the patient’s attitude to life events and thereby
also modifies their emotional responses. A similar effect was produced by the
revised version of the story I told myself about my unfinished doctorate, as
related in the beginning of this book.
Because a story fosters social agreement and coherence.
A story has the power to produce consensus, which is extremely hard to
achieve by merely stating facts.
It is much easier to bring about social coherence and agreement using a
story, as opposed to reciting dry facts and data, for a story can serve as a kind
of “social glue” – it creates a connection, a bridge between complete
strangers.
Take, for example, the Old Testament: Have you ever considered that the
stories it contains form the foundation of Western culture?
In a similar vein, any society’s tradition or history (“his story”) is
essentially a collection of stories: stories that define its people, connect them
with one another, and create an infrastructure for social unity.
Myths, for that matter, also have such a power. Myths are stories that can
unite societies, communities and nations. Roland Barthes maintains in his
1972 book Mythologies that myths are, in essence, ideological messages that
have undergone the process of “naturalization,” and as such appear as “a
natural condition of the world” even though in fact they are nothing of the
kind. Nonetheless, myths join strangers together by fostering coherence and
agreement among them.
Because a story draws people’s attention.
Would you or anyone else be captivated by a random sequence of facts?
How much attention can one expect when presenting dry data?
Conversely, it is relatively easy to capture people’s attention with a good
story. A good story can and usually does keep people in thrall – this is an
indisputable fact. Facts one can hear in any order; it doesn’t really matter at
which point you start, take a break, or resume. With stories, on the other
hand, it is not that simple, because when we listen to a story, we try to follow
the events as they unfold and keep track of the plot. There is always a
concern that, should our mind wander to other matters and realms, we would
find it difficult to catch up, having missed information essential for
understanding the whole picture.
And we don’t really like feeling adrift, without a clue what others are
talking about, do we?
Because a story triggers the release of endorphins.
A story is a format that is familiar to us from early childhood, and some
even claim that it is part of our DNA.
This may account for experimental results demonstrating that stories cause
chemical changes in our brain.
The researchers who investigated this question suggest that when we listen
to a story and form a mental image of its events, our brains release
endorphins. Yes, the same substance that is associated with sports, sex, and
eating chocolate – the natural drug that alleviates pain, fosters euphoria, and
brings about a good mood.
Hopefully, this is a good enough reason for making storytelling part of any
meeting, lecture, or presentation that you may give or lead.
But if you still have doubts on that point, below is a link to a clip that
demonstrates the effect of stories on our brain, so you can see for yourself.
“Neuroscience of Business Storytelling” (Link 3)

Because a story creates a mental image.

You probably know the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words.” But
have you ever considered the worth of a mental image? Not a visual image,
but an imaginary one.
A mental image is a picture we create in our minds; it is an imaginary
picture – and in my opinion, it is worth at least a thousand visual
representations!
So how can we evoke a mental image in the minds of our audience?
By telling them a story. And not just any story but a good one. Our
audience will naturally and spontaneously imagine its characters and events.
And in a stream of such images, the plot will gradually unfold in their minds.
Everyone who gets entrapped in the web of a story is subject to this
unconscious and involuntary process – at least when the story is properly
constructed and thus has the power to fire the listeners’ imagination. This
process occurs every time we read a good book; in effect, we are watching a
movie composed of mental images that we create in accordance with our
interpretation of the content. And the power of these mental images can be
truly tremendous.
Here is an example:
When I gave my middle daughter the second volume of Anne of Green
Gables (Anne of Avonlea), she took one look at it, made a face, and pushed it
aside dismissively. I found her reaction puzzling and also felt a little hurt by
it.
It is common knowledge – well, at least as far as my daughters are
concerned – that the heroines of my childhood, Anne Shirley and Lizzy
Bennet, were important in shaping my early perceptions regarding gender
equality. So much so that, when my eldest daughter was born, I rushed to buy
Anne of Green Gables and Pride and Prejudice, in spite of my friends’
unanimous and rather patronizing admonitions that the chance she would
ever read them was slim indeed. And if she did at all, it would be only in ten
years or so.
So the reaction of my middle daughter to the book I had given her was
somewhat disappointing, and I started to wonder if the excitement she had
displayed when I gave her the first volume hadn’t been just a show to please
me.
When I asked her what was wrong, she replied, “I am not going to read
this!”
“But why?” I asked. “Didn’t you say that you enjoyed the first part?”
“What do you mean, why?” she retorted, and then, pointing to a brightly
colored picture on the cover of the second volume, “Anne Shirley doesn’t
even look like that!”
My daughter’s words made the whole thing crystal clear. There and then I
understood how much more powerful an image we create in our minds is than
any tangible, material picture.
A few days later, this discovery was confirmed.
It was morning. My eldest daughter was still asleep, and her two sisters
were munching something at the breakfast counter in the kitchen. I placed on
the stove a small frying pan with a little oil in it. All of a sudden, without any
warning, the frying pan caught fire, and the flames shot up all the way to the
extractor fan. Following some sort of instinct, I grabbed the frying pan by the
handle and threw it into the sink, to the frightened cries of my two daughters.
When their older sister woke up some time later and learned what had
happened, for the rest of the day she felt very anxious, and every time I went
close to the stove, she became visibly agitated. At some point, I could no
longer contain myself and asked her, “Tell me, what’s that all about? Your
sisters are not as panicky as you, even though they actually saw what
happened.” And then she said, “That’s exactly the point, mom. Don’t you
know that imagination is stronger than reality?”
The dramatist and screenwriter Jean Anouilh said that “fiction gives life
its form.” For the purposes of our discussion, we can rephrase that as: It is
imagination that gives reality its form.
If you are still in doubt, stop for a moment and try to recall how you felt
when you read a book and imagined its protagonist in a certain way, and then
a movie came out in which the actor impersonating that character was
nothing like the mental image you had created for yourself. How many
among you will admit that the movie was disappointing? And your
disappointment had nothing to do with how good the movie was or how
talented the actors.
I had such an experience after watching Pride and Prejudice (2005)
starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. Surprisingly, the mental
images of Lizzy and Mr. Darcy I’d held in my mind were not those I had
summoned while reading the book (probably because that had been twenty-
five years earlier); instead, my mind’s eye saw Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle,
who starred in the unforgettable 1995 BBC version. In this case, even though
the mental image was not mine but a secondhand one, as it were, it was still
much too strong for me to accept the new casting of two characters I had long
and dearly cherished.
Because storytelling transcends boundaries, whether political, national,
or cultural.
Stories are inherently supranational. They cancel out race, gender, and
age. They create a bridge between countries and cultures. How so? It is
difficult to tell, but a point I made earlier may provide a clue: If someone
hears another person’s story, they are likely to feel affection and empathy for
that person – even if they happen to live in China and speak only Mandarin.
If you are still not convinced, watch these advertisements from Thailand at
the link below.
“7 Sad Ads from Thailand – Amazing Thailand Ads – Must Watch!”
(Link 4)
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
Supply, that since Peel’s bill of 1819 was accepted as a final
settlement of the currency question, the salaries of all public servants
should be cut down by 20 per cent. Though listened to attentively, he
received small support, either from his own friends or the friends of
the Government; but he added, by the vigour of his appeal, to the
reputation which he had already acquired, and was by common
consent assigned a place with Lord Althorpe, Lord John Russell, and
Mr Brougham, as one of the leaders of the Opposition in the House
of Commons.
Early in May 1830 the Parliamentary campaign opened in earnest,
by a notice of motion by Sir James Graham for a return of all the
pensions, salaries, and emoluments then receivable by members of
the Privy Council. His speech was, in its own way, a telling one; and
the motion was met by a proposal from the Chancellor of the
Exchequer to supply the honourable member with a comprehensive
enumeration of all civil and military offices and salaries under the
Crown. Sir James either felt or affected great indignation, and, in
rejecting Mr Goulbourne’s counter-proposal, made use of the
expression, “That he was not disposed to stoop to ignoble game while
flights of voracious birds of prey were floating in the upper regions of
the air.” This was one of the clap-traps in which Sir James on all
convenient occasions indulged, and it had its effect. Not fewer than
147 members in a House of 382 voted with him—a remarkable sign
of the times, a sure proof that men’s passions had overclouded their
reason on many matters, and that Government by party, as it had
once existed, was for a season at least at an end.
Encouraged by the plaudits which were heaped upon him, Sir
James, after remaining quiet for a few weeks, moved to reduce the
grant for special diplomatic missions from £28,000 to £18,000 a
year. He was again opposed with all the strength which the
Government could muster, and again failed. But failure on this
occasion was accepted on both sides as a triumph. In a House of 217
members, the motion was rejected by a majority of 19 only. It was a
blow to the Ministers scarcely less severe than that which they
received the same evening, when Sir James Mackintosh carried his
clause in the Forgery Bill against them—abolishing the punishment
of death in all cases except where wills were concerned.
 The death of George IV., on the 20th of June 1830, was soon
followed by the dissolution of Parliament. Sir James went back to his
constituents with a reputation largely enhanced; and while his
canvass was at its height, tidings of the revolution in Paris arrived.
They set the whole country in a blaze, and two Liberal members
immediately started for Cumberland. A fierce contest ensued, of the
temper of which some idea may be formed when we transcribe one of
the toasts which was proposed and accepted amid a tempest of
applause at a public dinner given to Sir James Graham at
Whitehaven—“May the heads of Don Miguel, King Ferdinand, and
Charles Capet be severed from their bodies and roll in the dust, and
the sooner the better.” It would be unfair to the memory of Sir James
Graham if we omitted to add that he wholly disapproved of this
sentiment, and that, while applauding the revolution, he expressed
himself anxious that the French people should use their victory with
moderation.
We have now arrived at an era into the history of which it would be
out of place, while sketching Sir James Graham’s career, to enter
much at length. The elections of 1830 had gone against the
Government, and the country seemed to have become a prey to
anarchy. There were incendiary fires in many places; and when
Parliament met in November to provide a remedy, the worst spirit
manifested itself in both Houses. The King’s visit to the Lord Mayor
of London was postponed; and the Duke, with extraordinary
rashness, gave utterance to a statement which his enemies insisted
on accepting as a manifesto against all reform. A coalition between
the Whigs and the ultra-Tories to expel him from power ensued, and
Ministers, being defeated on a question of the civil-list, resigned
their places. In bringing all this to pass Sir James had taken an active
part, and he received his reward in the appointment of First Lord of
the Admiralty, with a seat in Earl Grey’s Cabinet. He was placed at
the Admiralty, however, rather as representing ultra opinions than
from any admiration of his talents and industry; for Earl Grey,
desiring above all things to throw the authority of Government into
the hands of aristocrats, was too prudent to overlook the policy,
situated as he then was, of having every great party in the State
represented in his Cabinet. Hence the Duke of Richmond, Mr Wynn,
Lord Palmerston, Lord Goderich, and Mr Charles Grant, were invited
to take their seats beside Lord Lansdowne, Lord Althorpe, and Lord
Carlisle; and Lord Durham, Sir James Graham, and Lord Melbourne
readily joined them. Among all these there was not one who
displayed so large an amount of administrative ability as Sir James
Graham, or who with so much frankness acknowledged, when the
proper time came, that the improvements effected by him in the
department were little more than the execution of plans which his
predecessor had already arranged and determined upon.
Earl Grey had taken office pledged to three things,—
Retrenchment, Non-intervention in Foreign Affairs, and
Parliamentary Reform. Into all these Sir James Graham eagerly
threw himself. Returned again without opposition for Cumberland,
he took up his residence at the Admiralty, and worked like a slave to
keep ahead of the enormous amount of business which devolved
upon him. For now his real worth was discovered. What might be
wanting in brilliancy he endeavoured to make up by labour; and he
held his own, not without a hard fight for it, in the House of
Commons. Lord Althorpe, the acknowledged leader of the
Ministerial party, was slow and confused. He derived the greatest
benefit from the subtle and ambitious promptings of Graham, and
often sought for them. Whether the proposal in the first Whig budget
to impose a tax on the transfer of stock came from this source does
not appear; but the measure, in spite of the eloquence with which Sir
James Graham supported it, met with no success, and was
withdrawn amid the jeers of the House.
This was a bad beginning, and his speech in defence of the army
estimates proved equally unfortunate. The pledge of non-
intervention had been thrown over by the Government in the case of
Belgium, and an increase to the army was asked for. In advocating
this increase, Sir James allowed himself considerable latitude of
speech in regard to the condition of Ireland, and O’Gorman Mahon,
conceiving that he, among others, had been attacked, called upon the
First Lord to retract, or else to give him personal satisfaction. Sir
James requested Lord Althorpe to act for him on that occasion, and
the quarrel was amicably settled.
The improvements introduced into the constitution of the
Admiralty were chiefly these: Sir James abolished the Victualling and
Navy Boards as separate establishments; he required the accounts of
the office to be kept by double entry; he proposed to throw open the
great national asylum at Greenwich to seamen of the mercantile
marine; and, failing to accomplish that, he relieved the mercantile
marine from the special tax which it had heretofore borne. Nor was
he all the while exempt from a full share of the burden of
administration in other respects. Earl Grey never lost sight of the
pledge which he had given to reform the representative system
throughout the United Kingdom, and a committee of four was
appointed to investigate the whole subject, and to report upon it to
the Cabinet. Lord Durham, Lord John Russell, Lord Duncannon, and
Sir James Graham composed that committee, of which no member
worked more steadily and with greater zeal than Sir James.
It is not our purpose to tell over again the thrice-told tale of the
bloodless revolution of 1831–32. In preparing the scheme which the
Government was to bring forward, Sir James Graham appears to
have been less extravagant than some of his colleagues. He desired to
interfere as little as possible with existing rights in counties, except
by adding copyholders and leaseholders to the ancient freeholders.
In boroughs he was an advocate for occupancy as a condition to
freedom, and was willing that the limit of the pecuniary
qualifications should be wide. He objected to the ballot, and to
anything like an attempt to establish perfect uniformity of franchise
anywhere. Yet such was his infirmity of purpose that he yielded his
own opinions to those of men of stronger will, and affixed his
signature to a report which recommended the ballot and other
arrangements of which he disapproved. It was this weakness, indeed
—this apparent inability to arrive at settled convictions and to stand
by them—which constituted the great flaw in Sir James Graham’s
character as a public man. His biographer, we observe, commends
him for the specialty, and endeavours to make what was mere
irresolution stand in the light of judicial impartiality. “Half his life,”
says Mr Torrens, “was spent in comparing and pondering opposite
results, and determining judicially in the silence and solitude of his
study on which side the balance lay. ‘Upon the whole’ again and
again occurs throughout his private correspondence and public
judgments, for judgments they frequently were—a phrase which a
statesman of a constitutional country may well employ as eminently
expressive of the true candour and humility of wisdom.” Doubtless
this is true; but if we find the statesman afterwards going apart from
his own conclusions, and falling in with proposals against which he
had “on the whole” decided, what can we say of him except that his
humility degenerates into weakness, and that, whatever qualities he
may possess, firmness of purpose is certainly not one of them?
It is a remarkable fact that not even now could Sir James Graham
command the attention of the House. His great attention to business,
his value on a committee, and his administrative abilities, were very
generally acknowledged, but as a speaker he made little or no
impression. Even his advocacy of what may be called his own
measure was felt to be feeble—a strange medley of confused
discussion and turgid enunciations. But the bill had other sources of
strength to depend upon than the logic of its Parliamentary
supporters. Political unions and conspiracies out of doors did the
work, and the King and the House of Lords were forced to accept
their own humiliation. First came the dissolution on the 23d of April
1831, a step into which William IV. was coerced by the overbearing
insolence of Earl Grey and Lord Chancellor Brougham. Then
followed elections wherein brute force bore down all opposition, and
by-and-by such an assembly at Westminster as struck terror into the
hearts of the Ministers who had brought it together. On the top of
that wave Sir James Graham was again borne into Parliament—a
colleague being given to him of opinions far more advanced than his
own. So it befell in the borough of Carlisle, so also in the
neighbouring county of Westmoreland. It is quite certain that Sir
James Graham did not contemplate the crisis, which he had helped
to bring on, without alarm. “We have ventured,” he says, speaking of
himself and his colleagues, “to drive nearer the brink than any other
statesman ever did before; but we did so because aware that if we let
go the reins the horses would be maddened into plunging headlong
into the abyss, where extrication would be impossible.”
We have alluded elsewhere to Sir James Graham’s reconstruction
of the departments in the Admiralty. It is creditable to him that he
disclaimed all the merit of originality in such reconstruction. He
discovered, on acceding to office, that plans of practical reform were
already settled, and he had the good sense to accept and act upon
them as his own. He found a willing adviser likewise in Lord Melville,
who kept back nothing from him when consulted. Having completed
this job, he set himself next to devise some means of getting rid of
the necessity of impressment, and was again fortunate enough to
have brought to him an important letter, addressed by Lord Nelson
to Earl St Vincent. The letter in question suggested that there ought
to be a registration of seamen, among whom, at the sudden outbreak
of war, a ballot should take place, with permission, as in the militia,
to find substitutes. But, anxious as he was to accomplish this object,
he shrank as a Minister of the Crown from openly striking a blow at
the prerogative. When, therefore, Mr Buckingham moved, “That the
forcible impressment of seamen for His Majesty’s navy was unjust,
cruel, inefficient, and unnecessary,” Sir James Graham resisted the
motion. He fought, however, less for the evil itself than for the
manner of applying a remedy, and obtained leave of the House to
bring in a bill which has many admirable points in it, but which he
was not destined to guide through its various stages till it became
law.
The years 1833 and 1834 were seasons of sore trial to the Reform
Government. They had evoked a power at home which they found
themselves ill able to control. They had entered into treaties and
engagements abroad, the necessity of acting up to which involved
them in heavy expenses. But most of all were they hampered and
annoyed by the operations of the Irish party, which, after helping
them to carry their great measure, asked for its reward. The Irish
Established Church must be sacrificed; and the better to insure a
speedy attainment of that object, an agitation was got up for the
repeal of the Union. Now, Earl Grey was not a man to endure
contradiction calmly; he introduced a stern Coercion Bill into the
House of Lords, which his colleagues fought inch by inch in the
House of Commons. In order to conciliate their Radical supporters,
they proposed at the same time to reduce the number of Irish
bishops, and to substitute for church-rate in Ireland moneys to be
raised by taxes imposed on all sees and benefices. Finally, after
providing, as was assumed, a better method of managing episcopal
and chapter lands, a clause in their bill declared “That it should be
lawful to appropriate any portion thence accruing to purposes of
secular utility, without regard to the religious opinions of persons to
be benefited.” This famous clause (the 147th) was warmly debated,
and in the end withdrawn. But neither section of the Legislature
seemed to be satisfied. Indeed, in the Cabinet itself diversity of
opinion was held in regard to that matter, and no great while elapsed
ere diversity of opinion led to separation.
 The first overt proof of schism in the Cabinet was presented by the
opposite sides which Sir James Graham and his colleagues took on
Mr O’Connell’s motion of censure upon the Irish judge, Sir William
Smith. Sir James stoutly resisted it. Mr Stanley, Lord Althorpe, and
Lord John Russell voted for it. On a division, Sir James went out
with a minority of 74, and next morning tendered his resignation. He
had proved himself, however, too valuable a member of the
Administration to be cast adrift, and Earl Grey refused to part with
him. Three nights afterwards he committed another crime by
acknowledging in his place that the economy effected by his
predecessors at the Admiralty was quite equal to his own. Then
followed a discussion upon the Corn Laws, which he defended as
they stood; whereas Mr Poulett Thompson, Vice-President of the
Board of Trade, proposed to substitute a fixed duty for a sliding-
scale. And here an incident befell which deserves notice. Mr Poulett
Thompson endeavoured to confute his opponent by reading extracts
from a pamphlet which had appeared in 1830, and in which the
author, under the nom de guerre of a Cumberland Landowner,
advocated entire freedom of trade in corn, as in other commodities.
Strange to say, Sir James Graham took no notice of the ironical
cheers which followed these quotations, and which marked the
conviction of the House that the pamphlet had emanated from his
pen. Yet such was not the case. The pamphlet was the work of a Mr
Rooke, and was acknowledged as such when, four years
subsequently, the author gave to the world a volume on the science
of geology. Why Sir James Graham did not decline the honour thrust
upon him at the moment, we are at a loss to conceive, and his
biographer certainly assigns no satisfactory reason for the
proceeding.
The Cabinet worked on not very amicably, and Sir James Graham
did it what service he could by taking charge of its bill for
remodelling the Exchequer Office. But the time was come when he
felt that he could serve it no longer. Lord Wellesley’s measure for
converting tithes in Ireland into a permanent rent-charge on the land
was cumbered by a question from Mr Shiel, drawing from Lord John
Russell something like a pledge, that the Government might
hereafter consider the propriety of applying a portion of this rent-
charge to secular purposes. And a few days later Mr Ward brought
forward his motion, “That the Protestant Episcopal Establishment in
Ireland exceeds the spiritual wants of the Protestant population, and
that, it being the right of the State to regulate the distribution of
Church property in such a manner as Parliament might determine, it
is the opinion of this House ‘that the temporal possessions of the
Church of Ireland, as established by law, ought to be reduced.’”
There was no evading a movement like this. The Cabinet must either
resist or accept Mr Ward’s motion, and a majority determined to
accept it. Now, however Radical Sir James Graham’s views might be
on other points, he was then, as he always had been, a consistent
Churchman. On many previous occasions he had declared his
determination to defend to the uttermost the inviolability of what he
regarded as a fundamental institution of the Empire; and the Duke of
Richmond, Lord Ripon, and Mr Stanley agreed with him. When,
therefore, this Act for confiscating the property of the Church was
accepted by the Cabinet as its own, the four Ministers above named
felt that only one course lay open to them: they retired from the
Administration, and shook it thereby to its base.
Sir James sat below the gangway, on the Ministerial side of the
House, while those gyrations went on which ended in shaking Earl
Grey out of the Premier’s chair, and Lord Melbourne into it. With Mr
Stanley, and the half-dozen friends who adhered to him, Sir James
kept aloof from each of the rival parties, becoming one of the
company who, as Mr O’Connell described it, “travelled by themselves
in the Derby Dilly.” It is not for us to inquire into the motives which
animated the little band at that time. But considerations of delicacy
towards old friends were surely rated above their just value when
they induced Mr Stanley and Sir James Graham, a few months
subsequently, to decline taking office under Sir Robert Peel. Had
they met his advances as frankly as they deserved, the Conservative
Government of 1835 would have probably stood its ground; and
though it be difficult to conceive, looking both at things present and
things past, how the commercial system, now in the ascendant, could
have been pushed aside, still the progress of that system would have
been probably more gradual; it certainly might have achieved its
triumph at a sacrifice less costly than the disruption of the great Tory
party, which followed on the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.
Sir James was coldly looked upon by the Liberals for abandoning
Earl Grey’s Administration, and a cabal was got up to resist his re-
election for East Cumberland in the event of his taking office with Sir
Robert Peel. He refused to take office, as we have shown, and
defended himself well at the hustings against the attacks which were
made upon him. East Cumberland chose him again to be its
representative, and he again took his seat below the gangway on the
Ministerial side of the House. As an independent member, however,
he stood aloof from the struggle between Sir Robert Peel and the
Whigs, till Lord John Russell brought forward his famous motion
“For the appropriation to secular purposes of a portion of the Church
property in Ireland.” Then Sir James Graham threw over all party
scruples. He delivered against the motion one of the most telling
speeches which he ever uttered in Parliament, and went out into the
gallery with that gallant band which failed to keep their chief in office
by twenty-five votes only. From that moment his severance from the
Whigs became a mere question of time, and the bitterness with
which the Municipal Reform Bill was argued hurried it on. Sir James
had never desired to swamp the poorer voters, either in counties or
boroughs, and voted against the extinction of the class of freemen.
Having gone out with the Tories, he was preparing to cross the
House to his old seat, when a storm of derisive cheering greeted him,
accompanied by shouts of “Stay where you are!” He stopped, looked
angrily at the benches whence the sounds proceeded, and then sat
down with a smile of scorn on his lips on one of the Opposition
benches.
For the part which he took in resisting the extension to Ireland of
the municipal changes which were effected in England and in
Scotland, Mr Torrens severely censures Sir James Graham. This is
natural enough. Going far beyond his hero in Radical propensities,
Mr Torrens dispenses blame where men of moderate views would
award praise. He seems to forget that all legislation for Ireland was
undertaken in those days with a twofold purpose only—to conciliate
Mr O’Connell, and to humble the House of Lords. The Melbourne
Ministry, however, rode their hobby too fast. Not a few of the most
distinguished of the old reformers fell off from them. Indeed, to such
a height was the spirit of alienation carried, that not Sir James
Graham only, but likewise Lord Brougham, Sir Francis Burdett, and
Lord Stanley, withdrew their names from Brookes’s, into which Mr
O’Connell had been received as a member.
 From this date up to the death of William IV. in 1837, party spirit
prevailed in Parliament and out of it, with a bitterness which has no
parallel in modern times. The Ministers, existing by the breath of Mr
O’Connell and the Radicals, seemed indifferent to the consequences
of the measures which they proposed. The great body of the
Opposition, carried away by personal dislike to their opponents,
fought more than one battle which it would have been wise to avoid,
and compelled their more judicious leaders to fight with them. On
the whole, however, the Duke in the House of Lords and Sir Robert
Peel in the Commons managed matters well; and it is only just to Sir
James Graham to add, that they found in him a hearty as well as a
prudent coadjutor.
The accession of her present Majesty led, of course, to a
dissolution, and Sir James Graham had the mortification to find
himself opposed in East Cumberland by Major Aglionby, formerly
his fastest friend. He received, on the other hand, but a doubtful
support from the Conservatives, and on the day of nomination the
mob refused to hear him. Naturally proud, and perhaps a little
dissatisfied with himself, he quitted the hustings, and went to the
poll in bad heart. He was defeated by a majority of upwards of 500
votes, and withdrew, full of indignation, to Netherby. He had
suffered not long before this a heavy domestic affliction in the death
of his mother; and mortified ambition, coming on the back of private
sorrow, wellnigh broke him down. He took no further part in county
business; he shut himself out from county society, and spent his time
chiefly in reading every new book that came out, and corresponding
on important subjects with Sir Robert Peel. It was the interval
between his defeat for East Cumberland and his return to Parliament
as member for the Welsh borough of Pembroke which made him,
what he ever after continued to be, a Peelite to the backbone.
In 1838 Sir James Graham was elected Lord Rector of the
University of Glasgow, in opposition to the Duke of Sussex. He
delivered an inaugural address, which is probably still remembered
in consequence of the uproar which it called forth by certain
allusions to the necessity of keeping the Church in alliance with the
State; for then the fever of Free-Kirk folly was at its height in
Scotland. But in 1839 he had graver matters to attend to. That
systematic agitation against the Corn Laws having already begun of
which Mr Charles Villiers, and not Mr Cobden, was the author. Sir
James spoke in his place against interference with the sliding-scale;
at the same time he guarded himself from the charge of desiring to
secure a monopoly in the corn-market for the English landowner,
and went out of his way to warn the House that nothing could be
more perilous to English interests than that monopoly in the supply
of cotton which had been conceded to America. He was anxious even
then that steps should be taken to encourage the better cultivation of
the plant in India, and pressed upon the President of the Board of
Control the wisdom of originating such a scheme. Words of warning
which, disregarded at the moment, come back upon us now with a
melancholy echo!
The progress of the struggle, which ended in the withdrawal of the
Appropriation Clause and the passing of the Irish Municipal Reform
Bill through both Houses of Parliament, is of too recent date to
require that we should speak of it in detail. So is the contest which
arose about softening down some of the clauses in the New Poor-
Law, of which Sir James, though advocating the law itself, was a
strenuous advocate. His speech on that occasion, as well as his
censure of the job which pensioned Sir John Newport and raised Mr
Spring Rice to the peerage, more and more drew towards him the
sympathies of the Conservative party, which indeed had already
begun to look to him as one of its future leaders. He was equally
efficient in his attacks on the Whig mismanagement of affairs in
India and in China, and certainly did not spare his old friends when
stirred by their rebukes into invective. At last the collapse came, and
in 1841 the country declared against the Whigs. A new
Administration was formed, with Sir Robert Peel at its head. Sir
James Graham accepted the seals of the Home Office, and for five
years public affairs were carried on, if not smoothly in all respects,
with remarkable success upon the whole. No doubt, Lord Aberdeen’s
legislation in the matter of the Church of Scotland proved
unfortunate, and there was little in Sir James Graham’s manner to
reconcile the discontented portion of the Scottish clergy to the law as
it stood. Indeed, it is a remarkable fact, that almost all the failures in
Sir Robert Peel’s policy occurred on points of which the management
devolved upon Sir James Graham. To him, in a great degree, was
attributed the disruption in the Scottish Church. His bill for the
amendment of the Factory Act of 1833 hung fire, and was withdrawn;
while his attempt to reform the ecclesiastical courts in England
utterly broke down.
In 1843 the difficulties of the Administration really began. Ireland
was the rock ahead which they found it impossible to weather. They
brought in one bill, which they ultimately abandoned, and were
content to appoint a Commission, with Lord Devon at its head, to
inquire into the state of the country with a view to future legislation.
To some of their adherents, moreover, they appeared to be shaken in
their adhesion to the sliding scale of duties on the importation of
foreign corn; and day by day the great fact became more obvious that
Parliamentary government, based on a widely-extended suffrage, is
scarcely compatible with the continuance of monarchy. Fortunately,
perhaps, for them, Mr O’Connell chose this moment to reawaken the
demand in Ireland for the dissolution of the Union, and to inflame
the passions of the people by his monster meetings. Great, we should
now say unnecessary, forbearance was exhibited in dealing with this
movement; but at last a manifesto appeared, which, besides calling
upon the masses to assemble at Clontarf, invited the “Repeal cavalry”
to attend in troops of twenty-five,—each under its own officers. The
Lord-Lieutenant and Lord Chancellor of Ireland happened both to be
in London at the time. They met Sir James Graham at the Home
Office with the law officers of the Crown, and that decisive step was
taken which not only dispersed the meeting of Clontarf, but shut up
Mr O’Connell in jail.
We believe that Sir James Graham did nothing more than his duty
to the Crown and to the country throughout these proceedings. He
contrived, however, to concentrate all the bile of the Opposition on
his own head, and a manner, not always very gracious, repelled, if it
did not positively disgust, not a few of the supporters of the
Administration. It so happened also, that his bill for limiting the
hours of labour in the factories did not meet the views either of the
mill-owners or of Lord Ashley (the present Lord Shaftesbury) and his
friends. The result was, that being defeated on one point by Lord
Ashley, and on another by the mill-owners, he withdrew his measure,
and sustained, as unsuccessful legislators usually do, some loss of
character from the process. But the most damaging event in the
course of his Administration was his having authorised, by warrant,
the letters of Mazzini and other refugees to be opened at the General
Post-Office. A dead set was made at him; and though he showed
clearly enough that the law bore him out, he escaped by a majority of
only forty-two in a full House—a narrow one, considering the state of
parties—the mortification of having his conduct inquired into by a
committee of the House of Commons. It is not for us to say why Lord
Aberdeen maintained a profound silence in the House of Lords when
the subject came to be discussed there. His Lordship was never
famous for excess of pluck; and it was generally believed at the time,
and is indeed highly probable, that Lord Aberdeen, being Minister
for Foreign Affairs, had at least as much to do with the transaction as
the Home Secretary. The truth, however, is, that a great deal too
much was made of the matter. Lord John Russell and Mr Macaulay,
with other leaders of the Opposition, supported Tom Duncombe in
his demand; while Sir Robert Peel resisted it, though with his usual
caution. At last, on the suggestion of Sir James himself, a committee
was named to inquire privately, when it came out that there had not
been a Secretary of State for the last hundred years but had signed
warrants similar to that issued by Sir James, and that, in doing as he
had done, he acted upon precedent, with, as it happened, more than
common moderation.
We come now to the Peel policy of 1845, the renewal of the
income-tax and the “further lightening of the springs of industry,” by
striking out 430 out of 813 articles on which customs duties still
continued to be levied. It would be satisfactory to know what share
Sir James Graham had in the inauguration and adoption of that
policy. Suspicion was rife at the moment, and it still remains, that he
took a very active part in pressing its adoption on the Cabinet. But
Mr Torrens throws no light whatever upon the subject. He reminds
us, indeed, of some witty sayings uttered on the occasion, such as
“that the old leaven of Holland House would work till it produced a
thorough fermentation,” &c., and chronicles the beginnings of Mr
Disraeli’s influence, by quoting his cutting remarks, “that Protection
in 1845 was in the same position with Protestant ascendancy in
1828;” and that “a Conservative Government was an organised
hypocrisy.” But not a line is given of private correspondence to show
what Sir James’s opinions really were with reference to the present
or the past. So it is when Mr Torrens comes to describe the course of
legislation which led to the permanent endowment of Maynooth, and
the setting up of what Sir Robert Inglis called “Godless Colleges” in
Ireland. We have a not uninteresting digest of each debate as it
occurred, the names of the speakers on both sides being duly
recorded; but of Sir James Graham is said no more than of Mr
George Bankes or of Mr Ward, or of others even less worthy of notice
than the latter gentlemen. This is the more to be regretted that Mr
Torrens speaks feelingly of the enormous amount of labour which
the subject of his biography underwent, and which, we may venture
to add, from our own personal knowledge of the man, the biographer
has by no means overrated. The fact is, that Sir James Graham was
what has been termed a glutton of work. Such was the constitution of
his mind, that before deciding upon any point, whether practical or
theoretical, he looked round and round for argument on both sides,
and not unfrequently continued to doubt after he had arrived at a
judgment. One thing, however, is certain: he had already, in 1845,
become a convert to the doctrines of free trade, and was very urgent
in his recommendations to the chief of the Cabinet to inaugurate an
entire change of system. Now, Sir Robert Peel, as his famous Elbing
letter showed, scarcely stood in need of such pressure. Thrown by
mere accident into the Tory party, he never made common cause
with it, and seemed to rejoice that the time was at length come for
humbling the aristocrats who had so long made use of his talents
while affecting socially to look down upon him.
We need not stop to repeat the thrice-told tale of the anti-corn-law
agitation, or of the potato blight in the autumn of 1846, and its
consequences. Enough is done when we state, that from the first
appearance of that disease Sir James Graham saw but one remedy
for the evil. In the discussions which ensued he ranged himself with
Lord Aberdeen and Mr Sidney Herbert on the side of the Premier,
and never, as he subsequently declared, gave a vote with greater
satisfaction in his life than that which broke up the Peel Government,
and dislocated the great party which it had taken years to
consolidate. Not very popular at any time either with the Whigs or
their rivals; disliked by the former for his desertion on the Irish
Church question; distrusted by the latter because of the political
creed of his youth,—he now drew down upon his own head an
amount of obloquy, more enduring, if not, for the moment, more
intense, than that with which the recreant Tory chief was
overwhelmed; and the time shortly arrived when, partly on this
account, partly because his proud heart rebelled against the dictates
of his contemporaries, public life, especially official, if not
Parliamentary life, became to him intolerable.
We must hurry over what remains to be told of this versatile yet
vigorous statesman. When Lord Aberdeen formed his Coalition
Cabinet, Sir James Graham returned to the Admiralty, where the
Crimean war took him by surprise, as it did all the other members of
the Administration. Sir James, however, put a bold face upon the
matter, and having selected Sir Charles Napier to command the
worst-found and worst-manned fleet that ever quitted the English
shores, he sent him, at the worst season of the year, to try what could
be done for the destruction of Russian power in the Baltic. It was
unfortunate, both for the First Lord and for the Admiral, that the
Reform Club chose to give the latter a dinner. The speeches uttered
on that occasion, and especially Sir James Graham’s speech,
resembled more the pæans of victors after the strife, than the
statements of men about to incur the hazard of a campaign; and the
abortive issue of the expedition covered both with ridicule. It did
more, however, than this. A bitter quarrel ensued, which was
prosecuted not very decorously, sometimes in the House of
Commons, sometimes through the press, and which had no other
result than to damage both parties very seriously in the estimation of
the public.
The break-up of the Aberdeen Cabinet—to which, by the by, Sir
James greatly contributed—may be said to have brought his public
life to a close. He retained, indeed, his seat in Parliament—Carlisle
having returned him as a good Radical member on two separate
occasions. And though he seldom spoke, it was always in angry
opposition to the Conservative party, once more reunited under Lord
Derby and Mr Disraeli. Private sorrows, however, began to tame him
down. In 1857 Lady Graham died—a terrible blow, from which he
never recovered; and the death of Lord Herbert in August 1861
affected him deeply. To that excellent man, and at heart most
Conservative politician, Sir James Graham was much attached. It
seemed, indeed, as if to him had been transferred the entire stock of
love and respect of which Sir Robert Peel, while living, had engrossed
the larger share; and now, when the grave closed over Lord Herbert,
life appeared to have no more interest for Sir James Graham. He
made a long journey, in very inclement weather, to attend the funeral
of his friend at Wilton, and, returning immediately afterwards to the
north, scarcely smiled again. Our latest recollection of him is in
church—a tall, handsome, yet shattered man, earnest in his
devotions, but bearing upon his brow the cloud which was never to
be raised on this side the grave. He died at Netherby, surrounded by
his children, on the 25th of October 1861.
It has been said of Sir James Graham that he narrowly escaped
being a great man. Certainly he possessed some of the qualities
which contribute to build up greatness. He was patient, for example,
of labour; careful in coming to conclusions; not at all over-
scrupulous in changing or retaining opinions; and a first-rate
administrator. But there was not a touch of genius about him, nor
one shade of originality. His moral timidity was greater than the
world supposed it to be. He often shrank from taking a step which
his deliberate judgment approved; he often did what he had resolved
not to do, and repented afterwards. Such a man was not fit to lead;
and the inward consciousness of his own weakness, perhaps,
hindered him from ever aspiring to become the head of an
administration. His usefulness, on the other hand, as the second or
confidential supporter of a great minister, cannot be over-estimated.
He had much improved in later years as a speaker, and commanded
the attention of the House; but the style of his oratory continued to
the last in perfect accord with his intellectual organisation. On
ordinary occasions it was stiff, perhaps pedantic; when anything
occurred to ruffle or excite, it became sharp and personal—more,
perhaps, than the speaker intended it to be. Taking all this into
account, we arrive at the conclusion, that the position which he
achieved among the statesmen of the passing age was exactly that
which nature intended him to fill. He stood neither in the front rank
nor perhaps in the second, but took a very prominent place in the
third. In private life he was highly estimable, possessing, however,
few of those qualities which gather round their owner troops of
devoted friends. His manners were reserved, except with those who
knew him intimately; his nature was proud, but he was kind-hearted,
charitable, and deeply religious—being free from the two extremes of
silly mannerism on the one hand, and pharisaical austerity on the
other. He was buried in the churchyard of his own village, only the
members of his family and a few old friends following him to the
grave.
 THE INEXHAUSTIBLE CAPITAL.[3]
3. ‘Roba di Roma.’ By William W. Story. 2 vols. London, 1863.
If, at some future day, perhaps still remote, when the present
wearer of the triple tiara shall have descended into the tomb, and
when the power of some who now support him shall be numbered
with the things that were, Rome, in compliance with the wishes of
Italy, shall become the capital of that fairest of European kingdoms,
there will be one class of persons who, although they may not regret
it, will be losers by the change, and those are the foreigners,
especially English, who, for six months of the year, take possession of
all that is best in the papal metropolis. In addition to its garrison of
French troops, that renowned city has now for many years submitted
—with a far better will than it does to the presence of Gallic legions—
to a foreign occupation of a more agreeable and profitable
description. Combining more varied attractions than any other city
in the world, Rome has become the first watering-place in Europe.
Its waters of Trevi are as fascinating to votaries of pleasure and
lovers of art as the most salutary springs to seekers after health. Its
galleries and antiquities offer years of occupation, even to the most
sedulous of visitors, before these can say that they have sufficiently
seen and studied them; its winter gaieties and amusements are
abundant to satisfy the greediest of such enjoyments; during its long
spring (and much of what is winter elsewhere is spring at Rome)
lovers of pleasant rides and delightful scenery discover that in such
does the Campagna abound. But still, to that majority of its foreign
visitors which soon become sated with pictures and statues and
classical remains, Rome’s chief attraction is unquestionably the
pomps and ceremonies, the splendour and the shrines of that Church
whose headquarters the Italians so earnestly desire to see
transported beyond the limits of Italy. Remove the Pope, and of
course there is an end to the grand solemnities in which he is the
most prominent figure; to the magnificent funzioni of Holy Week, to
witness which thousands annually flock to Rome, filling to the roof
every hotel and lodging-house; to gorgeous ceremonials, brilliant
processions, and high festivals; to the chairing of the Pontiff and the
feeding of the beggars; the washing of feet and the sounding of silver
trumpets and the benediction from the balcony, with its magnificent
scenic effect, with the golden chair and the peacock fans, and the rest
of the sumptuous and dazzling paraphernalia. All this must of course
depart whenever the Italian Government takes its seat at Rome,
unless there should then be found some member of the college of
cardinals willing to accept the Pontiff’s spiritual heritage without his
temporal sway, and to retain his chair at the Vatican whilst a King of
Italy thrones it at the Quirinal. The installation of a commonplace lay
government could hardly fail to diminish Rome’s present attractions
for foreigners. Everything is now done to render it pleasant to them
in all ways. The utmost consideration and regard for their comfort
and convenience are shown by the government whose capital they
enrich, and by the people, who look upon them as their principal
source of profit. Rome has little industry or commerce to live by;
what prosperity she still enjoys is due solely to the forestieri; and, as
these are chiefly heretics, the anomaly ensues that the heretic is
made much more of in the city of the Pope than in any other capital.
For him the best places everywhere—the utmost possible immunity
from police annoyances—the blandest smiles of doorkeepers and
guardians of galleries—the convenient place of public worship, still
denied to him in that bigoted Spain which out-herods Herod, and is
more papist than the Pope; and, to crown all these advantages,
should death overtake him whilst sojourning in Rome, he has the
satisfaction of being buried amongst hundreds of his countrymen,
some of them of no mean repute, in one of the prettiest flower-grown
English cemeteries that can anywhere be found. The favour shown to
him is a standing joke in Rome. “I am off to the Sistine, to hear the
music,” says Marforio to Pasquin. “Spare yourself the trouble,” is the
reply; “the Swiss and the noble guards will not let you in.” “Never
fear,” answers Marforio; “I have turned heretic.” There is truth in the
jest. To heretics, Rome is indeed the most tolerant of cities, as the
Romans are the most supple and complaisant of hosts.
It seems incredible that, in the second half of the nineteenth
century, it should be found possible to write two copious volumes
about Rome, in which most persons, even of those who fancied they
knew the place thoroughly, might find not only much to interest and
amuse them, but also a great many novel facts and much original
appreciation of things and topics which they thought had long since
been worn threadbare. A book, too, neither critical nor political;
neither playing the cicerone through Roman galleries, nor meddling,
otherwise than by such passing allusions as sufficiently show the
author’s sympathies with the much-discussed Roman question. Since
there still remained so much to be written on so attractive a theme,
how can we explain its not having been done years ago, by some of
the many English of literary tastes who annually abide in Rome? The
answer is soon found. The English in Rome—or, it may truly be said,
in Italy generally—do not, except in very rare cases, get below the
superficial crust which veils from them the richness of the mine
beneath. They work in a beaten track, and he who arrives to-day does
neither more nor less than he who yesterday departed. They may
conscientiously visit every object mentioned in their guide-book—
they may reiterate those visits until they can tell you from memory
the place of every picture or statue in the Vatican or elsewhere, and
until they can fairly say that they have thoroughly “done” Rome in
the vulgar acceptation of the word. Still they have explored, and seen,
and heard but a portion of what lies at their disposal, and would well
repay research; they have scrutinised the Rome of the past, but are
ignorant of the Rome of the present; they have pondered over the
graves of the dead, but of the living they know little or nothing. To a
real knowledge and enjoyment of Rome, two things are essential—
familiarity with the language and intercourse with the people—the
former being, of course, indispensable to the latter. Comparatively
few of the thousands of English who annually pass several months in
the shadow of St Peter’s—many of them returning year after year to
that which is undeniably the most seductive of Continental
residences—obtain familiar admission to the highest circle of Roman
society; and still fewer care to seek an entrance into any other, or to
trouble themselves to converse with natives of lower degree. They
treat Rome as they would an extremely agreeable watering-place in
England;—they go there to see the lions, to enjoy a delightful climate
and pleasant environs, and to give each other dinners and balls. They
form an English colony, according to the usage of our countrymen;
and their circles are often as exclusive in their way as that of the
Roman princes, to which only the highest connections or most
potent recommendations insure access. Very few, indeed, are the
Italians who find admission into the many pleasant English houses
each winter sees opened in Rome. The English live amongst
themselves; they have their own quarter (the best, as usual, in the
city), their own club, hotels, shops, and habits; the men scarcely ever
enter an Italian osteria or café, where they might glean some notion
of the manners and customs of the natives, but they appropriate two
or three establishments of the kind, which they Anglicise to the
utmost extent possible in those latitudes, and which the Romans
soon learn to shun, scared by the foreign invasion and by the fancy
prices charged for base imitations of British viands. Not one in a
hundred of the English who visit Rome are there after May or before
November; they see the place and people only in their winter and
spring aspects; summer and autumn are unknown to them. Many
complete their five or six months’ term of residence without
acquiring even a smattering of Italian; and when they leave, all they
know of the people is what they may have learned from lying
ciceroni, or from native servants and shopkeepers possessed of
sufficient English to gull the forestieri. Now, let us suppose a
contrary case—that of an Englishman (or American) of more than
average intelligence and cultivation, with a keen appreciation of art,
a quick perception of the characteristic, and a warm love for Rome,
who should abide for six years in that city and its environs, not
invariably flying north from summer heats, but contenting himself
with temporary retreats to one of the charming nooks the
neighbouring hills afford, and who, thoroughly familiar with the
language, should lose no opportunity of mingling and conversing
with the people, chatting with all he met—with the peasant in the
field, the mendicant by the road-side, the itinerant musician who
played beneath his window, as well as with the physician, the lawyer,
the trader, and the artist, with whom he might more frequently and
naturally be brought in contact. Such a man, we apprehend, would be
well qualified to write a fresh and pleasant and instructive book
concerning a city whose fame must live for ever, and which may
appropriately be surnamed the Inexhaustible as well as the Eternal.
Nobody who visited the great Exhibition of 1862 will have failed to
observe and admire two pieces of sculpture which the most
competent critics declared to be second to none, even if they were
equalled by any of those there collected together. The author of ‘Roba
di Roma,’ the foreign and fantastical name of a very English and
sensible book, might have placed upon its title-page, had it so
pleased him, “by the author of ‘Cleopatra’ and the ‘Lybyan Sybil,’”
and the advertisement would have been no bad one; for everybody
who had admired the sculptor’s beautiful statues would have been
curious to see if he were as clever with the pen as he was cunning
with the chisel. Mr Story, however, was above seeking any such side-
wind of popularity, and proposed allowing his literary labours to
stand upon their own merits. This they are well able to do. As
pleasant reading, his book at once takes its place in the foremost
rank of its class, whilst the information it contains gives it a more
solid and permanent value than can be attained by a work intended
for mere amusement. Without being in any degree a guide-book, it
contains a vast deal which every visitor to Rome would be glad to
find in one. There exists a series of Red Books, much more generally
studied than the Blue ones, and with which every Englishman is
familiar who pushes his Continental explorations beyond Paris.
Unequal in degree of merit, the Briton abroad yet can ill do without
the worst of them. Amongst the best must be reckoned that for Rome
—a work performed conscientiously and con amore by a genial and
accomplished citizen of the world, to whom the Eternal City has
become almost a second patria. But the very best of handbooks
cannot exhaust its subject, when that subject is Rome; and so we
counsel every visitor to the papal capital to associate with his Murray
Mr Story’s ‘Roba.’

“Every Englishman,” says this gentleman, “carries a Murray for information and
a Byron for sentiment, and finds out by them what he is to know and feel at every
step. Pictures and statues have been staled by copy and description, until
everything is stereotyped, from the Dying Gladiator, with his ‘young barbarians all
at play,’ down to the Beatrice Cenci, the Madame Touson of the shops, that haunts
one everywhere with her white turban and red eyes. Every ruin has had its score of
immortelles hung upon it. The soil has been almost overworked by antiquarians
and scholars, to whom the modern flower was nothing, but the antique brick a
prize. Poets and sentimentalists have described to death what the antiquaries have
left, and some have done their work so well that nothing remains to be done after
them. All the public and private life of the ancient Romans, from Romulus to
Constantine, is perfectly well known. But the common life of the modern Romans
—the games, customs, and habits of the people—the everyday of to-day—has been
only touched upon here and there,—sometimes with spirit and accuracy, as by
Charles M‘Farlane; sometimes with grace, as by Hans Christian Andersen; and
sometimes with great ignorance, as by Jones, Brown, and Robinson, who see
through the eyes of their courier and the spectacles of their prejudices. There may
be, among the thousands of travellers that annually winter at Rome, some to whom
the common out-door pictures of modern Roman life would have a charm as
special as the galleries and antiquities, and to whom a sketch of many things,
which wise and serious travellers have passed by as unworthy their notice, might
be interesting.”

This last reflection suggested itself to Mr Story as he drove into

Rome, somewhat more than six years ago, on his third visit to that
capital, which has been his residence ever since; and, as he is
evidently a man who likes to carry out a good idea, he at once
commenced to hoard his observations for future use and public
benefit. The impression made upon us by his two copious volumes is,
that they have been composed con amore, and at perfect leisure—
conditions eminently conducive to success in authorship. That Mr
Story loves Rome he need not tell us; his attachment is manifest in
his pages. Who, indeed, that has dwelt there long enough to fall
under its fascination, does not love it and desire to return thither?
Everybody would fain visit Rome, but those only who have been
there can fully appreciate the charm it exercises. There are places
whose attractions imagination is apt to overcolour, and which
consequently disappoint on near acquaintance; but if there be
persons who thus find Rome fall short of their expectations, they
usually are wise enough to keep it to themselves, and so avoid the
charge of extravagance. Doubtless those whose mind, education, and
previous pursuits and studies enable them fully to appreciate and
enjoy the treasures of art, and of classical and historical associations
there heaped up, are few compared to the visitors who form but an
imperfect and superficial estimate of what they behold, and who
soon are glad to fall back upon less intellectual pleasures. Of these
there is no lack. Agreeable society, pleasant promenades, carnival
diversions—theatres which, if not uniformly good, at least are
sufficiently attractive to audiences which go as much to talk as to
listen—the vicinity of a picturesque country, tempting to excursions,
which may be compressed into a day or extended to weeks, according
as one keeps within the present limits of the Papal territory, or
stretches out into Umbria, to Terni and Narni, Perugia and Spoleto,
—these varied resources and advantages combine to make Rome
delightful, at least in winter and spring, to almost every class of
visitors. Considering how many who have visited it have also written
about it, it seems scarcely possible, at this time, for anybody to fill
seven hundred close pages with matter relating to it without
becoming prolix. That, however, is a reproach no one can address to
Mr Story. His work shows extensive reading, happily made use of,
close observation, and the eye of a true artist. It admits of a broad
division into two parts—one of these comprising solely what he
himself has seen, heard, and thought; the other including much for
which he is indebted to many books, studied to good purpose. As a
specimen of the last-named portion, we may cite the chapter entitled
“The Colosseum”—the romantic chronicle of that marvellous
structure. Its opening is a good specimen of the author’s vivid, rapid
manner of placing before us pictures painted in words:—

“Of all the ruins in Rome, none is at once so beautiful, so imposing, and so
characteristic as the Colosseum.[4] Here throbbed the Roman heart in its fullest
pulses. Over its benches swarmed the mighty population of the centre city of the
world. In its arena, gazed at by a hundred thousand eager eyes, the gladiator fell,
while the vast velarium trembled as the air was shaken by savage shouts of ‘Habet,’
and myriads of cruel hands, with upturned thumbs, sealed his unhappy fate. The
sand of the arena drank the blood of African elephants, lions, and tigers—of
Mirmilli, Laqueatores, Retiarii, and Andabatæ—and of Christian martyrs and
virgins. Here emperor, senators, knights, and soldiers, the lowest populace and the
proudest citizens, gazed together on the bloody games, shouted together as the
favourite won, groaned together fiercely as he fell, and startled the eagles sailing
over the blue vault above with their wild cries of triumph. Here might be heard the
trumpeting of the enraged elephant, the savage roar of the tiger, the peevish shriek
of the grave-rifling hyena; while the human beasts above, looking on the slaughter
of the lower beasts beneath, uttered a wilder and more awful yell. Rome—brutal,
powerful, bloodthirsty, imperial Rome—built in its days of pride this mighty
amphitheatre, and, outlasting all its works, it still stands, the best type of its
grandeur and brutality. What St Peter’s is to the Rome of to-day, is the Colosseum
to the Rome of the Cæsars. The baths of Caracalla, grand though they be, sink into
insignificance beside it. The Cæsars’ palaces are almost level with the earth. Over
the pavement where once swept the imperial robes now slips the gleaming lizard;
and in the indiscriminate ruins of those splendid halls the contadino plants his
potatoes, and sells for a paul the oxidised coin which once may have paid the
entrance fee to the great amphitheatre. The golden house of Nero is gone. The very
Forum where Cicero delivered his immortal orations is all but obliterated, and
antiquarians quarrel over the few columns that remain. But the Colosseum still
stands; despite the assault of time and the work of barbarians it still stands, noble
and beautiful in its decay—yes, more beautiful than ever.”

4. We preserve Mr Story’s orthography, which, although unusual, is doubtless

correct. “The name Colosseum, or Coliseum as it is improperly called, seems to
have been derived from its colossal proportions, and not, as has been supposed by
some writers, from a colossal statue of one of the emperors placed within it”
(‘Roba,’ i. 222). A correspondent of the ‘Athenæum’ (7th February 1863) says that,
“in volume II. of the ‘Lives of the Roman Empresses,’ p. 50 (Edit. Naples, 1768),
there is a note which gives the reason why the correct orthography is Colosseum.
Referring to the completion of the great amphitheatre by Titus, the note has the
following: ‘Nel mezzo del Anfiteatro si sorgeva una grande statua rappresentante
Nerone, chiamata il Colosso di Nerone, da cui quel luogo prese il nome di
Colosseo.’” Mr Story remarks that the present name is comparatively modern, and
first occurs in the writings of the venerable Bede. To the ancient Romans the
Colosseum was known as the Amphiteatrum Flavium.
How profound a calm has now replaced the rush and roar of
conflict! You walk down to the Colosseum on one of those soft sunny
mornings common in Rome in the early months of the year, and you
find it kept by two or three French sentries, and untenanted save by
as many dilapidated ciceroni, who crawl out of their secret recesses
as you enter the arena, and vie with each other for the honour of
conducting you over the mighty remains, in which, as Mr Story
happily expresses it, “Nature has healed over the wounds of time
with delicate grasses and weeds.” The last time we visited the
Colosseum, the drummers of a French regiment were out for practice
in its immediate vicinity, startling the echoes of the wondrous old
edifice with a diabolical clatter of stick against sheepskin. Saw-
sharpening, or the simultaneous tuning of one hundred and fifty
fiddles, is hardly more vexatious to the nerves than the discordant
rub-a-dub of a dozen squads of apprentice drummers, pounding
their instruments with a deafening disregard to harmony. Persons
are differently affected by the Colosseum, Mr Story assures us—some
with horror, some with sentiment, some with statistics. Persons who
go there on drum-practice days are doubtless affected with a
vehement desire to get out of earshot. Apart from the unpleasant
nature of the noise, it, and the sight of its originators, are destructive
of the day-dreams to which solitude and quiet in that great
dilapidated structure are so eminently favourable. Most persons will
admit that nothing in Rome has impressed them so strongly as the
Colosseum. A German writer has said that the Americans are
particularly affected by it, more so than most Europeans; and if this
be the case, it is doubtless attributable to the striking contrast the
tourist from beyond the Atlantic finds between those ruins of a
mighty past and the upstart edifices of his own bran-new country.
The Americans, it is said, were the first to light up the Colosseum
with Bengal fires. A number of Germans, artists and others,
attempted it with torches on a dark winter night, but the means were
insufficient: the torches, although numerous, struggled in vain to
dispel the deep nocturnal gloom which seemed condensed in the
giant ruin. The attempt, however, gave the idea to the Americans,
who quickly found the money for something on a grander scale; and
the Roman pyrotechnists, who are first-rate in skill and experience,
produced an illumination with coloured fires which drew out to the
Colosseum not only the forestieri but the Romans themselves,
usually very careless of the sights the foreigners most run after. Since
then such illuminations have become comparatively common, and
have been witnessed by most persons who have remained any time in
Rome. The effect is very striking, and should be seen once, just as
one goes to see the statuary at the Vatican by torchlight; but, for
both, the preference will generally be given to daylight, and also, as
regards the Colosseum, to moonlight. For the best description of its
appearance when lighted in this last-named manner, Mr Story refers
us to a book entitled, ‘Rome and its Rulers,’ by that impartial Irish
M.P., Mr John Francis Maguire, who, when in the Pope’s dominions,
was so peculiarly fortunate as to find there nothing which was not in
the highest degree admirable and praiseworthy. Truly a book “in
which many things are scented with rose-water,” as Mr Story
remarks, and which may also justly be said to abound in moonshine.
Of this latter commodity, as collected in the Colosseum, the eloquent
Maguire thus discourses:—

“The moon was slowly pursuing her way up the blue sky, and gradually rising,
foot by foot, to the height of the unbroken wall of the building, now and then
peeping in through arch or window.... Patiently we awaited the higher elevation
and full splendour of the chaste Dian, enjoying each new effect as she sported with
the venerable ruin, and imparted to its grim antiquity a youthful flush—mocking
but delightful illusion.”
 Nothing can be more striking than this picture of the moon going
up-stairs at a steady, composed pace, fearful, probably, of losing
breath by speed, and occasionally pausing at a hole in the wall to
squint through it at her Hibernian admirer. But your thoroughpaced
Irish or British Ultramontane is very liable to lunar influences when
he gets to Rome; and if he chance to be in Parliament, or in a
position to make his voice heard in his own country, he is apt to have
his head completely turned by the interested attentions shown to
him in the highest quarters. We have happened more than once to
see gentlemen of that class, devoted supporters of the Pope, by the
influence of whose Irish adherents they had been carried into
Parliament, arrive in Rome during the recess to seek materials for
their speeches in the approaching session. They stay but a short time,
and generally know no Italian and little French, but that is a very
trifling drawback. They find countrymen amongst the immediate
friends and daily visitors of his Holiness, are made much of at the
Vatican, are crammed to their hearts’ content with carefully-
prepared statistics and fabulous facts, and depart convinced, or
seeming to be so, that they have a thorough knowledge of the state of
the country, and that all that has been said about Papal misrule is
sheer malignant invention. They are taken to see the prisons, and
find them far better and more humane in their arrangements than
those they looked into as they passed through Piedmont. Of course
they do. In Piedmont there is little attempt at concealment.
Whatever its faults, the Government there does not take much pains
to appear better than it is. In Rome the confiding M.P. sees the
model prisons—those kept for inspection. Does he imagine he has
seen those where political prisoners are confined? Surely Messrs
Maguire, Hennessey, Bowyer, and Co., are not so credulous as that.
The Vatican is far too knowing not to ease the consciences of its
advocates. Why should they be reduced to the cruel alternative of
silence or of speaking in opposition to what they know to be fact? In
the Roman prisons there are rooms set apart for favoured prisoners,
who there enjoy light and air, and are well fed and treated. Mr
Maguire was delighted with the Prison of San Michele, where,
“instead of gloom, horror, and noisome dungeons, I beheld a large,
well-lighted, well-ventilated, and (could such a term be properly
applied to any place of confinement) cheerful-looking hall.” He goes
on to talk of “the bright sun streaming in; the superior size and
arrangement of the cells,” &c. &c. Mr Story, who dwells a good deal
on the subject of Roman and Neapolitan prisons (as the latter were
under the Bourbons), and supplies various documents justificatory of
the view which he and every unbiassed and rightly-informed person
cannot do otherwise than take of them, refers to the well-known
Casanova case—that of an unfortunate young Italian who, on his
return from a residence in America, was arrested at Viterbo on the
sole ground that he had no passport, and subjected to the most
barbarous treatment in the Carcere Nuovo at Rome. Thence he was
transferred to Naples, and, after a captivity of five or six years, was
released by the arrival of Garibaldi. “Oh, Mr Maguire,” exclaims the
author of the ‘Roba,’ “did you never suspect that if you had the
mischance to be a poor Italian without parents or passport, instead
of a member of Parliament, you might have been shown into other
rooms than the ‘Salone dei Preti?’ Via!” Why should Mr Maguire
trouble himself with such inconvenient suspicions? He and those
who resemble him seek their information in the highest quarter—
namely, from the Government; and having, beforehand, an excellent
opinion of that Government, they cannot think of suspecting it of
fraud or misstatement. Moreover he might find in Rome countrymen
of his own, and possibly even some Englishmen, ready to support
him in the belief that everything is for the best under the pious and
enlightened rule of Antonelli. There are always a few bitter Irish
bigots and zealous British perverts to be met with in the Papal
capital, prompt to deny the existence of abuses, and to extol the
excellent working of the priest-government under which the
unfortunate Romans groan. They are made much of by the
Monsignori, and graciously received by the Pope; and occasionally
they find means of making some sort of demonstration which may be
magnified in partisan journals into that of an important section of
the British residents in Rome. It was an insignificant clique of this
kind which, about two years ago, scandalised their countrymen in
that capital by waiting upon Francis II. of Naples with expressions of
sympathy and good wishes.
The author of the ‘Roba,’ who does not dislike a good-natured hit
at his own countrymen’s peculiarities, is amusing with respect to
their criticisms of the Colosseum, the Campagna, and other principal
features of Rome and its environs. One young lady told him she
thought the Colosseum “pretty, but not so pretty as Naples;” and a
gentleman was of opinion that it was less well built than the custom-
house in his native city, of which the correct lines, sharp angles, and
whitewashed superficies were doubtless more grateful to his view
than the ruins whose abundance constitutes one of Rome’s chief
charms. There are people who would be more struck with the
excellent workmanship and first-rate bricks of the tall modern scarp
which supports a part of the Colosseum that threatened to crumble
away, than they would be with its ruined arches, its broken travertine
blocks, its time-worn cornices and flower-draped benches, or than
with the lovely ruins of Caracalla’s baths, concerning which Mr Story
quotes Shelley, whilst himself describing them with much poetry of
expression, and a warm perception of the beautiful. “Come with me,”
he says, “to the massive ruins of Caracalla’s baths—climb its lofty
arches and creep along the broken roofs of its perilous terraces.
Golden gorses and wallflowers blaze there in the sun, out of reach;
fig-trees, whose fruit no hand can pluck, root themselves in its clefts;
pink sweetpeas and every variety of creeping vetch here bloom in
perfection; tall grasses wave their feathery plumes out on dizzy and
impracticable ledges; and nature seems to have delighted to twine
this majestic ruin with its loveliest flowers. Sit here, where Shelley
wrote the ‘Prometheus Unbound,’ and look out over the wide-
stretching Campagna.” And if you have with you, as you ought to
have, when wandering over those giddy arches and broken
platforms, the second volume of ‘Roba di Roma,’ turn to page 97, and
read its accomplished author’s graphic and glowing description of
the view thence obtained. Unfortunately not all his countrymen
possess the same feeling for the beautiful in nature—not all can find
a charm in a time-stained marble block, moss-mantled and weed-
entwined. To one of Mr Story’s countrymen the Colosseum was
simply “an ugly, pokerish place,” whilst another was chiefly struck by
its circular form, and a third by the advantages it offered for love-
making—this last being a recommendation, doubtless, but one that
can hardly have been reckoned upon by the original designers of the
edifice. One gentleman (we need not ask from which side of the
Atlantic) was liberal enough to say, “I do not object, sir, to the
carnival at Rome;” and Mr Story assures us that he knows several
who are equally indulgent to the Colosseum and to St Peter’s. He
grieves to admit that English and Americans too often speak ill of the
Campagna, which seems to him, he declares, the most beautiful and
touching in its interest of all places he has ever seen; but he pillories
a Frenchman who ventures to despise it. The confident Gaul had just
come up from Naples, and was asked if he had seen the grand old
temples at Pæstum. “Oui, monsieur,” was his answer, “j’ai vu le
Peste. C’est un pays détestable; c’est comme la Campagne de Rome.”
Detestable enough, no doubt, says Story, after the fine military
landscape that surrounds Paris; “where low bounding hills are
flattened like earthworks and bastions, and stiff formal poplars are
drawn up in squares and columns on the wide parade of its level and
monotonous plains. It is also a peculiarity of the Frenchman that he
underrates everybody and everything except himself and his
country.” Mr Story is too much in love with the Campagna not to be
jealous of its fame. It is quite certain that, with many, this is not so
good as it deserves. People who have not explored it are apt to
picture it to themselves as a desolate tract, affording pasturage but
little wood, and exhaling fever from every cleft in its soil. When once
they have driven and ridden or walked (for much cannot be done on
wheels) over its varied and picturesque surface, and seen it in the
fresh springtime, when its green copses and hedges scent the air, and
its sward is diapered with wild-flowers innumerable, many of which
are amongst the choice ones of our English gardens, they are lost in
astonishment at the beauty of the tract that surrounds Rome. Our
own original notion of the Campagna was based on a picture of a
dreary expanse, over which the first shades of night were spreading,
chasing thence the last deep red glow of sunset; whilst in the centre
of the melancholy, treeless plain, a peasant lad, in goat-skin breeks
and elf-locks, and suffering, apparently, under a severe attack of
jaundice, tended a herd of pallid cattle, which gave one the idea of
having just risen from the straw of sickness in some bovine fever
hospital. How different this unprepossessing picture was from the
reality need not be told to any who have taken the trouble to visit the
vicinity of Rome, instead of limiting their daily exercise (as some of
the visitors to that city most unwisely, both as regards health and
enjoyment, are prone to do) to the small but agreeable garden on the
Pincian Hill, and to the more extensive and certainly most delightful
grounds of the Villas Borghese, Doria Pamphili, Albani, and other
residences of the Roman princes. It would be tedious to enumerate
even the half of the charming rides which are to be had within twenty
miles of Rome, and which, it must be owned, the younger portion of
the floating British population, both male and female, generally
make the most of during the early spring months, much more to
their own pleasure and benefit than to those of the unfortunate hacks
the Roman livery-stable keepers annually provide for the use of the
forestieri. A regard for truth compels us also to declare that it is not
the male portion of the English at Rome that those Campagna
Rosinantes would, could they speak their minds, most object to
carry. Rome—whose climate, by the by, has been thought by some to
be generally more favourable to women than to men—seems to give
our fair countrywomen strength and endurance for an amount of
horse exercise they would seldom take in England. Acting upon the
principle put into their mouths by ‘Punch,’ “He’s a hoss, and he must
go,” they may be seen daily urging their hired chargers across the
plain, and performing their twenty-five or thirty miles, chiefly at a
canter, to and from the various points of attraction, noted sites,
favourite picnic spots, and the like, in the neighbourhood of Rome,
and coming in, glowing with health, to dance half the night or more
at the numerous pleasant parties given there during the first three or
four months of every year. There used to be a subscription pack of
hounds in Rome, but the sport was put a stop to, a few seasons ago,
in consequence of a young member of the Roman aristocracy having
broken his neck over a small ditch. Thereupon Pio Nono forbade the
sport, which was considered rather hard upon the English, who, as
heretics, might surely have been allowed to fracture themselves to
any extent without causing much pain to his Holiness; and, indeed,
this feeling was so general, that some were rather inclined to
attribute the interdiction to Cardinal Antonelli’s sympathy with the
foxes. However that may have been, there was no obtaining a
revocation of the edict, and the hounds were sold—to be re-
purchased, perhaps, at a future day, when the White Cross of Savoy
shall have replaced the Cross Keys on the pinnacles of a liberated
Rome. The loss was a great one, however, to the English; and even
many of the Italians deplored the stoppage of the mita, as they called
“the meet,” which, however, with most of the foreigners (that is to
say, of the non-English), was little more than a pretext for picnics
and flirtations. Mr Story, with a few humorous touches, gives us an
excellent idea of the modus operandi:—
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