You know how the heart is subject to freshets; you know how the
mother, always loving her child, yet seeing in it some new wile of
affection, will catch it up and cover it with kisses and break
forth in a rapture of loving. Such a kind of heart-glow fell from
the Savior upon that young man who said to him, "Good Master, what
good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" It is said,
"Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him."
--_Henry Ward Beecher_
[Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER]
The influence of Henry Ward Beecher upon his time was marked. And now
the stream of his life is lost amid the ocean of our being. As a single
drop of aniline in a barrel of water will tint the whole mass, so has
the entire American mind been colored through the existence of this one
glowing personality. He placed a new interpretation on religion, and we
are different people because he lived.
He was not constructive, not administrative--he wrote much, but as
literature his work has small claim on immortality. He was an orator,
and the business of the orator is to inspire other men to think and act
for themselves.
Orators live but in memory. Their destiny is to be the sweet, elusive
fragrance of oblivion--the thyme and mignonette of things that were.
The limitations in the all-around man are by-products which are used by
destiny in the making of orators. The welling emotions, the vivid
imagination, the forgetfulness of self, the abandon to feeling--all
these things in Wall Street are spurious coin. No prudent man was ever
an orator--no cautious man ever made a multitude change its mind, when
it had vowed it would not.
Oratory is indiscretion set to music.
The great orator is great on account of his weaknesses as well as on
account of his strength. So why should we expect the orator to be the
impeccable man of perfect parts?
These essays attempt to give the man--they are neither a vindication nor
an apology.
Edmund Gosse has recently said something so wise and to the point on the
subject of biography that I can not resist the temptation to quote him:
If the reader will but bear with me so far as to endure the thesis
that the first theoretical object of the biographer should be
indiscretion, not discretion, I will concede almost everything
practical to delicacy. But this must be granted to me: that the aim
of all portraiture ought to be the emphasizing of what makes the
man different from, not like, other men. The widow almost always
desires that her deceased hero should be represented as exactly
like all other respectable men, only a little grander, a little
more glorified. She hates, as only a bad biographer can hate, the
telling of the truth with respect to those faults and foibles which
made the light and shade of his character. This, it appears, was
the primitive view of biography. The mass of medieval memorials was
of the "expanded-tract" order: it was mainly composed of lives of
the saints, tractates in which the possible and the impossible were
mingled in inextricable disorder, but where every word was intended
directly for edification. Here the biographer was a moralist whose
hold upon exact truth of statement was very loose indeed, but who
was determined that every word he wrote should strengthen his
readers in the faith. Nor is this generation of biographers dead
today. Half the lives of the great and good men, which are
published in England and America, are expanded tracts. Let the
biographer be tactful, but do not let him be cowardly; let him
cultivate delicacy, but avoid its ridiculous parody, prudery.
And I also quote this from James Anthony Froude:
The usual custom in biography is to begin with the brightest side
and to leave the faults to be discovered afterwards. It is
dishonest and it does not answer. Of all literary sins, Carlyle
himself detested most a false biography. Faults frankly
acknowledged are frankly forgiven. Faults concealed work always
like poison. Burns' offenses were made no secret of. They are now
forgotten, and Burns stands without a shadow on him, the idol of
his countrymen.
Byron's diary was destroyed, and he remains and will remain with a
stain of suspicion about him, which revives and will revive, and
will never be wholly obliterated. "The truth shall make you free"
in biography as in everything else. Falsehood and concealment are a
great man's worst enemy.
* * * * *
Henry Ward Beecher was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, June
Twenty-third, Eighteen Hundred Thirteen. He was the eighth child of
Lyman and Roxana Foote Beecher. Like Lincoln and various other great
men, Beecher had two mothers: the one who gave him birth, and the one
who cared for him as he grew up. Beecher used to take with him on his
travels an old daguerreotype of his real mother, and in the cover of the
case, beneath the glass, was a lock of her hair--fair in color, and
bright as if touched by the kiss of the summer sun. Often he would take
this picture out and apostrophize it, just as he would the uncut gems
that he always carried in his pockets. "My first mother," he used to
call her; and to him she stood as a sort of deity. "My first mother
stands to me for love; my second mother for discipline; my father for
justice," he once said to Halliday.
I am not sure that Beecher had a well-defined idea of either discipline
or justice, but love to him was a very vivid and personal reality. He
knew what it meant--infinite forgiveness, a lifelong, yearning
tenderness, a Something that suffereth long and is kind. This he
preached for fifty years, and he preached little else. Lyman Beecher
proclaimed the justice of God; Henry Ward Beecher told of His love.
Lyman Beecher was a logician, but Henry Ward was a lover. There is a
task on hand for the man who attempts to prove that Nature is kind, or
that God is love. Perhaps man himself, with all his imperfections, gives
us the best example of love that the universe has to offer. In preaching
the love of God, Henry Ward Beecher revealed his own; for oratory, like
literature, is only a confession.
"My first mother is always pleading for me--she reaches out her arms to
me--her delicate, long, tapering fingers stroke my hair--I hear her
voice, gentle and low!" Do you say this is the language of o'erwrought
emotion? I say to you it is simply the language of love. This mother,
dead and turned to dust, who passed out when the boy was scarce three
years old, stood to him for the ideal. Love, anyway, is a matter of the
imagination, and he who can not imagine can not love, and love is from
within. The lover clothes the beloved in the garments of his fancy, and
woe to him if he ever loses the power to imagine.
Have you not often noticed how the man or woman whose mother died before
a time that the child could recall, and whose memory clusters around a
faded picture and a lock of hair--how this person is thrice blessed in
that the ideal is always a shelter when the real palls? Love is a refuge
and a defense. The Law of Compensation is kind: Lincoln lived, until the
day of his death, bathed in the love of Nancy Hanks, that mother, worn,
yellow and sad, who gave him birth, and yet whom he had never known. No
child ever really lost its mother--nothing is ever lost. Men are really
only grown-up children, and the longing to be mothered is not effaced by
the passing years. The type is well shown in the life of Meissonier,
whose mother died in his childhood, but she was near him to the last. In
his journal he wrote this: "It is the morning of my seventieth birthday.
What a long time to look back upon! This morning, at the hour my mother
gave me birth, I wished my first thoughts to be of her. Dear Mother, how
often have the tears risen at the remembrance of you! It was your
absence--my longing for you--that made you so dear to me. The love of my
heart goes out to you! Do you hear me, Mother, crying and calling for
you? How sweet it must be to have a mother!"
* * * * *
One might suppose that a childless woman suddenly presented by Fate with
an exacting husband and a brood of nine would soon be a candidate for
nervous prostration; Sarah Porter Beecher, however, rose to the level of
events, and looked after her household with diligence and a
conscientious heart. Little Henry Ward was four years old and wore a
red-flannel dress, outgrown by one of the girls. He was chubby, with a
full-moon face and yellow curls, which were so much trouble to take care
of that they were soon cut off, after he had set the example of cutting
off two himself. He talked as though his mouth were full of hot mush. If
sent to a neighbor's on an errand, he usually forgot what he was sent
for, or else explained matters in such a way that he brought back the
wrong thing. His mother meant to be kind; her patience was splendid; and
one's heart goes out to her in sympathy when we think of her faithful
efforts to teach the lesser catechism to this baby savage who much
preferred to make mud-pies.
Little Henry Ward had a third mother who did him much gentle benefit,
and that was his sister Harriet, two years his senior. These little
child-mothers who take care of the younger members of the family deserve
special seats in Paradise. Harriet taught little Henry Ward to talk
plainly, to add four and four, and to look solemn when he did not feel
so--and thus escape the strap behind the kitchen-door. His bringing-up
was of the uncaressing, let-alone kind.
Lyman Beecher was a deal better than his religion; for his religion,
like that of most people, was an inheritance, not an evolution. Piety
settled down upon the household like a pall every Saturday at sundown;
and the lessons taught were largely from the Old Testament.
These big, bustling, strenuous households are pretty good life-drill for
the members. The children are taught self-reliance, to do without each
other, to do for others, and the older members educate the younger ones.
It is a great thing to leave children alone. Henry Ward Beecher has
intimated in various places in his books how the whole Beecher brood
loved their father, yet as precaution against misunderstanding they made
the sudden sneak and the quick side-step whenever they saw him coming.
Village life with a fair degree of prosperity, but not too much, is an
education in itself. The knowledge gained is not always classic, nor
even polite, but it is all a part of the great, seething game of life.
Henry Ward Beecher was not an educated man in the usual sense of the
word. At school he carved his desk, made faces at the girls, and kept
the place in a turmoil generally: doing the wrong thing, just like many
another bumpkin. At home he carried in the wood, picked up chips, worked
in the garden in Summer, and shoveled out the walks in Winter. He knew
when the dishwater was worth saving to mix up with meal for the
chickens, and when it should be put on the asparagus-bed or the
rosebushes. He could make a lye-leach, knew that it was lucky to set
hens on thirteen eggs, realized that hens' eggs hatched in three weeks,
and ducks' in four. He knew when the berries ripened, where the crows
nested, and could find the bee-trees by watching the flight of the bees
after they had gotten their fill on the basswood-blossoms. He knew all
the birds that sang in the branches--could tell what birds migrated and
what not--was acquainted with the flowers and weeds and fungi--knew
where the rabbits burrowed--could pick the milkweed that would cure
warts, and tell the points of the compass by examining the bark of the
trees. He was on familiar terms with all the ragamuffins in the village,
and regarded the man who kept the livery-stable as the wisest person in
New England, and the stage-driver as the wittiest.
Lyman Beecher was a graduate of Yale, and Henry Ward would have been,
had he been able to pass the preparatory examinations. But he couldn't,
and finally he was bundled off to Amherst, very much as we now send boys
to a business college when they get plucked at the high school. But it
matters little--give the boys time--some of them ripen slowly, and
others there be who know more at sixteen than they will ever know again,
like street gamins with the wit of debauchees, rareripes at ten, and
rotten at the core. "Delay adolescence," wrote Doctor Charcot to an
anxious mother; "delay adolescence, and you bank energy until it is
needed. If your boy is stupid at fourteen, thank God! Dulness is a
fulcrum and your son is getting ready to put a lever under the world."
At Amherst, Henry Ward stood well at the foot of his class. He read
everything except what was in the curriculum, and never allowed his
studies to interfere with his college course. He reveled in the debating
societies, and was always ready to thrash out any subject in wordy
warfare against all comers. His temper was splendid, his good-nature
sublime. If an opponent got the best of him he enjoyed it as much as the
audience--he could wait his turn. The man who can laugh at himself, and
who is not anxious to have the last word, is right in the suburbs of
greatness.
However, the Beechers all had a deal of positivism in their characters.
Thomas K. Beecher of Elmira, in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six, declared he
would not shave until John C. Fremont was elected President. It is
needless to add that he wore whiskers the rest of his life.
When Henry Ward was nineteen his father received a call to become
President of Lane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, and Henry Ward
accompanied him as assistant. The stalwart old father had now come to
recognize the worth of his son, and for the first time parental
authority was waived and they were companions. They were very much
alike--exuberant health, energy plus, faith and hope to spare. And
Henry Ward now saw that there was a gentle, tender and yearning side to
his father's nature, into which the world caught only glimpses. Lyman
Beecher was not free--he was bound by a hagiograph riveted upon his
soul; and so to a degree his whole nature was cramped and tortured in
his struggles between the "natural man" and the "spiritual." The son was
taught by antithesis, and inwardly vowed he would be free. The one word
that looms large in the life of Beecher is Liberty.
* * * * *
Henry Ward Beecher died aged seventy-four, having preached since he was
twenty-three. During that time he was pastor of three churches--two
years at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, six years at Indianapolis, and
forty-three years in Brooklyn. It was in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven
that he became pastor of the Congregational Church at Lawrenceburg. This
town was then a rival of Cincinnati. It had six churches--several more
than were absolutely needed. The Baptists were strong, the Presbyterians
were strenuous, the Episcopalians were exclusive, while the
Congregationalists were at ebb-tide through the rascality of a preacher
who had recently decamped and thrown a blanket of disgrace over the
whole denomination for ten miles up the creek. Thus were things when
Henry Ward Beecher assumed his first charge. The membership of the
church was made up of nineteen women and one man. The new pastor was
sexton as well as preacher--he swept out, rang the bell, lighted the
candles and locked up after service.
Beecher remained in Lawrenceburg two years. The membership had increased
to one hundred six men and seventy women. I suppose it will not be
denied as an actual fact that women bolster the steeples so that they
stay on the churches. From the time women held the rope and let Saint
Paul down in safety from the wall in a basket, women have maintained the
faith. But Beecher was a man's preacher from first to last. He was a
bold, manly man, making his appeal to men.
Two years at Lawrenceburg and he moved to Indianapolis, the capital of
the State, his reputation having been carried thither by the member from
Posey County, who incautiously boasted that his "deestrick" had the most
powerful preacher of any town on the Ohio River.
At Indianapolis, Beecher was a success at once. He entered into the
affairs of the people with an ease and a good nature that won the hearts
of this semi-pioneer population. His "Lectures to Young Men," delivered
Sunday evenings to packed houses, still have a sale. This bringing
religion down from the lofty heights of theology and making it a matter
of every-day life was eminently Beecheresque. And the reason it was a
success was because it fitted the needs of the people. Beecher expressed
what the people were thinking. Mankind clings to the creed; we will not
burn our bridges--we want the religion of our mothers, yet we crave the
simple common-sense we can comprehend as well as the superstition we
can't. Beecher's task was to rationalize orthodoxy so as to make it
palatable to thinking minds. "I can't ride two horses at one time," once
said Robert Ingersoll to Beecher, "but possibly I'll be able to yet, for
tomorrow I am going to hear you preach." Then it was that Beecher
offered to write Ingersoll's epitaph, which he proceeded to do by
scribbling two words on the back of an envelope, thus: "Robert Burns."
But these men understood and had a thorough respect for each other. Once
at a mass-meeting at Cooper Union, Beecher introduced Ingersoll as the
"first, foremost and most gifted of all living orators."
And Ingersoll, not to be outdone, referred in his speech to Beecher as
the "one orthodox clergyman in the world who has eliminated hell from
his creed and put the devil out of church, and still stands in his
pulpit."
Six years at Indianapolis put Beecher in command of his armament. And
Brooklyn, seeking a man of power, called him thither. His first sermon
in Plymouth Church outlined his course; and the principles then laid
down he was to preach for fifty years: the love of God; the life of
Christ, not as a sacrifice, but as an example--our Elder Brother; and
Liberty--liberty to think, to express, to act, to become.
It would have been worth going miles to see this man as he appeared at
Plymouth Church those first years of his ministry. Such a specimen of
mental, spiritual and physical manhood Nature produces only once in a
century. Imagine a man of thirty-five, when manhood has not yet left
youth behind, height five feet ten, weight one hundred eighty, a body
like that of a Greek god, and a mind poised, sure, serene, with a fund
of good nature that could not be overdrawn; a face cleanly shaven; a
wealth of blond hair falling to his broad shoulders; eyes of infinite
blue--eyes like the eyes of Christ when He gazed upon the penitent
thief on the cross, or eyes that flash fire, changing their color with
the mood of the man--a radiant, happy man, the cheeriest, sunniest
nature that ever dwelt in human body, with a sympathy that went out to
everybody and everything--children, animals, the old, the feeble, the
fallen--a man too big to be jealous, too noble to quibble, a man so
manly that he would accept guilt rather than impute it to another. If he
had been possessed of less love he would have been a stronger man. The
generous nature lies open and unprotected--through its guilelessness it
allows concrete rascality to come close enough to strike it. "One reason
why Beecher had so many enemies was because he bestowed so many
benefits," said Rufus Choate.
Talmage did not discover himself until he was forty-six; Beecher was
Beecher at thirty-five. He was as great then as he ever was--it was too
much to ask that he should evolve into something more--Nature has to
distribute her gifts. Had Beecher grown after his thirty-fifth year, as
he grew from twenty-five to thirty-five, he would have been a Colossus
that would have disturbed the equilibrium of the thinking world, and
created revolution instead of evolution. The opposition toward great men
is right and natural--it is a part of Nature's plan to hold the balance
true, "lest ye become as gods!"
* * * * *
I traveled with Major James B. Pond one lecture season, and during that
time heard only two themes discussed, John Brown and Henry Ward Beecher.
These were his gods. Pond fought with John Brown in Kansas, shoulder to
shoulder, and it was only through an accident that he was not with Brown
at Harpers Ferry, in which case his soul would have gone marching on
with that of Old John Brown. From Eighteen Hundred Sixty to Eighteen
Hundred Sixty-six Pond belonged to the army, and was stationed in
Western Missouri, where there was no commissariat, where they took no
prisoners, and where men like Jesse James lived, who never knew the war
was over. Pond had so many notches cut on the butt of his pistol that he
had ceased to count them.
He was big, brusk, quibbling, insulting, dictatorial, painstaking,
considerate and kind. He was the most exasperating and lovable man I
ever knew. He left a trail of enemies wherever he traveled, and the
irony of fate is shown in that he was allowed to die peacefully in his
bed.
I cut my relationship with him because I did not care to be pained by
seeing his form dangling from the crossbeam of a telegraph-pole. When I
lectured at Washington a policeman appeared at the box-office and
demanded the amusement-license fee of five dollars. "Your authority?"
roared Pond. And the policeman not being able to explain, Pond kicked
him down the stairway, and kept his club as a souvenir. We got out on
the midnight train before warrants could be served.
He would often push me into the first carriage when we arrived at a
town, and sometimes the driver would say, "This is a private carriage,"
or, "This rig is engaged," and Pond would reply, "What's that to
me?--drive us to the hotel--you evidently don't know whom you are
talking to!" And so imperious was his manner that his orders were
usually obeyed. Arriving at the hotel, he would hand out double fare. It
was his rule to pay too much or too little. Yet as a manager he was
perfection--he knew the trains to a minute, and always knew, too, what
to do if we missed the first train, or if the train was late. At the
hall he saw that every detail was provided for. If the place was too
hot, or too cold, somebody got thoroughly damned. If the ventilation was
bad, and he could not get the windows open, he would break them out. If
you questioned his balance-sheet he would the next day flash up an
expense-account that looked like a plumber's bill and give you fifty
cents as your share of the spoils. At hotels he always got a room with
two beds, if possible. I was his prisoner--he was despotically kind--he
regulated my hours of sleep, my meals, my exercise. He would throw
intruding visitors downstairs as average men shoo chickens or scare
cats. He was a bundle of profanity and unrest until after the lecture.
Then we would go to our room, and he would talk like a windmill. He
would crawl into his bed and I into mine, and then he would continue
telling Beecher stories half the night, comparing me with Beecher to my
great disadvantage. A dozen times I have heard him tell how Beecher
would say, "Pond, never consult me about plans or explain details--if
you do, our friendship ceases." Beecher was glad to leave every detail
of travel to Pond, and Pond delighted in assuming sole charge. Beecher
never audited an account--he just took what Pond gave him and said
nothing. In this Beecher was very wise--he managed Pond and Pond never
knew it. Pond had a pride in paying Beecher as much as possible, and
found gratification in giving the money to Beecher instead of keeping
it. He was immensely proud of his charge and grew to have an idolatrous
regard for Beecher. Pond's brusk ways amused Beecher, and the Osawatomie
experience made him a sort of hero in Beecher's eyes.
Beecher took Pond at his true value, regarded his wrath as a child's
tantrum, and let him do most of the talking as well as the business. And
Beecher's great welling heart touched a side of Pond's nature that few
knew existed at all--a side that he masked with harshness; for, in spite
of his perversity, Pond had his virtues--he was simple as a child, and
so ingenuous that deception with him was impossible. He could not tell a
lie so you would not know it.
He served Beecher with a doglike loyalty, and an honesty beyond
suspicion. They were associated fourteen years, traveled together over
three hundred thousand miles, and Pond paid to Beecher two hundred forty
thousand dollars.
* * * * *
Beecher and Tilton became acquainted about the year Eighteen Hundred
Sixty. Beecher was at that time forty-seven years old; Tilton was
twenty-five. The influence of the older man over the younger was very
marked. Tilton became one of the most zealous workers in Plymouth
Church: he attended every service, took part in the Wednesday evening
prayer-meeting, helped take up the collection, and was a constant
recruiting force. Tilton was a reporter, and later an editorial writer
on different New York and Brooklyn dailies. Beecher's Sunday sermon
supplied Tilton the cue for his next day's leader. And be it said to his
honor, he usually gave due credit, and in various ways helped the cause
of Plymouth Church by booming the reputation of its pastor.
Tilton was possessed of a deal of intellectual nervous force. His mind
was receptive, active, versatile. His all-round newspaper experience had
given him an education, and he could express himself acceptably on any
theme. He wrote children's stories, threw off poetry in idle hours,
penned essays, skimmed the surface of philosophy, and dived occasionally
into theology. But his theology and his philosophy were strictly the
goods put out by Beecher, distilled through the Tilton cosmos. He
occasionally made addresses at social gatherings, and evolved into an
orator whose reputation extended to Staten Island.
Beecher's big, boyish heart went out to this bright and intelligent
young man--they were much in each other's company. People said they
looked alike; although one was tall and slender and the other was
inclined to be stout. Beecher wore his hair long, and now Tilton wore
his long, too. Beecher affected a wide-brimmed slouch-hat; Tilton wore
one of similar style, with brim a trifle wider. Beecher wore a large,
blue cloak; Tilton wrapped himself 'round with a cloak one shade more
ultramarine than Beecher's.
Tilton's wife was very much like Tilton--both were intellectual,
nervous, artistic. They were so much alike that they give us a hint of
what a hell this world would be if all mankind were made in one mold.
But there was this difference between them: Mrs. Tilton was proud, while
Tilton was vain. They were only civil toward each other because they had
vowed they would be. They did not throw crockery, because to do so would
have been bad form.
Beecher was a great joker--hilarious, laughing, and both witty and
humorous. I was going to say he was wise, but that isn't the word.
Tilton lacked wit--he never bubbled except as a matter of duty. Both Mr.
and Mrs. Tilton greatly enjoyed the society of Beecher, for, besides
being a great intellectual force, his presence was an antiseptic 'gainst
jaundice and introspection. And Beecher loved them both, because they
loved him, and because he loved everybody. They supplied him a foil for
his wit, a receptacle for his overflow of spirit, a flint on which to
strike his steel. Mrs. Tilton admired Beecher a little more than her
husband did--she was a woman. Tilton was glad that his wife liked
Beecher--it brought Beecher to his house; and if Beecher admired
Tilton's wife--why, was not this a proof that Tilton and Beecher were
alike? I guess so! Mrs. Tilton was musical, artistic, keen of brain,
emotional, with all a fine-fibered woman's longings, hopes and ideals.
So matters went drifting on the tide, and the years went by, as the
years will.
Mrs. Tilton became a semi-invalid, the kind that doctors now treat with
hypophosphites, beef-iron-and-wine, cod-liver oil, and massage by the
right attendant. They call it congenital anemia--a scarcity of the red
corpuscle.
Some doctors there be who do not yet know that the emotions control the
secretions, and a perfect circulation is a matter of mind. Anyway, what
can the poor Galenite do in a case like this--his pills are powerless,
his potions inane! Tilton knew that his wife loved Beecher, and he also
fully realized that in this she was only carrying out a little of the
doctrine of freedom that he taught, and that he claimed for himself. For
a time Tilton was beautifully magnanimous. Occasionally Mrs. Tilton had
spells of complete prostration, when she thought she was going to die.
At such times her husband would send for Beecher to come and administer
extreme unction.
Instead of dying, the woman would get well.
After one such attack, Tilton taunted his wife with her quick recovery.
It was a taunt that pulled tight on the corners of his mouth; it was
lacking in playfulness. Beecher was present at the bedside of the
propped-up invalid. They turned on Tilton, did these two, and flayed him
with their agile wit and ready tongues. Tilton protested they were
wrong--he was not jealous--the idea!
But that afternoon he had his hair cut, and he discarded the slouch-hat
for one with a stiff brim.
It took six months for his hair to grow to a length sufficient to
indicate genius.
* * * * *
Beecher's great heart was wrung and stung by the tangle of events in
which he finally found himself plunged. That his love for Mrs. Tilton
was great there is no doubt, and for the wife with whom he had lived for
over a score of years he had a profound pity and regard. She had not
grown with him. Had she remained in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and married a
well-to-do grocer, all for her would have been well. Beecher belonged to
the world, and this his wife never knew: she thought she owned him. To
interest her and to make her shine before the world, certain literary
productions were put out with her name as author, on request of Robert
Bonner, but all this was a pathetic attempt by her husband to conceal
the truth of her mediocrity. She spied upon him, watched his mail,
turned his pockets, and did all the things no wife should do, lest
perchance she be punished by finding her suspicions true. Wives and
husbands must live by faith. The wife who is miserable until she makes
her husband "confess all" is never happy afterwards. Beecher could not
pour out his soul to his wife--he had to watch her mood and dole out to
her the platitudes she could digest--never with her did he reach
abandon. But the wife strove to do her duty--she was a good housekeeper,
economical and industrious, and her very virtues proved a source of
exasperation to her husband--he could not hate her.
It was Mrs. Beecher herself who first discovered the relationship
existing between her husband and Mrs. Tilton. She accused her husband,
and he made no denial--he offered her her liberty. But this she did not
want. Beecher promised to break with Mrs. Tilton. They parted--parted
forever in sweet sorrow.
And the next week they met again.
The greater the man before the public, the more he outpours himself, the
more his need for mothering in the quiet of his home. All things are
equalized, and with the strength of the sublime, spiritual nature goes
the weakness of a child. Beecher was an undeveloped boy to the day of
his death.
Beecher at one time had a great desire to stand square before the world.
Major Pond, on Beecher's request, went to Mrs. Beecher and begged her to
sue for a divorce. At the same time Tilton was asked to secure a divorce
from his wife. When all parties were free, Beecher would marry Mrs.
Tilton and face the world an honest man--nothing to hide--right out
under the clear, blue sky, blown upon by the free winds of heaven!
This was his heart's desire.
But all negotiations failed. Mrs. Beecher would not give up her husband,
and Tilton was too intent on revenge--and cash--to even consider the
matter. Then came the crash.
* * * * *
Tilton sued Beecher for one hundred thousand dollars' damages for
alienating his wife's affection. It took five months to try the case.
The best legal talent in the land was engaged. The jury disagreed and
the case was not tried again.
Had Mrs. Beecher applied for a divorce on statutory grounds, no court
would have denied her prayer. In actions for divorce, guilt does not
have to be proved--it is assumed. But when one man sues another for
money damages, the rulings are drawn finer and matters must be proved.
That is where Tilton failed in his lawsuit.
At the trial, Beecher perjured himself like a gentleman to protect Mrs.
Tilton; Mrs. Tilton waived the truth for Beecher's benefit; and Mrs.
Beecher swore black was white, because she did not want to lose her
husband. Such a precious trinity of prevaricators is very seldom seen in
a courtroom, a place where liars much do congregate. Judge and jury knew
they lied and respected them the more, for down in the hearts of all men
is a feeling that the love-affairs of a man and a woman are sacred
themes, and a bulwark of lies to protect the holy of holies is ever
justifiable.
Tilton was the one person who told the truth, and he was universally
execrated for it. Love does not leave a person without reason. And there
is something in the thought of money as payment to a man for a woman's
love that is against nature.
Tilton lost the woman's love, and he would balm his lacerated heart with
lucre! Money? God help us--a man should earn money. We sometimes hear of
men who subsist on women's shame; but what shall we say of a man who
would turn parasite and live in luxury on a woman's love--and this woman
by him now spurned and scorned! The faults and frailties of men and
women caught in the swirl of circumstances are not without excuse, but
the cold plottings to punish them and the desire to thrive by their
faults are hideous.
The worst about a double life is not its immorality--it is that the
relationship makes a man a liar. The universe is not planned for
duplicity--all the energy we have is needed in our business, and he who
starts out on the pathway of untruth finds himself treading upon
brambles and nettles which close behind him and make return impossible.
The further he goes the worse the jungle of poison-oak and ivy, which at
last circles him round in strangling embrace. He who escapes the clutch
of a life of falsehood is as one in a million. Victor Hugo has pictured
the situation when he tells of the man whose feet are caught in the bed
of bird-lime. He attempts to jump out, but only sinks deeper--he
flounders, calls for help, and puts forth all his strength. He is up to
his knees--to his hips--his waist--his neck, and at last only hands are
seen reaching up in mute appeal to heaven. But the heavens are as
brass, and soon where there was once a man is only the dumb indifference
of Nature.
The only safe course is the open road of truth. Lies once begun, pile
up; and lies require lies to bolster them.
Mrs. Tilton had made a written confession to her husband, but this she
repudiated in court, declaring it was given "in terrorem." Now she had
only words of praise and vindication for Beecher.
Mrs. Beecher sat by her husband's side all through the long trial. For a
man to leave the woman with whom he has lived a lifetime, and who is the
mother of his children, is out of the question. What if she does lack
intellect and spirituality! He has endured her; aye! he has even been
happy with her at times--the relationship has been endurable--'twere
imbecility, and death for both, to break it.
Beecher and his wife would stand together.
Mrs. Tilton's lips had been sanctified by love, and were sealed, though
her heart did break.
The jury stood nine for Beecher and three against. Major Pond, the
astute, construed this into a vindication--Beecher was not guilty!
The first lecture after the trial was given at Alexandria Bay. Pond had
sold out for five hundred dollars. Beecher said it was rank robbery--no
one would be there. The lecture was to be in the grove at three o'clock
in the afternoon. In the forenoon, boats were seen coming from east and
west and north--excursion-boats laden with pilgrims; sailboats,
rowboats, skiffs, and even birch-bark canoes bearing red men. The people
came also in carts and wagons, and on horseback. An audience of five
thousand confronted the lecturer.
The man who had planned the affair had banked on his knowledge of
humanity--the people wanted to see and hear the individual who had been
whipped naked at the cart's tail, and who still lived to face the world
smilingly, bravely, undauntedly.
Major Pond was paid the five hundred dollars as agreed. The enterprise
had netted its manager over a thousand dollars--he was a rich man
anyway--things had turned out as he had prophesied, and in the
exuberance of his success he that night handed Mr. Beecher a check for
two hundred fifty dollars, saying, "This is for you with my love--it is
outside of any arrangement made with Major Pond." After they had retired
to their rooms, Beecher handed the check to Pond, and said, as his blue
eyes filled with tears, "Major, you know what to do with this?" And
Major Pond said, "Yes."
Tilton went to Europe, leaving his family behind. But Major Pond made it
his business to see that Mrs. Tilton wanted for nothing that money could
buy. Beecher never saw Mrs. Tilton, to converse with her, again. She
outlived him a dozen years. On her deathbed she confessed to her sister
that her denials as to her relations with Beecher were untrue. "He loved
me," she said; "he loved me, and I would have been less than woman had
I not loved him. This love will be my passport to Paradise--God
understands." And so she died.
* * * * *
Tilton was by nature an unsuccessful man. He was proudly aristocratic,
lordly, dignified, jealous, mentally wiggling and spiritually jiggling.
His career was like that of a race-horse which makes a record faster
than he can ever attain again, and thus is forever barred from all
slow-paced competitions. Tilton aspired to be a novelist, an essayist, a
poet, an orator. His performances in each of these lines, unfortunately,
were not bad enough to damn him; and his work done in fair weather was
so much better than he could do in foul that he was caught by the
undertow. And as for doing what Adirondack Murray did--get right down to
hardpan and wash dishes in a dishpan--he couldn't do it. Like an Indian,
he would starve before he would work--and he came near it, gaining a
garret-living, teaching languages and doing hack literary work in Paris,
where he went to escape the accumulation of contempt that came his way
just after the great Beecher trial.
Before this, Tilton started out to star the country as a lecturer. He
evidently thought he could climb to popularity over the wreck of Henry
Ward Beecher. Even had he wrecked Beecher completely, it is very likely
he would have gone down in the swirl, and become literary flotsam and
jetsam just the same.
Tilton had failed to down his man, and men who are failures do not draw
on the lecture platform. The auditor has failure enough at home, God
knows! and what he wants when he lays down good money for a
lecture-ticket is to annex himself to a success.
Tilton's lecture was called, "The Problem of Life"--a title which had
the advantage of allowing the speaker to say anything he wished to say
on any subject and still not violate the unities. I heard Tilton give
this lecture twice, and it was given from start to finish in exactly the
same way. It contained much learning--had flights of eloquence, bursts
of bathos, puffs of pathos, but not a smile in the whole hour and a
half. It was faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead
perfection--no more. It was so perfect that some people thought it
great. The man was an actor and had what is called platform presence. He
would walk on the stage, carrying his big, blue cloak over his arm, his
slouch-hat in his hand--for he clung to these Beecher properties to the
last, even claiming that Beecher was encroaching on his preserve in
wearing them.
He would bow as stiffly and solemnly as a new-made judge. Then he would
toss the cloak on a convenient sofa, place the big hat on top of it, and
come down to the footlights, deliberately removing his yellow kid
gloves. There was no introduction--he was the whole show and brooked no
competition. He would begin talking as he removed the gloves; he would
get one glove off and hold it in the other hand, seemingly lost in his
speech. From time to time he would emphasize his remarks by beating the
palm of his gloved hand with the loose glove. By the time the lecture
was half over, both gloves would be lying on the table; unlike the
performance of Sir Edwin Arnold, who, during his readings, always wore
one white kid glove and carried its mate in the gloved hand from
beginning to end.
Theodore Tilton's lectures were consummate art, done by a handsome,
graceful and cultured man in a red necktie, but they did not carry
enough caloric to make them go. They seemed to lack vibrations. Art
without a message is for the people who love art for art's sake, and God
does not care much for these, otherwise he would not have made so few of
them.
* * * * *
Lyman Abbott sums up his estimate of the worth of his lifelong friend
and literary associate, Henry Ward Beecher, in the following words:
"It was in the pulpit that Beecher was seen at his best. His
mastery of the English tongue, his dramatic power, his instinctive
art of impersonation, which had become a second nature, his vivid
imagination, his breadth of intellectual view, the catholicity of
his sympathies, his passionate enthusiasm, which made for the
moment his immediate theme seem to him the one theme of
transcendent importance, his quaint humor alternating with genuine
pathos, and above all his simple and singularly unaffected
devotional nature, made him as a preacher without a peer in his own
time and country. His favorite theme was love: love to man was to
him the fulfilment of all law; love of God was the essence of all
Christianity. Retaining to the day of his death the forms and
phrases of the New England theology in which he had been reared, he
poured into them a new meaning and gave to them a new significance.
"He probably did more than any other man in America to lead the
Puritan churches from a faith which regarded God as a moral
governor, the Bible as a book of laws, and religion as obedience to
a conscience, to a faith which regards God as a father, the Bible
as a book of counsels, and religion as a life of liberty in love."
As a sample of Beecher's eloquence, this extract from his sermon on the
death of Lincoln reveals his quality as well perhaps as anything he ever
said:
The joy of the Nation came upon us suddenly, with such a surge as
no words can describe. Men laughed, embraced one another, sang and
prayed, and many could only weep for gladness.
In one short hour, joy had no pulse. The sorrow was so terrible
that it stunned sensibility. The first feeling was the least, and
men wanted to get strength to feel. Other griefs belong always to
some one in chief, but this belonged to all. Men walked for hours
as though a corpse lay in their houses. The city forgot to roar.
Never did so many hearts in so brief a time touch two such
boundless feelings. It was the uttermost of joy and the uttermost
of sorrow--noon and midnight without a space between. We should not
mourn, however, because the departure of the President was so
sudden. When one is prepared to die, the suddenness of death is a
blessing. They that are taken awake and watching, as the bridegroom
dressed for the wedding, and not those who die in pain and stupor,
are blessed. Neither should we mourn the manner of his death. The
soldier prays that he may die by the shot of the enemy in the hour
of victory, and it was meet that he should be joined in a common
experience in death with the brave men to whom he had been joined
in all his sympathy and life.
This blow was but the expiring rebellion. Epitomized in this foul
act we find the whole nature and disposition of slavery. It is fit
that its expiring blow should be such as to take away from men the
last forbearance, the last pity, and fire the soul with invincible
determination that the breeding system of such mischiefs and
monsters shall be forever and utterly destroyed. We needed not that
he should put on paper that he believed in slavery, who, with
treason, with murder, with cruelty infernal, hovered round that
majestic man to destroy his life. He was himself the lifelong sting
with which Slavery struck at Liberty, and he carried the poison
that belonged to Slavery; and as long as this Nation lasts it will
never be forgotten that we have had one Martyr-President--never,
never while time lasts, while heaven lasts, while hell rocks and
groans, will it be forgotten that Slavery by its minions slew him,
and in slaying him made manifest its whole nature and tendency.
This blow was aimed at the life of the Government. Some murders
there have been that admitted shades of palliation, but not such a
one as this--without provocation, without reason, without
temptation--sprung from the fury of a heart cankered to all that is
pure and just.
The blow has failed of its object. The Government stands more solid
today than any pyramid of Egypt. Men love liberty and hate slavery
today more than ever before. How naturally, how easily, the
Government passed into the hands of the new President, and I avow
my belief that he will be found a man true to every instinct of
liberty, true to the whole trust that is imposed in him, vigilant
of the Constitution, careful of the laws, wise for liberty: in that
he himself for his life long, has known what it is to suffer from
the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from the bitter
experience of his own life. Even he that sleeps has by this event
been clothed with new influence. His simple and weighty words will
be gathered like those of Washington, and quoted by those who, were
he alive, would refuse to listen. Men will receive a new access to
patriotism. I swear you on the altar of his memory to be more
faithful to that country for which he perished. We will, as we
follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which
he warred, and which in vanquishing him has made him a martyr and
conqueror. I swear you by the memory of this martyr to hate slavery
with an unabatable hatred, and to pursue it. We will admire the
firmness of this man in justice, his inflexible conscience for the
right, his gentleness and moderation of spirit, which not all the
hate of party could turn to bitterness. And I swear you to follow
his justice, his moderation, his mercy. How can I speak to that
twilight million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of
God, and whom God sent before them to lead them out of the house of
bondage? O thou Shepherd of Israel, Thou that didst comfort Thy
people of old, to Thy care we commit these helpless and
long-wronged and grieved.
And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than one
alive. The Nation rises up at every stage of his coming; cities and
States are his pall-bearers, and the cannon beat the hours in
solemn progression; dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is
Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David?
Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man
from among the people. Behold! we return him to you a mighty
conqueror; not thine any more, but the Nation's--not ours, but the
world's. Give him place, O ye prairies! in the midst of this great
continent shall rest a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim
to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds
that move over mighty spaces of the West, chant his requiem! Ye
people, behold the martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words,
pleads for fidelity, for law, for Liberty!