ECCENTRICITIES OF GENIUS
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
[Illustration:
_Faithfully Yours
J. B. Pond_
]
ECCENTRICITIES
OF GENIUS
[Illustration: MEMORIES OF
FAMOUS MEN
AND WOMEN OF
THE PLATFORM
AND STAGE]
BY
MAJOR J. B. POND
WITH 91 PORTRAITS
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY, NEW YORK
To
GEORGE R. PECK.
A TRUE FRIEND,
A TRUE GENTLEMAN,
A GREAT LAWYER,
AND MY IDEAL ORATOR,
I Dedicate this Book.
J. B. POND.
CONTENTS
ORATORS
PAGE
The Triumvirate of Lecture Kings, 1
John B. Gough, 3
Wendell Phillips, 7
William Lloyd Garrison, 13
Charles Sumner, 14
Chauncey M. Depew, 17
Gen. Horace Porter, 23
Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, 27
Frederick Douglass, 29
Booker T. Washington, 31
PULPIT ORATORS
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, 37
Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott, 77
Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, 83
Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, 85
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, 91
Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon, 112
Rt. Rev. Bishop Henry C. Potter, 121
Very Rev. S. Reynolds Hole, 122
Rt. Rev. Dr. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, 130
Very Rev. Charles William Stubbs, D.D., 132
WOMEN LECTURERS AND SINGERS
Susan B. Anthony, 144
Julia Ward Howe, 147
Anna E. Dickinson, 152
Mary Livermore, 155
Lucy Stone, 161
Clara Louise Kellogg, 163
Emma Abbott, 166
Helen Potter, 170
Annie Grey, 172
Maud Ballington Booth, 177
Mary Proctor, 178
HUMORISTS
Josh Billings, 185
Thomas Nast, 188
Petroleum V. Nasby, 192
Samuel L. Clemens, 197
Mark Twain and George W. Cable, 231
Mark Twain, Nasby, and Josh Billings, 232
Paul Blouet (Max O’Rell), 234
Bill Nye, 237
James Whitcomb Riley, 241
EXPLORERS, TRAVELLERS, AND WAR CORRESPONDENTS
Sir Henry M. Stanley, 263
George Kennan, 289
Frederick Villiers, 291
Dr. Frederick A. Cook, 293
Robert E. Peary, 295
Capt. Joshua Slocum, 299
John L. Stoddard, 302
ACTORS AND DRAMATIC CRITICS
Joseph Jefferson, 305
William Winter, 306
Sir Henry Irving, 312
Charlotte Cushman, 315
Ellen Terry, 319
LITERARY LECTURERS
Matthew Arnold, 323
John Boyle O’Reilly, 326
Hamilton W. Mabie, 329
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 330
William Dean Howells, 333
George William Curtis, 341
MISCELLANEOUS
Henry Watterson, 345
The Hon. William Parsons, 347
William E. Gladstone, 348
P. T. Barnum, 350
George H. Daniels, 355
Ed. Heron-Allen, 367
Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, 361
Elbert Hubbard, 368
AUTHOR READERS AND LECTURERS
Sir Edwin Arnold, 375
The Rev. Dr. John Watson (“Ian Maclaren”), 405
Hall Caine, 452
F. Marion Crawford, 455
Gen. Lew Wallace, 465
Israel Zangwill, 469
William Webster Ellsworth, 474
Anthony Hope Hawkins, 477
George W. Cable, 490
Walt Whitman, 497
Dr. A. Conan Doyle, 503
Joaquin Miller, 510
Alexander Black, 512
Ernest Seton-Thompson, 515
William Henry Drummond, D.D., 519
John Fox, Jr., 523
Thomas Nelson Page, 521
Rudyard Kipling, 525
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE LYCEUM FIELD
James Redpath, 533
The Lyceum, 539
Ole Bull, 545
Index, 555
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
J. B. Pond, _Frontispiece_
PAGE
Ann Eliza Young, xxi
John B. Gough, 2
Wendell Phillips, 7
William Lloyd Garrison, 13
Charles Sumner, 14
Chauncey M. Depew, 17
Gen. Horace Porter, 23
Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, 27
Frederick Douglass, 29
Booker T. Washington, 31
Henry Ward Beecher, 37, 41
Lyman Abbott, 77
Newell Dwight Hillis, 83
Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, 85
T. DeWitt Talmage, 91
Charles H. Spurgeon, 112
Rt. Rev. Henry C. Potter, 121
Very Rev. S. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, 122
Dr. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, 130
Very Reverend Charles William Stubbs, D.D., Dean of Ely, 132
Susan B. Anthony, 144
Julia Ward Howe, 147
Anna E. Dickinson, 152
Mary A. Livermore, 154
Miss Lucy Stone, 161
Clara Louise Kellogg, 163
Emma Abbott, 167
Miss Helen Potter’s Impersonation of John B. Gough, 170
Annie Gray, 172
Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth, 177
Miss Mary Proctor, 178
Josh Billings, 185
Thomas Nast, 188
Petroleum V. Nasby, 192
Mark Twain, 197
Keeping the Letter of the Contract, 208
The Last Snapshot Before the _Warrimoo_ Sailed, 224
Mark Twain and George W. Cable, 231
Mark Twain, Nasby, and Josh Billings, 232
Max O’Rell (Paul Blouet), 234
Nye and Riley, 237
The Nye-Riley Program, with Mr. Riley’s Decorations, 242
Henry M. Stanley, 263
George Kennan, 289
Frederick Villiers, 291
Dr. Frederick A. Cook, 293
Robert E. Peary, 295
Mrs. Peary, 297
Capt. Joshua Slocum, 299
John L. Stoddard, 302
Joseph Jefferson, 305
William Winter, 306
Sir Henry Irving, 312
Miss Charlotte Cushman, 315
Miss Ellen Terry, 319
Matthew Arnold, 323
John Boyle O’Reilly, 326
Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, 329
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 330
William Dean Howells, 333
George William Curtis, 341
Henry Watterson, 345
Hon. William Parsons, 347
William E. Gladstone, 348
P. T. Barnum, 350
Mr. George H. Daniels, 355
Mr. Ed. Heron-Allen, 357
Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, 361
Elbert Hubbard, 368
Sir Edwin Arnold, 375
Dr. John Watson (“Ian Maclaren”), 405
Hall Caine, 452
F. Marion Crawford, 455
Gen. Lew Wallace, 465
Israel Zangwill, 469
William Webster Ellsworth, 474
Anthony Hope Hawkins, 477
George W. Cable, 490
Walt Whitman, 497
A. Conan Doyle, 503
Joaquin Miller, 510
Alexander Black, 512
Ernest Seton-Thompson, 515
William Henry Drummond, D.D., 519
Thomas Nelson Page, 521
John Fox. Jr., 523
Rudyard Kipling, 525
James Redpath, 533
Ole Bull and His Wife, 545
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
I want to acknowledge, with thanks, the kind permission of _The
Cosmopolitan Magazine_ and _The Saturday Evening Post_ to reprint in
this book parts of articles originally published in those periodicals;
also the kind permission of the photographers, Rockwood and Falk, of New
York; Gutekunst, of Philadelphia; Wood, of Chicago; Taber, of San
Francisco; Elliott & Fry, Lombardi & Co., Alfred A. Ellis, Barraud, and
Window & Grove, of London, to reproduce several of their copyrighted
photographs for this book.
J. B. POND.
PREFACE
There are over 3,000 prefaces in my library. None of them suit me. They
are all better and more appropriate than I can write, so I extract from
different ones as many as I think are needed for this book of mine.
* * * * *
“If the perusal of these pages should cheer some fainting wanderer on
the world’s highway, and lead him far from the haunts of evil, by the
still waters of temperance, my labor will have been well
repaid.”--_Autobiography and Personal Recollections of John B. Gough._
“The author has taken the liberty to dedicate this book to certain
enterprising gentlemen in London, who have displayed their devotion to a
sentiment now widely prevailing in the music halls, by republishing an
American book without solicitation on the author’s part.”--_Mr, Dooley,
“In the Hearts of His Countrymen.”_
“Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in
this book. Information seems to stew out of me naturally, like the
precious ottar of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it seems to me that
I would give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The
more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak
wisdom. Therefore, I only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader,
not justification.”--_“Roughing It,” Mark Twain._
“A blaze of splendor is the pictorial part of this book, an art gallery
on the wing. You need not visit New York, or Dresden, or Berlin, or
Rome, to see the masterpieces, for the best part of them is now, my dear
reader, _between your forefinger and thumb_! The publishers of this book
have ransacked the earth for these three, hundred and thirteen gems
(313).”
“_GREAT is the responsibility!_ of the publishing a book, especially in
_this_ case where the publishers, a MONTH BEFORE THE BOOK IS PUBLISHED!
HAVE SOLD! 250,000 COPIES THEREOF! An unprecedented occurrence in the
history of LITERATURE!” (the capitals, italics, and astonishers are
mine.--J. B. P.).--_“The Pathway of Life,” Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage._
“It is not to illustrate any heroic achievements of a man, but to
vindicate a just and beneficent principle, in its application to the
whole human family, by letting in a light of truth upon a system
esteemed by some as a blessing, and by others as a curse and a
crime.”--_“My Bondage and Freedom,” Frederick Douglass._
* * * * *
“Look in the hearts of average men;
The tragedies of doom are there,
And comedies of glad delight,
And hopeless wailings of despair,
And hopes and sorrows infinite--
Shall not a poet now and then
Look in the hearts of average men?”
--_“Waifs from Wild Meadows,” Sam Walter Foss._
FIRST QUESTION ANSWERED.
My friends often ask how I got into the Lyceum business. I drifted into
it, the same as most people do who have to find some place for which
they are fitted, or try to. It was my fortune to be raised on the
frontier. My father was one of the pioneers of Wisconsin. He was an
abolitionist. The Bible and the New York “_Trybune_,” not _Tribune_,
were almost synonymous in our family, and about the only library we had.
Wisconsin was a sort of refuge for the fugitive slave, and my father
kept an underground station. Many a night I have slept out on the
prairie with some runaway slaves, with father and the neighbors
protecting them against the United States marshal. I found myself, when
eighteen years of age, carrying a Sharp’s rifle in 1856 with John Brown,
in Kansas.
I was between thirteen and fourteen when, after my father had given me a
severe drubbing for telling a lie, which was not a lie, I ran away.
Then I was in Fond du Lac. I remember the wooden sidewalks, and seeing
boys wearing shoes in the summer time. How I pitied them; I thought it
dreadful! I was looking at the wonder scenes, gazing with intense
interest into the shop windows. All of a sudden I heard a noise in a
shop. I looked in. It was a printing office. It was so wonderful I
ventured to step inside the door. Just then the man working the press
(who proved to be the foreman) said to me, “Well, what do you want?”
I replied, “Nothing,” and stepped back.
He said, “Don’t you want to learn the trade?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
“Don’t you want to be a printer’s devil?”
At that I was still more frightened. He said:
“You see the editor in that sanctum--” Just then a man came to the door
from an adjoining room and spoke very gently to me. _I never forgot
that._
He said, “I want an apprentice to learn the printer’s trade. Would you
like to try? I will give you $25 for the first year, $30 for the second,
and $50 for the third.” I agreed.
“You go in there and roll that press,” said the foreman.
It seems the regular “devil” had had an altercation with the foreman and
left, and one of the journeyman printers was rolling a handbill, while a
man outside with his sulky and horse was waiting for it, and that poster
I can always recall. It was a rude cut of a stallion, with black letter
announcements relating thereto. That beautiful clean white paper and the
glossy black ink startled me. I never got over it. I have been using
black ink and white paper ever since.
To make a long story short, I was behind that press and covered with
printers’ ink in a very few minutes. After the handbill was printed, the
foreman lifted the form, called me to his side of the press, and said:
“Take this form to that sink and wash it.”
I started, and right in front of the sink it seems a little of the lye
had accumulated and the floor was slippery. I slipped and down I went.
The chase went over my head and the type flew in all directions. The
foreman said:
“There! by thunder, you leave!”
The editor stepped out of the sanctum and said,
“What’s the matter?”
“He’s pied that form,” replied the foreman.
“Did you show him how to wash it?” asked the editor.
“He leaves, or I do,” said the foreman.
“You can leave if you want,” said the editor.
Probably the reader can imagine my feelings at having such a friend to
take my part.
So the foreman left, and I did the best I could, picking up the type
until it was about time to quit, when the editor told me to come with
him to his house.
I went there and looked in; at first I did not dare enter. There was
the first upholstered furniture I had ever seen, a white tablecloth,
glass tumblers and napkins--such things I had never seen. There were
figures on the carpet. Two beautifully dressed ladies came downstairs
and took seats at the table directly opposite me. I must have turned
crimson. I was completely dazed by their beauty and so embarrassed I
must have betrayed my feelings. I was glad my feet were under the table,
for I was barefooted. I went through some motions, but ate no supper.
Next morning I was to be at the office, open it, and have it swept by
seven o’clock. I had the key in my pocket and it fairly burned there, so
anxious was I to be at my new work and to turn that key in the lock.
I was at the office before six to sweep it out. I hunted around and
found a broom and began sweeping everything toward the door. I swept the
sanctum, a corner partitioned off from the main room, of the printing
office. I dared not pick up the loose exchanges lying on the floor, but
swept around them, and had almost a winrow of dirt moved up to the door,
amid clouds of dust, when Walker Rouse, the elder apprentice, came in
and exclaimed:
“Whew, what a dust! Why, you haven’t sprinkled before sweeping!”
I did not know what he meant until he got the sprinkling pot and showed
me how to sprinkle the floor, and then how to dust the bank and cases
and the editor’s sanctum, pick up and fold the exchanges, and tidy up
his desk. All this Walker showed me how to do by doing it for me. At
seven o’clock the printers came around. The editor came in at eight.
“Boy,” he said, “what is your name?”
“James--James Pond.”
“James, your office is looking fine. You are beginning well.”
And so it has been going ever since. I think I have had credit a great
many times for what somebody else has done.
The Fountain City _Herald_ survived but a few months. I went from Fond
du Lac to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where I obtained work on the Oshkosh
_Democrat_, served my time as an apprentice, and then went to Madison,
Wisconsin, and worked as a journeyman. In the summer of 1856, with
Charles G. Finney, Jr. (son of the president of Oberlin College), I
found myself in Kansas, working on _The Herald of Freedom_, at Lawrence;
a little later carrying a Sharp’s rifle (“Beecher Bible”) with old John
Brown. In the fall I went to St. Louis, to work during the winter. Then
back to Wisconsin.
In 1873, after the war and emancipation of the slaves, I found myself
associated with the first gentile paper in Utah--_The Salt Lake
Tribune_. About that time the railroad had reached Zion, and there was a
tremendous influx of gentiles. We had territorial officers who could not
be used by the Mormons, and there was considerable excitement. President
Brigham Young and several Mormon leaders were put under arrest. There
were so many gentiles that they could not possibly find accommodations
at the hotels, and Brigham Young proclaimed to his people that they
could open their houses and receive them as boarders, and that a fair
price for their board--not exorbitant, but a fair price--should be
charged. He thought three dollars a week a good price for board. He
admonished his people that they must not forget that they were all
missionaries.
It happened that a Methodist minister (the Rev. C. C. Stratton) and his
wife obtained board with Ann Eliza Young, then Brigham Young’s last and
nineteenth wife, who was keeping house by herself in a small cottage,
not far from the Lion House. Ann Eliza was born in Mormonism and reared
in Utah by her mother, who was an educated woman and one of the first
converts of Joseph Smith, living in Nauvoo, Ill., for several years
before they migrated to Utah. Ann Eliza was a very intelligent woman,
but her whole life was circumscribed by Mormonism. She had never
attended any other church, and never read any other literature than
Mormon books. She was a conscientious woman. It was through this
Methodist minister and his wife that she apostatized.
One evening it was arranged that Ann Eliza should tell her story to the
guests of the hotel (the Walker House), where she had taken refuge under
the protection of the officials of the territory--Governor Woods and
Chief Justice McKean, who lived there. I was there also and had
something to do with making the arrangements. She did give her
story--the most interesting and thrilling story that anybody ever heard.
That speech was telegraphed to the Associated Press, and the next day
came telegrams from theatrical managers, showmen, and speculators from
all parts of the country. One was from P. T. Barnum and another from
James Redpath, the owner of the Lyceum Bureau, in Boston, whom I had met
and known in Kansas in 1856. It asked her to lecture.
[Illustration]
Our people decided that if Ann Eliza could tell that story in
Washington, we would get some attention and legislation. Up to that time
we had been able to get little attention and no legislation. I happened
to be available and went to Washington with her. I made a proposition
that if she would go on a lecture tour I would manage it. She accepted
it. That’s where I first became a manager.
Although she was to speak first in Washington, they were determined to
hear her in Laramie and Denver en route. I got the schoolroom in
Laramie, charged $1.50 a ticket, and sold four hundred tickets, and took
in $600 that evening. Next, in Denver, she spoke in the New Baptist
Church, the largest auditorium in the city at that time. I remember the
night she was to appear in Denver I went to the Inter-Ocean Hotel where
she boarded, to escort her to the church, and did not know her. She was
dressed up, and--well, she looked very pretty. The leading Methodist
minister--she had been converted by a Methodist, and they claimed
her--introduced her to one of the largest audiences ever assembled in
Denver.
Armed with letters of introduction to Speaker James G. Blaine, President
U. S. Grant, and many members of Congress, we reached Washington, where
we got into the Speaker’s room and she sent her card to Speaker Blaine.
He was in the speaker’s chair. He came out and shook hands with her and
was half tempted to be a little bit funny and jocose, but he discovered
at once that she was a lady, a woman with a cause, and an earnest one,
and in a moment his attention was riveted. He did not go back to his
chair but sent word to somebody else to take his place, and in a few
minutes _somebody_ else came into the speaker’s room, and in not over
twenty minutes that room was packed with members of Congress. There was
a stampede on the floor, and she held an ovation for two hours.
Everybody wanted to see and hear her. Two days after that she did tell
her story in Washington. Forty-eight hours later the Poland bill for the
relief of the oppressed in Utah was a law.
I will say now that in all my experience I have never found so eloquent,
so interesting, so earnest a talker. I have heard a great many, too. She
had a cause. She was in dead earnest. She could sway audiences with her
eloquence. She was able in two years from that time to leave Utah with
her children and her family, and she never returned.
I took a desk in Mr. Redpath’s office in Boston and booked Mrs. Young’s
time in New England and the Eastern States, while, with an Eastern lady
as chaperone, she travelled and lectured nightly to as large audiences
as were being drawn by the most popular lecturers of that period, such
as Gough, Phillips, Anna Dickinson, and Mary A. Livermore. At the end of
the season she had earned over $20,000.
I have frequently visited Utah on tours with some of my celebrities, and
have found amongst the Mormon people as intelligent and interested
listeners as are to be found in any other part of the United States. I
do not believe there is a more critical or appreciative public in
America. From the time of my first visit to Utah I have known and
respected the Mormon people, and some of the best friends I now have are
among them. I have always made it a rule to make special terms and
prices for that public because of its universal intelligence and
appreciation.
In the spring of 1899, it was my privilege to place F. Marion Crawford
with the Brigham Young Normal College at Provo, where I found over six
hundred young men and maidens studying to become teachers and
missionaries for the Mormon church. The president of that college, Mr.
Cluff, I had known when a boy living near the spot where the college now
stands. His uncle, David Cluff, was a customer of mine in 1868. He kept
a furniture store and was undertaker for the town of Provo. He had three
wives living under the same roof. Over his store he had an assembly hall
where the young people gathered for dancing, theatricals, and other
amusements. I attended one of these dances while a guest of Mr. Cluff
and was introduced to his wives and several of his children, a cousin of
whom is now president of this great collegiate institution. Mr. Cluff,
senior, had come originally from Vermont. His first wife was also a New
England girl. I think that I was the only gentile in Provo that night. I
had driven forty miles by team from Salt Lake City the day before. I was
made to feel perfectly at home in this Mormon family and met with all
comforts of a home that reminded me of the old-time pioneer households
in Western New York and Wisconsin. When the party assembled in the ball
room, before the music started--the band was made up entirely of members
of the Cluff family--Mr. Cluff opened the proceedings with prayer, as is
the custom on all public occasions among the Mormons.
One of the faculty of the Brigham Young College, a lady, is Mrs. Susa
Young Gates, a daughter of Lucy and Brigham Young, one of the most
prominent women in Utah and editor of _The Young Woman’s Journal_ of
that State. I had never met Mrs. Gates until on this occasion, but she
has been one of my correspondents in Utah for a number of years. She is
well known as one of the leaders among women, and is identified with all
the discussions and movements for their progress in the United States. I
had thought favorably of trying to induce her to come East and lecture
to women’s clubs and associations. When we met, naturally the memory of
Ann Eliza, who was my first star, was still green in this community, and
she gently took me to task for having been opposed to her people and
religion. To show that Ann Eliza had inflicted an injury to the cause
and faith she believed in and followed, I submit the following extract
from a letter Mrs. Gates wrote to me while I was in California with Mr.
Crawford, shortly after leaving her:
* * * * *
“Major Pond--I like the frank and manly way in which you speak of the
unfortunate past and of your wish to help my people in the future. I
applied to you simply as the greatest manager on earth; and perhaps had
resolved that all transactions should be kept on the strictest
impersonal and business basis. But I became convinced after a few
conversations with you that you had played an unwitting part in the
great harm that Ann Eliza did my father and the whole people. I have
been closely observing you, Major, while you were studying me. And I
understand how with your generous and chivalrous disposition you could
champion the cause of one you esteemed at that time to be an oppressed
woman. But Ann Eliza was untruthful. She was a jealous and unscrupulous
woman! God forgive her and let Him deal with her. I have no bitterness
in my heart for her. I love my religion too well to hold enmity to any
one, however wilful and wicked they may be. My dear father was one of
the purest and most unselfish of men as well as one of the greatest; and
you, Major, who are such a lover of heroes, would revere my father more
and more if you would study him more. Yes, I accept in good faith your
candid offer, and will let God and the future prove if a Mormon’s
friendship is not as high and noble as that of any one on earth. My
husband was very favorably impressed with your whole-hearted generous
praise of all that you saw, and he stands with me in this offer to
‘smoke the pipe of peace.’”
* * * * *
It was while engaged in the Redpath Bureau in Boston, booking Ann
Eliza’s time, that I became enamored of the business, and a year later,
with Mr. George H. Hathaway, chief clerk of the bureau, bought out James
Redpath and assumed the management of that fine business. After four
years’ most pleasant partnership, Mr. Hathaway and I separated, he
retaining the Redpath Lyceum Bureau and its good name, and I moved to
New York and established a bureau of my own, put my sign in the window,
where it has remained twenty-two years and will probably stay as long as
I care to work.
I have endeavored to tell of the famous men and women, who have been
lyceum favorites, that I have known and managed since I began with Mr.
Hathaway in Boston in March, 1875, and most of whom, it has been my
pleasure to call my friends.
Since I started out as a journeyman printer in 1856, I have realized
that the best and most useful advice ever given to me was that of my
employer whom I was about to leave. In bidding me good-by, he said:
“Now, Jim, you are starting from this minute out into the world to look
after yourself. Let me give you some advice. Always associate with
people from whom you can learn something useful. The greater a man is,
the easier he is of approach. You can choose your companions from among
the very best, and a man is always known by the company he keeps. It is
much easier to ride than to carry a load.”
This advice I never forgot. It was worth more to me than any I ever had.
It has helped me always when I set out to try to secure some celebrity,
and has invariably proved true. I have never felt the slightest
hesitancy in approaching any famous man or woman, and it never took long
to ascertain whether the man was a gentleman or the woman a lady.
In preparing this book I have told of the people as I knew them, and
shall avoid any attempt to over-estimate or to belittle their genuine
characters.
ORATORS
ECCENTRICITIES OF GENIUS
THE TRIUMVIRATE OF LECTURE KINGS.
The great triumvirate of lecture kings consisted of Gough, Beecher, and
Wendell Phillips. Other men for a season, and sometimes for a few years,
were as popular as any of them, but it was a calcium-light popularity,
whereas the popularity of the “Big Three” endured for their entire
lives.
Phillips held his place the longest, beginning lyceum work about 1845,
and continuing it to his death nearly forty years later. Gough was the
most supremely popular--not the greatest of the three intellectually,
but most level to the largest number of the plain people. Beecher came
parallel with him and had a higher influence. His position during and
after the Civil War reached the altitude of world influence. His command
of the Plymouth pulpit was the most enormous mental leverage. Theodore
Parker said of it as early as 1856, that its “sounding board was the
Rocky Mountains”--the auditorium therefore was the continent. Beecher
touched the hearts of men; Gough held to the fear of the effects of
wrong-doing; Phillips, through the intellect, reached the conscience of
his generation. He was a name in Great Britain, a power in the Northern
States. Beecher was a power on both sides of the ocean, a person beloved
on all sides. Who shall name other men who have filled the last half of
the century with such enduring recognition?
[Illustration: JOHN B. GOUGH.]
John B. Gough deserves the title of King of the Lecture World, if
popularity be made the sole test, and only Mr. Beecher and Wendell
Phillips had any claim to contest the title with him, if eloquence--the
power to hold and charm audiences--be made the test.
Mr. Gough was a more popular lecturer for a longer term of years than
any other favorite of the lyceums. He was a born orator, with great
dramatic power. Men of greater culture but less natural ability used to
be fond of attributing his success to the supposed fact that he was the
“evangelical comedian,” that the unco’ good, whose religious prejudices
would not suffer them to go to the theatre, found a substitute in
listening to the comic stories and the dramatic delivery of Gough.
This theory does not suffice to explain the universal and long-continued
popularity of this great orator. He never faced an audience that he did
not capture and captivate; and not in the United States only, not in the
North only, where his popularity never wavered, but in the South, where
Yankees were not in favor, and in the Canadian Provinces, where they
were disliked, and in every part of England, Scotland, and Ireland as
well. He delighted not only all the intelligent audiences he addressed
in these six nations--for during most of his career our North and our
South were at heart two nations’ making with Canada three nations on our
continent, and the three distinct nationalities on the British Islands
making up the six--but he delighted all kinds and conditions of men. He
was at his best before an educated audience in an evangelical community.
But when he addressed a “mission” audience in North Street, Boston, or
in the Five Points in New York, he charmed the gamin and the poorest
classes who gathered there as much as he charmed the cultivated
assemblages in Music Hall, Boston, then admitted to be the finest
audiences that Boston and its suburbs could turn out.
Mr. Gough never asked a fee in his life. He left his remuneration to the
public who employed him. It rose year after year, beginning with less
than a dollar at times, until, when the bureau did his business for him,
it reached from $200, the lowest fee, to $500 a night. In the last years
of his life his income exceeded $30,000. He did more to promote the
temperance cause than any man who ever lived. It is strange, but it is a
fact, that although Gough never broke down in his life as an orator, and
never failed to capture his audience, yet he always had a mild sort of
stage-fright, which never went off until he began to speak.
To get time to master this fright was the reason why he always insisted
on being “introduced” to his audiences before he spoke, and he so
insisted even in places where the absurd custom had been abandoned for
years. When the chairman was introducing him, Mr. Gough was “bracing up”
to overcome his stage-fright. And let me say right here that the phrase
“bracing up” has two meanings; that the slanderous statements often
started against Mr. Gough, that he sometimes took a drink in secret,
were wholly and wickedly untrue. In his autobiography Mr. Gough has told
the true story of his fall, his conversion, and his one relapse, and he
has told it truthfully. He was absolutely and always, after his first
relapse, a total-abstinence man in creed and life. There never lived a
truer man.
For forty years he held the reputation as first in the land as an orator
and champion of temperance. He probably delivered more lectures than any
man who has lived in the present age. From a carefully kept record we
find that from 1842 to 1852 he lectured on an average of 300 times a
year, making 3,000 lectures. From 1862 to 1870 he averaged 260 times a
year, or 2,080 lectures on temperance. Of these, 1,160 were delivered in
Great Britain. After 1870 Mr. Gough lectured on miscellaneous subjects.
Each year he prepared a new lecture upon a fresh topic. Among the most
taking were: “Eloquence and Orators,” “Peculiar People,” “Fact and
Fiction,” “Habit,” “Curiosity,” “Circumstances,” “Will It Pay,” “Now
and Then,” “Night Scenes,” “Blunders,” which was his last. From 1861 to
the time of his death, February 11, 1886, he delivered 3,526 lectures,
making in all 9,600 addresses before 9,000,000 hearers.
Mr. Gough was a charming man personally: modest, unassuming,
kind-hearted, and sincere, always ready to help a worthy cause or a
needy friend. He was a zealous Christian, but he never obtruded his
religious belief offensively on others. One needed to see him in his
home to know what a devoted Christian he was.
John B. Gough was among the heroes of the nineteenth century. The
incalculable good he did to his fellow-men can never be known. It is no
idle statement when we say that he was the direct means, under God, of
raising tens of thousands from degradation to be law-abiding men and
women. It was my privilege, in 1879, to see in Mr. Gough’s library four
large books containing the names of over 140,000 men, women, and
children who, by his own personal efforts, had been induced to sign the
pledge.
It was the habit of John B. Gough, for forty years, to carry two
overcoats on his lecture tours. After his lectures he put both of them
on--the first, a light one, which he buttoned up tight, and the second,
a very heavy one, a sort of combination of heavy ulster and the
regulation overcoat.
His two-hour lecture was an unbroken succession of contortions and
antics that left him dripping with perspiration. It required all this
covering to protect his body from the air before he changed his wet
clothing for dry.
On his return to his hotel, Mrs. Gough was always in waiting with fresh
clothing. A valet at once set to work rubbing him down, exactly as is
the custom of grooming a racehorse at the end of the heat. After this
process he appeared apparently as fresh as ever. He would eat a bowl of
bread and milk, and always wanted an old-fashioned bowl.
Mrs. Gough was his constant companion, but did not attend the lectures.
During the last twelve years of their travel together she did not hear
him once.
Gough was a man of the people, the son of a workingman and himself a
workingman, self-educated but not what is technically called a scholar.
[Illustration: WENDELL PHILLIPS]
Wendell Phillips was the bluest of the blue blood of New England. His
forefather came over in the _Arabella_, the vessel that followed the
_Mayflower_, and there was a clergyman in every generation from the
first immigrant to Phillips himself. They were always prominent people.
Phillips studied for the law and there was a brilliant career open for
him. When he was at college, he showed no sympathy with any radical
movement. On the contrary, he was a member of an exclusive set known as
The Gentlemen’s Club, and used to laugh at Sumner for taking Garrison’s
_Liberator_. But he happened one day to attend a meeting in Faneuil
Hall, and heard the Attorney General of the State vindicate the
murderers of Lovejoy, in Illinois, and say that Lovejoy died as the fool
dieth. Young Phillips sprang to his feet at once and delivered a short
speech which placed him at the head of the orators of New England, a
position he kept until he lay still in death. That incident made him an
abolitionist for life. He abandoned all ideas of eminence in law or
politics and determined to devote his whole life to the anti-slavery
agitation.
He was the most polished and graceful orator our country ever produced.
He spoke as quietly as if he were talking in his own parlor, and almost
entirely without gestures, yet he had as great a power over all kinds of
audiences as any American of whom we have any record. Often called
before howling mobs, who had come to the lecture-room to prevent him
from being heard, and who would shout and sing to drown his voice, he
never failed to subdue them in a short time. These were occasions when
even such men as Garrison and Theodore Parker were as powerless as
children and were forced to retire. One illustration of his power and
tact occurred in Boston. The majority of the audience was hostile. They
yelled and sang and completely drowned his voice. The reporters were
seated in a row just under the platform, in the place where the
orchestra play in an ordinary theatre. Phillips made no attempt to
address the howling audience, but bent over and seemed to be speaking in
a low tone to the reporters. By and by the curiosity of the howling
audience was excited: they ceased to clamor and tried to hear what he
was saying to the reporters. Phillips looked at them and said quietly:
“Go on, gentlemen, go on. I do not need your ears. Through these pencils
I speak to thirty millions of people.”
Not a voice was raised again. The mob had found its master and stayed
whipped until he sat down.
He was open and sympathetic to all appeals and causes, and this made him
accessible always to the poorest of men. I knew that in Boston among
some of his most trusted intimates--men to whom he was always
accessible--were workmen and laborers, who would hardly have been
admitted at the kitchen doors of others of the “Brahmins” of that city.
George Lowell Austin, in his “Life and Times of Wendell Phillips,” says:
“Among all the noble men in Massachusetts who early came to the support
of William Lloyd Garrison, in his war upon slavery, none came from a
higher social plane, or parted with brighter prospects, or brought to
the cause more brilliant abilities than did Wendell Phillips. He might
have been congressman, governor, senator of the United States, and,
possibly, have risen higher still, had he allied himself to either of
the great political parties. In the Senate, had he reached that body, he
would have ranked with Sumner and Conkling as an orator, and with
Fessenden, Grimes, Douglas, and O. P. Morton as a debater.”
Eloquent as he was as a lecturer, he was far more effective as a
debater. Debate was for him the flint and steel which brought out all
his fire.
The memory of Mr. Phillips was something wonderful. He would listen to
an elaborate speech for hours, and, without a single note of what had
been said, in writing, reply to every part of it as fully and completely
as if the speech were written out before him. Those who heard him only
on the platform, and when not confronted by an opponent, have a very
limited comprehension of his wonderful resources as a speaker.
In his style as a debater he resembled Sir Robert Peel, in grace and
courtliness of manner and in fluency and copiousness of diction. He
never hesitated for a word, or failed to employ the word best fitted to
express his thought on the point under discussion.
The great agitator’s tact was only equalled by the serene humor and
pleasant wit that he exhibited. An old friend has recently told me of
Mr. Phillips questioning him as to the highest grade he had won in the
Union army on the occasion of his going to the Federal capital just
after muster-out, as a special correspondent. Mr. Phillips, knowing the
young man’s radical views, had given him several letters of introduction
and was writing one to Senator Sumner when he asked this question,
remarking with a gentle laugh: “Yes, a title has its value with my
friend Charles.” His unvarying urbanity was in conspicuous contrast with
the Senator’s sometimes unpleasant surliness.
Mr. Phillips was decidedly old-fashioned in many of his ways. When at
home, for example, he did his own marketing, and he knew how to buy. His
chief purchases, however, were always in the way of dainties for his
invalid wife. His own table habits were of the simplest. He was quite
apt to answer his own door bell. On the entrance to that quiet Boston
house there was no door-plate--only the name painted in large black
letters--
=PHILLIPS.=
I called on him one morning at his house. He answered the bell himself.
I remarked:
“Mr. Phillips, you have a very conspicuous sign on your door.”
He told me that as the door-plate had been torn off by vandals he had
decided to have his name painted on the door so conspicuously that any
one who wished to find his house could easily distinguish the name.
A large commercial block now occupies the ground where the house stood.
On the corner of this modern building there is a bronze tablet bearing
the following inscription:
+--------------------------------------------------+
| HERE |
| WENDELL PHILLIPS RESIDED |
| DURING FORTY YEARS, DEVOTED BY HIM |
| TO EFFORTS TO SECURE THE ABOLITION OF |
| AFRICAN SLAVERY IN THIS COUNTRY. |
| THE CHARMS OF HOME, THE ENJOYMENT |
| OF WEALTH AND LEARNING, EVEN THE KINDLY |
| RECOGNITION OF HIS FELLOW-CITIZENS, |
| WERE BY HIM ACCOUNTED AS NAUGHT |
| COMPARED WITH DUTY. |
| HE LIVED TO SEE JUSTICE TRIUMPHANT, |
| FREEDOM UNIVERSAL, AND TO RECEIVE |
| THE TARDY PRAISES OF HIS FORMER |
| OPPONENTS. |
| THE BLESSINGS OF THE POOR, THE |
| FRIENDLESS, AND THE OPPRESSED ENRICHED HIM. |
| IN BOSTON HE WAS BORN 29 NOVEMBER, 1811, AND |
| DIED 2 FEBRUARY, 1884. |
| THIS TABLET WAS ERECTED IN 1894, BY ORDER OF |
| THE CITY COUNCIL OF BOSTON. |
+--------------------------------------------------+
His benevolence was abounding. He inherited a fair fortune for those
days, and he earned a great sum of money as a lecturer. Yet when he died
there was nothing left--not even a debt. Mrs. Phillips, who did not long
survive him, never knew this, for the friends about her arranged that
the frugal household--and that it always was--should go on till the end.
Mr. Phillips was quite an adept with tools, keeping the household goods
always in repair. At home, when not with Mrs. Phillips, he was always
puttering with tools or engaged in reading and studying. He claimed
that, as a boy, there was not an ordinary craft at which he had not done
a good day’s work. His understanding of the building trades made him
always at home with their workers.
Mr. Phillips was in demand wherever his services could be secured. He
did not earn so much money lecturing as he might have made. He never
allowed lecture committees to lose money if he knew it. In case of bad
weather, or a disappointment of any kind to the persons who had failed
to realize a profit on the large fee promised, he would invariably
insist that he receive only an equitable portion of the profits. Seldom
was there such an occasion, for his were the palmiest days of the
lyceum.
Mr. Phillips’s repertoire was encyclopædic, embracing a vast list:
travel, science, current politics, reform, labor, anti-slavery,
education, legal topics, foreign matters, biography, and religion. Some
of his titles were: “Street Life in Europe,” “The Lost Arts,” “The
Times, or a Lesson of the Hour,” “Temperance,” “Woman,” “The Indians, or
in Early Days,” “Agitation,” “Training,” “Law and Lawyers,” “Courts and
Jails,” “The Irish Question,” “O’Connell,” “Sumner,” and “Christianity a
Battle, not a Dream.”
No speaker of his day ever treated a greater variety of topics, nor with
more even excellence, than Wendell Phillips. I quote from some of his
letters illustrating an experience while on a long Western lecture tour.
From Illinois he writes in a car with a lead pencil: “The weather is
dull; only two days since I left that I have seen the sun. Rain, snow,
clouds, damp, mud, and grim heavens. Still, the audiences are large.”
From, one of the oil towns in Pennsylvania: “Here I am in an oil town,
mud over the hubs of the wheels; literally, one horse was smothered in
it; the queerest crowd of men, with trousers tucked in their boots; no
privacy--hotels all one crowd--chambers mere thoroughfares, everybody
passing through at will, and here I must stay until Sunday. I find some
of the Boston people here. Everybody here is making money--the first
place I have found where this is the case. Explanation--they have all
struck oil.”
Again he writes from an Iowa town: “It has been extremely cold. I have
been in the smaller towns and have had poor hotels and a generally hard
time, rushed from one train to another, and puffed from station to
station. In eleven days I have slept in a regular bed but four nights,
still I have been fortunate in filling every engagement, and Sumner has
been the favorite subject.
“In Milwaukee, I was at the ‘Plankington,’ where I had a fine suite of
rooms, bath, chamber, parlor with pier glass ten feet high and five feet
broad--nothing showy--just comfortable.”
Another time from Davenport, Iowa, to Redpath, his former abolitionist
friend, as well as manager: “I, the traveller, the ‘elderly gentleman,’
have been--kissed! in Illinois! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, if
you can without choking your envious soul. Yes, kissed!! on a public
platform, in front of a depot, the whole world envying me. ‘Who did it?’
do you ask? It was an old man of seventy-three years--a veteran
abolitionist, a lovely old saint. In the early days of the cause we used
to kiss each other like the early Christians, and when he saw me he
resumed the habit.”
William Lloyd Garrison.--Now that Phillips and Garrison and the era in
which they flourished have passed into history, it is common for writers
who treat on that period to talk of these two champions of freedom as if
they were equals, or of Phillips, even, as if he were Garrison’s
inferior.
[Illustration]
Those who knew both men smile at such absurdities.
Phillips and Garrison were equals in one respect only--in moral courage
and unselfish devotion to the slave. Garrison was a commonplace man in
respect to intellectual ability, whereas Phillips was a man of genius of
the rarest culture. Garrison was a strong platform speaker. Phillips was
one of the greatest orators of the century. Only three men of his time
could contest the palm of eloquence with him--Webster, Clay, and
Beecher.
There never was a more benevolent face than William Lloyd Garrison’s. He
had a kindly eye, a winning smile, a gentleness of way, a crisp,
straightforward way of talking, and a merciless movement in straight
lines of thought.
Mr. Garrison visited England after the war was over and the emancipation
of the slaves was accomplished, and received unusual courtesies. At a
dinner given him by the British Anti-Slavery Society he was presented
with a gold watch. As he took it in his hand he said:
“Well, gentlemen, if this had been a rotten egg I should have known what
to do with it, but as it is a gold watch, I have nothing to say.”
Charles Sumner was an aristocrat. He was my father’s ideal. After I had
got back from Kansas and visited my father’s home in Wisconsin, father
said to me: “James, the Honorable Charles Sumner is going to speak at
R----. We must hear him.”
So we arranged to go. We walked nine miles to hear him speak. My father
never spoke of him without giving him his title. He had enjoyed that
speech intensely. I do not know whether I did or not. Father occupied a
front seat with the intention of rushing up to the platform and greeting
him by the hand when he was finished, but the Honorable Charles was too
quick for him. He disappeared, got to his hotel, and nobody saw him.
[Illustration]
Father said: “James, the Honorable Charles Sumner is going to Milwaukee
to-morrow morning, and we can ride with him a part of the way.”
We were on the train early the next morning, and so was the Honorable
Charles Sumner. He was sitting reading in the drawing-room car.
Father stepped up and said: “The Honorable Charles Sumner? I have read
all of your speeches. I feel that it is the duty of every American to
take you by the hand. This is my son. He has just returned from the
Kansas conflict.”
Honorable Charles Sumner did not see father nor his son, but he saw the
porter and said: “Can you get me a place where I will be undisturbed?”
Poor father! His heart was almost broken. During his last twenty-five
years he never referred to the Honorable Charles Sumner. Sumner was in
greater demand as a lecturer than any other man of his time just about
those years.
When at the height of his fame, he lectured in Providence and, at the
close, the committee gave him a check for $500, expecting that he would
hand it back, as it was at that time such an unprecedented fee. But Mr.
Sumner put the check into his pocket.
His price with the bureau was $300 to $500. There was never any
difficulty in getting it.
[Illustration: CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW]
Chauncey M. Depew I regard as the peerless all-round orator of the
present time. I have listened to him on all sorts of occasions for the
past twenty-five years, and I am bound to say that I have never known a
more versatile public speaker. I have heard many jocose references to
Chauncey’s chestnuts, and have been chestnut hunting whenever I could
get into the field where he was, with poor pickings--at public dinners,
college commencements, Press Club gatherings, alumni associations,
mechanics’ associations, workingmen’s societies, and political
campaigns--and must say that without exception he deviates from the line
in which he is expected to talk less than anybody I have ever known
excepting Beecher.