would preach attracted yesterday evening a very large number of persons
to the outside at least of the Islington Presbyterian Church, of which
Dr. Thain Davidson is the minister. The seat-holders and a few others
having received tickets were enabled to get in sideways, and between
them they filled about all the seats almost two hours before the service
commenced. Thousands of unprivileged persons either went away altogether
or remained to take their chances among the public rush at a quarter
past six, the services commencing at half past. The church, which seats
about seven hundred and fifty persons, then quickly became crammed, amid
cries and shrieks here and there for help in consequence of the
pressure, and a few windows had to be broken to increase the
ventilation. Many persons were reported injured.”
The same performance was gone through after service except that the
horses were allowed to be hitched back on the carriage. The mob followed
for at least half a mile, shouting praises for “Talmodge” as we drove
away. Dr. Baxter left us at the hotel and for the first time our party
was left alone free from visitors. The Doctor was very tired. At dinner
both he and Mrs. Talmage could talk of nothing but this “overwhelmingly
cordial greeting to an American minister.” “Major, did you ever hear of
such greeting to a minister?” I was asked, and I certainly never had.
“This is going to be awful. How can I ever live through a succession of
ovations like that?” he said to all of us.
“DeWitt, you never can endure it,” said Mrs. Talmage; “I am sure you
cannot.”
This was the burden of the conversation at dinner. When I retired to the
reading room the Doctor soon followed me, to remark:
“Major Pond, was ever such an ovation given to an American minister in
London before?”
“Never,” said I instantly and emphatically.
“Major, what would the American papers say of this if they knew the
facts? Hadn’t some account of this tremendous reception better be cabled
to the Associated Press?”
The next morning the following despatch appeared in the New York
_Herald_:
* * * * *
“LONDON, June 15, 1879.
“_Herald_, New York:
“Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage preached to-day at the Islington Presbyterian
Church, Colebrooke Road, to an enormous congregation. Much curiosity was
evinced by the people to see the famous American preacher; a dense crowd
blockaded the streets leading to the church. The enthusiasm was immense.
Half a mile before the Presbyterian church was reached the carriage of
the reverend gentleman was lifted from the ground and carried bodily to
the church. It was one of the most tremendous ovations ever paid to an
American minister in London.”
* * * * *
That Sunday evening Dr. Talmage and I walked out and had our first
private business talk. We crossed the street to Westminster Abbey and
walked all around it, discussing the wonders of the historic Abbey for
some time, when the Doctor suddenly changed the subject.
“Wasn’t that the most tremendous, overwhelming reception that a minister
ever had?” he said to me. “This excitement is going to use me all up. I
never can stand it. What have you done?”
I replied that I had fixed my first ten nights with the Leeds Y. M. C.
A., all in the large cities.
“I cannot stand it. I am sure it will break me down. How much am I to
get out of it?”
I replied, “You get your $100 a night and your expenses; isn’t that our
contract?”
“Oh, I can’t do that. It would be the ruin of my health; and you would
be getting rich and I have nothing.”
“Wait, my dear Dr. Talmage, and see how it starts. I came here under
terms of a contract with you, and now you don’t seem to consider it
binding.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t stand it, and must give the whole thing up
unless I can have at least $250 a lecture.”
“That’s all I get for the first ten lectures, and by that time we don’t
know whether they will be worth any more. Let’s try under our contract
and see if it is as great as your prediction. I am ready to do the fair
thing. I certainly will make no new contract until we see if the one in
existence is any good.”
“Very well; stop it all. I will take Mrs. Talmage and Jessie and go to
Paris and get rest, which I need and must have.”
So we sat on the steps of Westminster Abbey until 2 o’clock Monday
morning and the Doctor was booked to lecture in Nottingham that night.
When we separated he asked me what hour he had better start for
Nottingham, if he went. I told him 9:30. “I’ll see you at breakfast at 8
and tell you finally,” he said.
When he and Mrs. Talmage came down to breakfast in their travelling
clothes I knew he was going to Nottingham. I felt so, any way.
Applications were pouring in, and I saw that I could obtain certainties
of from £100 to £200 a lecture after the ten Leeds lectures had been
given, so I was prepared to make concessions to the Doctor, if he showed
any disposition to be fair. As we sat down to the table the Doctor
handed me a note written by his own hand on a narrow strip of paper. It
read as follows:
“Pay me $200 a lecture and my expenses, not those of my family, and I
will go on for one hundred lectures. Put this note in your pocket.” I
read and replied:
“All right, Dr. Talmage. I accept. Mrs. Talmage, do you know about
this?”
“Yes, Major Pond. I am so glad you and the Doctor have come to an
agreement.”
So we started for Nottingham. Mr. Thorn met us at the station there and
drove the Talmages to some gentleman’s house where, they were
entertained. Mr. Thorn returned and dined with me at my hotel. I asked
him how the bookings were. He replied that everything was full. I asked
if he sold reserved seats. He said:
“No; the people had filled the house early that afternoon and not
another person could be got in. He and his committee had been all the
afternoon collecting the entrance fee from the crowd now in their seats.
He was ready for Dr. Talmage to go on at any time.”
When he went to the hall there were thousands of the same human strata
that had been seen the Sunday before, waiting to set eyes on Dr.
Talmage, and they were enthusiastic to the verge of insanity. The police
had protected a back entrance, so that the chairman, mayor, and speaker
could get in. I was obliged to stand until I could bear it no longer,
and went out.
I arranged with Thorn to pay me for the two following lectures in
Birmingham and Manchester, so I could return to London and proceed to
fill the balance of the time, and he to look after the welfare of the
“star” while I agreed to join them on the following Saturday in
Liverpool. At my London hotel I found great stacks of letters, but as my
time and route were all mapped out, they did not trouble me. Still all
the letters must be opened in order to know which of them most needed
attention. There were many applications with accompanying checks for
from £20 to £40. It seemed incredible that there could be such a craze
over a minister, and yet that it caused no comment whatever in the daily
newspapers or the secular press in any way. I expected to read blazing
headlines of the first great occasion in the London morning papers, but
there was not a word. The London secular press seldom mentions religious
doings.
I then set to work to finish booking the time. There was much to do in
arranging ninety one-night stands for a great attraction, and surely I
had the greatest one I had ever known. I was working into midnight when
a telegram came up. I would not have opened it had it been a seasonable
hour. It was from the Doctor, and read:
* * * * *
“BIRMINGHAM, June 19, 1879.
“J. B. POND, Westminster Palace Hotel, London.
“Stop everything. To-night surpasses all.
“Signed,
“T. DEWITT TALMAGE.”
* * * * *
He was booked for Manchester the following evening, and a great audience
was expected. I replied:
“Must keep the Manchester engagement. Will meet you there to-morrow.”
So I left London and arrived in Manchester about 5 o’clock the next
afternoon. Passing the City Hall and public buildings my “cabby” drove
into a dense crowd of thousands massed together. I never saw the like. I
asked my driver what that crowd meant. He said a Yankee minister was to
lecture there by the name of “Talm-o-d-ge.” I asked the name of the
building. He said it was Free Trade Hall.
I discharged the cab and tried to get into the outskirts of the crowd. I
had a small handbag. The crowd was not noisy, but simply made a rush for
the door, which had been burst open, and filled the hall with all that
could get in. Every now and then I could hear some one say, “I _will_
see Talm-o-d-ge,” and then he would make a break, only to be crowded
back. I slipped up to a policeman and asked what this all meant. He told
me the same story, of a Yankee minister that was to lecture. He had
never before heard of “Talm-o-d-ge,” but the crowd evidently had. I said
to him, so as not to be overheard: “I am a Yankee. I am Dr. Talmage’s
secretary.” He didn’t even wait to look at me, but with both hands in
the air he shouted:
“This is Dr. Talm-o-d-ge’s secretary! Here! Here! Dr. Talin-o-d-ge’s
secretary! Here! Here! “ Just then the crowd within hearing turned their
eyes on me and made a rush, all shouting, “Dr. Talm-o-d-ge’s secretary!
Here! Here!”
The next thing I knew I was being carried above the heads of that crowd
and shot along head first. So I was carried over and on these heads,
until I was nearly in the centre of great Free Trade Hall. How they
found a place for my feet I don’t know. They passed me on by their hands
until there was a place to alight. “Dr. Talm-o-d-ge’s secretary,” was
the cry. The crowd was orderly and numbered about six thousand, or as
many as could possibly get inside of Free Trade Hall, which is one of
the greatest auditoriums in the world. They were singing “Hold the
Fort,” while the Y. M. C. A. committee, in their shirt sleeves, were
collecting the admission fees, ranging from one shilling to half a
crown. No objections were made to paying, for everybody expected to do
that, but the rush of thousands was more than the hall could
accommodate.
I remained there until Dr. Talmage and Mr. Lee, his host, who was to
preside, and family arrived. I heard the lecture, and it was the first
one of Dr. Talmage’s that I ever heard through. The people cheered as he
came in, and it seemed for minutes as though the roof would be fairly
raised. I never heard such cheering. After the lecture it was midnight
before the crowd would let up on shaking hands and becoming enthusiastic
over the Doctor. It was a scene that could not be produced in America.
The Doctor saw me after the lecture and asked where I was stopping. I
told him at the Queen’s. He said he was stopping with Mr. William Lee, a
distinguished resident of Manchester, and that he and Mrs. Talmage would
call in the morning. I went back to my hotel. About 11 o’clock the next
morning Dr. and Mrs. Talmage arrived and came up to my room. There was
very little ceremony. The Doctor struck right out from the shoulder. It
was business!
“You have got to pay me $350 a lecture or I go home from here. I cannot
stand this tremendous succession of ovations.”
“If you can do it for $350, can’t you stand the same thing for the price
agreed upon in London? I am paying you twice the amount of our original
agreement,” I said.
“I am killing myself and making you or somebody else rich. I get nothing
for it. Say yes or no.” He was positive but good natured. I didn’t hurry
to reply, but related my experience of being suspended over the heads of
that multitude for half an hour yesterday, remarking that it seemed
days.
Mrs. Talmage, always a loyal wife, would often remind her husband that
it was no use attempting to go on. He could not stand it. I did not get
angry. I really enjoyed it, only there were people waiting outside to
see me. Dr. Baxter wanted to buy a return date in Manchester, and did
buy it then and there while the Talmages waited. In a side room he gave
me his check for £300, and I signed a contract. I returned and invited
Dr. and Mrs. Talmage to lunch. They accepted. The conversation between
them was as to what steamers sailed first and which was the most
desirable route. I heard it all. This was an open date, Saturday. He was
to preach in Manchester the following Sunday, so I did not hurry.
I felt sure the tour would pay if the people did not get disgusted. They
had expected a great Calvinistic divine to give them religious lectures.
Many made unkind expressions at his provoking so much laughter and at
the secular tendency of his address. I felt a little uncertain, but
finally said: “Dr. Talmage, I am getting $250 each for this series of
ten lectures, as you know. Thorn is making the fortune--not I. I am
getting tired of this, but I will give you your $250 each for the one
hundred lectures; no more.” He said nothing, but waited. Finally getting
up, he said, “Well, that’s the best you will do, is it?”
“Yes, sir; and I may change my mind in ten minutes. If you do this, I
will hire an English lawyer to draw up papers that will hold.”
“All right, then, make your contract and I will sign it.”
This had been a long siege. I went out, and by direction of the hotel
proprietor found a solicitor, who came to my room, got all the details,
and went back. He must have worked all night on the document. It was a
remarkable paper, drawn up in the English form, with many pages of
“whereases,” “said party,” etc., having a long ribbon and large red wax
seal about the size of a Boston cracker attached. The party of the
second part (Talmage) after hearing it read, signed it, as I also did.
When all was over, the Doctor said very pleasantly that he was glad that
there was an understanding at last.
We went together to Liverpool, Glasgow, and other cities in Scotland.
Such crowds! He missed the train for Perth. I had told him that he must
take a certain train in order to be on time. A party had taken them to
the Trossachs, and when the hour arrived to begin the lecture in Perth,
a telegram came from the Doctor stating that he had missed the train and
would arrive about 10. The audience, which congested the hall, seemed
quite patient for two hours. The time was late and the curfew bell said
11 o’clock. Many demanded their money back, and got it to the amount of
£40; but still there was a large audience waiting, and the Doctor got
through a little after midnight. The following Sunday we spent in
Glasgow. The Doctor preached in the morning and in the afternoon we
settled up.
The tenth lecture of the tour concluded my contract with the Leeds Y. M.
C. A. at $250 a lecture. On this ten lectures I had made nothing, but
during that time I had booked the balance of the tour of ninety more
lectures at a very handsome profit, the lowest fee being £80 a lecture,
and in some instances £250. The final lecture in England was sold in
Liverpool to the Y. M. C. A. for £400, to be September 11. Eleven weeks
booked for five lectures a week, twenty-five per cent. of the guarantees
paid in advance and in my bank in London. Good prospects indeed.
Secretary Thorn, of the Leeds Y. M. C. A., who had managed the first ten
lectures, presided at a dinner given to Dr. Talmage in Leeds three weeks
later. In his official report, which he read on that occasion, he stated
that the Association had netted about £1,000 ($5,000). This was $500
profit on each lecture. At the low prices paid for admission to lectures
in Great Britain, 1_s_, 2_s_ 6_d_ to 3_s_ 6_d_, it shows that the crowds
must have been enormous. As the lectures were all sold to local
committees in the towns yet to be visited, I felt certain that in most
cases these parties had pretty heavy responsibility, especially as the
religious press was complaining of the lack of piety in the Doctor’s
discourses. His lecture on “The Bright Side of Things” had provoked
laughter where many had expected sacred things. I feared a reaction,
for in all the crowds I heard expressions of bitter disappointment.
From Leeds, after two lectures in near cities, we came to London. Dr.
Baxter, of _The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times_, was to pay me
£200 for the first London lecture in Exeter Hall, which was crowded. Dr.
Talinage had already preached in the same hall, with the usual large
gathering of disappointed outsiders.
When we arrived in London I found there was quite a feeling against Dr.
Talmage, aroused by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker on account of the
questionable verdict in his ecclesiastical trial by the New York
Presbytery just before he left. But the Rev. Charles Wood, a young
Presbyterian minister visiting London at that time, now in Philadelphia,
succeeded in bringing Dr. Parker around, and Talmage was invited to
preach in City Temple, but had not the open date and had to forego the
honor. However, the ladies of both sides exchanged friendly calls, and
all went well.
After our return to London and the Exeter Hall lecture the business from
this time began to decline. It was difficult in many instances to
collect the guarantees, and I often felt like a thief when accepting
money that responsible parties had guaranteed with a reasonable
assurance that it would prove profitable. Then again, others had
persisted in having dates, and threatened the law if I did not make the
contract and accept the twenty-five per cent. advance payment. Some of
these I enjoyed holding to the terms they had almost compelled me to
make.
Several causes contributed to the revulsion of public opinion and the
depreciation of the Doctor’s value. Chief among these was the
disappointment in his religious zeal. These religious “lower” classes,
whose only literature is the penny religious weekly, had pictured him as
an ideal man of God. With his marvellous insight into the human heart of
the nineteenth century, he had, through his sermons, touched chords
beyond the reach of any other man of his time. He had shown that he knew
the burdens, the temptations, the bitternesses of men and women who
gain their daily bread only by a struggle. With this master key he had
unlocked their hearts, and they sought his presence very much in the
same spirit that the multitude followed Christ into the wilderness. I
believe I witnessed marvellous, unmatched scenes in old England that
summer. Such tribute as was laid at Talmage’s feet was never paid to any
other religious leader, and when these people came to find the lectures
more of a secular, not religious character their disappointment knew no
bounds. His final lecture in Liverpool was a dismal failure. Four
responsible men had signed the contract for $2,000. I settled for $500,
and if Dr. Talmage had not refunded that amount to the Y. M. C. A.
committee I believe he would have been mobbed. The crowd gathered
outside the Northwestern Hotel, calling for Talmage, and it seemed as
though every vituperative adjective the English language possesses was
applied to him by these religious fanatics. He had made the feeling. If
he had only emulated his own teachings instead of using an old American
lyceum lecture, he might have had a triumphant home-coming instead of
the one he did have; but he seemed to disregard in every way the wishes
of the people who paid to see or hear him. The result to the management
was simply a loss of the time. The Doctor got all that was made on the
tour. Instead of one hundred lectures the tour was shortened to seventy,
for which Dr. Talmage received $17,500, the management “his labor for
his pains.” Had Dr. Talmage kept his original agreement he would have
netted $7,000, but by his “eccentricity” he made $10,500 more than he
expected when he started on the journey.
I have made very few engagements for Dr. Talmage since his memorable
season.
Dr. Talmage’s sermons have been more widely read and circulated during
the past thirty years than those of any other minister that has lived in
his time. _The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times_, of London, has
sent out from five hundred thousand to nearly a million a week since
1870. Next to _The Christian World_ it is the greatest religious
newspaper property in Great Britain. The price is a penny, and it sells
almost wholly to the lower classes, who depend upon it for their only
reading, both religious and secular. It is printed in muddy black with
cheap, coarse zinc cuts. It now has an American edition, edited
ostensibly by Dr. Talmage, with a circulation equal, if not greater,
than that in Great Britain. This is a reproduction of the English
edition, but on much finer paper and beautifully printed--an essential
feature for a religious household paper in America, no matter how remote
or primitive the fireside it reaches. This American edition prints one
of Dr. Talmage’s sermons every week. It is most skillfully managed and
considered a great property. It is seldom seen in the public reading
rooms or library, or among the upper middle class homes, but drive out
into the country among the farmers and stop at a farmhouse for a drink
of water, and while you wait the first object to attract your attention
is a copy of _The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times_. From the
Atlantic to the Pacific this religious paper has found its way into the
houses of the poor religious classes, and, of course, must do
incalculable good.
Another means of disseminating Dr. Talmage’s sermons for the past two
decades has been the “patent insides” of country newspapers. Over six
thousand different weekly papers by this method send out his weekly
sermon, and while the doctor had a pulpit his sermon appeared in one of
the Monday morning papers in every large city.
“Dr. Talmage’s Sermon in the Great Tabernacle yesterday. By special
telegraph to _The Courier-Journal_,” etc.
Dr. Talmage has the greatest congregation of readers of his sermons of
any man living, and this is his means of advertising. To gather up a
large audience for him in the western country all that is needed is a
railroad junction where cars can be run from all directions, the
erection of a temporary amphitheatre, and the announcement that Dr.
Talmage is to preach, and all the facilities for bringing out crowds
will be tested to their fullest capacity. Under these conditions the
doctor is the greatest one-man attraction in America, and what cares he
for such comment as the following from _The Congregationalist_, the New
England organ of that denomination:
“If in humility it may be done without violence to the feelings of our
Presbyterian brethren--whose particular funeral it is--we feel called
upon to inquire if it be not nearly time for the reign of ordinary
propriety to set in as to the Talmage business. It was bad enough to
have a lot of old sermons weekly stereotyped through the land on Monday
mornings during his late tour to the Holy Land, as having been delivered
by him on the previous day on Mars Hill and elsewhere; and to have
accounts so gorgeous as to be manifestly fictitious in their coloring,
sent abroad as the great man’s intercourse by the way with kindred great
men. But now that this dazzling pulpit light is once more shining and
shimmering at home, we think the world at large could manage, without
overwhelming grief, to dispense with Mr. Louis Klopsch’s Boswellian
columns, detailing the amazing Talmage experiences, and recounting the
tremendous Talmage remarks at various places along that route, which has
been beatified and forevermore advertised as that of his travels.”
_The Toledo Blade_, one of the papers which published Talmage’s sermons
during this Palestine tour, came out with a frank explanation that none
of them were cabled, and that they were all prepared before the doctor
left home. _The Blade_ further made matters interesting by admissions
that some of them, including the one credited to Mars Hill, were never
delivered at all.
What cares Dr. Talmage for all this? He has his public, that he has
educated, adamantine in its faith in him. He is said to be the richest
minister in the world, and he has _earned_ it all himself.
Charles H. Spurgeon was, to me, a name, next to that of Beecher, to
conjure with. When I arrived in London for the first time, June 3, 1879,
and started out to see the sights, the first place I instructed my
“cabby” to drive to was Spurgeon’s Tabernacle.
[Illustration]
It was about sunset when I first set eyes on the famous building. I know
I felt a disappointment. It was not what I expected to see. The
surroundings were not attractive. The high iron gates suggested more a
prison than an invitation to go up to the house of the Lord. I made no
stop, but directed my driver to show me the City Temple, on Holburn
Viaduct, where the great Dr. Joseph Parker preached. It was in the
gloaming that I first saw this famous “church.” It was not as large as I
expected. In most of our cities it would be considered a very ordinary,
comfortable house of worship.
“Do you call that a large church?” I asked the cabby.