Fifty-seventh Street, New York. Notwithstanding that the rain came down
in torrents, the great church was crowded. The Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix
introduced the speaker. The good Dean entertained his audience fairly
well, but was a disappointment to many, due largely, I thought, to his
bad advisers. He had been told that the more he amused American
audiences and made them laugh, the better satisfied they would be. It is
often a misfortune to a clergyman to be a wit. There were on the
platform and in the audience people as learned as the one who addressed
them. In his Rochester congregation he had been accustomed to addressing
a different audience--an audience that he must talk down to. It took him
only a short time to discover that in America the pews are as high as
the pulpit, and he gave his audiences a scholarly and delightful
entertainment. His popularity increased to the end of his tour.
He did not come to America for gain. All his earnings on the tour were
applied to the restoration of an arch in the tower of the Rochester
Cathedral, where the good Dean is fond of showing his Yankee visitors
his American lecture proceeds.
It was Mrs. Pond’s and my privilege, during our visit to England in the
summer of 1897, to be guests for three days at the Deanery. During our
stay a garden party was given in our honor by the Dean and Mrs. Hole. We
were shown on the place over a thousand varieties of roses, and we
thought they must certainly be the very choicest in all the world; but
the morning of the day of the garden party, a number of wagons and carts
came driving in, loaded with banks and boxes of roses from various
persons whom the Dean said were his disciples. They were displayed in a
large basement room of the Deanery, and we were invited to view them.
The great room was filled with tables on which the roses were displayed.
It was certainly the most beautiful floral display that we ever saw, and
the Dean assured us that nothing could be more perfect.
“You see,” said the Dean, “my dear Major and Mrs. Pond, the fruits of
our efforts in rose culture; our disciples have all outgrown their
teachers.” There was every color and almost every variety of rose. How I
wish I could adequately describe them!
The garden party was a magnificent affair. The parishioners and best
citizens of Rochester and its neighborhood were there--about four
hundred--Rochester’s “Four Hundred,” I presume. The guests’ table was
under an immense rose-tree as large as a common apple-tree, in full
bloom. It was the first and only large rose-tree I have seen in blossom.
Among the guests were Mr. John Morgan Richards of London, and his
daughter, Mrs. Craigie (“John Oliver Hobbes “); a Mr. Arnold, brother of
Sir Edwin Arnold, a scholarly gentleman and poet, who would be famous
were he not eclipsed by his brother, and Mr. Latham, an English
gentleman who now owns and lives in the famous Dickens home at Gad’s
Hill, near by, who, the day before, had shown us all over the place and
through the house, the unique Dickens library, the dining room, and the
chair at the head of the table where the great novelist died.
I was never so impressed with the fact that there is more in this life
than just to live and breathe and have a being, and that when life’s
efforts are made in the right direction, what should be called “higher
life” is almost within the reach of all who desire to attain it.
I must declare that of all the visits I have ever made in Europe, and of
all the hosts and hostesses whose hospitality it has been my honor to
enjoy, the Deanery at Rochester, Dean Hole (now past eighty), and his
estimable wife, are among the very brightest of my memories. May they
long be spared to us!
I copy from the good Dean’s book, “A Little Tour in America,” the
following anecdote, which will give his estimate of one of our American
plays that he saw while here:
“I had also the gratification of seeing those popular favorites, Mr. and
Mrs. Kendal, in ‘Lady Clancarty,’ and was specially delighted with Mr.
Denman Thompson in ‘The Old Homestead.’ Toward the end of the play, his
manager came to my box with an invitation to an interview, and I had the
pleasure of thanking Mr. Thompson for his humorous, pathetic, bright,
and wholesome performance, and of telling him how much he resembled in
many ways the greatest comic actor of his day, Mr. Buckstone.
“Next morning there appeared in the New York _Herald_ a paragraph
headed, ‘A Dean Behind the Scenes,’ and shortly afterward I was gently
rebuked by a brother clergyman as having imperilled the dignity of my
office. As counsel for the defence, I made answer, ‘Reverend sir, in the
play entitled “The Old Homestead,” two young fellows, who had been
making fools of themselves and had gone to the bad, were brought back to
a right mind--to their home and duty. They were shown the misery and
degradation of vice, and then, in contrast, the happiness and the honor
of a righteous life. I went behind the scenes to thank the teacher of
that object lesson, and if you, my brother, will prove to me that by
one of your sermons you have persuaded two prodigals to get away from
the husks of the swine and return to their Father’s house, I shall
rejoice to pay my respects to you in the vestry, or wherever we may
meet.’”
The Bishop of Ripon, Dr. Boyd Carpenter, the Queen’s favorite minister,
is regarded as the most eloquent man in the English clergy. I visited
him at his palace during 1897. He said he wished to visit America soon,
but had three hundred and ten parsons to look after, and did not know
just how soon he could arrange to make the trip.
[Illustration]
His great theme is Dante. A distinguished woman told me that she had
heard him deliver a course of five lectures on Dante, and she thought
she had never heard a man so intensely interested in his subject or so
eloquent. His palace is a sort of public hotel for all members of the
clergy, and Mrs. Carpenter told me that though a yearly income of
£10,000 seemed enormous for a Bishop, she was often put to it to know
how to make both ends meet. She kept count one year, and they
entertained more than six thousand persons.
The Bishop writes a personal letter to the Queen every month, and
receives one in reply. He has a copy of every photograph that Queen
Victoria ever had taken, with her autograph written on each one.
A warm feeling of personal friendship exists between the Bishop of Ripon
and the Dean of Ely, yet the two men are very unlike. The wide
difference between their points of view is apparent from these few words
in one of Dr. Carpenter’s letters to me:
“Dean Stubbs is a man well known for his strong social sympathies. He
has been the champion of the agricultural laborer, and in all questions
he, as such, has taken _a strangely liberal line_.”
The Bishop of Ripon has had invitations to deliver the Noble course of
lectures at Harvard University, and the Lowell Institute lectures in
Boston. I know that he would be pleased to come to our country, but he
is such a very busy man that up to this time he has not found it
possible.
The Very Reverend Charles William Stubbs, D.D., Dean of Ely, is a most
charming gentleman and esteemed as one of the most accomplished English
pulpit orators of the Church of England. Through the Rev. Dr. John
Watson I induced him to come to America in the fall of 1899 to give a
series of lectures to fill the demand which seemed to me had long
existed in this country to hear from the platform one of the ablest
lecturers of the Church of England.
[Illustration]
Besides being a fine pulpit orator, the Dean of Ely is a pleasing
platform speaker, with but little English mannerism, a scholar of fine
type, an essayist of gentle humor and kindly wit, a man of practical
affairs, and a sympathetic poet in touch with history and humanity. As a
poet he has the ballad quality, the lyric tone.
Not only were his prepared lectures polished and scholarly, but when
called upon suddenly he was always ready, with wit and humor and
anecdote, for any occasion, as is attested by the following portion of
an impromptu speech made at a banquet tendered by the Lotus Club to Sir
Henry Irving in New York on the evening of the day of the Dean’s
arrival:
“Mr. President, Sir Henry, Gentlemen of the Lotus Club: In this
atmosphere of resistless eloquence and wit and humor and good
fellowship and eulogy, I confess I find myself somewhat
embarrassed--embarrassed by the generosity of your kindly feeling toward
me, expressed by your president, but embarrassed especially because your
president has treated me with not even that amount of generosity which
he extended to the gentleman who spoke last and who needed no such
generosity. I have not even had a twenty-minutes’ grace in which to
concoct any impromptu humorous remarks. What, then, can I do? I think it
was one of your own prophets--shall I say one of your own poets?--one of
the greatest of your literary men, an ambassador to England some years
ago, a man of whom I am always glad to think as a personal friend of my
own, Mr. James Russell Lowell, who once said that an after-dinner speech
should consist of an anecdote, a commonplace, and a quotation. Now, how
can I fulfil those canons of speech to-night?
“An anecdote. I am reminded, partly by the frank comradeship of this
meeting to-night and partly, also, by the rapidity with which the time
is passing by, that I am staying with one of the clergy of this city who
is not very well known to me as yet;--although I find that to know
almost any American is to love him as a friend--and who, perhaps, may
therefore be a little surprised to-night if I return toward the small
hours, as at present would seem to be my prospect. And that recalls to
my mind an incident which I remember a good many years ago in my
Cambridge life when I was present at a banquet given in the hall of St
Peter’s College, Cambridge, in honor of its six hundredth anniversary.
There were many illustrious members of the college present, and many and
long speeches. I remember that it was half-past eleven o’clock at night
when Sir Frederick Bramwell, the brother of the judge, was called upon
to respond to ‘The Toast of the Applied Sciences.’ He said something of
this kind: ‘Gentlemen, I could have conceived occasions when it would
have been delightful to me to expatiate upon such a subject, but at this
hour of the night the only application of science that appears to me to
be appropriate to the moment is the application of the domestic lucifer
to the bedroom candle.’ (Laughter.) Whereupon your ambassador, Mr
Lowell, with that happy genius, that quick power of composition, and
that delightful grace which were always so characteristic of him, wrote
on the back of his menu card, and tossed across the table, these lines:
“‘Oh, brief Sir Frederick,
Who thy wit could catch,
Hold thee a candle,
Or find thy match?’”
(Applause.)
Dean Stubbs is a man above middle stature, of robust frame and English
aspect, with just a trace perhaps of some Scandinavian ancestor in the
long head and face and the ruddy complexion. He is descended from the
same Yorkshire yeoman stock as the present Bishop of Oxford, the author
of the “Constitutional History of England,” whose kinsman he is, and
from which stock in old days there came such men as the well-known
Puritan writer, John Stubbs, who wrote the “Discovery of a Gaping
Gulph,” and who, when his hand was cut off by order of the Queen, as a
penalty for the publication of his outspoken pamphlet, waved his hat
with the other hand and cried, “God save Queen Elizabeth!” The
distinction which some men have gained as the champions of a great
cause, or the leaders of a great movement, is a surprise to us when we
see them. In their bodily presence there is nothing indicative of power,
and we have to wait for the explanation of their ascendency. No such
surprise will be felt by those who look upon Dr. Stubbs for the first
time. We see at once that his physical endowments fit him for
leadership. The tall, massive, upright frame, suggestive of his yeoman
ancestry; the easy, natural dignity of his bearing; the firmness of his
step, as of one who is clear as to his own course, and whom it would not
be easy to move from any position that he felt called upon to take; the
high, broad forehead, the alert and penetrating glance--all make it easy
for us to believe, even before we have heard him speak, that he
possesses characteristics which explain his position and influence. He
impresses one immediately as a strong man both intellectually and
physically.
In speaking of his recreations, he said: “I am president of the Ely Golf
Club, am fond of bicycling, work at carpentering, am maker and patentee
of the Sleepy Hollow chair, and few things please me more than to show
my English, especially my American friends, round the cathedral.” And
any one who has heard the Dean’s exquisite lectures on the Ely Cathedral
may well be delighted with such a guide.
Unlike other clergymen who devote themselves exclusively to theological
studies and abstract disquisition, Dr. Stubbs has examined and discussed
some of the most vital practical questions of the day--the relief of the
poor, the condition and needs of laborers, the welfare of artisans in
the great manufacturing centres, the advancement of women, and the
education of the masses. His life, accordingly, has been one of
practical industry and effort for the good of others, and, while
building an honorable renown for himself, he has been, in the largest
sense of the word, a public benefactor.
He has always taken such a deep and active interest in the problems of
labor and capital that he has become known as a “Christian Socialist.”
In explanation of the meaning of this term as applied to himself, he
relates the following anecdote:
“I had called on a rich old merchant in the North to ask him for a
subscription. At first he was somewhat grumpy. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘they
call you a Socialist; what do you mean by Socialism?’ ‘My dear sir,’ I
replied, ‘it depends on _what_ Socialism you mean, political Socialism
or Christian Socialism, for there is a great difference between the two.
Of the Political Socialist I hold very much the same opinion as that of
Ebenezer Eliot, the Corn-Law Rhymer, who wrote long ago--
‘“What is a socialist? one who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings,
A rogue, or a bungler, or both, he is willing
To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.”
But while the political Socialist says, “What is yours is mine,” the
Christian Socialist says, “What is mine is yours.”’ The old man’s eyes
twinkled. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I’ve met a good many of the first sort; I
never met any of the second. However, here’s £5 for your fund.’”
The Dean began his American tour with a course of six matinee lectures
in the Lyceum Theatre, New York. His subjects were: “Shakespeare as a
Religious Teacher,” “Ely Cathedral” (illustrated), “Milton and the
Puritans,” “Ideal Women of the Poets,” “James Russell Lowell,” and a
second lecture on “Ely Cathedral” (also illustrated). Other lectures
which he gave in this country were on “Shelley,” “Browning,” and
“Charles Kingsley and Christian Socialism,” but the illustrated lectures
on “Ely Cathedral” were the only ones that drew big money. The others
were too scholarly for the American lyceum in its present condition.
Some idea of the delightfulness of the Dean’s illustrated lectures on
the Cathedral of Ely may be had from the following criticism by William
Winter, published in the New York Tribune: “The exordium of the Dean’s
discourse, devoted to a portrayal of the physical beauty of the wide,
dream-like fenlands of England, with Ely Cathedral--an image of
sublimity and mystery--towering through the white mist and the hazy,
golden light, fell upon the ear like a strain of music, and easily lured
his hearers into a mood of fancy and sentiment, making them sympathetic
with the glories of the past and reverent of the grandeur of the
passionate religious devotion expressed so well in those wonderful old
minsters of Europe--which seems to have utterly died out of the earth.
Later it pleased the Dean to make his lecture a familiar talk, and to
grace it with occasional tints of playful humor: the colloquial and
rhetorical strains are not harmonious, and it is never easy to mingle
them, but, certainly, the speaker managed this difficult involution with
singular grace; but, at the last, reverting to his poetic vein, he
rounded his work with noble eloquence and power. More than seventy
pictures, many of them very lovely, were incidentally displayed--the
spectacle culminating in a view of the shrine of St. Awdry, from which
the white marble sarcophagus of the virgin Queen Etheldreda has
disappeared--hidden, it is believed, somewhere in the great
cathedral--perhaps to be restored in a purer, because a more spiritual,
age, now dawning on the world.”
While in New York, the Dean being very anxious to hear Dr. Hillis, the
Plymouth pulpit being the Mecca of all visiting clergymen and ministers
from the other side, we arranged to attend one Sunday morning. The Dean
was intensely interested, but I think was much surprised by Dr. Hillis’
unique style. “A nightmare of eloquence!” he exclaimed.
In Boston he repeated his New York course of lectures in Steinert Hall,
which seemed to be the most popular lecture hall in Boston at this time.
It is a very deep cellar under the Steinert Piano Rooms, and is quite
prettily fitted up, but oh! if there should happen to be a panic down
there, no one would escape to tell the story. Back of the stage is an
elevator shaft used for carrying pianos up and down from the basement to
the top of the building, and this causes a strong draught from the back
of the stage, through the auditorium, and out to the sidewalk.
Acoustically there is an advantage in this, because the draft carries
the sound through the audience room, and one can be distinctly heard
throughout the place in almost a whisper. But in cool weather both
audience and speakers have to keep on their coats and wraps, as the cold
draught carries away with it all the heat from the radiators. It is the
best Boston has, unless you go up two or three more flights to the Y. M.
C. A. Hall, which is about as inconvenient for an audience as anything
could possibly be.
Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the fashionable people of Boston
turned out to welcome the Dean of Ely. He was the social lion of the
season and the special pet of the literary Episcopalians and the faculty
of Harvard University. He preached three times in Trinity
Church--Phillips Brooks’ old pulpit--for his friend, Dr. Donald, and was
also university preacher in the Appleton Chapel, Harvard, where he was
listened to by a great crowd of undergraduates. Some of these sermons
are published this autumn in a volume with the title “Pro
Patria!”--sermons on special occasions in England and America.
The papers gave excellent accounts of his sermons and lectures, and, on
the whole, Dr. Stubbs’ visit proved a financial success; but, compared
with former days, when a first-class lecturer was a first-class
attraction, there was much to be desired. Fifteen years ago a course of
such lectures would have filled Tremont Temple or Music Hall.
At Columbus, Ohio, he preached for the St. Andrew’s Brotherhood, and met
with a very cordial reception. He preached in Philadelphia and gave a
course of lectures there with great success.
On the announcement of his proposed visit to Chicago I received a letter
from the Episcopalian Bishop of that city denouncing a dean who could
come to America to lecture for money; but notwithstanding this, the
appointments were made for that city.
The Dean of Ely did not come to America to make money. He came to make
friends, and I am sure he did it. He wanted a holiday, and he came to
our country to get it, and if, not being a rich man, and having six sons
to educate and put out in the world, he chose to pay his way by earning
his travelling expenses, I do not see what business it is of the Bishop
of Chicago to question the dignity of the Dean. That can quite well take
care of itself.
Dr. Stubbs gave his first lecture in Chicago for the Twentieth Century
Club, which for a number of years has had the first appearance of all my
stars, and generally assures a good audience on the following evening in
Central Music Hall. The local manager, however, in that city in some way
conceived the idea that nobody but Episcopalians would care to hear the
Dean of Ely, and so worked through the church instead of advertising
through the general public. The result of such a course, together with
most gloomy conditions of mud, sleet, rain, and snow combined, was poor
business, although a delightful lecture to those who were present. The
Chicago _Journal_ said:
“Because of his scholarly attainments, his bright and sympathetic views,
the lecture of last evening was one of the most charming and instructive
addresses of the kind ever heard in Chicago.”
“_The Elite_, an illustrated society journal of Chicago, addressed to
people of culture and fashion,” in an article on the Dean, says in
allusion to his lecture before the Twentieth Century Club: “He gave his
hearers much pleasure. They all said so at the time. Many remarked that
the occasion was one of the club’s best evenings. The Dean has been
misquoted in the newspapers (of course without intention) as to what he
said on that evening by way of rebuke. The manner in which he
administered the rebuke was gentle to playfulness--yet it held a bit of
quiet sarcasm. But no offence was given and no offence was felt. He
caused his audience to laugh and put it on its mettle.”
This is, of course, in allusion to the foolish indignation of the yellow
journals of Chicago about an interview with the Dean by the American
_Outlook_ in which Dr. Stubbs spoke of “the hateful unloveliness of the
city, and its wilderness of mean streets.”
This interview happened to appear just at the time when there was a lull
in yellow journalistic excitements in Chicago, and his description of
that city furnished material for some very elaborate editorials and
cartoons and the publication of private letters which patriotic
Chicagoans were invited to contribute. The affair was taken up by the
press throughout the country, and at the present writing the Dean of Ely
is the best-advertised clergyman of the Church of England. There would
be no difficulty in booking a profitable tour for him this season
(1900-1901) if only he were available. Several of my friends in Chicago
wrote to me that if I dared to visit their city again I would be a
candidate for the Vigilance Committee, for having brought Dean Stubbs to
this country. Knowing that the Dean would appreciate the humorous side
of the situation, I sent him some of the newspaper clippings and wrote
him that if I were driven out of my own country on his account I might
wish to seek refuge in the confines of Ely Cathedral. To this he replied
as follows:
* * * * *
“Deanery, Ely, July 25, 1900.
“MY DEAR GOOD MAJOR: I am delighted to hear that you and Mrs. Pond are
coming to the Isle of Refuge--you are quite safe here. If the Vigilance
Committees of Chicago meditate a raid upon you at Ely, we will open the
sluice at Denver and put the whole of Cambridgeshire outside the Isle
twelve feet under sea water. But how sadly wanting in humor some of your
journalists must be. I thought that was an English prerogative. The
Chicagoans were really very kind, my hostess at the Twentieth Century
Club quite charming, and I believe she was the sister of the mayor. How
strange! And Mr. Newman was as kind as he could be and his wife was more
so. But why must I praise an ugly street because I like a man who lives
in it? I didn’t praise New Jersey; why Chicago? No. It is a hatefully
unlovely place, but I admire greatly the men who, because they live
there--poor things--are so loyal and patriotic. To be loyal for a noble
city like New York is fine, but to be loyal to Chicago, that is sublime.
Pray announce that I am coming over next spring to lecture in Chicago on
‘The Ideal City of the Poets,’ to be illustrated with ‘dinky second
number’ lantern slides of the City of the Wind.
“I have just had a pleasant visit from Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, my kind
hosts in Philadelphia, and a continual stream of Americans who heard one
or the other of my lectures are passing through here daily, and very
pleasant it is to me to welcome them. We are suffering from an
exceptionally torrid summer--93 degrees in the shade yesterday. I feel,
to use one of your quaint Americanisms, as ’limp as a half-yard of
chewed string.’
“Kindest regards to your wife and Bimbo and Miss Glass.