American writers of the first rank, but within the last ten years or so
he has come to be regarded as one of the foremost authorities, if not
the very first, in the criticism of current poetry and romance. Hundreds
of thousands of readers put themselves under the inspiration and leading
of his printed talks upon books and writers of the day, and while he has
been to our vast reading public one of the least seen of literary
Americans, no portrait is better known than his, no man’s utterance upon
any subject of literary value is more widely or eagerly considered. All
the more emphatically is this latter statement true of the subjects he
has now chosen for his public lectures. These themes are peculiarly his
own, and the opportunity to see the very face and hear the living voice
of the man himself is one that, it may safely be predicted, the whole
book-loving element of American society will avail itself of with a keen
and affectionate delight.
G. W. CABLE.
Northampton, Mass., July, ’99.
* * * * *
I want Mr. Howells to live to a good old age, as long as the great war
horses of the platform lived. The people want to see and hear him most
of all. Here is what his friend, Mark Twain, said of lecturing at the
close of the American end of his tour around the world:
“Lecturing is gymnastics, chest-expander, medicine, mind healer, blues
destroyer, all in one. I am twice as well as I was when I started out. I
have gained nine pounds in twenty-eight days, and expect to weigh six
hundred before January. I haven’t had a blue day in all the
twenty-eight.”
George William Curtis has filled, as no other American man of letters of
this generation, the ideal of clear intellect, pure taste, moral
purpose, chivalry of feeling, and personal refinement and grace. The
grace and culture he possessed were as natural as his courtesy and his
faith in mankind. They were ingrained as part of his being, wrought into
every strain and making the strands of his everyday life.
[Illustration]
From the moment of his entrance into public life as a speaker, now
nearly fifty years ago, he entirely satisfied the higher conception of
purity, dignity, and sweetness. He was a lecturer of beautiful presence
and was superbly artificial, yet this artificiality was natural. His
hair and beard were a beautiful silver-gray, his face was pale, his
manner studied, his voice cultivated. It was as enjoyable to hear him as
to listen to an opera, and was a lesson in grand manners and elocution.
His voice, like his manners and appearance on the platform, was
ideal--clear, bell-like, silvery. He could be heard in the largest of
halls without apparently any special effort. It was a delight to listen;
every syllable was distinct, yet there was no strain. The enunciation
was perfect. The matter of his speeches was like the sound, perfect in
sense, clear in meaning, as graceful as the speaking, and always
carrying the sense of conviction to the hearers.
A gentleman, and exclusive in bearing, Curtis was, nevertheless,
profoundly democratic. He believed in his fellowmen--that was the
essence of his democracy--and, like Wendell Phillips, he illustrated in
his manners and greeting that the noblest refinement was in all senses a
part of the most complete faith in republican doctrine and in the
essential equality of human beings. For twenty years Mr. Curtis
commanded the highest fees--about the same as Gough, Beecher, and
Phillips. He always read his lectures from carefully prepared
manuscripts.
MISCELLANEOUS Henry Watterson I have known for the twenty-five years
that he has been coming to the Everett House, New York. I think I know
him better than many of those who count themselves intimate
acquaintances and friends. My office has been his headquarters most of
that time, where he has been in the habit of meeting all classes of
political leaders, newspaper managers, and editors, and where have been
discussed all progressive schemes in the interest of telegraph news,
printing machinery, paper manufacture, and advancement in industry of
all kinds, political, social, scientific, and for the general good in
all directions.
[Illustration]
A Democratic leader and editor of the most influential paper in the
South, he has counted such men as Greeley, Raymond, James, Whitelaw
Reid, Dana, McGill, and John Swinton among his nearest friends and
advisers. He was looked upon by his political opponents as one of the
safest of their advisers. I think Henry Watterson has had the entrée to
the White House during every administration since Grant’s, excepting
Hayes, although I hardly think he and President Cleveland were over fond
of each other.
There are conditions under which a close friend of the Colonel can learn
all about him--his remarkable social experiences, especially among the
men and women of the lyric and dramatic stage. At one time he knew every
great actor, actress, singer, and manager in the English-speaking
world, and they were all his friends.
Colonel Watterson has been a successful lecturer during the last two
decades and has covered as much territory as any other man. He is
equally popular in New England and in the South; is a favorite in Texas,
California, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, and all the Western States. He has
given his lecture on “Abraham Lincoln” before crowded houses in Southern
cities where, when he was a rebel captain, he would joyfully have
directed the Federal President’s execution.
Until 1894 he conducted the councils of his party in all national
conventions, and has wielded an influence more potent in the advancement
of the Democratic party than any other man of his time.
He is a charming man personally, honest, kind-hearted, and sincere in
every way (except at poker: I have known him to rake in all the chips in
a three-round jack-pot, and raise out five good players--a
Vice-President of the United States, a governor of a State, and three
United States Senators--on a bobtail flush). His friends are legion. As
a public speaker I think he is as bad as he is charming in private
conversation. The secret of his universal popularity is his own
magnificent self.
The Hon. William Parsons, a Dublin barrister, was a splendid
representative of a school of literary and historical lecturers, who,
like Dr. John Lord, followed the platform as a profession. Taking him
all in all, Mr. Parsons was decidedly the most satisfactory man to
manager and audiences alike that has come from abroad. His taking
presence, charming manners, and well-equipped brain, admirably
furnished, his ease of speech and pleasant, well-trained voice, together
with his ready wit and careful scholarship, made him a favorite always
during the twelve years he was continuously coming here for the lecture
season. But his voice was his best tool; it never wore on himself or
tired his hearers.
[Illustration]
From 1873 to 1884, the Hon. William Parsons made annual lecture tours in
America. Next to Gough, he was about the first one to be booked for the
following season wherever he appeared. Generally he returned after the
close of a lecture tour with his time for the following season all
booked solid and contracts in his pocket. His lectures were
biographical.
William E. Gladstone could not be prevailed upon to undertake a lecture
tour in America. I made him a final otter of £4,000 for twenty lectures.
Of course he did not accept it; yet, if he had only known the reception
he would have gotten in America, and the anxious, almost feverish desire
that there was on the part of the people to see and hear him, I think he
would have been inclined to run across. There is no auditorium in this
country that he could not have filled nightly at big prices. But
possibly the fear also of the reception may have influenced his
negative. It certainly did affect John Bright in the series of refusals
he made to my several suggestions.
[Illustration]
I met Mr. Gladstone three times at his home in London and submitted
propositions for a tour of fifty lectures. He did not discourage me at
first, but later on said that he thought he was too old to make the
trip. “Besides,” he added, “why should I go to America? Don’t all
Americans come to see me?” I give the letter Mr. Gladstone sent me in
reply to my last:
* * * * *
“DEAR SIR: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, with all
the kindness it expresses, and the dazzling proposals which it offers.
Unhappily my reply lies not in vague expressions of hope, but in the
burden of seventy years, and of engagements and duties beyond my
strength, by the desertion of which, even for the time needed, I should
really be disentitling myself to the good will of the people of America,
which I prize so highly.
“I remain, dear sir,
Your most faithful servant,
W. E. GLADSTONE.”
“February 7, 1880.
“TO MAJOR J. B. POND, Boston, U. S. A.”
* * * * *
On two occasions I breakfasted with Mr. Gladstone at his Harley Street
house. He was very much interested in my stories of Western frontier
life, and asked if I had any objections to having a stenographer sit
behind a screen and take down the “stories.” So on my third visit we sat
down to breakfast and I talked. I had been thinking all the night before
and all the morning on my way to his house what I would say, but when
once seated at the table, somehow, unconsciously, I was going on at a
great rate, giving experiences of my Western life, all drawn out of me
by Mr. Gladstone’s fascinating way of doing things. It was one o’clock
when we rose from the table. He said: “Major Pond, I cannot tell you how
interesting your visit has been to me. I thank you for it.” The reporter
was concealed behind a screen very near. I have looked for the stories
in print, but I never found them.
P. T. Barnum I first saw in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in 1853. The
agitation over the Maine Law had excited the then new and farthest
Western State, Wisconsin, and there was a movement on foot to have the
Maine Law passed by the State Legislature. Many speakers were secured
from the East, among whom were Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. S. R. I. Bennett, P. T.
Barnum, and another gentleman, a famous agitator, whose name I forget.
This party travelled in a two-horse carriage from town to town, holding
temperance meetings and making speeches. I know that I walked with my
father from Alto to Fond du Lac (twenty miles) to see and to hear “the
great humbug,” Barnum. I remember Darling’s Hall was packed. The women
speakers, to my eye, seemed very beautiful. I remember that the hair of
one hung in long ringlets down each side of her face and neck, and her
shoulders and arms were bare! She was very picturesque.
[Illustration]
Then came the first gentleman, whom I didn’t care for; but at last came
Barnum, “the humbug.” The first handclapping and cheers that I ever
remember hearing were for Barnum. I didn’t understand what it was all
about. A handsome, medium-sized man, in dark trousers, white vest, and
a black sack coat, smooth shaven, with a wealth of curly black hair,
and a smile all over his face, stepped forward on the platform. He
prefaced his remarks by saying:
“Yes, I am a ‘humbug,’ but the cause which I have championed in company
with these friends is sincere. That is no humbug. I have consented to
accompany them throughout your State to help, if possible, in
establishing a law in this young State that may save thousands and tens
of thousands from ruin. You have laws for the prevention of murder and
of theft and of all other crimes, but no law for the prevention of a
man’s stealing and wasting his earnings in strong drink and
impoverishing his family.”
He made a very eloquent appeal to our people, and closed his speech by
reassuring his friends that he was no humbug, “but look out next year. I
expect to send a show into this country. Then you may get humbugged.” He
retired with more cheers and applause. The next year Barnum’s woolly
horse was exhibited throughout the West, and everybody _was_ humbugged.
My father, at great sacrifice, took all his family, and all the
settlement did likewise. I didn’t see him after that until 1875 or 1876.
While I was associated with Mr. Redpath in Boston I engaged Mr. Barnum
to give twenty lectures on temperance in New England, paying him $2,000
and his expenses. His first lecture was in Music Hall, Boston, in the
Redpath Lyceum Course, before a very large audience.
The day he arrived at Boston I met him and Mrs Barnum, his new young
wife, at the station. Each had small handbags. I asked him if he had any
large baggage. He said they had none, excepting what they carried in
their hands. I started to pilot them to a carriage, when Mr. Barnum
said: “We will walk to the Parker House. It is not necessary to go to
the expense of a carriage.” I accompanied him on his tour through New
England, where he lectured in all the large towns, and he would never
allow his manager to incur an extra expense for any unnecessary comfort.
He was the most prudently economical man that I have ever known. It made
no difference to him who paid the expenses. If they were unnecessary,
he didn’t want them incurred. Invariably he walked from the station to
the hotel. In business relations with him afterward I found that same
rigid economy in all his dealings.
He told me that the large full sheet lithograph of his own head cost him
a little less than a cent and a half each; I could not have got them at
the time for less than eight cents. He also told me that his book, “The
Life of P. T. Barnum,” a bound volume of several hundred pages, was
printed in Buffalo, and cost him a trifle over nine cents each and sold
for a dollar; but he bought a million copies both of the book and of his
lithograph. He always arranged to have his colored show bills made so as
to answer the same purpose from one year to another. He seldom had a new
drawing made, but, with the introduction of modern type descriptive
bills, he could border the old colored posters and make a fine display.
He had bill-posting reduced to a fine art. He claimed that there was
only one liquid a man could use in excessive quantities without being
swallowed up by it, and that was printer’s ink.
His house in Bridgeport was a museum of itself. All the gems of the old
museum that were of extraordinary interest as curios were to be seen
there. Although he cared nothing especially for rare paintings, the
things that he gathered about him seemed designed to attract the eye
rather than the ear or the finer qualities of the mind. His band was
composed of the cheapest musicians that could be hired. For his side
shows he engaged people personally. I remember a man who had a special
act of some kind that rather attracted Barnum’s interest as a feature
for a side show. The man spoke of a woman he knew with whom he did a
double act which made a great hit. Mr. Barnum at once asked if she were
his wife. The man said, “No.”
“Well,” says Barnum, “you must fix that. You will have to make
arrangements to occupy the same berth in the sleeping car. We put four
people in a section.”
Once I told Mr. Barnum of an experience a friend of mine had at his show
in Milwaukee. There was a big crowd around the ticket wagon, but he got
through it and called for eight tickets, holding out a $50 bill to the
agent, who seized it, handed him eight tickets and a wad of money. After
he got out of the crowd and counted his money he found that he was $20
short, and of course that spoiled the enjoyment of the show for him. He
seated his party, went back, and waited for an opportunity to get to the
box office. The ticket seller just politely bluffed him off, insisting
that he got his right change, and one or two “bouncers” around the
office hustled the man away. Of course there was no recourse for him
whatever. The story seemed to make no impression on Barnum at all. He
simply said, “That was nothing; my man pays $5,000 a year for the
privilege of selling tickets at my show.” I asked him if that was the
custom, and he said it was with all circuses and big shows on the road;
that the privilege of selling tickets was awarded to the highest bidder.
For years he had never let it for less than $2,500. I afterward learned
that that was indeed the custom.
Mr. Barnum frequently gave me passes to his show, written out in his own
handwriting and always on the cheapest kind of paper. I wish I had kept
some of them. I have had as many as a dozen of them in my pocket at one
time.
He and I were one day sitting in the show in Boston a few minutes before
the time for the performance to begin. The show peddlers came along
crying, “Lemonade! Lemonade!” and, not recognizing Mr. Barnum, shouted
in his face. Mr. Barnum said to them:
“Go to the other part of the show. I don’t want you to peddle these
things anywhere within my hearing.”
That afternoon one of the Amazons in the great Amazon march, which was a
feature that year, was run over and killed by a chariot near the
entrance of the ring. Mr. Barnum did not move, and I said:
“That is dreadful, isn’t it?”
“Oh,” he replied, “there is another waiting for a place. It is rather a
benefit than a loss.”
I think I never knew a more heartless man or one who knew the value and
possibilities of a dollar more than P. T. Barnum. I am told he left a
very handsome fortune. He cut always with a gold knife. A more
plausible, pleasant-speaking man was never heard. It was as good as the
show itself to listen to him in conversation. He was familiar with every
slightest detail of his great performance.
I said to him once: “You utilized Jumbo’s stampede in the Zoological
Gardens, London, to pretty good advantage as an advertisement.”
Barnum replied: “We did nothing. We could not help it. I had been to a
thousand dollars’ expense sending men to India, and had sketches made of
the scene of capturing this immense beast, and had started my man to
Buffalo with drawings and orders for the printing when I saw in the
papers that Jumbo refused to leave the garden, and that there was a
general uprising of the children of London, who were making a protest
against his going. I had a cable proposition to buy him back, but I
didn’t sell. It never cost me a cent to advertise Jumbo. It was the
greatest free advertising I ever heard of.”
Mr. George H. Daniels, general passenger agent of the New York Central &
Hudson River Railroad, is a many-sided man who has added a new subject
to the lecture platform.
[Illustration]
It is somewhat surprising that although almost every conceivable phase
of art, literature, science, invention, adventure, and philanthropy has
been treated by lyceum lecturers, the almost limitless subject of the
evolution of facilities for rapid and luxurious travel has been
neglected. Yet it is a subject in which the great travelling public is
much interested. The development of the means of travel and commerce is
so universally a part of daily life that we do not stop to realize the
causes of the tremendous strides which have been made in these fields
within a single lifetime. It remained for Mr. Daniels to introduce us to
this interesting subject.
Early in the Civil War Mr. Daniels left the public school in Aurora,
Ill., and enlisted in the marine artillery of New York, going to North
Carolina with the Burnside expedition, later becoming a government
steamboat pilot for the inland waters of North Carolina and Virginia,
serving in that capacity until the close of the war.
After the war he became connected with Western railroads and has grown
up in the transportation business, so that he has not only observed, but
has had an important part in its development. In his special department
he has shown a combination of rare executive ability which amounts
almost to genius. He is original in his way of doing things and is full
of new and progressive schemes. Besides this, Mr. Daniels is a man of
excellent literary ability, as well as originality of thought--a rare
combination of qualities.
His speeches are concise and to the point and crowded with information.
He is _the_ man to address railroad assemblies on all sorts of
occasions, and is one of the most brilliant of speakers. If our lyceum
managers could realize the great educative influence such lectures would
have upon their community, they would not be long in restoring the
lyceum platform to its original position when it stood for genius,
ability, and education.
In spite of his brilliant qualities as a writer and speaker, Mr. Daniels
is satisfied with the very highest position in his profession, and is
not ambitious to fill any other niche of public eminence. He has risen
by sheer ability to the high position which he now occupies in his
special line, and is contented to remain the “right file in the front
rank,” with the largest income of any general passenger agent in the
world.
Mr. Daniels, it is expected, will soon convey passengers from New York
to Chicago between sunrise and sunset, via the New York Central
Railroad.
Mr. Ed. Heron-Allen, who is now a barrister in London, was one of the
most unique as well as most remarkable successes in the way of a lyceum
novelty that I ever discovered. He came to me while I was in London with
Mr. Beecher in 1886, and showed me a little book which he had written on
the science of the hand.
[Illustration]
He at once impressed me as one of the most dashing and attractive young
gentlemen I had ever met, and I found that he was a favorite with many
of the swell clubs and literary societies. He was a young man with
tremendous assurance, which at once inspired confidence on the part of
whomever he met.
He wished to go to America and give lessons and lectures on the science
of the hand, and went so far as to propose that he would hire a hall and
give his lecture that I might judge of it for myself. He did so, and Mr.
Beecher and I, with a number of his friends, attended the lecture in
Hempstead, London.
When he was eighteen years of age he was sent to the continent to secure
a collection of violins and other stringed instruments for the Colonial
Exhibition in London. His expedition was very successful, and he became
so intensely enamored of his work that he wrote a book on violin making,
which is now a standard authority on the subject for all violin makers.
He seemed possessed of many most remarkable gifts.
Arrangements were completed, and he came to America on the same steamer
on which Mr. and Mrs. Beecher, my brother, and I returned. He was the
most popular man on the boat, improvising a number of brilliant social
affairs that added to the pleasure of the voyagers.
On his arrival in New York, he took an extensive suite of parlors at the
Everett House, and held a press reception, at which he examined the
hands of many of the reporters and their friends, including several men
of distinction, and wrote descriptions of the characters of many, to the
wonder and admiration of his auditors.
Within a week he was a favorite in New York’s best society. He sent out
his cards announcing that he would give lessons in the science of the
hand, with charts and written descriptions accompanying them. One
leading young ladies’ school in New York arranged for seventy sittings
of pupils, each of whom paid ten dollars. Their hands were examined,
charts made, and a description of their character was written out. Ed.
Heron-Allen was indeed a very busy young man. He employed a stenographer
to take down his descriptions of the hands and write them out to
accompany the printed charts in which he himself inserted the lines of
the hands he examined. He found a stenographer who could take down his
descriptions with such accuracy that when he had finished his
examinations the chart and descriptive paper were ready to hand over to
the pupil enclosed in a cardboard roller and tied with a tasty bow of
various-colored ribbons. In this way he was kept very busy for a number
of weeks, and would often come down to my office at the close of a day’s
work and turn in from $100 to $150 in cash, which he had taken in from
visitors in a single day.
He served a five-o’clock tea in his parlors every day, at which his fair
pupils invariably assisted. In fact, it became a regular custom for the
daily papers, under the head of “What is Going On in Society,” to
announce the name of the lady who was to “pour tea” at Ed. Heron-Allen’s
_séunce_. that day.
Notwithstanding the peculiarity of his profession, he had the entrée to
the very best families of New York.
It was not long before there arose a jealousy of him among the young men
of New York, and a great many of them were much opposed to him, but that
made no difference to him. He was a favorite, and he knew it. He kept
right along making friends and money.