learn that it was some other person. He was greatly frightened,
and embarrassed, too, after coming to his senses; for the undershirt
could no more protect his shaking body than the
tinfoil on the neck of a champagne bottle could conceal all the
champagne. We were glad it was not our friend, but we could
not smile for gladness. A smile and an earthquake never
appear simultaneously.
Two men fresh from their rooms, in sleeping garb, were
supporting a young lady in angel clothes by both arms. They
carried her bodily, as she had collapsed. It was pitiable, but
not laughable, until next morning. Such calls as this: “Is
there a doctor in the house? My wife is dying!” “Oh, can’t
you get a doctor quick? I know my husband is dead or dying.
Do try. Oh, what will become of us?” “Is there any train
leaving right away?” A woman caught hold of a man’s arm,
screaming, “Save me! save me!” He tried in his rush and
fright to shake her off, but she again cried out: “Save, oh, save
me! What shall I do?” Just then he loosened her grasp,
saying, “Go to hell!” and she fell prostrate.
Returning to our rooms, I found my bed in the middle of
the floor and the centre-table very near the wall; both had
moved about four feet. Water was running in the bathroom.
On the floor in the hallway lay a young man. I asked him if
he felt badly or was in pain. He said: “No, I am in no
pain, neither am I frightened. I simply cannot get up. My
legs refuse to carry me.” We helped him to a sofa in the
corridor, and there left him, at his request, with “Thank
you.”
We were to leave for Southern California the following morning.
I noticed that Mr. Crawford had some severe spells of
coughing on the cars at night, and I thought that the earthquake
had affected him more severely than he had cared to tell
me. Before retiring he told me that he was going to take me
into his confidence, as we were partners and friends, and mentioned
the fact that he had been having a good deal of trouble
coughing, and that he had had two hemorrhages since I had
joined him; that his left lung was very sore, and he might be
obliged to return home, but that he intended to finish the tour
no matter what the sacrifice, if it were possible. In San Francisco
he had been in consultation with a physician who had
been recommended to him by his New York physician, and he
had been advised to close the tour then and there and return
home; but he was in hopes that Southern California might
help him. This put a damper on further pleasure for me. I
cared nothing whatever as to the business part of it--that
never entered my mind; but I assured Mr. Crawford that I
would not be the means of his breaking down for a dozen fortunes.
He assured me that it was not my fault at all, and that
he was going through. He had contracted a cold in New Orleans,
and at Pueblo, on a very windy day, he had visited a
smelting-works and had inhaled so much of the gas that it had
nearly killed him. He received the best of care. We visited
Southern California with no serious mishap, went back up to San
Francisco for two more lectures, and then to Portland, Ore. At
Portland he was seriously ill, and I persuaded him to call in a
local physician, who examined him thoroughly, and who told
me afterward that only a man of his perfect physique and iron
constitution could possibly have continued lecturing. But
Mr. Crawford was incorrigible, and insisted that he must be
doctored up in order to finish his tour. This physician assured
me that the case was very serious, and gave me some medicine
and some directions about how to act in case there should be
further attacks.
We continued on to Victoria, B. C., and back to Helena,
Mont., a town that we had been advised to skip owing
to its high altitude. The San Francisco doctor had insisted
that it would not do for Mr. Crawford to venture twelve
thousand feet above sea-level in Helena. It did no good.
We went to Helena. Mr. Crawford gave two lectures there
to the two largest audiences we had between the Pacific Ocean
and the Missouri River. Then we went on to Winnipeg, and
home. I was satisfied that Mr. Crawford’s days were numbered.
I had promised to say nothing to any one about it, and
I never did mention it, and would not do so now, were it not
for the fact that Mr. Crawford has written me that he has
fully recovered. During all the time Mr. Crawford kept up
his writing, and was always cheerful. It was his wonderful
power of abstraction and courage that carried him through
this ordeal.
We parted in Chicago. He was so anxious to hurry home
that he took the fastest train, while I made $16 by arriving
twelve hours later by another route. We exchanged several
telegrams on our different routes. I put it down as one of
the most enjoyable and delightful companionships that I have
ever had.
At the close of this six months’ tour Mr. Crawford sailed for
his home in Italy, still in poor health. I hardly expected
ever to see him again. I was lonesome without him, and busied
myself at odd times with writing him letters, which he never
answered. I feared he was ill, or that I had hurt his feelings
in some way, but, to my delight, in due time the
following letter came, which brought great joy to the Pond
household:
* * * * *
“SANT’ AGNELLO DI SORRENTO, ITALY,
“Dec. 16, 1898.
“DEAR OLD MAJOR:
“A Merry Christmas to you, and to Mrs. Pond, and Bim, and Miss Glass,
and all the very best wishes of the season! I am not dead and buried,
and as you may have supposed from a rude way I have of never answering a
man’s letters till he has written about six times. But I have been very
busy with my work, and between times with enjoying a long spell of home
with my wife and children. Knowing how you hate Mrs. Pond and Bim, you
will probably find this most extraordinary! You must try and get used to
the idea. (This letter does not contain a request for a loan for five
dollars at the end of it, so you may read it quite calmly--I just
thought of that.)
“I look over my old note books of last year, and it hardly seems
possible that I could ever have been the talking-piece of baggage that
was sent flying over the country for six months to be wound up every day
at the same hour. This is a good deal more comfortable, my friend, and
there is less wear and tear on one’s throat and good clothes--not to
mention one’s temper and digestion. All the same, I am glad I did it
once, and saw the country from end to end and from top to bottom, and
with a man who knows the West as you do. But if we ever do it again, I
shall take a patent reversible india-rubber coffin which can be used as
a bath, overcoat, or pulpit, and can be hermetically sealed so as to
bring the lecturer home on ice from the point at which he dies!
“Well--I am all right again, thank goodness! Whatever you do, my friend,
_never let_ your lecturer go and visit the smelting furnaces in
Colorado. That was the beginning of my trouble, and you were not there
on that day to prevent me from going.
“We had a little earthquake here not long ago--a sort of little kitten
earthquake--but it made me think of that evening in San Francisco, when
the house rocked and the boy dropped the cheese into the ice box and
ran! That was a good supper, well shaken down--we shall probably never
digest another so quickly.
“I have discovered that the wicked Emperor Tiberius was left-handed--you
and I are in good company.
“This is just a Christmas greeting--a little less than a lecture, a
little more than an autograph, from
“Your friend and old lecturer,
“F. MARION CRAWFORD.”
* * * * *
Gen. Lew Wallace has made three distinct and
creditable reputations, as a soldier in the war for the
Union, as a lawyer and orator, and as an author. As a State
lawyer and political speaker, he is confessedly one of the most
distinguished at the bar and on the stump of Indiana. As a
novelist, he has made one of
the most brilliant successes of
late years. His “Ben Hur”
had only one rival in popularity
in America--“Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.” As a lecturer,
he has proved one of the best
attractions in the lyceum, and
his popularity is increasing.
[Illustration]
After the success of “Ben
Hur” he was called for from
all parts of the land, especially
by the Young Men’s
Christian Associations. I
don’t know that anybody has
been in so much demand since
Gough’s time for these societies
as General Wallace.
After two or three years of earnest effort I succeeded in
getting him to make a tour of one hundred lectures. The
General was a pessimist in regard to lecturing. He did
not think the people cared to hear him, and to some extent he
was right.
He surprised me by making the suggestion that instead of
the regular fifteen per cent commission for booking time, I
should take twenty-five per cent; he thought that was little
enough. That enabled me to put a good deal of extra spirit
into my work. He kept the engagements, a hundred in number.
The tour proved very profitable. From a business
standpoint it was delightfully satisfactory. I could ask nothing
pleasanter in my life than to be constantly associated with
Gen. Lew Wallace and to be his daily companion while he was
travelling about the country delivering lectures. He had kind
words for every person he met. They were genuine, too, and
did not smack of the demagogue.
During his engagements with me, Mr. Klaw of Messrs.
Klaw & Erlanger called on me several times and proposed that
I should get General Wallace to consent to the dramatization
of “Ben Hur,” saying that they would pay any amount of
money I wanted. I made this suggestion to General Wallace
several times, and tried to point out to him the good it would
do, and the profit that was to be realized from it, as these
managers would spare no money in making the production a
success. I pointed out to him that there was an opportunity
in the chariot race for an unsurpassed scene and dramatic
effect. The General would not listen to it, although I
approached him from every standpoint possible. That success
was not for me. Two years later I found that these same
managers had obtained General Wallace’s consent to dramatize
“Ben Hur” and to bring it out in New York. I never got
over it; I entertained so high an opinion of the General’s fairness,
and felt so satisfied that our business relations had been
the pleasantest in the world, and that he would not under any
circumstances do me a wrong. I have never seen him or
heard from him on the subject and I have never seen the play.
If the General happens to read this he will know why I have
never seen it. That was another of my escapes.
Apropos of this, there is one other escape I had while in Boston.
Mr. Alexander Graham Bell came to me wanting to interest
me in a new invention that he had by which he could hear
in Lowell, or in any other town, a lecture delivered in Boston.
I went out and heard a test of it with Mr. Bell. I suggested to
him that it would be just the thing for communication between
business offices and factories, livery stables and hotels. He
wanted me to go into the business with him and urged me to
do so. He spent an hour sitting by my desk talking about it.
I spoke about it to my partner, but he reminded me that our
business contract would not admit of speculation of any kind.
I felt pretty certain that there was a fortune in the business, and
came very near telling him that I would leave the lyceum and
take the risk and go into the telephone business. As Mr. Bell
was leaving my office a gentleman from Providence, who ran
a lecture course in that town, came in, and I said to Mr. Bell:
“Here is the man you want for that business.”
Turning to the other gentleman, I said: “Gower, here’s
something that there’s a fortune in. Now you go into this
thing.”
Mr. Gower did his errand in a moment, and walked out of
the office with Mr. Alexander Graham Bell. I never saw him
afterward. Gower went up in a balloon in Paris and was
never heard from. It was said that he was worth over a million
dollars when he disappeared--all from the telephone business.
At that time he was the husband of Lilian Norton--our Nordica.
That was another narrow escape which I had.
[Illustration:
* * * * *
COPYRIGHT 1898 BY ROCKWOOD N.Y.
* * * * *
ISRAEL ZANGWILL]
Israel Zangwill, author of “The Children of the
Ghetto,” is another of the unique characters that I have
introduced to American audiences, and one who interested
me deeply. Many inquiries about him had come from all over
the country, especially from Jewish societies. I called on Mr.
Zangwill at his home in London, in 1897, and was very cordially
received. He had never lectured, but thought he could
make a go of it, and after an hour’s conversation with him I
came to the conclusion that he could not fail to interest all
who met him. It was a peculiar fascination, largely due, I
think, to his indomitable assurance. He looked me right
square in the eye when he talked, and whatever he said was
so because he said so, although I knew better at the time.
He showed me over his two rooms--one of them a library
with book shelves on all sides filled with books that bore the
marks of wear and tear, and arranged on these shelves _ad libitum_,
or perhaps I should say disarranged. I asked him if he
had saved press notices of his various books. He took me
into the adjoining room and lifted the lid of a trunk which
was stuffed full of press cuttings, with the Romeike attachments.
(There must have been $500 worth.) He had been
in the habit of throwing them promiscuously into the trunk and
pressing them down or stamping on them, until it looked like
a trunk packed full of old waste paper or refuse packing material.
Zangwill had just got back from Jerusalem, and showed me
another trunkful of unmounted photographs of the great
paintings and architecture of all parts of Europe. There were
thousands of them,--most of them very beautiful too,--but
they were almost ruined by the rough way in which they had
been carelessly thrown into the trunk. One very peculiar
photograph was of the mummy of Pharaoh. I asked him to
let me take a snapshot of it, and got him to hold the photograph
up against the window-sill.
It seemed almost impossible to come to any kind of understanding
with Zangwill. He thought that there was a great
public waiting for him over here, and I also thought so to a
considerable extent. But he couldn’t understand why he
should come over to America and draw great crowds and I get
a third of the profits from his earnings; so nothing was definitely
settled at that interview. I came away knowing well
enough that he intended to visit the United States, and to get
all that there was in it if he did come. Weeks went by, and
nothing was satisfactorily arranged between us. He kept me
informed of his movements. He was to sail in August in the
steamship _Lucania_ in company with his friend Judge Sulzburger
of Philadelphia, whose guest he was to be while over
here.
He arrived on the morning of September 27th, and I met
him at the steamer. We had made no arrangement, and he was
not under my direction or under any obligation to me in any
way. Still, I knew he had made no other arrangements.
Several Jewish friends met him and took possession of him. I
asked him if he would see reporters, and he said that he would
be glad to meet them at any hour I might name. He went
with me to the Everett House, leaving his other friends to call
for him to go to Long Branch at five in the afternoon.
He met the press representatives in my office, all gathered
around the same table where many other English men of letters
had been on the stand. There was great interest in him.
The reporters recognized a brilliant subject, and succeeded in
getting about as rich material for “space” as they had encountered
for some time. Zangwill answered questions of every
conceivable sort, and returned the fire from his assailants with
vigor. The reports in all the papers the next day were excellent,
and the interest in the great Jewish novelist was manifest
everywhere.
Lecture committees called and letters of inquiry came pouring
in, but as yet I could give no answer. In the interviews
the day before he evaded all questions as to his plans, and so
it went on until October. Many excellent applications had to
be rejected because no definite answer could be given. The
result was that when an understanding was finally reached,
nearly all the lyceum courses in the country were made up, and
the only way to book Zangwill was to hire halls and speculate
or accept certainties wherever they came from.
After our contract was duly signed, I at once engaged the
Lyceum Theatre in New York for his initial performance in
America. It took place on the afternoon of October 11th, 1898.
The pretty theatre was crowded with as intelligent and fashionable
an audience as New York could turn out to welcome a
stranger. “The Drama as a Fine Art” was the subject chosen
by Mr. Zangwill. He told me that he would speak without
notes, as he had been assured that to attempt to read a lecture
to a New York audience was fatal. There was no use of
arguing this with him. It was with some difficulty that he
got under way, but the lecture itself was a shower of epigrams
interspersed with sparkles of wit that carried his audience with
him from the beginning to the very last word. Not until the
close of the lecture did a single person leave the house. The
speaker was recalled and cheered vociferously for a long time.
The lecture was a severe criticism of the dramatic critics,
and most of our New York critics were there. The only one
of whom Zangwill had spoken kindly was William Winter, on
whom the compliment was lost because the latter had ceased
long ago to take interest in such affairs.
Many of New York’s best people rushed upon the stage to
congratulate Zangwill on his real success. Some of the most
prominent Jewish citizens were there--among them Mr. Seligman
and Mr. Isidor Straus. The latter, who sat by me, declared
that I had certainly found a winner. I don’t think I
ever knew an audience to be more delighted.
Yet the papers the next morning, much to my surprise, were
not very complimentary of Mr. Zangwill’s criticism, and when
Zangwill and I met to join Hall Caine and Judge Sulzburger,
with whom we were to lunch that day at the Waldorf, he wore
about as dejected an expression as I have ever seen. Mr.
Caine’s play “The Christian” was receiving very vigorous
treatment at the hands of the New York papers about this
time, and when he and Mr. Zangwill met at the lunch table,
I think Judge Sulzburger must have noticed that the two men
were in so chopfallen and dejected a state of mind that they
might have put pepper in their coffee instead of sugar without
ever having known the difference.
If the reporters could have heard that little interchange of
opinions of the American press from two such brilliant minds,
their story would have delighted the general public if not the
journalists themselves.
I had little difficulty in booking Zangwill. After New
York, Boston, and Philadelphia, he went to Buffalo, Cincinnati,
Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, and Memphis; from there
to Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, and back to New York, making
a succession of the longest rides that ever a lecturer
attempted in this country. Everywhere Zangwill met big
crowds, and his audiences were delighted.
On his return in November he gave a series of three lectures
in the Waldorf-Astoria; but the newspapers had succeeded
in creating a prejudice against the speaker, and these
lectures were very poorly attended.
I booked him for a Sunday night in Boston, and there was
a large advance sale up to the Friday evening before the lecture.
Then came a blizzard, and not another ticket was sold
until the night of the lecture, when only $2 was taken in at
the box office. It was one of the historic blizzards of Boston.
The advance sale had been $480 up to Friday, and Sunday
night it was swelled to $482, but very few of the people who
had purchased tickets in advance were able to get to the theatre.
Arrangements were made for another Sunday night in Boston
three weeks later, but the public proposed to wait until
the night came before buying their tickets, as many of them
had been disappointed on the last occasion. On the Saturday
before this Sunday another blizzard set in. Mr. Zangwill was
on hand and filled the bill, but the house was empty. Nobody
could get there. Mr. Zangwill and I had rented the
theatre and were speculating. Our loss was about $80, but
Mr. Zangwill wrote me a letter declaring he thought he must
have been the Jonah on this occasion, and insisted on paying
all the loss out of his own pocket.
The two leading Jewish clubs in New York, the Harmony
Social and the Freundschaft, each paid him $500 for a lecture
on Sunday evening, and I don’t believe Mr. Zangwill or anybody
else ever faced a more cultivated or appreciative audience
than on these occasions.
Many offers were made to Mr. Zangwill for his literary
work, and he accepted a dazzling proposition from Harpers to
write a novel, and withdrew _forever_ from the platform, as he
said.
I tried very hard to secure Mr. Zangwill for another season,
as his lectures had given great satisfaction in the large cities
which he visited and they had been extensively reported. He
was about the best-advertised man in the country, and the public
had learned that he had something to give for the money
which the American public has always been willing to pay under
such conditions. But it was no use. Theatrical managers
were after him to dramatize “The Children of the Ghetto.”
Mr. Zangwill was a great dramatic critic, and he believed he
could write a great play, and managers had the same belief,
which they were ready to back up with large sums of money.
He came over again in 1899 and produced the play in Washington
in October of that year. There were fine criticisms and
every prospect of a fortune in sight; but it was not what New
York wanted, and so, after a long and fair trial, it was withdrawn
from the boards of the Herald Square Theatre.
Zangwill is a good lecturer, because his subject-matter is
educational to a great degree, and his copious flow of English
and epigrammatic sentences render it as entertaining and novel
as it is instructive. There is good money for him in America
whenever he wishes to set aside the time for it; but he will not
do it. He cannot jump on a steamer and come over here,
give a few lectures and run back again, without notifying the
people in advance that he is coming.
[Illustration]
William Webster Ellsworth is a man whose
fame as a lecturer was not acquired through _The Century
Magazine_, but who has helped to make _The Century_
what it is at this time. He has been secretary of the great
corporation which publishes _The Century_ since its establishment
by Roswell Smith.
Mr. Ellsworth is of Puritan
stock, a great-grandson
of Chief Justice
Ellsworth and of
Noah Webster, and he
was reared in Connecticut,
a stamping-ground
of Revolutionary heroes.
A few years ago he found
himself a recognized authority
on Revolutionary
subjects. It came about,
I believe, through a publisher’s
suggestion to an
author. Mr. Ellsworth
asked Elbridge S. Brooks
to write a book for boys
and girls on the Revolution, proposing that it should take
the form of a trip to the battlefields, and he offered to go
with Mr. Brooks. They made the trip together, and the
photographs taken by Mr. Ellsworth were used as illustrations
for “The Century Book of the American Revolution,” and were
afterward made the basis of a lecture by Mr. Ellsworth which
many of the societies of Sons and Daughters of the American
Revolution promptly asked to hear. His position gave him
access to private and public collections of manuscripts and
printing, and with his heart in the subject Mr. Ellsworth has
brought to light more interesting documents and pictures than
were ever supposed to exist. Scores of lyceum, patriotic, and
historical societies have had his two lectures, one on the Revolutionary
War, and the other on “Arnold and Andre: the
Story of the Treason,” which he prepared two years ago.