ladies, who had made a special request to meet the Doctor after his
reading, that they could have the privilege of being introduced to him.
While in the wings as he was stepping on the stage I told the Doctor
what I had done and asked him to please wait and meet them. He replied:
“Oh, Major, I cannot, I cannot. What do they want of me? Let me get
away. I haven’t the courage to look anybody in the face.” He was a
pessimist in regard to the satisfactoriness of his entertainment.
He is a gentleman with very hot blood. He seldom wears an overcoat, even
in the coldest weather. He seemed to like everybody he met and
everything he saw in America excepting our heated hotel lobbies, public
halls, and railway cars. When he had a matinée lecture he removed his
vest and buttoned his Prince Albert coat close to his body. This he
could not very well do in his evening dress.
Dr. Doyle comes of a family of artists and literary men, his grandfather
having been a famous caricaturist, and one of his uncles the famous
Richard Doyle of the early days of London _Punch_, and another, James
Doyle, the historian. He studied medicine, and at nineteen went to the
Arctic regions as medical officer to a whaler. On his return to
Edinburgh he continued his medical studies and there met Dr. James Bell,
the eminent surgeon, the man who suggested “Sherlock Holmes,” his most
famous character.
Like most literary men, he makes few close friends. He is a golf fiend,
and will spend all the time possible, cold, wet, rain or shine, on the
links. He is an ideal travelling companion.
I think that Dr. Doyle was tendered more honors from clubs and societies
generally than any other Englishman I have known, hundreds of which he
was obliged to decline. He was one of the most appreciative Englishmen
that ever came to this country. American institutions and American
customs did not seem to cause unkind remark or to surprise him as they
have many others. He was a great favorite with the newspaper men, and
they were always ready and willing to say nice things of him.
As for his impression of America generally, I don’t know that I can do
better than to give his own story as he told it at a dinner given in his
honor by the Lotos Club, New York, on the 17th of November, just before
his return home.
Two hundred members and guests of the Lotos Club gathered to greet him.
President Lawrence made a highly flattering address of welcome, and,
when he presented Dr. Doyle, the latter was blushing at the kind things
said of him. He began by saying:
“There was a time in my life which I divided among my patients and
literature. It is hard to say which suffered most. But during that time
I longed to travel as only a man to whom travel is impossible does long
for it, and most of all I longed to travel in the United States. Since
this was impossible, I contented myself with reading a good deal about
them, and building up an ideal United States in my own imagination. This
is notoriously a dangerous thing to do. I have come to the United
States, I have travelled from five to six thousand miles through them,
and I find that my ideal picture is not to be whittled down, but to be
enlarged on every side. I have heard even Americans say that life is
too prosaic over here. That romance is wanting. I do not know what they
mean. Romance is the very air they breathe. You are hedged in with
romance on every side. I can take a morning train in this city of New
York, I can pass up the historic and beautiful Hudson, I can dine at
Schenectady where the Huron and the Canadian did such bloody work, and
before evening I have found myself in the Adirondack forests, where the
bear and the panther are still to be shot, and where within four
generations the Indian and the frontiersman still fought for the
mastery. With a rifle and a canoe you can glide into one of the back
eddies which has been left by the stream of civilization. I feel keenly
the romance of Europe. I love the memories of the shattered castle and
the crumbling abbey; of the steel-clad knight and the archer; but to me
the romance of the red-skin and the trapper is more vivid, as being more
recent. It is so piquant also to stay in a comfortable inn, where you
can have your hair dressed by a barber, at the same place where a
century ago you might have been left with no hair to dress.
“Then there is the romance of this very city. On the first day of my
arrival, I inquired for the highest building and I ascended it in an
elevator--at least they assured me it was an elevator. I thought at
first that I had wandered into the dynamite gun. If a man can look down
from that point, upon the noble bridge, upon the two rivers crowded with
shipping, and upon the magnificent city with its thousand evidences of
energy and prosperity, and can afterward find nothing better than a
sneer to carry back with him across the ocean, he ought to consult a
doctor. His heart must be too hard or his head too soft. And no less
wonderful to me are those Western cities, which, without any period of
development, seem to spring straight into a full growth of every modern
convenience, but where, even among the rush of cable cars and the
ringing of telephone bells, one seems still to catch the echoes of the
woodsman’s axe and of the scout’s rifle. These things are the romance of
America, the romance of change, of contrast, of danger met and
difficulty overcome; and let me say that we, your kinsmen upon the other
side, exult in your success and in your prosperity, and it is those who
know British feeling, true British feeling best, who will best
understand how true are my words. I hope you don’t think I say this, or
that I express my admiration for your country, merely because I am
addressing an American audience. Those who know me better on the other
side will exonerate me from so unworthy a motive. It is a subject upon
which I feel deeply. I am aware that the division of opinion among us at
the time of your civil troubles has been taken to mean lack of sympathy
with you. Far from being so, it was exactly the contrary. Our sympathies
are so close and vital that when you are rent in two we are rent in two,
and with a bitterness and completeness which was the counterpart of your
own. So it would be to-morrow, and when it ceases to be, it will be a
proof that we have finally lost touch with you. It is only when a great
American or an Englishman dies, when a mighty voice is hushed forever, a
Tennyson, a Lowell, or a Holmes, that a thrill through both countries
tells of that deep-lying race feeling in the development of which lies,
I believe, the future history of the world. Little waves and eddies may
disturb the surface, but there is an unseen current there a thousand
fathoms deep, which sweeps us onward to the same goal. And the proudest
thought of a literary man is that he, too, in his infinitesimal way, is
one of the forces which make for unity of feeling amongst the
English-speaking races, and for that ‘peace and good will to all men’
which such a unity of feeling would entail.
“Gentlemen, I thank you once more for your great kindness to me.”
President Seth Low of Columbia University, Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, W.
Bourke Cockran, David Christie Murray, Bartow S. Weeks, and William H.
McElroy also spoke.
The menu had in its upper right-hand corner a portrait of Dr. Doyle, and
on its border characters and scenes from his novels.
The night before Dr. Doyle sailed for England, Friday, December 6, 1894,
the Aldine Club gave him a farewell dinner. Hamilton W. Mabie presided
and introduced the guest of the evening, who had just arrived from
Boston. It was a literary crowd of our choicest men of letters. Dr.
Doyle seemed to have no set speech, but prefaced his reply to Mabie with
an account of his arrival in Boston:
“I arrived in Boston and alighted from the train almost into the arms of
a dozen cabbies. One of them had a dog-eared book peeping out of his
pocket, and I instinctively called him, saying as I got in: ‘You may
drive me to Young’s, or Parker’s--perhaps.’
“‘Pardon me,’ said the cabbie, ‘I think you’ll find Major Pond waiting
for you at Parker’s, sir.’
“What could I do but stare and acquiesce by taking my seat speechlessly?
We arrived, and the observant cabman was at the door. I started to pay
my fare when he said, quite respectfully:
“‘If it is not too great an intrusion, sir, I should greatly prefer a
ticket to your lecture. If you have none of the printed ones with you,
your agent would doubtless honor one of your visiting-cards, if
pencilled by yourself.’
“I had to be gruff or laugh outright, and so said:
“‘Come, come, I am not accustomed to be beaten at my own tricks. Tell me
how you ascertained who I am, and you shall have tickets for your whole
family, and such cigars as you smoke here in America, besides.’
“‘Of course we all knew that you were coming on this train--that is, all
of the members of the Cabmen’s Literary Guild,’ was the half-apologetic
reply. ‘As it happens, I am the only member on duty at this station this
morning, and I had that advantage. If you will excuse other personal
remarks, your coat lapels are badly twisted downward, where they have
been grasped by the pertinacious New York reporters. Your hair has the
Quakerish cut of a Philadelphia barber, and your hat, battered at the
brim in front, shows where you have tightly grasped it, in the struggle
to stand your ground at a Chicago literary luncheon. Your right
overshoe has a large block of Buffalo mud just under the instep, the
odor of a Utica cigar hangs about your clothing, and the overcoat itself
shows the slovenly brushing of the porters of the through sleepers from
Albany. The crumbs of doughnut on the top of your bag--pardon me, your
luggage--could only have come there in Springfield, and stencilled upon
the very end of the “Wellington,” in fairly plain lettering, is the
name, “Conan Doyle.”
“Now I know where Sherlock Holmes went when he died. That leaves me free
to write any more adventures of his that I wish as long as I locate them
in Boston.”
Dr. Doyle heard some fine speeches that evening after he had finished.
Bill Nye was the first to follow him; then Edward Eggleston, Thomas
Nelson Page, Charles Dudley Warner, F. Hopkinson Smith, James Lane
Allen, and others; but the intellectual part of the feast was listening
to Dr. Doyle’s story-telling. He has a brilliant capacity for telling a
true story with absolute correctness of historical detail and with
anything but historical dulness.
After Dr. Doyle returned to his home he was, of course, obliged to say
something of the impressions left by his visit. Among other things that
he said, he made a remark to the effect that an English author should
come here with the primary purpose of seeing the country and not of
making money. This was immediately seized upon as a hint that his own
tour had not paid. The following letter put that idea at rest:
* * * * *
“TO THE EDITORS OF “THE CRITIC,” NEW YORK:
“I notice that you allude to my recent lecturing tour in America as
though it had been unsuccessful. In justice to my most able manager,
Major J. B. Pond, will you allow me to say that it was successful beyond
all possible expectation, that I had crowded houses nearly everywhere,
and that I could have easily doubled the list of my engagements? My
remarks about American lecturing were impersonal, and I repeat that an
English author should go there with the primary idea of seeing the
country and the people, and that the making of money should be a
secondary one.”
A. CONAN DOYLE.
“MALOJA, SWITZERLAND, Sept. 2, 1895.”
* * * * *
The warm feeling of friendship he felt toward America and the American
people is well illustrated by the following letter which he wrote me
some time after his American tour:
* * * * *
“UNDERSHAW, HINDHEAD, HASLEMERE.
NIND
“MY DEAR MAJOR:
“It was quite a pleasure to me to see your handwriting again. I shall
always regret that I did not see you when you came to London. Pray give
my kindest remembrances to Mrs. Pond and the little man. You will, I am
sure, be glad to hear that my wife’s health has much improved.
“Has not the Anglo-American _entente cordiale_ which I preached when I
was in the States grown since 1894? It is the best and healthiest sign
in the waning century. But we have much still to do.
Yours always,
“A. CONAN DOYLE.”
* * * * *
I would give him more money to-day than any Englishman I know of if he
would return for a hundred nights.
He must be a great disappointment to his old teacher. When he had
finished school the teacher called the boy up before him and said
solemnly:
“Doyle, I have known you now for seven years, and I know you thoroughly.
I am going to say something which you will remember in after-life.
Doyle, you will never come to any good.”
[Illustration]
Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras, when he first appeared made a
great sensation, and it was believed that a second Byron had been added
to the list of our poets. He was born in Indiana, but was taken to
Oregon when a mere infant. He spent part of his boyhood with a tribe of
Indians, and there took the name of a well-known highwayman or “road
agent.” It was a mere caprice on the boy’s part, but the name stuck to
him and he stuck to the name. After leaving the Indians he went to the
mines, and his life there is described in his novel “The Danites,” which
furnished the plot and character for his play of the same name. He soon
tired of digging for gold, and established an express, which consisted
of a few teams that took and brought parcels from the mining camp to the
nearest town. Then he took to law, practised before the territorial
courts, and subsequently was elected a judge. Of course he contributed
to the territorial newspapers--everybody did who had any talent for
writing; but unlike most frontier writers his contributions soon
attracted notice outside of the Territory, and he soon found himself
famous. That made it certain in those days that he would be invited to
lecture. He did lecture a few times in California, and then came East,
but proceeded to London before attempting to lecture in New England. He
found himself unknown in London, and adopted a very original scheme for
becoming known. He issued an edition of his poems of the Sierras--just
enough to send to the leading newspapers. He instantly became famous,
and was courted by “society.” He accepted numerous invitations to
parties in high life, and went to splendid aristocratic residences clad
in red shirt, slouch hat, and with his trousers tucked into his boots.
He wore his hair long and exaggerated the manners of the far West. The
result was to make him the lion of the season. He reaped a rich harvest
from fabulous fees for readings from his Western poems, and relating
incidents of his adventures in the Rocky Mountains. When he returned to
the United States he lectured a little, but did not make a hit, and he
soon returned to the coast, and has since depended almost solely on his
pen for a living.
Later he went to the Klondike, and after his return lectured in the
States on his experiences there; but his former friends were not around,
and the present public did not know him, so his venture was a failure.
Alexander Black is guilty of a new invention for drawing audiences. He
wrote the story of “Miss Jerry,” and not being in a position to engage a
company to produce it throughout the country, induced a number of
excellent actors to give the play in costume, and while it was being
acted photographed every scene and incident. Then he developed the
pictures, put them on lantern slides, and with the stereopticon
reproduces the play in every respect but the speaking, which Mr. Black
does himself. This stroke of genius is making Mr. Black rich, as well as
surprising the public with an absolute novelty.
[Illustration]
He has since produced two other picture plays. In “The Capital
Courtship” the scene is laid in Washington, and the characters in the
play call on the President in his office and in his parlors at the White
House. They also visit many of the cabinet ministers, all of whom must
have consented to pose specially for these illustrations. So great has
been Mr. Black’s success with the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and
Sciences that the manager of that institution, Mr. Franklin W. Hooper,
paid him $300 for his initial performance of “The Capital Courtship,”
and wrote me that this picture play of Mr. Black’s had brought many
thousands of dollars to the institute.
The third year Mr. Black produced another play, “Miss America,” which
has met with equal success. There is hardly an established lyceum in the
United States where he has not appeared, and what is particularly
interesting in these times is that Mr. Black is recalled more than any
other stereopticon entertainer.
He was originally a journalist, and retired from that calling to become
a showman. He spends his summers in preparing some new scheme for the
edification and instruction of his myriads of friends throughout the
length and breadth of the land. As I am not Mr. Black’s manager, it can
be seen that I pay him this tribute disinterestedly.
[Illustration: ERNEST SETON-THOMPSON]
Ernest Seton-Thompson is a practical demonstration of what I have ever
declared: that there always has been and always will be some one coming
to the front whom the general public wants to see and hear. That
somebody must do something good enough to attract general attention and
render an equivalent return for what the patrons will give.
The name of Seton-Thompson had been on my list for a season. He
frequently called at my office and gave me newspaper notices, and told
me of the pleasant things that had been said to him where he had given
lectures for small Lyceums at a moderate fee. He presented me with a
copy of his book, “Wild Animals I have Known,” which interested me
immensely, and I was satisfied that he was not lecturing or reading for
revenue only, but that he had a cause, was fond of animals, that his
life had been associated with them, and that he showed clearly that
every living creature had paternal and family instincts the same as
human beings.
I asked him if he would give a lecture in Jersey City, near my home, so
that I could hear it, which he consented to do. I then discovered that
he was certainly a big attraction. I had booked him with a kindergarten
society of New York for a lecture at Carnegie Lyceum, which I attended.
Although I went early, I found the box office crowded with women and
children trying to secure admission; but the man in the office had no
more tickets to sell. The young lady who had charge of the affair came
to me in great tribulation; there were a lot of people who wished to get
in, and all the tickets she had put out among her friends had been sold
and she didn’t know what to do. I hurried to the box office and asked
the ticket agent to sell the people something that would admit them to
the place, charging a dollar each, and I told the young lady to let
everybody in and secure all the money she could. The result was about
$160 more than the original sale of tickets that had been counted upon.
Then I suggested to Ernest Seton-Thompson that he and I give lectures in
partnership in that hall as often as we could. I secured a number of
dates,--I think eight in all,--the first one being one week from the
afternoon just mentioned. I went to Carnegie Lyceum that afternoon and
found every seat had been sold. The profits of the lecture were over
$500. I asked Mr. Thompson if that wasn’t the largest day’s work he had
ever done. He seemed very much flattered, and acknowledged that it was.
We went from there to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore,
giving afternoon and evening entertainments.
The matinées were arranged so as to take place after school hours,
generally from 4:30 to 5. These were invariably the largest attended. It
was surprising to find the number of children who had read Mr.
Seton-Thompson’s book and how familiar they all were with the names of
Lobo, Wahb, Mollie Cottontail, Blanca, Silver Spot, Vixen and Tip, The
Wild Mustang, and especially Little Johnny. The appearance of any one of
them on the screen was the signal for shouts of laughter from the
children. Lobo and Little Johnny seemed to please them the most.
No man has risen more rapidly in public favor than Mr. Seton-Thompson,
as regards both his writings and his lecturing. At the present time
there are more engagements booked for him at high prices than for any
other platform attraction in the country.
Mr. Seton-Thompson demonstrated that the hunting of wild animals with a
camera, instead of with a rifle to destroy their lives, is fully as
enjoyable, and possesses much more satisfactory final results. He has
also taught us that the animals instinctively avoid man because they are
being hunted for their lives; but in communities where the shooting of
animals is prohibited, the creatures become tame and almost sociable. In
the Yellowstone Park, where no firing is allowed or has been for years,
the bears and the wolves, the cattle and the horses, and the children,
mingle together undisturbed, and children, colts, wolves, and lambs are
as safe as though in their natural homes.
Mr. Seton-Thompson is a delightful man personally. Children have no
hesitancy in approaching him or writing to him. He has received
thousands of letters from children in all parts of the land telling him
how they have enjoyed his books, and of the animals they have known that
he must have heard of, or he could not have given their characters so
graphically. The most interesting reading that I have found for a long
time is among Mr. Seton Thompson’s letters from children. Here is one:
* * * * *
“August 6, 1899, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
“MY DEAR MR. ----
“‘Wild Animals I have Known’ is the best and truest book I know. I have
read it twice, each time feeling its trueness more and more. In the
simple way the book is written it helps you to understand the delicate
and finer parts of animal and bird life.
“The book appeals to you because it is true and just in all it says. I
think it keen in detail, liberal and fair to every creature in it,
beautiful in its style. The style that fascinates you yet not a
novelist’s fascination. Original in every way and no quoting or phrases
of other men, but just the Author’s own original and simple words, and
on the whole it is a fine book that couldent be matched in beauty and
style. The Author must lead a beautiful life in the woods and on the
plains and in animals resting places, feeling at home with them and
learning their ways, and I guess we all thank him for his toil and labor
to compleat such a fine book. I like the Pacing Mustang and his glorious
gate, as everlasting as steel. Bingo and lots of other stories. The Don
Valley Partridge in which Mr. Thompson speaks of the cruel hunter who
hunted Redruff. I had a simeler experience but not a brutal one for it
turned out all right. My, Uncle, a boy friend of mine, and myself with
our rifels and a pistol, (we were with a party of others going for a
ducking in Eel River) we three were ahead, and just as we turned a curve
we saw a Father quail with six or seven young ones, we were all seized
with an impulse to shoot him although it was out of season. I shot
between his toes, then my uncle shot and it kept it hot. I shot twice
again but all the time my friend was shooting and the dust was flying,
there the quails stood untouched, and unmoved he waited till all the
young were hid and then he hid himself. It was about five minutes that
we had been shooting. I stopped and thought of Mr. Thompson’s book. I
tried to stop the others, and I did. When we left the spot there was one
boy ashamed of his shooting, a man glad he dident kill the quaile, but
ashamed of his shooting, and last of all I with a wreath of happiness
round my head and glad I didn’t kill the biped. Mr. Thompson saved his
life (The quail’s) by writing that fine book of his, and he made me
happy the rest of the day, and put the cruel hunting spirite out of my
head.
“Hoping Mr. Thompson will write many more books,
“I am yours sincerely,
“A---- W----.”
(Twelve years old.)
* * * * *
It is surprising to learn, within two or three months after Mr.
Seton-Thompson’s success, how many people have been interested in the
same way, and are ready to make sacrifices by writing books and
lecturing on wild animals.