which he justly deserves.
At present writing Mr. Seton-Thompson is speaking twice a day in order
to comply with the demand for his services. Everywhere crowded houses
welcome him, and always on afternoon occasions the greater portion of
the audience is composed of children. The whole human family is his
public, because every human being loves wild animals; the rich and the
poor, the learned and the unlearned, are alike interested and
enthusiastic auditors.
All of Mr. Seton-Thompson’s writings and drawings descriptive of the
personality of wild animals are enhanced many fold by his inimitable
description of them from his own lips. It is seldom that an
author-artist is gifted with the ability to entertain upon the lecture
platform, but Mr. Ernest Seton-Thompson is as clever with his voice as
with his pen and pencil.
William Henry Drummond, D.D., author of “De Habitant” and other
French-Canadian poems, has lived virtually all his life with the
French-Canadian people, and while most of the English-speaking public
know the French-Canadians of the cities, they have had little
opportunity of knowing the habitant as does the doctor. He knows them,
and they know and love him so well that he allows them to tell their
tales in their own way as they would relate them to English-speaking
auditors not conversant with the French tongue.
[Illustration]
As James Whitcomb Riley’s Hoosier dialect poems have charmed the
American people, so have Dr. Drummond’s won the hearts of the Canadians.
He reads as charmingly as he writes.
For the sake of those who are not familiar with his work, I quote (by
permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons) a few verses from his poem, “De
Habitant.”
“De place I get born me, is up on de reever
Near foot of de rapide dat’s call Cheval Blanc,
Beeg mountain behin’ it, so high you can’t climb it,
An’ whole place she’s mebbe two honder arpent.
“De fader of me, he was habitant farmer,
Ma gran’fader too, an’ hees fader also,
Dey don’t mak’ no monee, but dat isn’t fonny,
For it’s not easy get ev’ryt’ing, you mus’ know--
“All de sam’ dere is somet’ing dey got ev’rybody,
Dat’s plaintee good healt’, wat de monee can’t geev,
So I’m workin’ away dere, an’ happy for stay dere
On farm by de reever, so long I was leev.”
“O! dat was de place w’en de spring tam she’s comin’,
W’en snow go away an’ de sky is all blue--
W’en ice lef’ de water, an’ sun is get hotter,
An’ back on de medder is sing de gon-glou--
“W’en small sheep is firs’ comin’ out on de pasture,
Deir nice leetle tail stickin’ up on deir back,
Dey ronne wit’ deir moder, an’ play wit’ each oder,
An’ jomp all de tam jus’ de sam’ dey was crack.”
[Illustration: Very dutifully Yours,
_Tho Nelson Page_
]
Thomas Nelson Page has been the most successful of the Southern authors
who have read from their own writings. He has done more to preserve the
traditions of the old South, the old negro character, and the interior
home life before the war, than any one else. I wish that I were able to
write well enough to say what I would like to of this Southern gentleman
of letters. He seems to convey all that is best in a character, whether
master or slave, and in such a way that every one who reads his charming
descriptive novels is made familiar with life in the South as it
actually was before the war.
Shortly after “Marse Chan” made its appearance, I received letters from
all parts of the country asking if Thomas Nelson Page, the author of
that story, could be secured to give readings. It was some time before I
obtained a favorable reply to my many invitations for him to let himself
be seen as well as read. He was very shy and quite averse to making an
exhibition of himself, claiming that he was not gifted with voice or
histrionic ability. He did consent to give joint readings with F.
Hopkinson Smith for a short tour, beginning in Boston, January 12, 1892,
in cosy little Chickering Hall. I had hoped for a big success
financially, but the fame of the two Southern authors had not preceded
them at the Hub. They opened with a small audience; but the newspapers
gave excellent reports the following day, which assured success for the
balance of the season. A Boston success means a success in New England,
but I had struck high for large cities. We went to Chicago, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and Washington. The readings were attended by the choicest
literary public in each city. Return engagements were made invariably,
which were very remunerative, and there was a good deal of money in
sight. Mr. Page was paving the way for a magnificent success another
season, as was evident from the number of applications that came from
every city where he had appeared.
Unfortunately, that season I made one engagement too many in Chicago,
for from there I received notice from Mr. Page that he would not give
another season to the platform under any conditions. Very shortly
afterward I learned that in Chicago he had made the acquaintance of one
of the most charming ladies in that city, who seemed to have more
influence over him than the alluring promises of lyceum readings. To
make a long story short, Mr. Page changed his manager.
He is now living in Washington, and I am happy to say that I can count
him as one of my best friends.
Three years ago I was a guest at a dinner at his house given to Anthony
Hope, where were present the Hon. Lyman Gage, Secretary of the Treasury,
Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and James Lane
Allen and Mr. John Fox, Jr., the two famous Southern novelists of the
time. One can imagine the charming intellectual atmosphere of an
occasion like this; none present but that felt there must have been some
fault in the reckoning of time, for it was 4 A.M. when the party
reluctantly dissolved.
Mr. Page has a beautiful home in Washington, and I know of no one better
fitted for such charming surroundings. He is as delightful as a host and
in his everyday conversation as he is as a reader of his fascinating
Southern stories. One can spend a day with Mr. Page in ordinary travel
and conversation and attend his readings at night, and find that he has
been as delightfully entertained in the ordinary speech as by the public
reading. He has the sweetest-speaking voice that I ever heard. There is
no music more delightful to listen to.
For one reason I am glad that I was deprived of his services as a star.
Had he continued on the platform he never would have written “Red Rock,”
a book which has met with an enormous sale and which gives the most
graphic picture of the trials that the Southerners endured during and
after the war. It is probably because I had been a soldier four years
and had known nearly every character exactly as Mr. Page has presented
it to the present generation and preserved it for posterity that I
enjoyed it so much. Thomas Nelson Page certainly has not lived in vain.
Mr. John Fox, Jr., is a young friend of Mr. Page’s of whom I like to
write. He is a Kentuckian, a Harvard man, lawyer, New York newspaper
man, all-around athlete, and author of “The Cumberland Vendetta,” “Hell
for Sartain,” and “The Kentuckians,” which have won him a position among
the best writers of America and Europe.
In Thomas Nelson Page’s letter introducing Mr. Fox to me, he writes:
“Get John Fox some engagements. He is going to be a success, and some
one else will secure him. Mr. Theodore Roosevelt was praising him to me
the other night in a way to warm my heart.”
[Illustration]
Mr. Fox is surely one of the most popular Southern authors of the time,
and is very much appreciated in the South on account of his nativity as
well as because of the high character of his literary work; but he has
appeared before the most cultivated literary circles in all of the
larger cities of the North, giving his dialect readings from his own
sketches of life in the Cumberland Mountains. He discovered a dialect
and lots of good in the humble people who inhabit that mountainous
region, and who are the least known of any of the inhabitants of our
country.
For the class he presents he is as thoroughly sympathetic as Thomas
Nelson Page is for the old-time Virginia negro “uncles” and “aunties” he
so charmingly describes. I do not know a more natural and, in a refined
sense, unconventional man on the platform and before his audience than
this handsome, well-bred, easy youngish gentleman from Bourbon County,
Kentucky.
The Cumberland tableland, which is the scene of his stories, divides the
Blue Ridge or Cumberland Mountains in East Tennessee from the “basin,”
or central and western sections of that State, and runs, a rugged
formation, into Southeast Kentucky. “Charles Egbert Craddock,” as Miss
Murfree signs herself, has preceded John Fox in the same field, but the
latter brought to his later task of dialect and character portraiture
the physical sense of companionship from his ability to actualize in his
own life the Cumberland mountaineer’s rugged out-of-door existence.
In my own wanderings as printer, soldier, and later lecture manager, I
have often felt the variant charm of the many-sided life of our land.
Often, too, have I wondered at men going abroad to find romance and
striking character, when so much of it is to be readily seen at home.
The Cumberland mountaineers, generally of non-slave-holding stock,
hunters even more than farmers, strong Union men in days of need, as a
rule, but intensely Southern, nevertheless, afford a field for the
story-teller’s art which seems to me of the most interesting and unique
character.
John Fox has won its secret and knows how to make others understand. He
has a capital presence, a magnetic force and manner, and a most telling
voice at his command. On the platform he is pretty much what he is off
it, except that he is sensitively watchful of doing his work well.
William Dean Howells declares that Fox brings a “fresh vision” and a
“novel touch” in the seeing and presenting of his scenes and characters.
If that is true of his books, it is more eminently so of his readings
and lecture descriptions. He has no mannerisms and gives no evidence of
effort. He simply tells and lives in the telling. What he gives is truly
his own work. His dialect is perfect, but it is human and actual, not a
mere caricature. The figures he gives are wholesome and clean, as is the
man who presents them.
Rudyard Kipling and I have exchanged a number of letters, but up to the
day before he was stricken with his late illness we had never met. After
several attempts through his friends and publishers, members of the
Century Co., to get an introduction to him, a common friend of the
editorial staff said to me:
“Major, it’s no use; Kipling won’t see you.”
“What have I done?” I asked.
“Nothing,” replied my friend. “He says that he has been told that if he
meets you he will go lecturing, and he doesn’t purpose to expose
himself.”
[Illustration]
And although his New York house was within a block of mine, he managed
to keep out of my sight, much as I tried to meet him.
In 1895, while crossing the continent with Mark Twain on his lecture
tour around the world, Mr. Kipling was often mentioned by Mark as the
greatest “card” in the world, and I was urged to try to get him. “I am
told he is the finest reader and interpreter of his own writings of all
of us. Get him,” said Mark. So, on my return from Victoria, B. C., after
having seen Mark and his wife and daughter sail out on the _Warrimoo_
for Australia, I determined to call on Mr. Kipling at his home in
Vermont, hoping that, on Mark’s suggestion, I might capture him. I
received no reply to my various telegrams that I would call on such a
day, but I had determined to make the effort. Yet when I started from
Montreal to Brattleboro my courage failed. I did not stop, but wrote
Mr. Kipling immediately on my arrival in New York, and received the
following reply:
* * * * *
“BRATTLEBORO, VT., Sept. 30, 1895.
“DEAR MR. POND:
“I am much obliged to you for your letter, but I can’t say that I can
see my way to the ententement you propose. There is such a thing as
paying one hundred and twenty-five cents for a dollar, and though I
suppose there is money in the lecturing business, it seems to me that
the bother, the fuss, the being at everybody’s beck and call, the night
journeys, and so on, make it very dear. I’ve seen a few men who’ve lived
through the fight, but they did not look happy. I might do it as soon as
I had two mortgages on my house, a lien on the horses, and a bill of
sale on the furniture, and writer’s cramp in both hands; but at present
I’m busy and contented to go on with the regular writing business. You
forget that I have already wandered over most of the States, and there
isn’t enough money in sight to hire me to face again some of the hotels
and some of the railway systems that I have met with. America is a great
country, but she is not made for lecturing in. With renewed thanks for
your very kind letter, believe me,
“Yours sincerely,
“RUDYARD KIPLING.”
* * * * *
Later I sent a complete set of his books, with a request that he favor
me with his autograph in each volume (about twenty books). He unpacked,
signed, and repacked them, and here is what he wrote:
* * * * *
“DEAR MAJOR POND:
“Your order of the 22d instant has been filled, we trust to your
satisfaction, and the stuff is returned herewith.
“We did not know that there would be such a mass of lumber to put
through the mill; and we note also that your order covers at least two
supplementary orders--(_a_) in the case of a young lady aged nineteen
(not in original contract) and (_b_) an autograph work for which we have
supplied one original hardwood case.
“Our mills are running full time at present, in spite of business
depression; but we are very reluctant to turn away any job that offers
under these circumstances, and making allowance for time consumed,
sorting, packing, crating, and returning finished goods, we should
esteem it a favor if you would see your way to forwarding an additional
ten ($10) dollars to the _Tribune_ Fresh Air Fund.
“Very sincerely yours,
“R. KIPLING & CO.”
(Autographs supplied on moderate terms; guaranteed sentiments to order.
Verse a specialty. No discount for cash.)
* * * * *
MY “BENEFIT” EXPERIENCE.
I had never believed in benefits for managers, for it is generally
looked upon as a sort of give-away--an acknowledgment of an impecunious
condition, like the beggar who stands on the street holding out his hat
or turning a little hand-organ, labelled with the sign, “I am
blind”--and one’s friends are liable to cut an old comrade in the
street, or pass by on the other side, as an after-effect of such an
appeal to the public.
It had been a hard season, and some of my friends had reaped pretty fair
profits and urged me to accept a complimentary benefit, tendering their
services and assistance gratuitously. My friend Bill Nye visited the
proprietors of Chickering Hall and obtained from them the free use of
that edifice for the entertainment, and my printers went so far as to
volunteer to furnish programmes, tickets, and such advertising material
as I wished. The newspapers, however, didn’t open their advertising
columns gratuitously, as that would have been an innovation and an
instance unparalleled in that department of newspaperdom, but the
editors were very generous with their puffs.
So it was suggested by my friends George W. Cable, Max O’Rell, Bill Nye,
and James Whitcomb Riley that I accept a testimonial. It was arranged
that George W. Cable should be introduced by his friend Roswell Smith,
president of the Century Co.; that Max O’Rell should be introduced by
his friend, Gen. Horace Porter; Bill Nye by Col. John A. Cockerell,
editor of the New York _World_, and one of the finest editor-orators of
the time; and James Whitcomb Riley was to be introduced by Dr. Edward
Eggleston, the Hoosier novelist, author of “The Hoosier Schoolmaster”
and “The Hoosier Schoolboy.” Each one of these introducers was
considered an attraction in himself.
The occasion was well advertised, circulars were sent out, and I think I
never had a more copious response by mail than I had at that time from
my friends, all asking for one or two tickets--complimentary, of course.
The time arrived, and my old friends turned out in full force--the old
free list. The expenses were about $200, and the receipts about $110. I
pocketed my loss of $90, and have discouraged every suggestion of a
“benefit” offered since that time.
The entertainment was delightful. No audience ever went out of
Chickering Hall with more beaming countenances, and I had
congratulations from all my friends. I was asked by one friend, who had
paid for her ticket, if I contemplated a tour to Europe. I certainly
could afford it after receiving such a rousing benefit!
In an appropriate speech, Mr. Roswell Smith introduced his friend George
W. Cable as the most successful magazine writer of his time, and dwelt
upon the good fortune his writings had brought to the Century Co., of
which he had the honor to be known as president.
His speech brought a hearty round of applause to Mr. Cable, as he
stepped forward and read “Posson Jone’,” his favorite Creole story.
Then Col. John Cockerell, in his characteristic eloquence, presented his
pet humorist, Bill Nye, who had come from the West on his invitation and
accepted a position on the editorial staff of the New York _World_, and
whose writings had quadrupled the circulation of the Sunday edition of
that paper. He was eloquent in his eulogistic introduction, and Nye
caught the inspiration as he wabbled down to the front of the stage.
Without uttering a word he had the audience convulsed for a long time,
and when he did begin his story of how he earned his first dollar, the
audience fairly bubbled over, while there was not the slightest ripple
on the speaker’s round countenance. Nye was bald-headed all over, and
more so when in front of an audience.
Then Edward Eggleston, the Hoosier novelist, introduced James Whitcomb
Riley, the Hoosier poet, with many happy turns on the term Hoosier and
the Hoosier State. Roswell Smith was from Indiana, Nye was part Hoosier,
and every one down on the programme was Indianian to some degree except
possibly Max O’Rell, the French humorist.
Mr. Eggleston’s introduction of James Whitcomb Riley put the poet in
trim for his best Hoosier interpretations, and before he had finished
his recital everybody in that audience was Hoosier more or less.
General Porter was saved for the last. His witty introduction of the
French humorist was the climax of the day. There had been so much
Indiana and Hoosier in the programme, he said, that he felt a little
embarrassed and discouraged, as the only novelty about his candidate for
the audience’s amusement was that he was not from Indiana.
It was an interesting two hours’ display of ability and genius, wit and
humor, such as would be difficult to reproduce at the present time.
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE LYCEUM FIELD
James Redpath.--No reference to the American lyceum, its lecturers or
lectures, would be complete without telling something about the
many-sided man who picked up the famous old lyceum system that had done
so much to “educate and agitate” back in the fifties and sixties, and
who created out of its wonderful fragments the equally notable plan of
entertainment and lecturing which then took its place.
[Illustration]
Previous to Mr. James Redpath’s establishment of the Redpath Lyceum
Bureau, the entertainment agency system of to-day had no existence; and
to Mr. James Redpath, in connection with his energetic partner, Mr.
George L. Fall, deceased, belongs the credit of instituting the bureau
system, by means of which nearly all the lecture business of the country
is now conducted. That I have had so much to do with this more latterly
is due largely to my good fortune in knowing so well his methods, while
winning and holding the personal friendship of the founder of “Redpath’s
Lyceum Bureau.”
Mr. James Redpath was born in Berwick-on-Tweed, England, August 24,
1833, coming to this country in 1848 with his family. For two or three
years he worked as a printer at Kalamazoo, Detroit, and Chicago, then
went to New York, where he began to write for the daily and weekly
press, and soon afterward became editorially connected with the New
York _Tribune_.
His health failing, in 1854 he started on a tour on foot through the
Southern seaboard States to see with his own eyes what slavery was. When
winter set in he renewed his journey, partly on foot and partly by
railroads and steamers, until he reached New Orleans. During all this
long journey he talked with the slaves, slept in their cabins, ate of
their humble fare, and listened to their distressing revelations. These
conversations Mr. Redpath took down in shorthand, and sent a series of
letters, descriptive of his walks and talks, to the New York
_Anti-Slavery Standard_ (William Lloyd Garrison’s paper)--letters which
were afterward collected and published, and which elicited the highest
praise of the leaders of the anti-slavery party.
From New Orleans Mr. Redpath went to St. Louis, where he at once
obtained a position as reporter on the _Missouri Democrat_, a Republican
daily paper. In 1855 the proprietors of that journal sent him to Kansas
to report the proceedings of the “bogus legislature” convened at the
Shawnee Mission. His reports of its proceedings and his descriptions of
the scenes which took place were copied far and wide by the Republican
press, and gave him at once a national reputation.
I was an awkward boy of eighteen, working at the “case” in beleaguered
Lawrence, Kansas Territory, during the summer of 1856, and was drawn to
the keen-witted, brave, friendly, and untiring young fellow who was
constantly on the move as special correspondent of the New York
_Tribune_ and of the old _Missouri Democrat_ of St. Louis. I had been
reared on the old _Try-bune_ up in the Wisconsin pioneer home where my
boyhood was passed. That’s why I found myself out there in that Kansas
summer of danger. When Redpath asked me to go to Prairie City with
him--he was intending to interview John Brown, and it was dangerous--I
was eager to go, because his articles in the _Tribune_ had caused me to
look upon him almost as a god, and where he went it was my ambition to
follow.
In October, 1856, during the time of the blockade of the Missouri River
by the border ruffians, Mr. Redpath led in an armed company of
immigrants, whom he had brought overland from Illinois, and succeeded in
locating them on the free soil of Kansas. He remained there for some
months, taking an active part in Free State politics, and still acting
as correspondent of the _Missouri Democrat_, the Chicago _Tribune_, and
the New York _Tribune_. Early in 1857 he left Kansas for Massachusetts,
married, and resided at Malden, near Boston, until 1875, when he moved
to New York.
In the fall of 1857 he went to Kansas to establish a weekly newspaper,
and at Doniphan, December 15th, he issued the first number of _The
Crusader of Freedom_. It was a radical anti-slavery journal; but owing
to the failure of parties who had agreed to support him to fulfil their
pledges, he was obliged to discontinue it, after three months’
publication, and returned to Boston.
At the time of John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, the press of all
parties cried out against the act, and denounced old John Brown as a
madman and a murderer. Mr. Redpath, who had long been on terms of
intimacy with Brown, published a series of articles in his defence, and
indorsed the step he had taken. These letters were followed by a “Life
of John Brown,” which was written in three weeks. It was published in
December, 1859, and had a sale of forty thousand copies. It was followed
by the “Echoes of Harper’s Ferry,” which was a collection of the best
speeches, sermons, articles, etc., relating to John Brown’s raid, and by
“Southern Notes for National Circulation,” a large pamphlet exhibiting
the character of the Southern people as seen by their acts following the
execution of John Brown and some of his captured followers.