ENGLISH AND SCOTCH READINGS.
I have another vast volume before me, recounting my English and Scotch
Reading Tours, with full details of innumerable home kindnesses and
hospitalities, from Ventnor in the South to Peterhead in the North,
which I need not particularise. I gave twenty-one "Readings from my own
Works" southward, in a dozen towns with a regular _entrepreneur_, who
was my _avant courier_ everywhere, making all arrangements, placarding,
advertising, hiring halls, engaging reporters, and the like; when all
was ready, I used to come forward, as the General does at a review,--and
then succeeded the sham-fight and division of the spoils of war--if any;
for, to say truth, our partnership did not prove lucrative, so we parted
with mutual esteem, and I resolved to accomplish all the rest of my
projected tour alone; a great effort and a successful one, for I
"orated" all through Scotland, from Ayr to Peterhead (far north of
Aberdeen), often to very large audiences (as at Glasgow, where the
number was said to be three thousand) and always to fair ones, the
Scotch being much more given to literature than the West of England. I
could give innumerable anecdotes of the splendid as well as kindly
welcome I received from great and small,--for as I now had no attending
agent I was all the more eagerly treated as a solitary guest,--and I
found myself handed on from one rich host to another all through the
land, with numerous book friends everywhere ready and willing to make
all arrangements freely at each town and city. So the tour paid better
every way, albeit the toil and excitement of being always to the front,
either on platforms or at dinner-parties, was excessive though not
exhausting. It is astonishing what one can do if one tries, and if the
sympathy of friends and a really good success are at hand to cheer one.
I wish there was space here to say more about all this; but the great
book before me would print up into several volumes. I will only, add, as
below, an interesting extract from this diary, just before I had parted
with my worthy agent aforesaid:--"He has told me some curious anecdotes
about eminent _artistes_ whom he has chaperoned, _e.g._ Thackeray came
to Clifton to give four readings on the Georges; the first reading had
only three auditors, the second not one; so Thackeray went away. Bellew
is uncertain; sometimes having empty benches, sometimes overflowing
ones, according to the programme, whether serious or laughable. Tom Hood
gave a lecture on Humour, which was so dull that the audience left him.
Miss Glyn Dallas often reads 'Cleopatra,' magnificently too, to empty
benches. Sims Reeves draws a vast audience, but sometimes at the last
moment refuses to sing (probably paying forfeit) because he is always
afraid of something giving way in his throat. Dickens, though with
crowded audiences, was not liked, nor nearly so good as Mr.----
expected: he carried about with him a sort of show-box, set round with
lights and covered with purple cloth, in the midst of which he appeared
in full evening costume with bouquet in button-hole, and, as Mr.----
said, 'very stiff.' Mr.---- has just engaged Madame Lemmens Sherrington
and six others for sixty-three concerts at a cost of £4000, for he says
that good music--after low humour--is the best thing to pay. May his
spirited speculation prosper!" Thus much for my quotation of Mr.---- 's
experiences.
It may interest a reader if I give, quite at haphazard, a list of one of
my readings: "Welcome; Adventure; Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow;
All's for the Best; Energy; Success; Warmth; Be True; Of Love; The Lost
Arctic; The Way of the World; Cheerfulness." All these may be found in
my Miscellaneous Poems and "Proverbial Philosophy." I varied the
programme--of about an hour and a half each (sometimes two)--frequently
through my fifty readings on this side of the Atlantic, as well as
through my hundred over there. How strange that the stammerer should
have so become the orator!--I thank God for this.
Before a final end to this brief record of my home-readings, I will add
another page of short extracts from this diary: "Though I continually
read for nearly two hours at a stretch (and that sometimes twice a day
too) I take no intervals, and hardly anything but a sip of water. Energy
and electrical effort are stimulants enough." "I always exert myself
quite as much for few as for many; perhaps more so." "No one ever can
read well or hold his audience if he doesn't feel what he reads." "Some
of the clergy are no great friends of mine; one told me to-day that
'perpetual dearly beloved brethren had spoilt him for eloquence, and he
didn't care to hear mine.'" This was at Salisbury, in a coffee-room.
"Cathedral towns are always dullest and least sympathetic with
lecturing laymen; for example, at Bristol, Salisbury, Worcester,
Gloster, and the like. Are the clerics jealous of lay spouters?
Dissenting ministers and Presbyterians seem far more genial." "I
travelled about fifteen hundred miles by rail, besides coaches and
carriages. My aggregate of paying hearers was about sixteen thousand,
the bulk being old book-likers. The gain was nearly four times as much
as the cost, good hospitality having been the rule." "I read publicly
(private readings additional, as often asked after dinners, &c.)
twenty-nine proverbial essays and thirty-eight poems; repeated according
to popularity by request to two hundred." I only do not name some of my
generous Scotch and English hosts for fear of seeming to have forgotten
others by omission; and the list is too lengthy for full insertion; as
also is the long story of my adventures and experiences in the
hospitable North.
Miscellaneous Poems.
Before dismissing thus curtly, my great Scottish exploit (which, by the
way, anticipated by three years my second American visit, but I would
not disjoin that from my first) I ought to give some account of the
publication of my Miscellaneous Poems by Gall & Inglis at Edinburgh, and
of some few of the hospitalities connected therewith, though not
revealing domesticities, as against my wholesome rule.
An odd thing happened to me at Mr. Inglis's dinner-table, where I met
several literary celebrities. I had just read, and was loud in my
praises of a then anonymous work, "Primeval Man Unveiled," and I asked
my neighbour, an aged man, if he knew that extraordinary book?
Whereupon the whole table saluted the questioner with a loud guffaw; for
I was speaking to its author, whom I had innocently so bepraised.
However, my mistake was easily forgiven, as may be imagined. I found
that the said author was Mr. Inglis's near relative, Mr. Gall,--so my
new publisher and I were immediately _en rapport_.
There are two simultaneous editions of this book of my poetry--one
called the Redlined and the other the Landscape; the first on thick
paper, and with eight steel engravings, the latter having every page
decorated in colours with beautiful borderings of scenery. The volume
contains about one-half or less of all the mass of lyrics I have
written, some of the pieces having been in earlier books of my poetry,
as Ballads and Poems, Cithara, Lyrics of the Heart and Mind, Hactenus, A
Thousand Lines, &c. &c.; and they date, though not printed in systematic
order, from my fifteenth year to beyond my sixtieth. Fly-leaf lyrics
have been continually growing ever since now to my seventy-sixth.
Here are a few further random, extracts from my Scotch
diary:--"Arbroath, _Sunday, Nov. 2, 1873_.--What a comfort it
is for once to feel utterly unknown; for even my luggage has only a
monogram, and here at the White Hart I am No. 15, and a commercial gent
to all appearance: really, it is quite a relief to be some one else than
Martin Tupper."
"Read J.S. Mill's autobiography; poor wretch! from his cradle brought up
as an atheist by a renegade father, he can have been hardly more
responsible for his no faith than a born idiot. However, in these
infidel last times, and with our very broad-church and no-church
teachings, a man has only to be utterly godless (so he be moral) to
make himself a name for pure reason. I'd sooner be the most
unenlightened Christian than such a false philosopher. Let a Goldsmith
say of me, 'No very great wit, he believed in a God,' for I refuse to
deny one, like the Psalmist's fool." "I throw myself so into my
readings, that I almost forget my audience, till their cheering, as it
were, wakes me up,--and I feel every word I say: if I didn't, that word
would fall dead. There is a magnetism in earnestness,--an electric
power; I am in a way full of it when reciting, and I am aware of it
flowing through the mass of my audience." "It was a touching thing to me
to hear the aged Mr. B---- conduct his family worship, singing like an
old Covenanter the harmonious Puritan dirgy hymn, reading the Bible most
devoutly, and praying (as only Presbyterians can pray) from the heart
and not from a formal liturgy, earnestly and eloquently; he prayed also
for me and mine, and I thank God and him for it." "My host at Ayr drove
me in his waggonette to see the mausoleum at Hamilton Palace, with its
wonderful bronze doors after Ghiberti, and its inlaid marble floor, much
of which is of real verd antique in small pieces. Then we went down
among the dead men, and inspected the coffins of nearly all the Dukes of
Hamilton. It is an outrage to have expended so much (£100,000) on this
senseless mausoleum, and to have left close by and within sight of the
great Grecian palace those filthy crowded streets of poverty and
disease--the wretched town of Hamilton--as a contrast to profuse
extravagance. The last Duke, the very Lord Douglas who was in the same
class with me at Christ Church, and is supposed to have personated me in
Tom Quad, has a very graceful temple of Vesta all to himself, with his
bust in the middle: his father lies, of all heathenish absurdities, in a
real antique Egyptian sarcophagus, into which it is said he was fitted
by internal scoopings, the Duke being taller than its former tenant, the
Pharaoh. All this done, we drove through some rugged parts of the High
Park, to see magnificent oaks, much like some at Albury, in hopes of
coming upon the famous wild cattle, grey, with black feet, ears, tail,
and nose, and stated to be untameable. To our great satisfaction we did
see a herd of thirty-four feeding quietly enough; had we been walking
instead of driving we might have fared poorly as hunted ones: though I
confess I saw at first no fierceness in the lot of them; but when the
herd sighted us, and began ominously to commence encircling our gig,
under the guidance of a terrible bull, we turned and fled, as the
discreeter part of wisdom; Captain Hamilton, my host, telling me that if
they charged us we must jump out and swarm up a tree! I was glad to be
out of such a fearful escapade as that." "As to diversities in the
Scotch Church, after seeing many clerical specimens of each kind, I
judge that (generally) the Established Scotch gives itself the superior
airs of the Established English; the Frees are the most intellectual;
the U.P.s most pious; the Scottish Episcopal getting excessively high;
and some other varieties growing far too broad and pantheistic. I don't
wonder to hear Papists say that Protestantism is breaking up; no two
parsons are agreed on all points, some on none."
As for social hospitalities, I found them either splendid or kindly--or
both--everywhere; and will only name Captain Hamilton of Rozelle, Sir
Michael Shaw Stewart of Ardgowan, Mr. Boyd of Glasgow, Mr. Gall and Mr.
Nelson of Edinburgh, Mr. Arthur of Paisley, and such other millionaire
hosts as James Baird, William Dickson, and the like, as among my
wealthiest and kindest welcomers.
Of course, when a guest for a week at Rozelle, I paid due homage to
Burns in his own territory; visiting his natal cottage, his funeral
cenotaph, Alloway Kirk, the Auld Brig, &c. &c.--all these in company
with the millionaire iron-master and most enthusiastic admirer of
Tam-o'-Shanter, Mr. James Baird. When he took me to his magnificent
castle hard by, he said to me "Ye're vera welcome to ma hoose,"--and I
entered to inspect his gallery of pictures: among them I noticed, with
surprise at such an incongruous subject for a painting, an ugly red
factory in course of building, and a man on a ladder leaning against it,
with a hod on his shoulder. To my inquiry about this, he replied, "Yon's
mysel',--I'm proud to say; that's what I was, and this is what I am." He
had made, while yet a workman, some discovery about cold blast or hot
blast (I don't know which) and gained enormous wealth thereby. He is the
man who gave half a million of money to the Scotch Established Church.