In private or social life, no matter how select or distinguished the surroundings or attractive the company, she eclipses every lady present, and is always the centre of attraction.
No better estimate of the genius of Miss Terry can be given than Mr. William Winter’s description of her in the character of Rosamund, in Tennyson’s “Becket,” which I quote, by permission of the Macmillan Co., from “Shadows of the Stage”:
“Tennyson’s Rosamund is one of the loveliest creations in English literature. No character could be imagined in more complete unison with the nature and attributes disclosed in the acting of Ellen Terry. She embodied it in a fluent and delicious vein of spontaneity. In that part, as in Goethe’s Margaret, she conquered by simply allowing a rich individuality to show itself through careless glee, confiding abandonment, and a sweet bewilderment of tremulous apprehension, and once through the proud self-assertion of elemental nobility. That seems not difficult in the saying, but, obviously, it must be difficult to do; for whenever, in acting, the effect of nature is most absolute, there the means of art have been applied with the most of glamour, and concealed with the best of disguise. Throughout her performance there was no effort. All was grace. In the fugitive scene with Becket, and in the affectionate prattle—half raillery, half fondness—in the bower scene with Henry, the conditions are so simple that the effect might have become insipid but for her sumptuous personality, her profound sincerity, the plenitude of her enticing and piquant ways, the sunshine of her face, and the music of her delicious voice. During those scenes her preservation of girlish sprightliness never lapsed—till, with the final exclamation, ‘Some dreadful truth is breaking on me,’ she struck the chord of tenderest pathos, and showed herself all woman. Beauty and tenderness, in forlorn apprehension, overshadowed, shaken, and made half wild with nameless dread, constitute a conflicting image of lovely grief, such as Ellen Terry, beyond all the players of our time, is best fitted to impress upon the heart.”
I have frequently been offered $1,000 if I could secure Miss Terry for an afternoon’s reading in the drawing-rooms of wealthy people in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.
LITERARY LECTURERS
MATTHEW ARNOLD came to this country and gave one hundred lectures. Nobody ever heard any of them, not even those sitting in the front row. At his first appearance in Chickering Hall every seat was sold at a high price. Chauncey M. Depew introduced the speaker. I was looking after the business in the front of the house. There was not a seat to be had excepting a few that were held by speculators on the sidewalk. As Mr. Depew and Matthew Arnold appeared before the audience, somebody told me that General and Mrs. Grant had just arrived and had seats in the gallery, but some other people were occupying them. I immediately got a policeman, and working through the standing crowd, found that they were the last two seats on the aisle in the gallery. We had no difficulty in getting the occupants to vacate as soon as they discovered who held the tickets. We had just heard the last few sentences of Mr. Depew’s introduction when Matthew Arnold stepped forward, opened out his manuscript, laid it on the desk, and his lips began to move. There was not the slightest sound audible from where I stood. After a few minutes General Grant said to Mrs. Grant, “Well, wife, we have paid to see the British lion; we cannot hear him roar, so we had better go home.” They left the hall. A few minutes later there was a stream of people leaving the place. All those standing went away very early. Later on, the others who could not endure the silence moved away as quietly as they could.
Matthew Arnold went to Boston, and some friends there urged him to take lessons in elocution, which he did. He engaged the well-known instructor, Mr. Marshall Wilder (not Marshall P. Wilder of vaudeville fame), but it only helped to make the performance appear more ridiculous than before.
Mr. Arnold had his manuscript copied in very large letters on flat cap paper and bound in portfolio style, which he mounted on an easel at his right. He would throw his eyes on the manuscript and then recite a sentence to the audience, turn his head for the next sentence and recite that in a loud, monotonous voice, and in that way to the end of the show.
Notwithstanding all his eccentricities, the best people of America paid $2 a ticket to see and hear the great poet and critic, and he returned to England with a very handsome sum of money, which he must have needed or he never would have allowed himself to be subjected to so ridiculous a spectacle as he made of his performance.
His own impressions of the success of the lecture are given in the following letter which he wrote to his daughter:
“The St. Botolph Club, 85 Boylston Street,
“Boston, November 8, 1883.
“My Dearest Fan:
“Here is Thursday and my Sunday letter has not yet been written; but you have heard from Flu, and she will have given you some notion of what our life here is. I hope, however, to write once in every week to you. I wrote last from New York, before my first lecture. I was badly heard, and many people were much disappointed; but they remained to the end, were perfectly civil and attentive, and applauded me when I had done. It made me doubtful about going on with the lecturing, however, as I felt I could not maintain a louder pitch of voice than I did in Chickering Hall, where I lectured, and some of the American halls are much larger. There is a good deal to be learned as to the management of the voice, however, and I have set myself to learn it, though I am old to begin; the kindness of the people here makes everything easier, as they are determined to like one. The strength of the feeling about papa, here in New England, especially, would gratify you; and they have been diligent readers of my books for years. The number of people whom, somehow or other, I reach here is what surprises me. Imagine General Grant calling at the Tribune office to thank them for their good report of the main points of my lecture, as he had thought the line taken so very important, but had heard imperfectly! Now I should not have suspected Grant of either knowing or caring anything whatever about me and my productions.
“Your ever affectionate
“M. A.”
JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY, the poet, editor of the Boston Pilot, the leading Roman Catholic newspaper of New England, and the first weekly devoted to Catholic and Irish interests ever published in this country, was at the time of his death the most popular lecturer of his time with Catholic societies. Boyle O’Reilly had passed an eventful life. Very early in his young manhood he became identified with the Fenian Brotherhood, under James Stevens, the Irish leader who came so nearly organizing a successful rebellion against British rule that it is a matter of record that at one time there was a Fenian Council organized in nearly every regiment in the British army that permitted Irish recruits, as well as in a large majority of all British ships of war. O’Reilly entered the Ninth Hussars in order to learn military life and skill. He became sergeant-major, the highest warrant position obtainable in the rank and file. He was so completely trusted that the Secret Service detective kept on duty in the regiment made him his confidant. The regiment was on duty at Dublin Castle when James Stevens was captured and brought there a prisoner. Besides the Ninth Hussars, there was also a Highland regiment in the garrison. Stevens escaped, aided by the Fenians under O’Reilly and his regimental associates. The young sergeant held high command in the brotherhood. A great commotion followed, and the Highlanders were put on guard with orders to hold every Irishman within the bounds. Before this was made public, O’Reilly attempted to leave, carrying the despatch bag often entrusted to him. He was stopped at the Castle gates, an act which was apologized for at the time. Before night fell it was known that a Fenian Council was in existence there. Its membership was almost defined, but its leader’s name still remained a secret. An order for summary execution of all was promulgated, martial law being in force, unless this name was given. Boyle O’Reilly, to save his associates from this fate, made the announcement himself. His action being treasonable, the penalty was death, and Sergeant O’Reilly was tried at once, found guilty, and condemned. This sentence was commuted to penal transportation for life, and the young soldier was sent to Western Australia, the last of British convict settlements. He remained five years before making his escape and reaching America in safety. The quality of manhood that Boyle O’Reilly possessed was displayed not only in the reckless courage and daring shown in the Fenian incidents, and in the patient, manly endurance exhibited in his years of prison servitude, but it reached a higher plane by far when he settled down to the life of a freeman and citizen in the metropolis of New England. With the maturity of his intellectual life intensified and deepened by the strange experiences through which he had passed, there came to him the conviction that conspiracy was personally demoralizing as well as futile as a policy. He felt that any genuine and sincere agitation could be best achieved in a free community by close adherence to the open ways that equal citizenship afforded. He never assumed, then, any other rôle than that of an American, while faithful always to the better interests of his own people. Boyle O’Reilly easily became one of the most popular men and scholars of Boston. He took an active part in all public affairs, social and political, and soon became as “to the manor born.” He was successful as a lecturer from the outset, for he had the genius of the poet, and the wit and warmth of an Irishman—qualities that, with a most attractive presence, made him popular always. But he cared more for his home, his newspaper, and his library than for the platform. Nevertheless, he was able to do a good deal of lecturing, where the distances would permit, without neglecting his other duties.
John Boyle O’Reilly, an Irishman and a Catholic, has been President of the Papyrus Club in Boston, a chair occupied by Webster, Lowell, Emerson, Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and has a memorial niche in the new Public Library of Boston, where is to be found the finest collection of Irish literature in America. The accompanying picture he signed for me only a short time before his death.
MR. HAMILTON W. MABIE, associate editor of The Outlook, and author of several books that rank among the finer literature of our land, is one of our very best public speakers. He is one of the first called upon to deliver addresses on nearly all of the most important occasions, and his literary lectures are also in great demand.
If the mantle of Edward Everett has fallen upon any man of this generation, that man is Mr. Mabie. As an orator he is popular in the same sense that Mr Everett was. He possesses more humor than Everett. But in his self command, in his reserve force, in the purity of his language, in his quiet intensity and refinement of appearance on the platform, he belongs to the same school, and to-day heads it.
In dignity of bearing, in clearness of expression, in the finish of his sentences, in the charm of his manner, Mr. Mabie is a model for all public speakers.
Each season on the lecture platform has more firmly established his position as one of the foremost essayists, critics, and orators of this country. He has addressed and delighted the most cultivated audiences wherever he has appeared, and recalls have been numerous. His lectures have been received with special favor before colleges, literary clubs, and wherever substance and form of the very highest order are appreciated.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON was a favorite of the lyceum for nearly forty years. He had finished his lecturing career when I took up the business, but his memory was very green to all lecture committees that thronged our office in Boston year after year, and many urgent applications were made for him to appear after he had retired to his home at Concord.
One morning Mrs. Mary A. Livermore came into our office in Boston, somewhat disturbed by the fact that the newspapers that morning had announced that the publishers of the Boston Herald had obtained an option on the Old South Meeting House, and that it was to be torn down, as the society was going to build a new church on the Back Bay and were to sell the old structure. At that time the Redpath Lyceum Bureau was a sort of rendezvous for the leading men and women of letters. Very soon Mrs. Julia Ward Howe came in, accompanied by Father Neil, a patriarchal minister of the Baptist profession, whose great white beard hung down to the skirts of his garments. There was a general feeling of indignation expressed by every one present that this great pile was to be desecrated or demolished. Mr. Redpath came in late, and about the first word he uttered was:
“Do you see the Old South Church is to go? It is sold to the Herald company.”
There was more indignation generally expressed, and Mr. Redpath went out to see the parties and to ascertain if the report was true. When he returned he reported that it was a fact that the parties had the option for sixty days, but were willing to release it if the citizens wished to preserve it. Then and there was an organization formed or talked of for the preservation of the church, and it was decided to get up an entertainment.
Before the day was over some ladies came in and announced to Mr. Redpath that they were going to make the attempt to preserve the old pile, and thought of giving an entertainment in the church as soon as possible in order to start a fund for its preservation. What could the Redpath Bureau furnish that would draw a crowd that would pay a good price? We thought it all over, and it was decided to try Mr. Emerson, as he had not lectured in Boston for a number of years.
It was my fortune to be sent to Concord, at Mr. Redpath’s suggestion, to see if Mr. Emerson would come in and give us a lecture. I went out and met the dear old man at the Manse House. He greeted me very cordially and gladly accepted the invitation to come in and lecture. The date was fixed; it was advertised in the newspapers; tickets were put out at from one to three dollars, and many of the Boston ladies sold them. The afternoon for the lecture came. The Old South was filled with as choice an audience of the blue blood of Boston as has ever assembled in that old chapel. Mr. Emerson came in and was introduced by Father Neil. As he began reading his lecture the audience was very attentive. After a few moments he lost his place, and his grand-daughter, sitting in the front row of seats, gently stepped toward him and reminded him that he was lecturing. He saw at once that he was wandering, and with the most charming, characteristic, apologetic bow he resumed his place—an incident that seemed to affect the audience more than anything that could possibly have occurred. A few moments later he took a piece of manuscript in his hand, and turning around with it, laid it on a side table.
Just then one of the audience said to me (I think it was Mrs. Livermore or Mrs. Howe), “Please have the audience pass right out,” and rushing up to Mr. Emerson, said, “Thank you so much for that delightful lecture,” then turning around, waved the audience to go out.
He probably had been speaking about fifteen minutes. The audience passed out, many of them in tears. It was one of the most pathetic sights that I ever witnessed. It did not attract very much attention just then, and I never read any account of it in the newspapers. I suppose it was out of love and veneration for the dear man that the incident did not receive public mention, but there must be a great many still alive who were witnesses of that memorable scene. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s last public appearance.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, Mark Twain always insisted, would be a success on the platform if he would ever consent to go lecturing, and on that recommendation, more than my love for his books, few of which I have ever read, I have used my persuasive eloquence on him more than on any other American author. I had other reasons for importuning Mr. Howells. One was because so many applications had come to me, year after year, from lyceums in all parts of the country, urging me to secure him and expressing wonder that he should refuse. Another was that every visit to the popular novelist increased my faith in the ultimate success of my object. He was always cordial and polite and seemingly pleased that there was so much of a desire on the part of the public to see and hear him, not knowing whether he could entertain them or not. He always seemed to reason very encouragingly from a business standpoint, going into details of probable results from a tour of from fifty to one hundred lectures, as compared with what he could earn by writing during the same length of time. He would like to try it, but there was the risk of health, and of giving up a certainty for what seemed to him an uncertainty. He felt sure that he could prepare a lecture that would please the people and give much information concerning the mysteries of his craft that he could not impart so well in any other way. He was more or less pessimistic concerning himself.
Finally there was some prospective change at Harper’s Weekly, to which he had regularly contributed so long, and to my delight, in the spring of 1899, he informed me that he would accept my offer, and that I might book fifty engagements for him to lecture, not more than four times a week, and not to go farther west than Kansas or Iowa. I think I never made an announcement that gave me more real inward satisfaction, for in all the years of my pursual of him I had come to learn his painstaking habit of devotion to his work, and that whatever he attempted would be sure of success.
When Mark Twain learned that Mr. Howells had at last consented to undertake a lecture tour, he wrote me:
“I am glad you have corralled Howells. He’s a most sinful man, and I always knew God would send him to the platform if he didn’t behave.”
He went to his country place in Maine to prepare his lectures. I received frequent letters from him telling me that he was taking easily to the work, and that I might feel satisfied that his lecture would meet the public approval. His first lecture, “The Heroes and Heroines of Fiction,” was given at my house.
His first public lecture was in Ypsilanti, Mich., for I had planned to make the long rides and distant cities before cold weather set in. Prevented by sickness from accompanying him myself, I sent another gentleman with him in my stead, and together they made a tour of the principal cities of the middle West. The newspaper criticisms of Mr. Howells’ lectures were fine, and everywhere that he went he found large and enthusiastic audiences. He endeared himself to his hearers. A gentleman in Des Moines, Ia., after Mr. Howells’ lecture there, sat down and wrote me a letter, from which I quote:
“Dear Mr. Pond:
“I am led to address you in this familiar way out of the enthusiastic pleasure which I have enjoyed over the visit of Mr. Howells, and I have thought it would be pleasing to you to know that his reception here was enthusiastic and appreciative. It was my good fortune to have him, with President McLean of the State University, and Major Byers of this city, at a little one o’clock lunch at my home on Wednesday, 1st inst., and his stay there will always be remembered by us as a delight. He is one of the sweetest tempered and most lovable men that I have ever known. The trait which, perhaps, first becomes noticeable when you have met him is his absolute honesty and faithfulness to the truth, and he carried out this principle in his lecture by making it not alone an effort to please, but by giving us an hour of the most valuable instruction. It is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the importance of this in a day so prolific of novels, and when it is so important that our novel reading should be well directed. Mr. Howells created a splendid impression in Des Moines, and has left the literary life of our city decidedly the better for his presence.”
The cordiality of the people he met throughout those middle Western States was almost too much for Mr. Howells. He wrote me from Emporia, Kansas:
“I had a great house—1,300 or 1,400—last night here, and only less quick and keen than in Topeka, where it was perfect. But I cannot stand the racket. I cannot sleep without drugs, and I will ask you not to make any more dates for me after Hamilton, if you can get me there; for I cannot promise to fill these; and I don’t want to disappoint people. It is the kindness (as I foresaw) that kills. I cannot refuse people’s hospitality, and it is simply disastrous.”
On his return to New York he brought up the subject again, by writing me:
“The trouble with lecturing is the social side, which is essentially a part of it, and a very pleasant part. If I could lecture every night (which I cannot) and arrive every day too late for an afternoon reception, and get away as soon as I read my paper, it would be fine, but that is impossible.”
This tour, I believe, brought a great deal of pleasure and profit to the novel-reading public (and whom does that term not include?) who had their first opportunity to hear the greatest realist in American fiction explain the technique of his profession. It seems, too, that some of the experiences were an education to Mr. Howells, who wrote me:
“Grinnell was my first glimpse of the real West, and it is simply stupendous. The beauty and richness of the country are marvellous. Co-education is the true thing for the West. I have never met brighter minds than among the women members of the faculty. What charming people, all!”
But he got homesick for New York and his desk, and some weeks before the tour was completed, he countermanded his request to make engagements for him only every other day, and asked me to crowd in all the dates possible in November, so as to let him off early in December.
Although in haste to escape from what he termed “the worst slavery I ever imagined,” and to get back to his writing, he called a halt at Hamilton, Ohio, the town of his early boyhood. How much human nature and “boy” nature the following few words reveal:
“Hamilton is my ‘Boy’s Town’ and I wish to go there on almost any terms. I could lecture there the night after Cincinnati, and I should like a day off there afterward.”
He did stop off there, and preceding his regular lecture on “The Novel and Novel Writing,” he delighted the people of Hamilton with some of his autobiographical reminiscences. The town was proud of him, if one may judge from the extended reports that appeared in the local papers.
I have since made several attempts to induce Mr. Howells to fill lecture engagements and thus give pleasure to the many people who are constantly applying to me for him, but his prejudice against the platform seems adamantine. Here is a record of one such futile attempt:
(Dict.) “May 24, 1900.
“My Dear Mr. Howells:
“Will you go to Wilmington, Del., and lecture for $350? I should think it would be splendid recreation for you. There are a great many people who have died for the want of platform ozone.”
“Sincerely yours,
“J. B. Pond.”
“Mr. W. D. Howells, 40 West 59th St., N. Y.”
“40 West 59th St., May 24, 1900.”
“My Dear Major:”
“I am not quite hungry enough yet. But I appreciate your kindness, and I wonder at Wilmington.”
“Yours truly,
“W. D. Howells.”
I wanted to say something of Mr. Howells—better than I knew how to write—so I asked my friend, Mr. George W. Cable, to write it for me, and here is what he has to say:
Nearly twenty years ago, Mr. Thomas Sargent Perry wrote of Mr. Howells: “He has made over the American novel, taught it gracefulness and compactness, and has given it a place in literature along with the best of modern work.” This was far from the first word of praise and appreciation evoked by Mr. Howells, who, as editor of a leading literary magazine, as poet and as novelist, had already firmly established himself in the ranks of the writers of to-day. And since his name first became known it has grown constantly more familiar and more loved, until to-day it is regarded as that of the most typically American of American writers, without a rival in his particular field of work.
This field of work has been the subject of more or less discussion among his readers, regarding its merits and demerits. But however much discussion there may be, as to the subject he has chosen, there can be absolutely no doubt as to the excellency of his treatment of it. He has chosen, as Thomas Wentworth Higginson tells us: “To look away from great passions, and rather to elevate the commonplace by minute touches.” He began by throwing aside all the meaningless conventionalities that then hung around the novel, boldly asserting that, “As for him, he was a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles—an observer and a portrayer of the trivial commonplaces of life.” Yet in truth he is far more than this; to quote Mr. Perry again, Mr. Howells touches the reader’s shoulder and points out the beauty hidden in simple actions, the pathos lurking beneath seemingly indifferent words—in short, the humanity of life.”
To “paint the thing as he sees it” has been and is ever Mr. Howells’s chief aim in his work. And because of his patient, conscientious adherence to this principle, he gives us life, his characters are not puppets, conjured from a wild imagination and moved mechanically by strings, but living, human men and women, such as we meet any and every day—very ordinary, perhaps, and at times even uninteresting, except that, as Browning has it:
First when we see them painted, things we’ve passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see.”
It is as the leading exponent of realism in art that Mr. Howells stands to-day—for realism as opposed to romanticism, for living interest in the world around us instead of a vague, fanciful dreaming about the past. Mr. Howells himself has told us that we cannot have romanticism back because we live now in an age of hopeful doing and striving, not of mere dreaming. “Like Tolstoi and Ibsen,” some one has written of him, “his types are drawn directly from the reality he knows, and have no prototypes in fiction. All romantic traditions are discarded and the story moves on, not only with the strictest regard for probability, but with the inevitableness of life itself.”
His “heavenly scorn” for conventions and traditions, for all that is second hand or sham, and his conscientious desire to set forth the truth and to show us life as he knows it, are the fundamental bases of his success. Yet I think he has become endeared to the American people even more through his pure, unqualified Americanism—his “contemporaneousness,” as Boyesen calls it, when he says, “That good-natured disrespect toward the past, that humorous tolerance of amusing shams, that large-hearted sympathy and kindliness toward all humanity, which are the most characteristic qualities of the American people, have never before found so typical a representative in American literature.” His men and women are not only real men and women of to-day, they are American men and women; and if he has been censured for giving us frivolous, inconsequent, nervously silly women, it is, as some one has said, because, “the vain and weak women intrude themselves a good deal in real life, while the Olive Hallecks and Penelope Laphams are content to keep a post of quiet observation farther back.” His fine, pure, unselfish women are not wanting any more than are his strong, noble men. He is too keen an observer to fail to recognize their existence even in the “everyday world” that he depicts, but his all-pervading humor ferrets out weakness and inconsequence and folly, exposing them, not in an unfriendly way, but with a generous, sympathetic smile that makes even his victims smile with him.
Still, even this kindly humor is far less noticeable in his later work than in his early writing. It has rather broadened into a large human sympathy, a genial love of his kind, and a keen appreciation of their merits as well as of their faults. When he moralizes, as he sometimes does, it is, as some one has said, in an “open and fearless treatment of the living problems of the hour.... Underlying each of his later works is the thought of a perfect brotherhood.”
To quote Thomas Sargent Perry again, than whose appreciation of Mr. Howells I know of none finer: “That he has delighted us all, we all know. He has shown us how genuine, how full of romance, is the life about us which seems sordid and has a fine reputation for sordidness. It is the tone of the author’s mind that makes the mark upon that of the reader, and who that knows Mr. Howells’s work does not feel that he learns new sympathies and gentler judgment from his generosity and careful study?”
Mr. Howells is not only one of the most prolific of all imaginative 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.