The Project Gutenberg eBook of Eccentricities of Genius, by Major J. B. Pond.

It was about sunset when I first set eyes on the famous building. I know I felt a disappointment. It was not what I expected to see. The surroundings were not attractive. The high iron gates suggested more a prison than an invitation to go up to the house of the Lord. I made no stop, but directed my driver to show me the City Temple, on Holburn Viaduct, where the great Dr. Joseph Parker preached. It was in the gloaming that I first saw this famous “church.” It was not as large as I expected. In most of our cities it would be considered a very ordinary, comfortable house of worship.

“It isn’t a church, sir; it’s a chapel. There’s a church,” he said, pointing to a still smaller edifice on the adjoining corner. “That’s where the lord mayor worships.” I learned then and there that only the Church of England has the right to the name of church for their places of worship (all others are chapels), and that there are no church bells or chimes except in the Established Church. I drove back through Oxford Street and Picadilly Circus to the Westminster Palace Hotel.

On returning to my hotel I sat down and addressed the following letter to Mr. Spurgeon:

“My Dear Sir: I am in London for the first time in my life and have set my eyes on the great Tabernacle, which was the first object of interest I wished to visit, as your name and your church have been almost a part of my life for a number of years, being a fellow-Baptist.

“Inasmuch as you thought enough of a letter that I wrote you to publish it in one of your books, I write to ask if I could have the pleasure of an interview with you at your convenience. Meanwhile, if a note from you would facilitate my getting a comfortable seat to hear you next Sabbath, I would very much appreciate it.

“Dear Sir: It will only be a waste of time for you to see me, as I am not at all in your line, and I am happy to enclose your cards.

There were two printed admission tickets to the Tabernacle. When Sunday morning arrived, in company with a friend, I went early to the Tabernacle in hopes of getting a comfortable seat. There was a great throng on the steps, hundreds of people having already congregated there while waiting for the doors to open. I noticed near the church an open gate, through which people were passing to a side door. I tried to pass in, but was stopped by a large, somewhat plain spoken, typical Englishman, who told me that my tickets were good when the front doors were opened.

I then saw that people were dropping pieces of silver into the box and passing in. I said to him, “How much am I expected to drop in?”

So dropping in two half crowns ($1.25) I was enabled to pass in at this side door of the great Tabernacle, where a gentlemanly usher gave our party good seats. Already several hundred people had entered in this way, and before the doors were open the lower floor was about filled with these contributors.

When the main doors were thrown open, there was a general rush of men and women in all directions, carrying umbrellas and jumping over the pews to get to the very nearest available seats, and almost immediately every seat in the church was occupied and great crowds were standing against the wall in the back galleries. I think I never witnessed such a squabble of people rushing into a building. They created a dust that was almost suffocating.

Very soon the great preacher appeared on a plain platform with no rostrum or pulpit except a small table at his side, where lay a hymn book and a Bible. Mr. Spurgeon immediately pronounced the invocation and then read a hymn, which the congregation sang without organ accompaniment or any other music except their voices. As the congregation rose, clouds of dust seemed to rise with it, so that it was almost impossible to distinguish the people in the top gallery.

It was a remarkable scene—a very devout crowd of worshippers who entered into the spirit of the occasion and did worship the Lord and Mr. Spurgeon with tremendous intensity.

I saw a number of Plymouth Church people near where I sat. I remember asking one or two of them how this compared with Plymouth Church. They all expressed disappointment. For intelligence, the congregation was not to be compared with Plymouth; it was another class of people, of a much lower order than I supposed could possibly form the congregation to which Mr. Spurgeon had preached so many years.

Passing out through the crowd I shook hands with Mr. Spurgeon. He didn’t recognize me. The following day I wrote him that before leaving England I should very much like to pay my respects to the man I had read and admired many years, making no reference whatever to my business. In reply I received the following strange letter, which showed that the great preacher really impugned my motives and thought I was bound to secure him for a lecture tour in America:

“Dear Sir: I am not at all afraid of anything you could say by way of temptation to preach or lecture for money, for the whole of the United States in bullion would not lead me to deliver one such lecture. It would only waste your time and mine for you to see me, though I feel sure you are one of the pleasantest men on earth. Your good-natured pertinacity is so admirable that I trust you will not waste it upon an impossible object, but be content to have my acknowledgment that if success could have been achieved, you would have achieved it.

“Yours very truly,
“C. H. Spurgeon.

“Major J. B. Pond, Westminster Palace Hotel.”

I revisited England in 1886 with the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Remembering the cordial letter Mr. Spurgeon had written me on my previous visit, I thought it no more than proper to drop him a line, stating that I was again in London and asking if he was of the same opinion still, and disinclined to allow me the privilege of a call to pay my respects, stating that I was visiting England with the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. I didn’t even suggest that Mr. Beecher would like to meet him, as that was not a part of my interests. I received the following letter in reply:

“Dear Sir: I have, in as plain a manner as possible, on former occasions declined to make your acquaintance, and I beg with all courtesy and decision to do the same again. I know your business, and I have no wish to enter upon it further. I can communicate with Mr. Beecher myself should I wish to do so. At present I have no object for which to seek an interview.

The morning I received the above letter from Mr. Spurgeon I breakfasted with Dr. and Mrs. Parker at their home in Daleham Gardens, where a number of distinguished ministers and friends had been invited to meet Mr. and Mrs. Beecher. There were present Mr. James Clarke, editor of The Christian World; the Rev. Dr. Simon, pastor of Westminster Chapel; the Rev. Dr. Henry Allon, Union Chapel, Islington; and the Rev. Dr. Clifford, Westbourne Park Chapel.

During the conversation some of the ministers present were of the opinion that Mr. Beecher should deliver his last lecture in London in the great Tabernacle, as it was the most appropriate auditorium in London and could accommodate the largest number of people. I said that I thought it impossible for Mr. Beecher to preach in the Tabernacle, as I did not believe that Mr. Spurgeon was friendly to Mr. Beecher. This seemed to surprise Dr. Parker, as well as the other representative ministers present. Dr. Parker suggested that Dr. Allon and Mr. Spurgeon were the greatest of friends, and he was sure that Mr. Spurgeon would be delighted to extend the invitation to Mr. Beecher; and Dr. Allon was of the same opinion. I remember that he said, “ Most assuredly Mr. Spurgeon would expect to invite Mr. Beecher to occupy the Tabernacle.” I handed to Mr. Beecher Spurgeon’s letter, which I had just received. As he read, I noticed a smile come on his face. He passed the letter to Dr. Parker, who also read it, and then to Dr. Allon, who, I think, passed it back to me. The enthusiasm for Mr. Spurgeon and the Tabernacle suddenly ceased.

On the occasion of Mr. Beecher’s first sermon in London, July 4, the congregation was admitted by ticket—the church members first and then the public, to the capacity of the auditorium. Hundreds, and I might say thousands, came who had to be turned away. As the congregation had to be admitted by ticket, and as many were unable to secure these, a rumor easily started in one of the religious papers that Mr. Beecher was preaching the Gospel for money, and that the tickets to hear him preach were sold at the doors of the house of the Lord. The secular press took it up. Newspaper correspondents cabled it to their representative journals across the Atlantic. London Truth enlarged upon it, and Labouchere’s letter to The New York Herald repeated it.

One of the first comments on the story was in The Baptist, a paper of which Mr. Spurgeon was supposed to be one of the editorial writers—an article which found a place in nearly all of the leading papers where Mr. Beecher was booked to lecture or preach. So I wrote the following letter to that paper, which was published without comment:

“Dear Sir: May I be allowed to correct a statement made in your excellent paper of the 23d inst. concerning Mr. Beecher and his lectures and sermons?

“Mr. Beecher does not charge for preaching outside his own pulpit in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. I have managed all his lecture tours for the past eleven years, and I have always arranged that he should preach on the Sabbath while absent from home, and that under no circumstances was there to be a charge of any kind made for hearing him preach the Gospel. True, when in other cities, in order to protect pew-holders and members of the regular congregations, it has been necessary to issue tickets of admission to the side doors before the house was opened to the general public.

“Mr. Beecher is a lecturer as well as preacher. He delivers on an average one hundred and fifty lectures a year, and has during some seasons lectured upward of two hundred times, besides preaching every Sabbath. He lectures because he finds it profitable both to himself and to those who are glad to pay their money to hear him; but never has he received a penny for preaching outside his own pulpit; and if London were bullion, and he could have it for preaching one sermon here, it would not even tempt him.

“Mr. Beecher receives from me the same pay per lecture that I give him in America. My business is furnishing lectures and high-class entertainments to lyceums and lecture associations in America. I supply lecture and musical societies throughout the United States with the best talent to be had. It is part of the American system of education, and the Americans are educated to it, and generally prefer it to trashy shows. They expect great men to address them; and when Dean Stanley, Professor Huxley, and Herbert Spencer came to America, I had hundreds of applications from all parts of the land asking their terms and approximate date; and when I replied that these men could not be secured, many of my constituents accused me of shiftlessness and neglect of business, and poured upon me all sorts of abuse because I did not supply them. I have ‘imported’ a great deal of English talent: George Dawson, Canon Kingsley, Bellew, Matthew Arnold, and last season Canon Farrar, who made a great deal of money in America, lectured every day and preached twice every Sabbath for three months. He was not abused nor falsely accused because of his success. Thousands tried to get tickets to hear him preach. They were not to be had, as the church congregations where he preached had them for themselves and friends. Canon Farrar received £200 each for his last three lectures in America, and the management made something too. The public were not only satisfied, but grateful that so rare an opportunity had been offered them.

“Mr. Beecher is not a rich man, nor a money-lover. He does not know what becomes of his money. He lives the Gospel that he preaches. He has many drafts on his purse that he would like to meet. He does all that he can to assist the needy. He has two thousand eight hundred members in his church, all as dear as his children to him. Reverses overtake many. His name is the first that goes on a note to give a deserving friend a new start in life. Could you but know a hundredth part of the good he is constantly doing, you would be as ardent a believer as I am. I bring him to England during his summer vacation to lecture. He gets every penny from me for his lectures that he gets from any service in Great Britain. He wants to preach every Sunday, so I leave Saturdays open, and place the Sundays where he likes to preach. If it were money we were after, I would have him lecture Saturdays and rest Sundays, and make £25 to £100 myself, and be £50 better off (every week) so far as this world’s goods are concerned. The ministers for whom he preaches manage their own congregations, and Mr. Beecher does not know as much about it as you do.

“Referring to Mr. Spurgeon on this subject of ‘charging to hear a sermon,’ where ‘the managers charged a shilling to hear him preach,’ and he remarked that ‘if he had known it he never would have preached,’ I will ask you to kindly explain the difference between charging a shilling and doing as I have on two different occasions when I went with some friends to hear Mr. Spurgeon. By putting money in a box at the side door I was allowed to go in and get seats, and I always found that a good-sized congregation was accommodated in this way by ‘paying what they liked,’ before the main doors were opened to the general public.

“If this is not charging an admission, I want to know what it is. I certainly could not have got a comfortable seat unless I complied with this custom.

“I am, yours very truly,
“J. B. Pond,

“Manager of Henry Ward Beecher’s Lectures.”

BISHOP HENRY C. POTTER of New York is the one clergyman of all that I know whom I most wish was a lyceum lecturer. It seems as though he is about the only one of his class of great and lovable clergymen that has been spared to us, now that Chapin, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks have passed away. He is ever going about doing good, and is as much at home and as well appreciated among the very poorest people as among those in the very highest station of life.

He is recognized by all who meet him on the street, and something kind is said as he passes by. If he would only be a lecturer! Thousands would pay to see and hear him, because they would know that they were to have something worth while in return for what they gave.

There is no great function, public or private, that he is not one of the first to be invited. He marries sons and daughters of the millionaires, and the poorest people as well, and all along the intermediate classes. In the Episcopalian families no name is more generally known, respected and loved.

The bishop is one of our very best public speakers. His addresses under all conditions abound with wit, humor and pathos, and sound sense. It is the simplicity, modesty, and real manliness of his make up that causes him to be just what he is and what he cannot help being. In every sense that the word implies, to every one who knows the meaning of the word, he is a man.

He told me of an incident that occurred as he was passing along Fourth Avenue. Some urchins were playing in the street, and he overheard one of them say: “There goes the Bish. He’s no chump.” I would rather have that eulogy from that urchin than from any statesman I know of.

THE VERY REV. S. REYNOLDS HOLE, dean of Rochester, was engaged by me for a lecture tour in America during the season of 1894-95. Since Canon Farrar lectured in America there has been no clergyman of the Church of England that I considered of sufficiently high standing to supply the demand that came most especially from the Episcopalian churches and societies. One of the best proofs that Dean Hole was such a man, if he could be secured, was the fact that as soon as it became known that negotiations were pending, the Lotus Club wrote to him tendering him a dinner on his arrival.

He came in October, with Mrs. Hole, and put up at the Everett House. He arrived on the 24th, and he was at once interviewed by representatives of all the newspapers. The next day he and Mrs. Hole received calls from many clergymen and their wives, and from nearly all the horticulturists in the vicinity. Roses in great profusion, of every form and variety, were sent in, for the Dean is known all over the world as the king of rose growers. Never was there a finer collection of roses than those which came to the Everett House during the Dean’s stay.

Then he yielded to Sarony’s invitation to come over and be photographed. The scene between the Dean and Sarony was indeed picturesque. “When the great photographer and artist found an interesting subject his enthusiasm was intense. The magnificent stature of the Dean fairly captivated him. He reached up (whoever knew Sarony will understand) and caught the Dean’s hand, exclaiming, as he looked at me:

“Major Pond, you have at last brought me a subject that I can enjoy. We’re going to have a good time.”

“I’d just like to hug you, sir,” said the artist, turning again to the Dean.

“I’ve not the slightest objection,” the Dean replied, and Sarony tried to encircle the big man with his arms. The famous artist, Mr. Herbert A. Olivier, who accompanied the party from England, made a sketch of the scene at that time, which is as correct in detail as a photograph could be.

On Saturday, the 27th, came the dinner at the Lotus Club. Dean Hole’s “Reminiscences” had made him widely known as the friend of Dickens, Thackeray, Leech, and other great Englishmen of the past generation. A distinguished company gathered to meet him, including the president, Frank R. Lawrence, the Rev. Morgan Dix, rector of Trinity Church; Dr. Arthur Brooks, Rev. Dr. David H. Greer, President Schurman, of Cornell University; the Rev. Dr. James MacArthur, and many other distinguished guests of the club.

Even at his advanced age Dean Hole looked stout and lusty. He is six feet three inches in height, and his body is built on the typical lines of John Bull. As one of the New York journals expressed it, he “is certainly one of the finest specimens of Elizabethan ecclesiastical architecture that England has ever sent to this country.” His head is large and covered with a mass of silvery gray hair. His features are strong and have an expression of benevolence and good humor.

“Two occasions come to my mind this evening—the Lotus Club’s receptions to Charles Kingsley and Dean Stanley. To-night we are equally honored in the privilege of meeting Dean Hole. We cannot greet him without recalling the facts which his ‘Reminiscences’ have made familiar here. We recall him as one who clasped hands with Thackeray and was the friend of Dickens; but it is his own individuality as a man and author that makes him dear to us.”

“I can assure you, gentlemen, that when I received your invitation, having heard so much of the literary, artistic, and social amenities of your famous club, I resembled in feelings—not in feature—the beautiful bride of Burleigh, when—

“‘A trouble weighed upon her,
And perplexed her night and morn,
With the burden of an honor
Unto which she was not born.’

“I could have quoted the words of the mate in Hood’s ‘Up the Rhine,’ when, during a storm at sea, a titled lady sent for him, and asked him if he could swim. ‘Yes, my lady,’ says he, ‘like a duck.’ ‘That being the case,’ says she, ‘I shall condescend to lay hold of your arm all night.’ ‘Too great an honor for the likes of me,’ says the mate.

“Even when I came into this building—though I am not a shy man, having been educated at Brazennose College, and preposterously flattered throughout my life, most probably on account of my size—I had lost this sense of unworthiness; but your gracious reception has not only reassured me, but has induced a delicious hallucination that, at some period forgotten, in some unconscious condition, I have said something, or done something, or written something, which really deserved your approbation. To be serious, I am, of course, aware why this great privilege has been conferred upon me. It is because you have associated me with those great men with whom I was in happy intercourse that you have made my heart glad to-night.

“It has ever been my ambition to blend my life, as the great painter does his colors, ‘with brains, sir,’ and I venture to think that such a yearning is a magnificent proof that we are not wholly destitute of this article, as when the poor wounded soldier exclaimed on hearing the doctor say that he could see his brains: ‘Oh, please write home and tell father, for he has always said I never had any.’ Be that as it may, my appreciation of my superiors has evoked from them a marvellous sympathy, has led to the formation of very precious friendships, and has been my elevator unto the higher abodes of brightness and freshness, as it is to-night.

“Yes, my brothers, it is delightful to dwell ‘with brains, sir,’ condensed in books in that glorious world—a library—a world which we can traverse without being sick at sea, or footsore on land; in which we can reach the heights of science without leaving our easy chair, hear the nightingales, the poets, with no risk of catarrh, survey the great battlefields of the world unscathed; a world in which we are surrounded by those who, whatever their temporal rank may have been, are its true kings and real nobility, and which places within our reach a wealth more precious than rubies, for all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared with it.

“In this happy world I met Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne, Willis, Longfellow, Whittier, and all your great American authors, historical, poetical, pathetic, humorous, and ever since I have rejoiced to hold converse with them. Nevertheless, it is with our living companions, with our fellow-men, who love books, as we do, that this fruition is complete, and so it comes to pass, in the words of one whose name I speak with a full heart, Oliver Wendell Holmes, that ‘a dinner table made up of such material as this is the last triumph of civilization over barbarism.’

“We feel, as our witty Bishop, afterward Archbishop, Magee described himself, when he said, ‘I am just now in such a sweet, genial disposition that even a curate might play with me.’ We are bold enough to state with Artemus Ward of his regiment, composed exclusively of major generals, that ‘we will rest muskets with anybody.’

“‘Linger, I cried, O radiant Time, thy power
Hath nothing else to give. Life is complete.
Let but the happy present, hour by hour,
Itself remember and itself repeat.’

“And yet one more quotation, wherewith to make some amends for the stupidity of him who quotes lines most appropriate, by Tennyson, from ‘The Lotus Eaters,’ and repeated by one who has just crossed the Atlantic:

“‘We have had enough of action and of motion we,
Tossed to starboard, tossed to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
And the wallowing monster spouted his foam fountain on the sea;
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind;
In this hollow Lotus land to live and lie reclined
(Here where the Queen of Clubs so royally we’ve dined),
On the hills, like gods together, careless of mankind.’

“‘Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor.’”

Then President Schurman of Cornell welcomed the Dean on behalf of the universities. He was followed by Dr. MacArthur, who made a fine speech and paid a splendid tribute to the guest of the evening. Mr. Brooks was the next speaker. Dr. Greer raised many a laugh by his witty remarks.

Dean Hole’s first lecture in America was in Calvary Baptist Church, Fifty-seventh Street, New York. Notwithstanding that the rain came down in torrents, the great church was crowded. The Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix introduced the speaker. The good Dean entertained his audience fairly well, but was a disappointment to many, due largely, I thought, to his bad advisers. He had been told that the more he amused American audiences and made them laugh, the better satisfied they would be. It is often a misfortune to a clergyman to be a wit. There were on the platform and in the audience people as learned as the one who addressed them. In his Rochester congregation he had been accustomed to addressing a different audience—an audience that he must talk down to. It took him only a short time to discover that in America the pews are as high as the pulpit, and he gave his audiences a scholarly and delightful entertainment. His popularity increased to the end of his tour.

He did not come to America for gain. All his earnings on the tour were applied to the restoration of an arch in the tower of the Rochester Cathedral, where the good Dean is fond of showing his Yankee visitors his American lecture proceeds.

It was Mrs. Pond’s and my privilege, during our visit to England in the summer of 1897, to be guests for three days at the Deanery. During our stay a garden party was given in our honor by the Dean and Mrs. Hole. We were shown on the place over a thousand varieties of roses, and we thought they must certainly be the very choicest in all the world; but the morning of the day of the garden party, a number of wagons and carts came driving in, loaded with banks and boxes of roses from various persons whom the Dean said were his disciples. They were displayed in a large basement room of the Deanery, and we were invited to view them. The great room was filled with tables on which the roses were displayed. It was certainly the most beautiful floral display that we ever saw, and the Dean assured us that nothing could be more perfect.

“You see,” said the Dean, “my dear Major and Mrs. Pond, the fruits of our efforts in rose culture; our disciples have all outgrown their teachers.” There was every color and almost every variety of rose. How I wish I could adequately describe them!

The garden party was a magnificent affair. The parishioners and best citizens of Rochester and its neighborhood were there—about four hundred—Rochester’s “Four Hundred,” I presume. The guests’ table was under an immense rose-tree as large as a common apple-tree, in full bloom. It was the first and only large rose-tree I have seen in blossom.

Among the guests were Mr. John Morgan Richards of London, and his daughter, Mrs. Craigie (“John Oliver Hobbes “); a Mr. Arnold, brother of Sir Edwin Arnold, a scholarly gentleman and poet, who would be famous were he not eclipsed by his brother, and Mr. Latham, an English gentleman who now owns and lives in the famous Dickens home at Gad’s Hill, near by, who, the day before, had shown us all over the place and through the house, the unique Dickens library, the dining room, and the chair at the head of the table where the great novelist died.

I was never so impressed with the fact that there is more in this life than just to live and breathe and have a being, and that when life’s efforts are made in the right direction, what should be called “higher life” is almost within the reach of all who desire to attain it.

I must declare that of all the visits I have ever made in Europe, and of all the hosts and hostesses whose hospitality it has been my honor to enjoy, the Deanery at Rochester, Dean Hole (now past eighty), and his estimable wife, are among the very brightest of my memories. May they long be spared to us!

I copy from the good Dean’s book, “A Little Tour in America,” the following anecdote, which will give his estimate of one of our American plays that he saw while here:

“I had also the gratification of seeing those popular favorites, Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, in ‘Lady Clancarty,’ and was specially delighted with Mr. Denman Thompson in ‘The Old Homestead.’ Toward the end of the play, his manager came to my box with an invitation to an interview, and I had the pleasure of thanking Mr. Thompson for his humorous, pathetic, bright, and wholesome performance, and of telling him how much he resembled in many ways the greatest comic actor of his day, Mr. Buckstone.

“Next morning there appeared in the New York Herald a paragraph headed, ‘A Dean Behind the Scenes,’ and shortly afterward I was gently rebuked by a brother clergyman as having imperilled the dignity of my office. As counsel for the defence, I made answer, ‘Reverend sir, in the play entitled “The Old Homestead,” two young fellows, who had been making fools of themselves and had gone to the bad, were brought back to a right mind—to their home and duty. They were shown the misery and degradation of vice, and then, in contrast, the happiness and the honor of a righteous life. I went behind the scenes to thank the teacher of that object lesson, and if you, my brother, will prove to me that by one of your sermons you have persuaded two prodigals to get away from the husks of the swine and return to their Father’s house, I shall rejoice to pay my respects to you in the vestry, or wherever we may meet.’”

THE BISHOP OF RIPON, DR. BOYD CARPENTER, the Queen’s favorite minister, is regarded as the most eloquent man in the English clergy. I visited him at his palace during 1897. He said he wished to visit America soon, but had three hundred and ten parsons to look after, and did not know just how soon he could arrange to make the trip.

His great theme is Dante. A distinguished woman told me that she had heard him deliver a course of five lectures on Dante, and she thought she had never heard a man so intensely interested in his subject or so eloquent. His palace is a sort of public hotel for all members of the clergy, and Mrs. Carpenter told me that though a yearly income of £10,000 seemed enormous for a Bishop, she was often put to it to know how to make both ends meet. She kept count one year, and they entertained more than six thousand persons.

The Bishop writes a personal letter to the Queen every month, and receives one in reply. He has a copy of every photograph that Queen Victoria ever had taken, with her autograph written on each one.

A warm feeling of personal friendship exists between the Bishop of Ripon and the Dean of Ely, yet the two men are very unlike. The wide difference between their points of view is apparent from these few words in one of Dr. Carpenter’s letters to me:

“Dean Stubbs is a man well known for his strong social sympathies. He has been the champion of the agricultural laborer, and in all questions he, as such, has taken a strangely liberal line.”

The Bishop of Ripon has had invitations to deliver the Noble course of lectures at Harvard University, and the Lowell Institute lectures in Boston. I know that he would be pleased to come to our country, but he is such a very busy man that up to this time he has not found it possible.

THE VERY REVEREND CHARLES WILLIAM STUBBs, D.D., Dean of Ely, is a most charming gentleman and esteemed as one of the most accomplished English pulpit orators of the Church of England. Through the Rev. Dr. John Watson I induced him to come to America in the fall of 1899 to give a series of lectures to fill the demand which seemed to me had long existed in this country to hear from the platform one of the ablest lecturers of the Church of England.

Besides being a fine pulpit orator, the Dean of Ely is a pleasing platform speaker, with but little English mannerism, a scholar of fine type, an essayist of gentle humor and kindly wit, a man of practical affairs, and a sympathetic poet in touch with history and humanity. As a poet he has the ballad quality, the lyric tone.

Not only were his prepared lectures polished and scholarly, but when called upon suddenly he was always ready, with wit and humor and anecdote, for any occasion, as is attested by the following portion of an impromptu speech made at a banquet tendered by the Lotus Club to Sir Henry Irving in New York on the evening of the day of the Dean’s arrival:

“Mr. President, Sir Henry, Gentlemen of the Lotus Club: In this atmosphere of resistless eloquence and wit and humor and good fellowship and eulogy, I confess I find myself somewhat embarrassed—embarrassed by the generosity of your kindly feeling toward me, expressed by your president, but embarrassed especially because your president has treated me with not even that amount of generosity which he extended to the gentleman who spoke last and who needed no such generosity. I have not even had a twenty-minutes’ grace in which to concoct any impromptu humorous remarks. What, then, can I do? I think it was one of your own prophets—shall I say one of your own poets?—one of the greatest of your literary men, an ambassador to England some years ago, a man of whom I am always glad to think as a personal friend of my own, Mr. James Russell Lowell, who once said that an after-dinner speech should consist of an anecdote, a commonplace, and a quotation. Now, how can I fulfil those canons of speech to-night?

“An anecdote. I am reminded, partly by the frank comradeship of this meeting to-night and partly, also, by the rapidity with which the time is passing by, that I am staying with one of the clergy of this city who is not very well known to me as yet;—although I find that to know almost any American is to love him as a friend—and who, perhaps, may therefore be a little surprised to-night if I return toward the small hours, as at present would seem to be my prospect. And that recalls to my mind an incident which I remember a good many years ago in my Cambridge life when I was present at a banquet given in the hall of St Peter’s College, Cambridge, in honor of its six hundredth anniversary. There were many illustrious members of the college present, and many and long speeches. I remember that it was half-past eleven o’clock at night when Sir Frederick Bramwell, the brother of the judge, was called upon to respond to ‘The Toast of the Applied Sciences.’ He said something of this kind: ‘Gentlemen, I could have conceived occasions when it would have been delightful to me to expatiate upon such a subject, but at this hour of the night the only application of science that appears to me to be appropriate to the moment is the application of the domestic lucifer to the bedroom candle.’ (Laughter.) Whereupon your ambassador, Mr Lowell, with that happy genius, that quick power of composition, and that delightful grace which were always so characteristic of him, wrote on the back of his menu card, and tossed across the table, these lines:

“‘Oh, brief Sir Frederick,
Who thy wit could catch,
Hold thee a candle,
Or find thy match?’”

(Applause.)

Dean Stubbs is a man above middle stature, of robust frame and English aspect, with just a trace perhaps of some Scandinavian ancestor in the long head and face and the ruddy complexion. He is descended from the same Yorkshire yeoman stock as the present Bishop of Oxford, the author of the “Constitutional History of England,” whose kinsman he is, and from which stock in old days there came such men as the well-known Puritan writer, John Stubbs, who wrote the “Discovery of a Gaping Gulph,” and who, when his hand was cut off by order of the Queen, as a penalty for the publication of his outspoken pamphlet, waved his hat with the other hand and cried, “God save Queen Elizabeth!” The distinction which some men have gained as the champions of a great cause, or the leaders of a great movement, is a surprise to us when we see them. In their bodily presence there is nothing indicative of power, and we have to wait for the explanation of their ascendency. No such surprise will be felt by those who look upon Dr. Stubbs for the first time. We see at once that his physical endowments fit him for leadership. The tall, massive, upright frame, suggestive of his yeoman ancestry; the easy, natural dignity of his bearing; the firmness of his step, as of one who is clear as to his own course, and whom it would not be easy to move from any position that he felt called upon to take; the high, broad forehead, the alert and penetrating glance—all make it easy for us to believe, even before we have heard him speak, that he possesses characteristics which explain his position and influence. He impresses one immediately as a strong man both intellectually and physically.

In speaking of his recreations, he said: “I am president of the Ely Golf Club, am fond of bicycling, work at carpentering, am maker and patentee of the Sleepy Hollow chair, and few things please me more than to show my English, especially my American friends, round the cathedral.” And any one who has heard the Dean’s exquisite lectures on the Ely Cathedral may well be delighted with such a guide.

Unlike other clergymen who devote themselves exclusively to theological studies and abstract disquisition, Dr. Stubbs has examined and discussed some of the most vital practical questions of the day—the relief of the poor, the condition and needs of laborers, the welfare of artisans in the great manufacturing centres, the advancement of women, and the education of the masses. His life, accordingly, has been one of practical industry and effort for the good of others, and, while building an honorable renown for himself, he has been, in the largest sense of the word, a public benefactor.

He has always taken such a deep and active interest in the problems of labor and capital that he has become known as a “Christian Socialist.” In explanation of the meaning of this term as applied to himself, he relates the following anecdote:

“I had called on a rich old merchant in the North to ask him for a subscription. At first he was somewhat grumpy. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘they call you a Socialist; what do you mean by Socialism?’ ‘My dear sir,’ I replied, ‘it depends on what Socialism you mean, political Socialism or Christian Socialism, for there is a great difference between the two. Of the Political Socialist I hold very much the same opinion as that of Ebenezer Eliot, the Corn-Law Rhymer, who wrote long ago—

‘“What is a socialist? one who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings,
A rogue, or a bungler, or both, he is willing
To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.”

But while the political Socialist says, “What is yours is mine,” the Christian Socialist says, “What is mine is yours.”’ The old man’s eyes twinkled. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I’ve met a good many of the first sort; I never met any of the second. However, here’s £5 for your fund.’”

The Dean began his American tour with a course of six matinee lectures in the Lyceum Theatre, New York. His subjects were: “Shakespeare as a Religious Teacher,” “Ely Cathedral” (illustrated), “Milton and the Puritans,” “Ideal Women of the Poets,” “James Russell Lowell,” and a second lecture on “Ely Cathedral” (also illustrated). Other lectures which he gave in this country were on “Shelley,” “Browning,” and “Charles Kingsley and Christian Socialism,” but the illustrated lectures on “Ely Cathedral” were the only ones that drew big money. The others were too scholarly for the American lyceum in its present condition.

Some idea of the delightfulness of the Dean’s illustrated lectures on the Cathedral of Ely may be had from the following criticism by William Winter, published in the New York Tribune: “The exordium of the Dean’s discourse, devoted to a portrayal of the physical beauty of the wide, dream-like fenlands of England, with Ely Cathedral—an image of sublimity and mystery—towering through the white mist and the hazy, golden light, fell upon the ear like a strain of music, and easily lured his hearers into a mood of fancy and sentiment, making them sympathetic with the glories of the past and reverent of the grandeur of the passionate religious devotion expressed so well in those wonderful old minsters of Europe—which seems to have utterly died out of the earth. Later it pleased the Dean to make his lecture a familiar talk, and to grace it with occasional tints of playful humor: the colloquial and rhetorical strains are not harmonious, and it is never easy to mingle them, but, certainly, the speaker managed this difficult involution with singular grace; but, at the last, reverting to his poetic vein, he rounded his work with noble eloquence and power. More than seventy pictures, many of them very lovely, were incidentally displayed—the spectacle culminating in a view of the shrine of St. Awdry, from which the white marble sarcophagus of the virgin Queen Etheldreda has disappeared—hidden, it is believed, somewhere in the great cathedral—perhaps to be restored in a purer, because a more spiritual, age, now dawning on the world.”

While in New York, the Dean being very anxious to hear Dr. Hillis, the Plymouth pulpit being the Mecca of all visiting clergymen and ministers from the other side, we arranged to attend one Sunday morning. The Dean was intensely interested, but I think was much surprised by Dr. Hillis’ unique style. “A nightmare of eloquence!” he exclaimed.

In Boston he repeated his New York course of lectures in Steinert Hall, which seemed to be the most popular lecture hall in Boston at this time. It is a very deep cellar under the Steinert Piano Rooms, and is quite prettily fitted up, but oh! if there should happen to be a panic down there, no one would escape to tell the story. Back of the stage is an elevator shaft used for carrying pianos up and down from the basement to the top of the building, and this causes a strong draught from the back of the stage, through the auditorium, and out to the sidewalk. Acoustically there is an advantage in this, because the draft carries the sound through the audience room, and one can be distinctly heard throughout the place in almost a whisper. But in cool weather both audience and speakers have to keep on their coats and wraps, as the cold draught carries away with it all the heat from the radiators. It is the best Boston has, unless you go up two or three more flights to the Y. M. C. A. Hall, which is about as inconvenient for an audience as anything could possibly be.

Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the fashionable people of Boston turned out to welcome the Dean of Ely. He was the social lion of the season and the special pet of the literary Episcopalians and the faculty of Harvard University. He preached three times in Trinity Church—Phillips Brooks’ old pulpit—for his friend, Dr. Donald, and was also university preacher in the Appleton Chapel, Harvard, where he was listened to by a great crowd of undergraduates. Some of these sermons are published this autumn in a volume with the title “Pro Patria!”—sermons on special occasions in England and America.

The papers gave excellent accounts of his sermons and lectures, and, on the whole, Dr. Stubbs’ visit proved a financial success; but, compared with former days, when a first-class lecturer was a first-class attraction, there was much to be desired. Fifteen years ago a course of such lectures would have filled Tremont Temple or Music Hall.

At Columbus, Ohio, he preached for the St. Andrew’s Brotherhood, and met with a very cordial reception. He preached in Philadelphia and gave a course of lectures there with great success.

On the announcement of his proposed visit to Chicago I received a letter from the Episcopalian Bishop of that city denouncing a dean who could come to America to lecture for money; but notwithstanding this, the appointments were made for that city.

The Dean of Ely did not come to America to make money. He came to make friends, and I am sure he did it. He wanted a holiday, and he came to our country to get it, and if, not being a rich man, and having six sons to educate and put out in the world, he chose to pay his way by earning his travelling expenses, I do not see what business it is of the Bishop of Chicago to question the dignity of the Dean. That can quite well take care of itself.

Dr. Stubbs gave his first lecture in Chicago for the Twentieth Century Club, which for a number of years has had the first appearance of all my stars, and generally assures a good audience on the following evening in Central Music Hall. The local manager, however, in that city in some way conceived the idea that nobody but Episcopalians would care to hear the Dean of Ely, and so worked through the church instead of advertising through the general public. The result of such a course, together with most gloomy conditions of mud, sleet, rain, and snow combined, was poor business, although a delightful lecture to those who were present. The Chicago Journal said:

“Because of his scholarly attainments, his bright and sympathetic views, the lecture of last evening was one of the most charming and instructive addresses of the kind ever heard in Chicago.”

“The Elite, an illustrated society journal of Chicago, addressed to people of culture and fashion,” in an article on the Dean, says in allusion to his lecture before the Twentieth Century Club: “He gave his hearers much pleasure. They all said so at the time. Many remarked that the occasion was one of the club’s best evenings. The Dean has been misquoted in the newspapers (of course without intention) as to what he said on that evening by way of rebuke. The manner in which he administered the rebuke was gentle to playfulness—yet it held a bit of quiet sarcasm. But no offence was given and no offence was felt. He caused his audience to laugh and put it on its mettle.”

This is, of course, in allusion to the foolish indignation of the yellow journals of Chicago about an interview with the Dean by the American Outlook in which Dr. Stubbs spoke of “the hateful unloveliness of the city, and its wilderness of mean streets.”

This interview happened to appear just at the time when there was a lull in yellow journalistic excitements in Chicago, and his description of that city furnished material for some very elaborate editorials and cartoons and the publication of private letters which patriotic Chicagoans were invited to contribute. The affair was taken up by the press throughout the country, and at the present writing the Dean of Ely is the best-advertised clergyman of the Church of England. There would be no difficulty in booking a profitable tour for him this season (1900-1901) if only he were available. Several of my friends in Chicago wrote to me that if I dared to visit their city again I would be a candidate for the Vigilance Committee, for having brought Dean Stubbs to this country. Knowing that the Dean would appreciate the humorous side of the situation, I sent him some of the newspaper clippings and wrote him that if I were driven out of my own country on his account I might wish to seek refuge in the confines of Ely Cathedral. To this he replied as follows:

“My Dear Good Major: I am delighted to hear that you and Mrs. Pond are coming to the Isle of Refuge—you are quite safe here. If the Vigilance Committees of Chicago meditate a raid upon you at Ely, we will open the sluice at Denver and put the whole of Cambridgeshire outside the Isle twelve feet under sea water. But how sadly wanting in humor some of your journalists must be. I thought that was an English prerogative. The Chicagoans were really very kind, my hostess at the Twentieth Century Club quite charming, and I believe she was the sister of the mayor. How strange! And Mr. Newman was as kind as he could be and his wife was more so. But why must I praise an ugly street because I like a man who lives in it? I didn’t praise New Jersey; why Chicago? No. It is a hatefully unlovely place, but I admire greatly the men who, because they live there—poor things—are so loyal and patriotic. To be loyal for a noble city like New York is fine, but to be loyal to Chicago, that is sublime. Pray announce that I am coming over next spring to lecture in Chicago on ‘The Ideal City of the Poets,’ to be illustrated with ‘dinky second number’ lantern slides of the City of the Wind.

“I have just had a pleasant visit from Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, my kind hosts in Philadelphia, and a continual stream of Americans who heard one or the other of my lectures are passing through here daily, and very pleasant it is to me to welcome them. We are suffering from an exceptionally torrid summer—93 degrees in the shade yesterday. I feel, to use one of your quaint Americanisms, as ’limp as a half-yard of chewed string.’

Evidently the good Dean retains the humorous pluck of his old Puritan ancestor, and if on his next visit the irate Chicagoans cut off the offending right hand which wrote the Outlook article, the dean will good-humoredly wave the bleeding stump and cry—“Bravo Chicago!”

WOMEN LECTURERS

SUSAN B. ANTHONY is one of the best-known women of our times and one of our ablest women orators. She will occupy in the history of the Woman’s Rights movement the same position that William Lloyd Garrison held in the history of the anti-slavery movement—the position of a sincere pioneer whose fidelity to principle and tenacity of purpose never faltered or failed. She deserves a place in the foremost ranks of the champions of her sex, for she has given her whole life and her whole heart to the work. It seems probable that these veteran women may live to see the triumph of their cause.