Chapter VI: Preface (5)

I remained there until Dr. Talmage and Mr. Lee, his host, who was to preside, and family arrived. I heard the lecture, and it was the first one of Dr. Talmage’s that I ever heard through. The people cheered as he came in, and it seemed for minutes as though the roof would be fairly raised. I never heard such cheering. After the lecture it was midnight before the crowd would let up on shaking hands and becoming enthusiastic over the Doctor. It was a scene that could not be produced in America.

The Doctor saw me after the lecture and asked where I was stopping. I told him at the Queen’s. He said he was stopping with Mr. William Lee, a distinguished resident of Manchester, and that he and Mrs. Talmage would call in the morning. I went back to my hotel. About 11 o’clock the next morning Dr. and Mrs. Talmage arrived and came up to my room. There was very little ceremony. The Doctor struck right out from the shoulder. It was business!

“You have got to pay me $350 a lecture or I go home from here. I cannot stand this tremendous succession of ovations.”

“If you can do it for $350, can’t you stand the same thing for the price agreed upon in London? I am paying you twice the amount of our original agreement,” I said.

“I am killing myself and making you or somebody else rich. I get nothing for it. Say yes or no.” He was positive but good natured. I didn’t hurry to reply, but related my experience of being suspended over the heads of that multitude for half an hour yesterday, remarking that it seemed days.

Mrs. Talmage, always a loyal wife, would often remind her husband that it was no use attempting to go on. He could not stand it. I did not get angry. I really enjoyed it, only there were people waiting outside to see me. Dr. Baxter wanted to buy a return date in Manchester, and did buy it then and there while the Talmages waited. In a side room he gave me his check for £300, and I signed a contract. I returned and invited Dr. and Mrs. Talmage to lunch. They accepted. The conversation between them was as to what steamers sailed first and which was the most desirable route. I heard it all. This was an open date, Saturday. He was to preach in Manchester the following Sunday, so I did not hurry.

I felt sure the tour would pay if the people did not get disgusted. They had expected a great Calvinistic divine to give them religious lectures. Many made unkind expressions at his provoking so much laughter and at the secular tendency of his address. I felt a little uncertain, but finally said: “Dr. Talmage, I am getting $250 each for this series of ten lectures, as you know. Thorn is making the fortune--not I. I am getting tired of this, but I will give you your $250 each for the one hundred lectures; no more.” He said nothing, but waited. Finally getting up, he said, “Well, that’s the best you will do, is it?”

“Yes, sir; and I may change my mind in ten minutes. If you do this, I will hire an English lawyer to draw up papers that will hold.”

“All right, then, make your contract and I will sign it.”

This had been a long siege. I went out, and by direction of the hotel proprietor found a solicitor, who came to my room, got all the details, and went back. He must have worked all night on the document. It was a remarkable paper, drawn up in the English form, with many pages of “whereases,” “said party,” etc., having a long ribbon and large red wax seal about the size of a Boston cracker attached. The party of the second part (Talmage) after hearing it read, signed it, as I also did. When all was over, the Doctor said very pleasantly that he was glad that there was an understanding at last.

We went together to Liverpool, Glasgow, and other cities in Scotland. Such crowds! He missed the train for Perth. I had told him that he must take a certain train in order to be on time. A party had taken them to the Trossachs, and when the hour arrived to begin the lecture in Perth, a telegram came from the Doctor stating that he had missed the train and would arrive about 10. The audience, which congested the hall, seemed quite patient for two hours. The time was late and the curfew bell said 11 o’clock. Many demanded their money back, and got it to the amount of £40; but still there was a large audience waiting, and the Doctor got through a little after midnight. The following Sunday we spent in Glasgow. The Doctor preached in the morning and in the afternoon we settled up.

The tenth lecture of the tour concluded my contract with the Leeds Y. M. C. A. at $250 a lecture. On this ten lectures I had made nothing, but during that time I had booked the balance of the tour of ninety more lectures at a very handsome profit, the lowest fee being £80 a lecture, and in some instances £250. The final lecture in England was sold in Liverpool to the Y. M. C. A. for £400, to be September 11. Eleven weeks booked for five lectures a week, twenty-five per cent. of the guarantees paid in advance and in my bank in London. Good prospects indeed.

Secretary Thorn, of the Leeds Y. M. C. A., who had managed the first ten lectures, presided at a dinner given to Dr. Talmage in Leeds three weeks later. In his official report, which he read on that occasion, he stated that the Association had netted about £1,000 ($5,000). This was $500 profit on each lecture. At the low prices paid for admission to lectures in Great Britain, 1_s_, 2_s_ 6_d_ to 3_s_ 6_d_, it shows that the crowds must have been enormous. As the lectures were all sold to local committees in the towns yet to be visited, I felt certain that in most cases these parties had pretty heavy responsibility, especially as the religious press was complaining of the lack of piety in the Doctor’s discourses. His lecture on “The Bright Side of Things” had provoked laughter where many had expected sacred things. I feared a reaction, for in all the crowds I heard expressions of bitter disappointment.

From Leeds, after two lectures in near cities, we came to London. Dr. Baxter, of _The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times_, was to pay me £200 for the first London lecture in Exeter Hall, which was crowded. Dr. Talinage had already preached in the same hall, with the usual large gathering of disappointed outsiders.

When we arrived in London I found there was quite a feeling against Dr. Talmage, aroused by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker on account of the questionable verdict in his ecclesiastical trial by the New York Presbytery just before he left. But the Rev. Charles Wood, a young Presbyterian minister visiting London at that time, now in Philadelphia, succeeded in bringing Dr. Parker around, and Talmage was invited to preach in City Temple, but had not the open date and had to forego the honor. However, the ladies of both sides exchanged friendly calls, and all went well.

After our return to London and the Exeter Hall lecture the business from this time began to decline. It was difficult in many instances to collect the guarantees, and I often felt like a thief when accepting money that responsible parties had guaranteed with a reasonable assurance that it would prove profitable. Then again, others had persisted in having dates, and threatened the law if I did not make the contract and accept the twenty-five per cent. advance payment. Some of these I enjoyed holding to the terms they had almost compelled me to make.

Several causes contributed to the revulsion of public opinion and the depreciation of the Doctor’s value. Chief among these was the disappointment in his religious zeal. These religious “lower” classes, whose only literature is the penny religious weekly, had pictured him as an ideal man of God. With his marvellous insight into the human heart of the nineteenth century, he had, through his sermons, touched chords beyond the reach of any other man of his time. He had shown that he knew the burdens, the temptations, the bitternesses of men and women who gain their daily bread only by a struggle. With this master key he had unlocked their hearts, and they sought his presence very much in the same spirit that the multitude followed Christ into the wilderness. I believe I witnessed marvellous, unmatched scenes in old England that summer. Such tribute as was laid at Talmage’s feet was never paid to any other religious leader, and when these people came to find the lectures more of a secular, not religious character their disappointment knew no bounds. His final lecture in Liverpool was a dismal failure. Four responsible men had signed the contract for $2,000. I settled for $500, and if Dr. Talmage had not refunded that amount to the Y. M. C. A. committee I believe he would have been mobbed. The crowd gathered outside the Northwestern Hotel, calling for Talmage, and it seemed as though every vituperative adjective the English language possesses was applied to him by these religious fanatics. He had made the feeling. If he had only emulated his own teachings instead of using an old American lyceum lecture, he might have had a triumphant home-coming instead of the one he did have; but he seemed to disregard in every way the wishes of the people who paid to see or hear him. The result to the management was simply a loss of the time. The Doctor got all that was made on the tour. Instead of one hundred lectures the tour was shortened to seventy, for which Dr. Talmage received $17,500, the management “his labor for his pains.” Had Dr. Talmage kept his original agreement he would have netted $7,000, but by his “eccentricity” he made $10,500 more than he expected when he started on the journey.

I have made very few engagements for Dr. Talmage since his memorable season.

Dr. Talmage’s sermons have been more widely read and circulated during the past thirty years than those of any other minister that has lived in his time. _The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times_, of London, has sent out from five hundred thousand to nearly a million a week since 1870. Next to _The Christian World_ it is the greatest religious newspaper property in Great Britain. The price is a penny, and it sells almost wholly to the lower classes, who depend upon it for their only reading, both religious and secular. It is printed in muddy black with cheap, coarse zinc cuts. It now has an American edition, edited ostensibly by Dr. Talmage, with a circulation equal, if not greater, than that in Great Britain. This is a reproduction of the English edition, but on much finer paper and beautifully printed--an essential feature for a religious household paper in America, no matter how remote or primitive the fireside it reaches. This American edition prints one of Dr. Talmage’s sermons every week. It is most skillfully managed and considered a great property. It is seldom seen in the public reading rooms or library, or among the upper middle class homes, but drive out into the country among the farmers and stop at a farmhouse for a drink of water, and while you wait the first object to attract your attention is a copy of _The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times_. From the Atlantic to the Pacific this religious paper has found its way into the houses of the poor religious classes, and, of course, must do incalculable good.

Another means of disseminating Dr. Talmage’s sermons for the past two decades has been the “patent insides” of country newspapers. Over six thousand different weekly papers by this method send out his weekly sermon, and while the doctor had a pulpit his sermon appeared in one of the Monday morning papers in every large city.

“Dr. Talmage’s Sermon in the Great Tabernacle yesterday. By special telegraph to _The Courier-Journal_,” etc.

Dr. Talmage has the greatest congregation of readers of his sermons of any man living, and this is his means of advertising. To gather up a large audience for him in the western country all that is needed is a railroad junction where cars can be run from all directions, the erection of a temporary amphitheatre, and the announcement that Dr. Talmage is to preach, and all the facilities for bringing out crowds will be tested to their fullest capacity. Under these conditions the doctor is the greatest one-man attraction in America, and what cares he for such comment as the following from _The Congregationalist_, the New England organ of that denomination:

“If in humility it may be done without violence to the feelings of our Presbyterian brethren--whose particular funeral it is--we feel called upon to inquire if it be not nearly time for the reign of ordinary propriety to set in as to the Talmage business. It was bad enough to have a lot of old sermons weekly stereotyped through the land on Monday mornings during his late tour to the Holy Land, as having been delivered by him on the previous day on Mars Hill and elsewhere; and to have accounts so gorgeous as to be manifestly fictitious in their coloring, sent abroad as the great man’s intercourse by the way with kindred great men. But now that this dazzling pulpit light is once more shining and shimmering at home, we think the world at large could manage, without overwhelming grief, to dispense with Mr. Louis Klopsch’s Boswellian columns, detailing the amazing Talmage experiences, and recounting the tremendous Talmage remarks at various places along that route, which has been beatified and forevermore advertised as that of his travels.”

_The Toledo Blade_, one of the papers which published Talmage’s sermons during this Palestine tour, came out with a frank explanation that none of them were cabled, and that they were all prepared before the doctor left home. _The Blade_ further made matters interesting by admissions that some of them, including the one credited to Mars Hill, were never delivered at all.

What cares Dr. Talmage for all this? He has his public, that he has educated, adamantine in its faith in him. He is said to be the richest minister in the world, and he has _earned_ it all himself.

Charles H. Spurgeon was, to me, a name, next to that of Beecher, to conjure with. When I arrived in London for the first time, June 3, 1879, and started out to see the sights, the first place I instructed my “cabby” to drive to was Spurgeon’s Tabernacle.

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.

“Do you call that a large church?” I asked the cabby.

“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:

* * * * *

“WESTMINSTER PALACE HOTEL, June 3, 1879.

“REV. C. H. SPURGEON, Nightingale Lane.

“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.

“I am, yours very truly,

“J. B. POND.”

* * * * *

The next morning I received the following letter from Mr. Spurgeon:

* * * * *

“NIGHTINGALE LANE, BALHAM, SURREY, June 5, 1879.

“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.

“Yours truly,

“C. H. SPURGEON.”

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

* * * * *

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 said, “Why can I not pass in here the same as others do?”

“Oh, you can by dropping something in the box.”

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?”

He replied, “Anything you please. A half crown is the usual amount.”

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:

* * * * *

“NIGHTINGALE LANE, BALHAM, SURREY, June 6, 1879.

“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 returned home without the sight.

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:

* * * * *

“WESTWOOD, BEULAH HILL, UPPER NORWOOD, July 13, 1886.

“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.

“Yours truly,

“C. H. SPURGEON.”

* * * * *

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:

* * * * *

CHARGING TO HEAR THE GOSPEL.

“31 MONTAGUE ST., LONDON, W. C., July 25, 1886.

“TO THE EDITOR OF _The Baptist_.

“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.

In introducing the guest, Mr. Lawrence said:

“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.”

The Dean, on rising, said:

“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.’

“And now, gentlemen, let me give--

“‘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.)