Part 10

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He was booked for Manchester the following evening, and a great audience was expected. I replied:

“Must keep the Manchester engagement. Will meet you there to-morrow.”

So I left London and arrived in Manchester about 5 o’clock the next afternoon. Passing the City Hall and public buildings my “cabby” drove into a dense crowd of thousands massed together. I never saw the like. I asked my driver what that crowd meant. He said a Yankee minister was to lecture there by the name of “Talm-o-d-ge.” I asked the name of the building. He said it was Free Trade Hall.

I discharged the cab and tried to get into the outskirts of the crowd. I had a small handbag. The crowd was not noisy, but simply made a rush for the door, which had been burst open, and filled the hall with all that could get in. Every now and then I could hear some one say, “I _will_ see Talm-o-d-ge,” and then he would make a break, only to be crowded back. I slipped up to a policeman and asked what this all meant. He told me the same story, of a Yankee minister that was to lecture. He had never before heard of “Talm-o-d-ge,” but the crowd evidently had. I said to him, so as not to be overheard: “I am a Yankee. I am Dr. Talmage’s secretary.” He didn’t even wait to look at me, but with both hands in the air he shouted:

“This is Dr. Talm-o-d-ge’s secretary! Here! Here! Dr. Talin-o-d-ge’s secretary! Here! Here! “ Just then the crowd within hearing turned their eyes on me and made a rush, all shouting, “Dr. Talm-o-d-ge’s secretary! Here! Here!”

The next thing I knew I was being carried above the heads of that crowd and shot along head first. So I was carried over and on these heads, until I was nearly in the centre of great Free Trade Hall. How they found a place for my feet I don’t know. They passed me on by their hands until there was a place to alight. “Dr. Talm-o-d-ge’s secretary,” was the cry. The crowd was orderly and numbered about six thousand, or as many as could possibly get inside of Free Trade Hall, which is one of the greatest auditoriums in the world. They were singing “Hold the Fort,” while the Y. M. C. A. committee, in their shirt sleeves, were collecting the admission fees, ranging from one shilling to half a crown. No objections were made to paying, for everybody expected to do that, but the rush of thousands was more than the hall could accommodate.

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:

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“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.”

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

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“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.”

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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:

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“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.”

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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:

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“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,