Part 11

“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.