Part 26

His first public lecture was in Ypsilanti, Mich., for I had planned to make the long rides and distant cities before cold weather set in. Prevented by sickness from accompanying him myself, I sent another gentleman with him in my stead, and together they made a tour of the principal cities of the middle West. The newspaper criticisms of Mr. Howells’ lectures were fine, and everywhere that he went he found large and enthusiastic audiences. He endeared himself to his hearers. A gentleman in Des Moines, Ia., after Mr. Howells’ lecture there, sat down and wrote me a letter, from which I quote:

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“DEAR MR. POND:

“I am led to address you in this familiar way out of the enthusiastic pleasure which I have enjoyed over the visit of Mr. Howells, and I have thought it would be pleasing to you to know that his reception here was enthusiastic and appreciative. It was my good fortune to have him, with President McLean of the State University, and Major Byers of this city, at a little one o’clock lunch at my home on Wednesday, 1st inst., and his stay there will always be remembered by us as a delight. He is one of the sweetest tempered and most lovable men that I have ever known. The trait which, perhaps, first becomes noticeable when you have met him is his absolute honesty and faithfulness to the truth, and he carried out this principle in his lecture by making it not alone an effort to please, but by giving us an hour of the most valuable instruction. It is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the importance of this in a day so prolific of novels, and when it is so important that our novel reading should be well directed. Mr. Howells created a splendid impression in Des Moines, and has left the literary life of our city decidedly the better for his presence.”

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The cordiality of the people he met throughout those middle Western States was almost too much for Mr. Howells. He wrote me from Emporia, Kansas:

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“I had a great house--1,300 or 1,400--last night here, and only less quick and keen than in Topeka, where it was perfect. But I cannot stand the racket. I cannot sleep without drugs, and I will ask you not to make any more dates for me after Hamilton, if you can get me there; for I cannot promise to fill these; and I don’t want to disappoint people. It is the _kindness_ (as I foresaw) that kills. I _cannot_ refuse people’s hospitality, and it is simply disastrous.”

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On his return to New York he brought up the subject again, by writing me:

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“The trouble with lecturing is the social side, which is essentially a part of it, and a very pleasant part. If I could lecture every night (which I cannot) and arrive every day too late for an afternoon reception, and get away as soon as I read my paper, it would be fine, but that is impossible.”

* * * * *

This tour, I believe, brought a great deal of pleasure and profit to the novel-reading public (and whom does that term not include?) who had their first opportunity to hear the greatest realist in American fiction explain the technique of his profession. It seems, too, that some of the experiences were an education to Mr. Howells, who wrote me:

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“Grinnell was my first glimpse of the real West, and it is simply stupendous. The beauty and richness of the country are marvellous. Co-education is the true thing for the West. I have never met brighter minds than among the women members of the faculty. What charming people, all!”

* * * * *

But he got homesick for New York and his desk, and some weeks before the tour was completed, he countermanded his request to make engagements for him only every other day, and asked me to crowd in all the dates possible in November, so as to let him off early in December.

Although in haste to escape from what he termed “the worst slavery I ever imagined,” and to get back to his writing, he called a halt at Hamilton, Ohio, the town of his early boyhood. How much human nature and “boy” nature the following few words reveal:

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“Hamilton is my ‘Boy’s Town’ and I wish to go there on almost any terms. I could lecture there the night after Cincinnati, and I should like a day off there afterward.”

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He did stop off there, and preceding his regular lecture on “The Novel and Novel Writing,” he delighted the people of Hamilton with some of his autobiographical reminiscences. The town was proud of him, if one may judge from the extended reports that appeared in the local papers.

I have since made several attempts to induce Mr. Howells to fill lecture engagements and thus give pleasure to the many people who are constantly applying to me for him, but his prejudice against the platform seems adamantine. Here is a record of one such futile attempt:

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(Dict.) “May 24, 1900.

“MY DEAR MR. HOWELLS:

“Will you go to Wilmington, Del., and lecture for $350? I should think it would be splendid recreation for you. There are a great many people who have died for the want of platform ozone.”

“Sincerely yours, “J. B. POND.”

“Mr. W. D. Howells, 40 West 59th St., N. Y.”

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“40 WEST 59TH ST., May 24, 1900.”

“MY DEAR MAJOR:”

“I am not quite hungry enough yet. But I appreciate your kindness, and I wonder at Wilmington.”

“Yours truly, “W. D. HOWELLS.”

* * * * *

I wanted to say something of Mr. Howells--better than I knew how to write--so I asked my friend, Mr. George W. Cable, to write it for me, and here is what he has to say:

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Nearly twenty years ago, Mr. Thomas Sargent Perry wrote of Mr. Howells: “He has made over the American novel, taught it gracefulness and compactness, and has given it a place in literature along with the best of modern work.” This was far from the first word of praise and appreciation evoked by Mr. Howells, who, as editor of a leading literary magazine, as poet and as novelist, had already firmly established himself in the ranks of the writers of to-day. And since his name first became known it has grown constantly more familiar and more loved, until to-day it is regarded as that of the most typically American of American writers, without a rival in his particular field of work.

This field of work has been the subject of more or less discussion among his readers, regarding its merits and demerits. But however much discussion there may be, as to the subject he has chosen, there can be absolutely no doubt as to the excellency of his treatment of it. He has chosen, as Thomas Wentworth Higginson tells us: “To look away from great passions, and rather to elevate the commonplace by minute touches.” He began by throwing aside all the meaningless conventionalities that then hung around the novel, boldly asserting that, “As for him, he was a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles--an observer and a portrayer of the trivial commonplaces of life.” Yet in truth he is far more than this; to quote Mr. Perry again, Mr. Howells touches the reader’s shoulder and points out the beauty hidden in simple actions, the pathos lurking beneath seemingly indifferent words--in short, the humanity of life.”

To “paint the thing as he sees it” has been and is ever Mr. Howells’s chief aim in his work. And because of his patient, conscientious adherence to this principle, he gives us life, his characters are not puppets, conjured from a wild imagination and moved mechanically by strings, but living, human men and women, such as we meet any and every day--very ordinary, perhaps, and at times even uninteresting, except that, as Browning has it:

“We’re made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we’ve passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see.”

It is as the leading exponent of realism in art that Mr. Howells stands to-day--for realism as opposed to romanticism, for living interest in the world around us instead of a vague, fanciful dreaming about the past. Mr. Howells himself has told us that we cannot have romanticism back because we live now in an age of hopeful doing and striving, not of mere dreaming. “Like Tolstoi and Ibsen,” some one has written of him, “his types are drawn directly from the reality he knows, and have no prototypes in fiction. All romantic traditions are discarded and the story moves on, not only with the strictest regard for probability, but with the inevitableness of life itself.”

His “heavenly scorn” for conventions and traditions, for all that is second hand or sham, and his conscientious desire to set forth the truth and to show us life as he knows it, are the fundamental bases of his success. Yet I think he has become endeared to the American people even more through his pure, unqualified Americanism--his “contemporaneousness,” as Boyesen calls it, when he says, “That good-natured disrespect toward the past, that humorous tolerance of amusing shams, that large-hearted sympathy and kindliness toward all humanity, which are the most characteristic qualities of the American people, have never before found so typical a representative in American literature.” His men and women are not only real men and women of to-day, they are American men and women; and if he has been censured for giving us frivolous, inconsequent, nervously silly women, it is, as some one has said, because, “the vain and weak women intrude themselves a good deal in real life, while the Olive Hallecks and Penelope Laphams are content to keep a post of quiet observation farther back.” His fine, pure, unselfish women are not wanting any more than are his strong, noble men. He is too keen an observer to fail to recognize their existence even in the “everyday world” that he depicts, but his all-pervading humor ferrets out weakness and inconsequence and folly, exposing them, not in an unfriendly way, but with a generous, sympathetic smile that makes even his victims smile with him.

Still, even this kindly humor is far less noticeable in his later work than in his early writing. It has rather broadened into a large human sympathy, a genial love of his kind, and a keen appreciation of their merits as well as of their faults. When he moralizes, as he sometimes does, it is, as some one has said, in an “open and fearless treatment of the living problems of the hour.... Underlying each of his later works is the thought of a perfect brotherhood.”

To quote Thomas Sargent Perry again, than whose appreciation of Mr. Howells I know of none finer: “That he has delighted us all, we all know. He has shown us how genuine, how full of romance, is the life about us which seems sordid and has a fine reputation for sordidness. It is the tone of the author’s mind that makes the mark upon that of the reader, and who that knows Mr. Howells’s work does not feel that he learns new sympathies and gentler judgment from his generosity and careful study?”

Mr. Howells is not only one of the most prolific of all imaginative American writers of the first rank, but within the last ten years or so he has come to be regarded as one of the foremost authorities, if not the very first, in the criticism of current poetry and romance. Hundreds of thousands of readers put themselves under the inspiration and leading of his printed talks upon books and writers of the day, and while he has been to our vast reading public one of the least seen of literary Americans, no portrait is better known than his, no man’s utterance upon any subject of literary value is more widely or eagerly considered. All the more emphatically is this latter statement true of the subjects he has now chosen for his public lectures. These themes are peculiarly his own, and the opportunity to see the very face and hear the living voice of the man himself is one that, it may safely be predicted, the whole book-loving element of American society will avail itself of with a keen and affectionate delight.

G. W. CABLE.

Northampton, Mass., July, ’99.

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I want Mr. Howells to live to a good old age, as long as the great war horses of the platform lived. The people want to see and hear him most of all. Here is what his friend, Mark Twain, said of lecturing at the close of the American end of his tour around the world:

“Lecturing is gymnastics, chest-expander, medicine, mind healer, blues destroyer, all in one. I am twice as well as I was when I started out. I have gained nine pounds in twenty-eight days, and expect to weigh six hundred before January. I haven’t had a blue day in all the twenty-eight.”

George William Curtis has filled, as no other American man of letters of this generation, the ideal of clear intellect, pure taste, moral purpose, chivalry of feeling, and personal refinement and grace. The grace and culture he possessed were as natural as his courtesy and his faith in mankind. They were ingrained as part of his being, wrought into every strain and making the strands of his everyday life.

From the moment of his entrance into public life as a speaker, now nearly fifty years ago, he entirely satisfied the higher conception of purity, dignity, and sweetness. He was a lecturer of beautiful presence and was superbly artificial, yet this artificiality was natural. His hair and beard were a beautiful silver-gray, his face was pale, his manner studied, his voice cultivated. It was as enjoyable to hear him as to listen to an opera, and was a lesson in grand manners and elocution.

His voice, like his manners and appearance on the platform, was ideal--clear, bell-like, silvery. He could be heard in the largest of halls without apparently any special effort. It was a delight to listen; every syllable was distinct, yet there was no strain. The enunciation was perfect. The matter of his speeches was like the sound, perfect in sense, clear in meaning, as graceful as the speaking, and always carrying the sense of conviction to the hearers.

A gentleman, and exclusive in bearing, Curtis was, nevertheless, profoundly democratic. He believed in his fellowmen--that was the essence of his democracy--and, like Wendell Phillips, he illustrated in his manners and greeting that the noblest refinement was in all senses a part of the most complete faith in republican doctrine and in the essential equality of human beings. For twenty years Mr. Curtis commanded the highest fees--about the same as Gough, Beecher, and Phillips. He always read his lectures from carefully prepared manuscripts.

MISCELLANEOUS Henry Watterson I have known for the twenty-five years that he has been coming to the Everett House, New York. I think I know him better than many of those who count themselves intimate acquaintances and friends. My office has been his headquarters most of that time, where he has been in the habit of meeting all classes of political leaders, newspaper managers, and editors, and where have been discussed all progressive schemes in the interest of telegraph news, printing machinery, paper manufacture, and advancement in industry of all kinds, political, social, scientific, and for the general good in all directions.

A Democratic leader and editor of the most influential paper in the South, he has counted such men as Greeley, Raymond, James, Whitelaw Reid, Dana, McGill, and John Swinton among his nearest friends and advisers. He was looked upon by his political opponents as one of the safest of their advisers. I think Henry Watterson has had the entrée to the White House during every administration since Grant’s, excepting Hayes, although I hardly think he and President Cleveland were over fond of each other.

There are conditions under which a close friend of the Colonel can learn all about him--his remarkable social experiences, especially among the men and women of the lyric and dramatic stage. At one time he knew every great actor, actress, singer, and manager in the English-speaking world, and they were all his friends.

Colonel Watterson has been a successful lecturer during the last two decades and has covered as much territory as any other man. He is equally popular in New England and in the South; is a favorite in Texas, California, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, and all the Western States. He has given his lecture on “Abraham Lincoln” before crowded houses in Southern cities where, when he was a rebel captain, he would joyfully have directed the Federal President’s execution.

Until 1894 he conducted the councils of his party in all national conventions, and has wielded an influence more potent in the advancement of the Democratic party than any other man of his time.

He is a charming man personally, honest, kind-hearted, and sincere in every way (except at poker: I have known him to rake in all the chips in a three-round jack-pot, and raise out five good players--a Vice-President of the United States, a governor of a State, and three United States Senators--on a bobtail flush). His friends are legion. As a public speaker I think he is as bad as he is charming in private conversation. The secret of his universal popularity is his own magnificent self.

The Hon. William Parsons, a Dublin barrister, was a splendid representative of a school of literary and historical lecturers, who, like Dr. John Lord, followed the platform as a profession. Taking him all in all, Mr. Parsons was decidedly the most satisfactory man to manager and audiences alike that has come from abroad. His taking presence, charming manners, and well-equipped brain, admirably furnished, his ease of speech and pleasant, well-trained voice, together with his ready wit and careful scholarship, made him a favorite always during the twelve years he was continuously coming here for the lecture season. But his voice was his best tool; it never wore on himself or tired his hearers.

From 1873 to 1884, the Hon. William Parsons made annual lecture tours in America. Next to Gough, he was about the first one to be booked for the following season wherever he appeared. Generally he returned after the close of a lecture tour with his time for the following season all booked solid and contracts in his pocket. His lectures were biographical.

William E. Gladstone could not be prevailed upon to undertake a lecture tour in America. I made him a final otter of £4,000 for twenty lectures. Of course he did not accept it; yet, if he had only known the reception he would have gotten in America, and the anxious, almost feverish desire that there was on the part of the people to see and hear him, I think he would have been inclined to run across. There is no auditorium in this country that he could not have filled nightly at big prices. But possibly the fear also of the reception may have influenced his negative. It certainly did affect John Bright in the series of refusals he made to my several suggestions.

I met Mr. Gladstone three times at his home in London and submitted propositions for a tour of fifty lectures. He did not discourage me at first, but later on said that he thought he was too old to make the trip. “Besides,” he added, “why should I go to America? Don’t all Americans come to see me?” I give the letter Mr. Gladstone sent me in reply to my last:

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“DEAR SIR: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, with all the kindness it expresses, and the dazzling proposals which it offers. Unhappily my reply lies not in vague expressions of hope, but in the burden of seventy years, and of engagements and duties beyond my strength, by the desertion of which, even for the time needed, I should really be disentitling myself to the good will of the people of America, which I prize so highly.

“I remain, dear sir, Your most faithful servant, W. E. GLADSTONE.”

“February 7, 1880.

“TO MAJOR J. B. POND, Boston, U. S. A.”

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On two occasions I breakfasted with Mr. Gladstone at his Harley Street house. He was very much interested in my stories of Western frontier life, and asked if I had any objections to having a stenographer sit behind a screen and take down the “stories.” So on my third visit we sat down to breakfast and I talked. I had been thinking all the night before and all the morning on my way to his house what I would say, but when once seated at the table, somehow, unconsciously, I was going on at a great rate, giving experiences of my Western life, all drawn out of me by Mr. Gladstone’s fascinating way of doing things. It was one o’clock when we rose from the table. He said: “Major Pond, I cannot tell you how interesting your visit has been to me. I thank you for it.” The reporter was concealed behind a screen very near. I have looked for the stories in print, but I never found them.

P. T. Barnum I first saw in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in 1853. The agitation over the Maine Law had excited the then new and farthest Western State, Wisconsin, and there was a movement on foot to have the Maine Law passed by the State Legislature. Many speakers were secured from the East, among whom were Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. S. R. I. Bennett, P. T. Barnum, and another gentleman, a famous agitator, whose name I forget. This party travelled in a two-horse carriage from town to town, holding temperance meetings and making speeches. I know that I walked with my father from Alto to Fond du Lac (twenty miles) to see and to hear “the great humbug,” Barnum. I remember Darling’s Hall was packed. The women speakers, to my eye, seemed very beautiful. I remember that the hair of one hung in long ringlets down each side of her face and neck, and her shoulders and arms were bare! She was very picturesque.

Then came the first gentleman, whom I didn’t care for; but at last came Barnum, “the humbug.” The first handclapping and cheers that I ever remember hearing were for Barnum. I didn’t understand what it was all about. A handsome, medium-sized man, in dark trousers, white vest, and a black sack coat, smooth shaven, with a wealth of curly black hair, and a smile all over his face, stepped forward on the platform. He prefaced his remarks by saying:

“Yes, I am a ‘humbug,’ but the cause which I have championed in company with these friends is sincere. That is no humbug. I have consented to accompany them throughout your State to help, if possible, in establishing a law in this young State that may save thousands and tens of thousands from ruin. You have laws for the prevention of murder and of theft and of all other crimes, but no law for the prevention of a man’s stealing and wasting his earnings in strong drink and impoverishing his family.”

He made a very eloquent appeal to our people, and closed his speech by reassuring his friends that he was no humbug, “but look out next year. I expect to send a show into this country. Then you may get humbugged.” He retired with more cheers and applause. The next year Barnum’s woolly horse was exhibited throughout the West, and everybody _was_ humbugged. My father, at great sacrifice, took all his family, and all the settlement did likewise. I didn’t see him after that until 1875 or 1876.

While I was associated with Mr. Redpath in Boston I engaged Mr. Barnum to give twenty lectures on temperance in New England, paying him $2,000 and his expenses. His first lecture was in Music Hall, Boston, in the Redpath Lyceum Course, before a very large audience.