Part 27

The day he arrived at Boston I met him and Mrs Barnum, his new young wife, at the station. Each had small handbags. I asked him if he had any large baggage. He said they had none, excepting what they carried in their hands. I started to pilot them to a carriage, when Mr. Barnum said: “We will walk to the Parker House. It is not necessary to go to the expense of a carriage.” I accompanied him on his tour through New England, where he lectured in all the large towns, and he would never allow his manager to incur an extra expense for any unnecessary comfort. He was the most prudently economical man that I have ever known. It made no difference to him who paid the expenses. If they were unnecessary, he didn’t want them incurred. Invariably he walked from the station to the hotel. In business relations with him afterward I found that same rigid economy in all his dealings.

He told me that the large full sheet lithograph of his own head cost him a little less than a cent and a half each; I could not have got them at the time for less than eight cents. He also told me that his book, “The Life of P. T. Barnum,” a bound volume of several hundred pages, was printed in Buffalo, and cost him a trifle over nine cents each and sold for a dollar; but he bought a million copies both of the book and of his lithograph. He always arranged to have his colored show bills made so as to answer the same purpose from one year to another. He seldom had a new drawing made, but, with the introduction of modern type descriptive bills, he could border the old colored posters and make a fine display. He had bill-posting reduced to a fine art. He claimed that there was only one liquid a man could use in excessive quantities without being swallowed up by it, and that was printer’s ink.

His house in Bridgeport was a museum of itself. All the gems of the old museum that were of extraordinary interest as curios were to be seen there. Although he cared nothing especially for rare paintings, the things that he gathered about him seemed designed to attract the eye rather than the ear or the finer qualities of the mind. His band was composed of the cheapest musicians that could be hired. For his side shows he engaged people personally. I remember a man who had a special act of some kind that rather attracted Barnum’s interest as a feature for a side show. The man spoke of a woman he knew with whom he did a double act which made a great hit. Mr. Barnum at once asked if she were his wife. The man said, “No.”

“Well,” says Barnum, “you must fix that. You will have to make arrangements to occupy the same berth in the sleeping car. We put four people in a section.”

Once I told Mr. Barnum of an experience a friend of mine had at his show in Milwaukee. There was a big crowd around the ticket wagon, but he got through it and called for eight tickets, holding out a $50 bill to the agent, who seized it, handed him eight tickets and a wad of money. After he got out of the crowd and counted his money he found that he was $20 short, and of course that spoiled the enjoyment of the show for him. He seated his party, went back, and waited for an opportunity to get to the box office. The ticket seller just politely bluffed him off, insisting that he got his right change, and one or two “bouncers” around the office hustled the man away. Of course there was no recourse for him whatever. The story seemed to make no impression on Barnum at all. He simply said, “That was nothing; my man pays $5,000 a year for the privilege of selling tickets at my show.” I asked him if that was the custom, and he said it was with all circuses and big shows on the road; that the privilege of selling tickets was awarded to the highest bidder. For years he had never let it for less than $2,500. I afterward learned that that was indeed the custom.

Mr. Barnum frequently gave me passes to his show, written out in his own handwriting and always on the cheapest kind of paper. I wish I had kept some of them. I have had as many as a dozen of them in my pocket at one time.

He and I were one day sitting in the show in Boston a few minutes before the time for the performance to begin. The show peddlers came along crying, “Lemonade! Lemonade!” and, not recognizing Mr. Barnum, shouted in his face. Mr. Barnum said to them:

“Go to the other part of the show. I don’t want you to peddle these things anywhere within my hearing.”

That afternoon one of the Amazons in the great Amazon march, which was a feature that year, was run over and killed by a chariot near the entrance of the ring. Mr. Barnum did not move, and I said:

“That is dreadful, isn’t it?”

“Oh,” he replied, “there is another waiting for a place. It is rather a benefit than a loss.”

I think I never knew a more heartless man or one who knew the value and possibilities of a dollar more than P. T. Barnum. I am told he left a very handsome fortune. He cut always with a gold knife. A more plausible, pleasant-speaking man was never heard. It was as good as the show itself to listen to him in conversation. He was familiar with every slightest detail of his great performance.

I said to him once: “You utilized Jumbo’s stampede in the Zoological Gardens, London, to pretty good advantage as an advertisement.”

Barnum replied: “We did nothing. We could not help it. I had been to a thousand dollars’ expense sending men to India, and had sketches made of the scene of capturing this immense beast, and had started my man to Buffalo with drawings and orders for the printing when I saw in the papers that Jumbo refused to leave the garden, and that there was a general uprising of the children of London, who were making a protest against his going. I had a cable proposition to buy him back, but I didn’t sell. It never cost me a cent to advertise Jumbo. It was the greatest free advertising I ever heard of.”

Mr. George H. Daniels, general passenger agent of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, is a many-sided man who has added a new subject to the lecture platform.

It is somewhat surprising that although almost every conceivable phase of art, literature, science, invention, adventure, and philanthropy has been treated by lyceum lecturers, the almost limitless subject of the evolution of facilities for rapid and luxurious travel has been neglected. Yet it is a subject in which the great travelling public is much interested. The development of the means of travel and commerce is so universally a part of daily life that we do not stop to realize the causes of the tremendous strides which have been made in these fields within a single lifetime. It remained for Mr. Daniels to introduce us to this interesting subject.

Early in the Civil War Mr. Daniels left the public school in Aurora, Ill., and enlisted in the marine artillery of New York, going to North Carolina with the Burnside expedition, later becoming a government steamboat pilot for the inland waters of North Carolina and Virginia, serving in that capacity until the close of the war.

After the war he became connected with Western railroads and has grown up in the transportation business, so that he has not only observed, but has had an important part in its development. In his special department he has shown a combination of rare executive ability which amounts almost to genius. He is original in his way of doing things and is full of new and progressive schemes. Besides this, Mr. Daniels is a man of excellent literary ability, as well as originality of thought--a rare combination of qualities.

His speeches are concise and to the point and crowded with information. He is _the_ man to address railroad assemblies on all sorts of occasions, and is one of the most brilliant of speakers. If our lyceum managers could realize the great educative influence such lectures would have upon their community, they would not be long in restoring the lyceum platform to its original position when it stood for genius, ability, and education.

In spite of his brilliant qualities as a writer and speaker, Mr. Daniels is satisfied with the very highest position in his profession, and is not ambitious to fill any other niche of public eminence. He has risen by sheer ability to the high position which he now occupies in his special line, and is contented to remain the “right file in the front rank,” with the largest income of any general passenger agent in the world.

Mr. Daniels, it is expected, will soon convey passengers from New York to Chicago between sunrise and sunset, via the New York Central Railroad.

Mr. Ed. Heron-Allen, who is now a barrister in London, was one of the most unique as well as most remarkable successes in the way of a lyceum novelty that I ever discovered. He came to me while I was in London with Mr. Beecher in 1886, and showed me a little book which he had written on the science of the hand.

He at once impressed me as one of the most dashing and attractive young gentlemen I had ever met, and I found that he was a favorite with many of the swell clubs and literary societies. He was a young man with tremendous assurance, which at once inspired confidence on the part of whomever he met.

He wished to go to America and give lessons and lectures on the science of the hand, and went so far as to propose that he would hire a hall and give his lecture that I might judge of it for myself. He did so, and Mr. Beecher and I, with a number of his friends, attended the lecture in Hempstead, London.

When he was eighteen years of age he was sent to the continent to secure a collection of violins and other stringed instruments for the Colonial Exhibition in London. His expedition was very successful, and he became so intensely enamored of his work that he wrote a book on violin making, which is now a standard authority on the subject for all violin makers. He seemed possessed of many most remarkable gifts.

Arrangements were completed, and he came to America on the same steamer on which Mr. and Mrs. Beecher, my brother, and I returned. He was the most popular man on the boat, improvising a number of brilliant social affairs that added to the pleasure of the voyagers.

On his arrival in New York, he took an extensive suite of parlors at the Everett House, and held a press reception, at which he examined the hands of many of the reporters and their friends, including several men of distinction, and wrote descriptions of the characters of many, to the wonder and admiration of his auditors.

Within a week he was a favorite in New York’s best society. He sent out his cards announcing that he would give lessons in the science of the hand, with charts and written descriptions accompanying them. One leading young ladies’ school in New York arranged for seventy sittings of pupils, each of whom paid ten dollars. Their hands were examined, charts made, and a description of their character was written out. Ed. Heron-Allen was indeed a very busy young man. He employed a stenographer to take down his descriptions of the hands and write them out to accompany the printed charts in which he himself inserted the lines of the hands he examined. He found a stenographer who could take down his descriptions with such accuracy that when he had finished his examinations the chart and descriptive paper were ready to hand over to the pupil enclosed in a cardboard roller and tied with a tasty bow of various-colored ribbons. In this way he was kept very busy for a number of weeks, and would often come down to my office at the close of a day’s work and turn in from $100 to $150 in cash, which he had taken in from visitors in a single day.

He served a five-o’clock tea in his parlors every day, at which his fair pupils invariably assisted. In fact, it became a regular custom for the daily papers, under the head of “What is Going On in Society,” to announce the name of the lady who was to “pour tea” at Ed. Heron-Allen’s _séunce_. that day.

Notwithstanding the peculiarity of his profession, he had the entrée to the very best families of New York.

It was not long before there arose a jealousy of him among the young men of New York, and a great many of them were much opposed to him, but that made no difference to him. He was a favorite, and he knew it. He kept right along making friends and money.

He went to Boston and repeated his successes there, with headquarters at the Vendome. Mrs. Jack Gardner took him up, which of course made him a social attraction there. Then he went to Chicago, Philadelphia, and back to New York.

One day he and I, in company with a prominent citizen of Brooklyn, visited a famous violin maker in that city who was anxious to meet Mr. Heron-Allen. We found our way up to his studio or workshop, where he was hard at work in his shirt sleeves and apron, and before him lay Ed. Heron-Allen’s book on the violin. As he had not been apprised of Mr. Heron-Allen’s coming, the visit was a complete surprise; but it was a very interesting meeting to hear those two experts discussing the mechanism of the violin, and reminded one of the oft-quoted saying, that “if you want something you must give something.” Mr. Heron-Allen discovered we had a great violin maker in America, and the violin maker claimed he was greatly benefited by the visit from the man whom he considered possessed the greatest knowledge of the violin of any one of his years.

Cheirosophy became irksome to Ed. Heron-Allen in a short time, and he decided to turn his attention to literature. He told me that he was going to write a novel, that he had found a publisher who was to make an advance on royalties, and that he was going to try living the life of a Bohemian litterateur for two years, depending for his living entirely upon what he could make with his pen. He withdrew from society, took apartments in some obscure place in New York, and I didn’t see him for some months. One morning I met him on Fourth Avenue, and he looked emaciated and hungry. He said he was going to get some breakfast. I invited him to breakfast with me, but he declined, and said he was still engaged in his literary labors and depending upon them wholly for his sustenance. He did keep it up for two years, but came near starving to death. During that time he put out two books--one “The Kisses of Fate,” the other I have forgotten.

He afterward called upon me and told me that he was going back to London to take charge of his father’s business, who was a well-established barrister in Soho.

The season following I visited him at his office in London. He had some public position in the law courts, which I visited with him. He was not clerk of the court, but seemed in charge of the distribution of briefs and assignment of cases for the judge. He invited me inside the railing and introduced me to the judge on the bench as Judge Pond of New York, as coolly as though it were an indisputable fact. The judge welcomed me on the seat by his side, and was very chatty and agreeable to me. I managed in some way to mask my identity and to keep up the delusion until the hour for adjournment, when Mr. Heron-Allen and I walked out, he thanking the judge for his kindness to his friend. When we got out on the street he nearly fainted with laughter over the practical joke and the way it had succeeded.

On my last visit to London, in 1897, my wife and I dined at his house. He is happily married, owns a big establishment, has a fine profession, and has had some of the most wonderful experiences of any man I have ever known. He was a great friend of Sir Richard Burton, who declared to me that of all the interesting and remarkable characters he had ever met, Ed. Heron-Allen was the most interesting, and suggested that he should have been a great soldier and leader of armies. His youthful appearance would lead one to believe him a mere boy. His manner and habits are those of a perfect gentleman. Putney, London, was the home of his boyhood. He was reared in affluence, and in the part of London where he lived he was known by all classes, rich and poor, as “The Pet of Putney.”

Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore was the greatest manager of his time, as well as the greatest military bandmaster. To him is due almost all the credit of making it possible to produce fine orchestral effects with a military band. Before his time military bands were simply brass bands, and the introduction of wood instruments--the oboe, saxaphone, flute, piccolo, and clarinet--dates from the year of Gilmore’s great Peace Jubilee.

In 1859, in Salem, Mass., he organized Gilmore’s Band, which he maintained until his death, Sept. 24, 1892. In Music Hall, Boston, Gilmore introduced the first band concerts, at popular prices, that were self-sustaining. For years, in Boston and New England, Gilmore’s Band headed the great parades.

He conceived and carried to a triumphant success the greatest musical jubilee festival ever known in all the world--the World Peace Jubilee Festival of 1872, when it did seem that wars were over and all the world was at peace. The immensity of the scheme was all the product of Gilmore’s brain. For over a year (1868-69) he found little encouragement. Business men scoffed at the wild idea and fairly laughed in his face at his persistence. “Finally,” as he told me himself, “I found one Boston merchant who was willing to listen to me, and as I unfolded the possibility and feasibilities of the plan and the great stimulus it would be to Boston trade, I saw that he caught the idea and comprehended the situation. This was Mr. Eben Jordan, who then and there promised me his help. I had no trouble from that time on. Mr. Jordan raised and supplied the money. I set about the details, secured the ground, had plans for the great coliseum drawn, contracts awarded, and the work was progressing rapidly and to the satisfaction of all interested. The great arches were raised, and the immensity of the structure attracted much public attention. People came from far and near to see the monster auditorium that was rising above everything in Boston. I was about ready to start for Europe to secure musical talent for the event, when, one morning, I saw headlines in the papers: ‘The Great Gilmore Coliseum Levelled to the Ground by a Hurricane,’ etc. I went out to the grounds and there everything lay flat. There was not a post standing. Those great arches were blown down and all was a hopeless wreck.

“I did not lose my courage, but called on Mr. Jordan, who listened to me as attentively as on the first occasion. I assured him that the accident was surely the most fortunate thing that could possibly have occurred. I had discovered, during the progress of this auditorium, which I had planned to seat 20,000, that it was inadequate, as the public attention which it was attracting warranted the fitting up of a building with three times that capacity. I was receiving orders from one end of the country to the other for blocks of seats, thousands of applications from singers to join the chorus, and there was not a military band leader in the country but had applied to join the great orchestra. We must have an auditorium with a capacity of 50,000--nothing less. I got that committee together, and before I slept that night had new plans matured and ready to announce the next morning.

“New life was instilled into the great project. The accident had provided the sure means of success. The whole community was heart and soul in it. The new coliseum was built. I engaged leaders, got out books of music to be used for choruses, and within three months singers were being drilled in all the New England cities.”

In 1871 Mr. Gilmore visited the capitals of Europe and succeeded in accomplishing what no other man could have brought about. He obtained from the governments of England, Germany, France, Ireland, Russia, and Italy, their national bands, all composed of enlisted men, and these bands were sent at the expense of their respective governments to take part in the World’s Peace Jubilee Festival.

It was interesting to hear from Mr. Gilmore’s own lips the accounts of his visits to the capitals and his arguments with the heads of governments when they tried to show the absurdity of granting leave of absence to enlisted men to visit our free country. Naturally, they said, the men would all desert, and quite naturally, too, the Americans would offer all inducements for them to desert--inducements quite irresistible, if all reports were true.

Mr. Gilmore replied that he would put them on their honor; that musicians were above the average of intelligence; they were gentlemen, and they would never desert. The fact that their sovereigns put trust in them and granted this privilege, would test their honor and their pride. He proposed to make a competitive international military band tournament, and every musician would feel bound to see his band bring home the prize.

Gilmore succeeded. Those foreign bands were a great feature of the jubilee, and their respective nations took a patriotic pride in seeing that nothing was lacking of perfect equipment for the visit.

The greatest opera singer of that time was Mme. Peschka Leutiner, who was subsidized by and under contract with the German government. Consent of the German Emperor must be obtained to bring her to America. Gilmore’s application for this great singer was refused. Nothing daunted, he secured an audience with Emperor William, and before leaving had obtained his consent, which meant an imperial order for Germany’s greatest singer to take the leading part in the World’s Peace Jubilee. “I never will forget the kindness and courtesy I received from the great emperor, and the feeling of triumph I had as I left his august presence,” said Mr. Gilmore afterward.

Many an evening while on tour, over his bottle of champagne after a concert (it was his custom to take a pint of champagne every night before going to bed), have I enjoyed Gilmore’s description of his successful visits to European capitals and the cordial receptions he had everywhere.

The great Peace Jubilee was the talk of the world to a greater degree than anything that has since taken place except the World’s Fair in Chicago.

While the plans for it were in progress, Gilmore was constantly being told by musical friends that his ensemble was so large as to render impossible the harmony of 1,000 instruments and 10,000 voices. They would be necessarily so far apart that the time required for the sound to travel would produce discord.

“I told them to wait and see,” said Gilmore, “and when I stood before that orchestra and that vast chorus, on my twenty-foot elevated stand, with my ten-foot baton in my hand, and began the opening overture with one grand harmony over the great coliseum, my triumph was complete. Major Pond, I would not have exchanged places with the greatest monarch living.” What a triumph!

THE WORLD’S PEACE JUBILEE IN BOSTON IN 1872. P. S. GILMORE, Director.

Chorus: 10,000. Orchestra: 1,000.

Orchestra leaders: Carl Zarrhan, Johann Strauss, and Dr. Tourjie.

Pianist: Dr. Von Buelow.

Soloists: Mme. Peschka Leutiner, Mme. Rudersdorff, and Miss Adelaide Phillips.

National bands: English, German, French, Italian, Russian, Irish, and American (the Marine Band, of Washington, D. C.).