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:
“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.”
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.
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.).
In 1873 Mr. Gilmore went to New York with his band, which became the Twenty-second Regiment Band of that city. He remained its leader up to the time of his death and made annual concert tours all over the country. It was my privilege to conduct several of these tours; in fact, I was his sole agent for booking his concerts until I was outbid by Mr. Blakely, who toured the band the four last years they were on the road. Gilmore’s Band, always one hundred strong, was at the head of all great public parades. Its appearance along the line of march was the signal for great outbursts of applause. Gilmore conceived the greatest and most popular schemes for hitting the music-loving as well as the patriotic masses. He was not a business man in the sense of loving to acquire money. In fact, he cared very little for money, but much for the fame of his band. He was a hard worker, and never left a rehearsal until everything was right. His musicians loved him and everybody respected him.
Once he and I were walking together down Broadway and were speaking of Parnell, who was then in New York and booked to speak in the Academy of Music in Brooklyn that evening. Mr. Beecher was to speak there also. Gilmore said to me:
“Major, do you know Mr. Beecher real well; I mean well enough to ask a favor? I want to get a seat on the stage to-night to hear him and Parnell, and it’s too late to think of securing a ticket.”
“Do I know him?” I said.
Just then I saw Mr. Beecher coming up Broadway toward us. Our eyes met, but each pretended not to see the other, and we came together co-chunk! We squared off at each other, and so stood a few seconds, to the surprise of passers-by. Then came Mr. Beecher’s laugh of recognition, and I said:
“Mr. Beecher, to my surprise, this man, P. S. Gilmore, says he never met you and asks if I know you well enough to introduce him to you.”
“Well,” said Mr. Beecher, “I know Mr. Gilmore, but it’s quite evident that a man of his fair reputation and fame doesn’t know the company he is in.”
Mr. Beecher invited Mr. Gilmore to “come over early with Pond and take dinner, and if I get into the Academy you will.” So we were there at the great Parnell meeting, and Mr. Gilmore heard Mr. Beecher at his best, for that meeting is on record as an event in Mr. Beecher’s life.
I went home with Mr. Beecher, and he and I sat in his dining-room for some time over a light supper, I listening to his conversation on the topic of the evening just past. I left him at about eleven o’clock for my home at the Everett House, New York. Mr. Gilmore then resided in New York, at 61 West 12th Street. On my way home it occurred to me that possibly Mr. Gilmore had not yet finished his bottle of champagne, and so I rang his bell. It was just twelve o’clock. The colored boy opened the door and I asked if Mr. Gilmore were still up. He said, “Yes.” I walked back to the dining room, and there he stood, telling Mrs. Gilmore about his experiences of the evening. He turned to me, saying:
“Major, I’m glad you came in. I am telling Mrs. Gilmore that this evening has been the greatest of my life; that Mr. Beecher’s speech to-night should be carved in letters of gold and placed in every schoolroom throughout the entire land.”
Mr. Gilmore and I were fast friends up to the time of his death. He had many eccentricities, some of which retarded his success. He was the man and the only man who should have had the direction of the musical features at the Chicago Exposition. He was ignored, and the whole affair turned out a diabolical failure, as everybody at all versed in the management of musical affairs knew and felt at that time. It broke Mr. Gilmore’s heart to see so great an opportunity lost, and I believe that was one of the causes that hastened his death.
He left one of the finest musical libraries ever collected. I do not know who has it now. He had no successor. We have Sousa and his incomparable band, that is up to date and in keeping with the requirements of the time, but the two great leaders are not alike.
Gilmore, often seen plodding in the mud through the streets of Boston at the head of a score of musicians, then conceiving and carrying to successful termination the greatest musical jubilee ever known, and making Puritan Boston bow the knee to him, Irishman and Catholic though he was.
Sousa, an enlisted musician in the Marine Band at Washington, becoming its leader, then, through Mr. Gilmore’s former manager, starred with a band of his own, and rising year after year, through the popularity of his own compositions and charming personnel as a conductor, to the highest place as a musician, bandmaster, and composer—not like Gilmore, but like what he is, and no one else can be—Sousa.
ELBERT HUBBARD, editor of The Philistine, founder and owner of the Roycroft Shop in East Aurora, New York, is the most recent and unique development in the lecture field.
I wish that I were able to write of Mr. Hubbard as I should like, but as I cannot, I shall say nothing. He says it himself. I have read so many nice things of him in The Philistine, a few of them reprints from other papers, that I think the entire eulogistic field is exhausted. I am one of the subscribers who pay for those puffs that he prints about himself.
Notwithstanding all that, he is doing a mighty good work, and he is also letting the public into the secret about himself for a consideration. Not long ago he wrote me: “If I get down to business here and cut off all distractions, I can make a name equal to John Ruskin’s or Thomas Carlyle’s. I can do it, but I must keep out of sight in order to succeed. To merely talk is not to succeed, and the public is only a devil that takes a man to the top of the mountain and then casts him on the stones beneath. So make no more lecture engagements for me.” And so the lecture-going public will never know what it has lost.
Good luck to you, Elbert! A high ambition is the chief spur to success.
Mr. Hubbard has received great praise for many of his “Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous People,” and many of them are truly delightful; but, of course, visiting so many of these, he has been obliged to travel in all sorts of weather and at all seasons of the year. He must have visited the home of Robert Burns just at the breaking up of a hard winter or the opening up of spring, else his tracks could never have thrown up so much mud.
The proportionate success of Hubbard to some of the other men of the platform may be inferred from The Philistine for April, 1900, where he says:
“The week before I was in Des Moines, Dean Stubbs exploited an audience in the same church. Stubbs had one hundred people; I had a thousand, with just $500 in the box office, that’s all. About an hour after the lecture the chairman of the committee snipped a clove, and declared that Stubbs wasn’t in it with me—a proposition I did not argue.”
In a later number of The Philistine Mr. Hubbard went on to say:
“I see that Dean Stubbs of Ely is out with a letter in the Pall Mall Gazette, denying that he ever said that Major Pond was the original David Harum. In this letter the Dean takes occasion to say his regard for the Major is very great, and further, that he fully endorses Hall Caine’s project of placing in Westminster Abbey a memorial tablet to Major Pond. The leading literary men of England and several American authors also have made contributions for the purpose mentioned. All those who contribute will have their names on the tablet, too, and beneath will be these words, ‘It is he that hath made us and not we ourselves.’”
I was so elated to hear that the Dean had made nice mention of me, that I wrote to him, asking him to send me a copy of the Pall Mall, and here is his reply:
“Of course I did not write a letter to the Pall Mall at all—on that or any other subject. I have not written a line about my American impressions in any English papers since my return, nor do I intend to do so.”
With this letter from the Dean of Ely, how am I to realize my blasted hopes of being immortalized in Westminster Abbey?
I travelled with Mr. Hubbard on a little starring tour last spring (March, 1900). Everywhere we went he had something nice to say to the porters, to the baggagemen, the hackmen, the street-car conductors, and the waiters in the hotels. He seemed incapable of hurting any one’s feelings. Everybody was in love with him. His is a remarkable personality. But when he gets set down by himself with that caustic pen of his, the words of Scripture seem to take possession of him, and “Whom he loveth he chasteneth.”
I like the atmosphere of East Aurora and frequently visit the Roycroft Shop. It is an object lesson in industry, frugality, and nice manners. A common friend, writing from St. Louis, expresses a wonder that a man who naturally elicits so much adulation does not become conceited!
Hubbard had the largest money audience of any “one-man show” in New York last winter, and the readers of The Philistine have been told all about it. That was his first New York audience.
When the Dean of Ely gave a course of five lectures in the Lyceum Theatre, New York, the first one was not very largely attended. The second audience was larger; the third larger still; and at the fifth, the capacity of the house was reached. This information I give here, as my friend Hubbard has never been furnished with box-office statements of that business. Yet, of the two, from a business standpoint, I would prefer the Roycroft man for a series of one-night stands over the country in cities where he has never before appeared—and there are many such towns left.
Mr. Hubbard’s love of water and cleanliness is remarkable. Not satisfied with his daily morning baths, he wants them all through the day. As soon as he arrives at a hotel he must have his bath, and before starting out sight-seeing he wants another. Then on his return for luncheon he will take out his watch, and if there happens to be fifteen minutes to spare, he says, “Just time for a bath before luncheon,” and off he goes for his tub.
At the Roycroft Shop he has had a number of bathrooms built for the convenience of the employees. At first there was but one, and when Mr. Hubbard announced that any one could be excused from work, at any time, long enough to take a bath, the capacity of this one room was soon reached and the employees were found waiting in line for their turn. So this permission had to be withdrawn until additional bathrooms could be added. The supply of bathrooms is now adequate and appreciated, as well as remunerative, for it adds vigor and energy to the workers, and increases their earning capacity.
In a sequestered bend of the brook, a few hundred yards from the back door of the Roycroft Shop, is the Roycroft swimming hole, which reminds the passer-by of a frog pond on a spring day, for the male Roycrofters, old and young, can be seen and heard jumping into the water for the time being, until the curious visitor has passed beyond the range of view.
“Cleanliness is godliness,” says Hubbard. “This is part of our system of education.”
Mr. Hubbard is without question the most amphibious man I ever knew—a sort of human sea lion—and I must say that when I saw him plunging around in the swimming hole at East Aurora, I was struck with the resemblance of his eyes to the beautiful, large, mild, liquid eyes of the California sea lion.