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From Pillar to Post

[318] <h2>XVI</h2> <h3>A PIONEER MANAGER</h3> No record made by a grateful pen of the joys and trials of the lecture platform could be complete without some reference to the spiritual benefits made possible by the profession of "Gad and Gab," as Mr. Strickland Gillilan, the astute author of "Off Ag'in, On Ag'in, Finnigin," himself a happy worker in the vineyard of peripatetic eloquence, calls it, in the matter of friendships. Both as a producer and as a consumer of the platform product I have been the beneficiary of many friendships and acquaintances that I now hold among the cherished memories of my professional life. As I think of them now they rush in upon me with such tidal force that I find myself unable for lack of space to treat of them in this volume, and they must be left for other pages. And yet in the light of grateful reasoning it becomes clear that I should not close this portion of my story without[319] some reference to one splendid soul, to whom primarily I owe all the happiness in this line of human effort that it has been my privilege and my blessing to enjoy, James B. Pond—the good old major, who during his long and busy career as an organizer and manager was guide, mentor, and friend, always faithful, always true, to the Man on the Platform. He was a big man in every way, physically as well as spiritually. The only misfit about him, if there were any, perhaps was in the size of his heart, which was, I suspect, too large even for his gigantic frame. If any man was ever born to be a pioneer in any kind of human endeavor requiring tenacity of purpose, scrupulous integrity, courage in the face of trial, tolerance of the shortcomings of others, and a dogged insistence upon "quality," that man was Major Pond, and he looked it. If I were a painter, and wanted a model for one of those sturdy Americans who were not afraid of anything, and went out into the wilds of a new and dangerous country with all the zest of a boy on the trail of a fox, to hew by main strength a way that civilization might follow in his train, I should seek no further than that huge, strengthful[320] figure, massive, graceful even in its ungainliness, surmounted by the frank, vigorous, hewn face that from its deep-set eyes flashed determination and kindliness always. Somehow or other Major Pond always made me think of the days of Forty-nine, and when he first dawned, or I should perhaps better say loomed, on the horizon of my life, I began first to sense the smallness of a mere library as a world in which to live, and to think of those vast, remoter stretches where men did not read and write romances, but lived them. My first contact with Major Pond was as a consumer of the things he had to sell, and I came soon to learn that the stamp of his approval was the hallmark of excellence. The major's imprint upon a circular was enough for me, and in several years of our relation as buyer and seller he never failed me; and the merest cursory glance at the list of men and women for whom he stood sponsor in the lyceum field shows why. It was a marvelous galaxy of humans, many of them now passed imperishably into the pages of history, for whom the major did yeoman service in this country, beginning with Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and Henry Ward Beecher, and ending with Matthew[321] Arnold, Henry M. Stanley, Julia Ward Howe and that Prince among men, the never-to-be-forgotten John Watson, dear to the hearts of readers everywhere as Ian Maclaren. The service of the manager of the Major Pond type was not a mere perfunctory business service only, but was of a more or less intimate personal nature as well. The major was not content to make a booking for a celebrity at some distant, well nigh inaccessible point, and then shoot him out into the dark unknown to take care of himself, and get along as best he might. On the contrary, he went along himself when he could, and what hardships were to be faced he shared, and those that might be staved off by a little kindly care and foresight he shielded his people from. It was thus that he built up not only the most notable list of lecturers the world has yet known, but at the same time surrounded himself with a circle of gallant friends, who came to think of him with rare affection. This intimate personal contact with men of unusual distinction gave him a fund of reminiscence that was a never-failing source of delight to his friends. To Mr. Gladstone, Pond's stories were[322] so tremendously appealing that during one of the major's visits to London the great British statesman requested permission to have a stenographer take them down just as they fell from the lips of the picturesque old American. Concerning Henry Ward Beecher and Mark Twain the major could talk forever, and the little sidelights his fund of anecdote concerning them cast upon the personality of these two men were invariably appealing. Worn by the nervous strain of a hard bit of lecturing before the major's own friends and neighbors one night many years ago, I was privileged to sit and gather refreshment and peace of mind in the joy of one of the major's reminiscent monologues lasting well into the early hours of the morning, with which he regaled me upon my return to his hospitable house. I was unhappily conscious of not having done my work particularly well that night—in fact I had had to lecture from a manuscript, which is always fatiguing both to speaker and to audience, and I hardly dared ask the major what he thought of my performance—but after awhile in his fatherly way he broached the subject himself. "It was a good lecture, Bangs," he said, "and[323] some day, maybe, you will find time to make it shorter." "What is a good lecture, Major, anyhow?" I asked, hoping that from such an authority as he must by now have become I should get some clue to a possible short cut, if not to success, at least away from failure. He threw himself back in his chair and laughed. "That reminds me, Bangs," said he. "Maybe you'd like to know what Horace Greeley considered a good lecture—at any rate it is the only answer to your question that I know. Greeley and Henry Ward Beecher and I were on our way to Boston once, and as we passed through Bridgeport, Connecticut, Greeley, glancing out of the car window, said, 'Hello, here's Bridgeport, the home of P. T. Barnum! Nice town, Beecher. I gave a successful lecture here once.' "'What do you call a successful lecture, Greeley?' asked Mr. Beecher. "'Why,' said Greeley, 'a successful lecture is where more people stay in than go out.'" As for the major's relations with Mark Twain, there was always so much of the spirit of pranksome boyhood in them both that their days to[324]gether, when Clemens was so bravely working to clear off the indebtedness of the publishing house that he had unnecessarily but chivalrously assumed as his own, must have been something of a romp, despite the unquestioned hardships of such persistent travel. As a specimen of the playful spirit in which the two men went at their work I recall a story told me that night by the major of how in a far western State, owing to a delayed train, they were kept waiting on a railway station platform for several hours. "Look here, Pond!" said Clemens after much dreary waiting. "You may not know it, but this is a violation of our contract. You agreed to keep me traveling, and this ain't traveling: it's just nothing but pure, cussed condemned loafing!" "All right, Mark," said the major. "Just a second and I'll fix you out." The major walked up to the end of the platform, where there was an empty baggage truck standing in front of the baggage room door. This he pushed along to where Clemens was standing, and then picking the humorist up in his arms he[325] put him on board the truck and wheeled him up and down the platform, to the astonishment of the gathered natives, until the train came in, thus filling his contract to the letter, as was his invariable custom. Nor shall I ever forget the major's delightful characterization of the platform work of Matthew Arnold. "Arnold spoke from a manuscript," said he. "It was a printed affair, done in large letters on ordinary cap paper, and bound up in a portfolio. This he insisted on having on an easel at his right hand. After bowing to his audience he would fasten his eyes on the manuscript and then turn and recite a sentence from it to the people in front. Then he would go back to the manuscript again, corral another sentence, and recite that. And so it went to the end of the show—and all in a voice that nobody could hear!" The major paused a moment, and chuckled. "General and Mrs. Grant attended the first Arnold lecture at Chickering Hall," he said. "The place was packed; but I got them seats, well back, but the best there were. After Arnold's lips had been moving without a sign of a word that[326] anybody could hear for ten or fifteen minutes the General turned to Mrs. Grant and said, 'Well, my dear, we've seen the British Lion at least; but inasmuch as we cannot hear him roar I guess we'd better go home!' Grant was known as the silent man," continued the major; "but Arnold gave him a pointer on how a man could be silent and talking at the same time." The major was a great believer in the value of Author's Readings by what he used to call "running mates,"—teams, as the vaudevillains have it. He had had great success with such combinations as Mark Twain and George W. Cable, Thomas Nelson Page and F. Hopkinson Smith, and Bill Nye and James Whitcomb Riley. Trotting in double harness had proved in these cases most profitable for everybody concerned, and the major was constantly in search of new alliances. How his ordinarily sane judgment ever came to be warped to such point that he could think of me in such a connection I cannot even pretend to surmise; but it did happen that in the mid-nineties of the last century he began singing a siren song in my ears, to which in an hour of greed and weakness I yielded, the burden of whose refrain was that[327] R. K. Munkittrick of Puck, a man with a rare gift of buoyant humor, and I could make a fortune for everybody if we would only consent to "trot" together. I had no particular illusions as to my abilities; but the fact that Major Pond believed I could do it was enough for me. If the Gaekwar of Baroda should ever assure me that a cracked bit of Pittsburg plate glass was a diamond of fairest ray serene, I should be inclined to think there was something in it so long as he wasn't trying to sell it to me, and so when Major Pond was willing to stake his professional reputation on it that Munkittrick and I would make a highly acceptable platform constellation it was not for me to refuse to twinkle. I shall never forget the experience. The horrors of it were such that the Day of Judgment itself have possessed small terrors for me since. We were tried out at Albany, New York, before an audience of sixty people, in an auditorium capable of seating three thousand. Everything seemed to go wrong, and on our way up to Albany Munkittrick managed to catch a cold which left him terribly hoarse upon our arrival at the old Delavan[328] House in New York's capital city. To overcome this hoarseness Munkittrick bought a box of troches of a well known brand, but instead of taking one or two of them he devoured the whole box in about twenty minutes, as if they had been gumdrops or marshmallows, with the result that his tongue began to swell up, and by eight o'clock when we were due on the platform that essential factor of clarity of enunciation was "too big for the job," if I may so put it, occupying not less than seven-eighths of the available space inside of Munkittrick's mouth, all of which, combined with the natural nervousness of a debut, put us quite out of commission. As a matter of fact we should never have gone out upon the platform; but we did, and while the chairman was announcing to the scattered multitude in front that we were the greatest combination of wit, eloquence, and humor the world had ever known, not even excepting Nye and Riley, who had so often delighted Albany audiences in the past, Munkittrick and I sat there quivering with fear, not even daring to look at each other. I do not believe that even the Babes in the Wood themselves looked upon their prospects with[329] greater dread. It was an awful evening; so awful that before it was over a frivolous reaction set in which I truly think was the only thing that enabled us to push it through to the bitter end. Of course it was a failure. We knew that almost before we began; but it was borne in upon us at the end by the fact that the chairman, who had invited us to join him in a little supper afterward to meet a few of his friends, vanished as if the earth had opened up and swallowed him, and not a crumb of his supper or the hem of his garment did either of us ever see again. Fortunately we had been paid in cash before we went out upon the stage. If it had not been so, or had we been paid by a check on which payment could have been stopped, I doubt if either of us would have realized a penny on the transaction. Moreover, I did not venture to call upon the major for at least a week, and even then my meeting with him was merely casual. I bumped against him on the street in front of his office in the Everett House. "Hello, Bangs!" said he. "Have a good time at Albany?" "Fine!" said I. "The town is full of charming people."[330] "Well—I'm glad somebody enjoyed it," said the major. "Any more bookings?" said I. "No," said the major, with a far-away look in his eye. "Fact is, old man, times are sort o' hard, and after thinking the matter over I've decided that I guess we'd better put off our drive for new business until—well, until some other season." And that was all the chiding I received from that kindly soul! Several years elapsed before I resumed professional relations with Major Pond, and the incident that brought about that resumption has always seemed to me to be most amusing, and to bring out in vivid colors the quality of the major's temper. Indeed it was about as illuminating a little farce-comedy as one would care to see. It happened that somewhere about the beginning of this century I was invited to prepare for a New York newspaper syndicate a series of satirical biographies of prominent personages of the day. The series was called "Who's What and Why in America." I was doing a great deal of other work at the time, and the managers of the syndicate fell in readily with my expressed view that lest my[331] name should seem to appear too frequently, and in too many competing quarters, it would be best that for this venture I should use a pseudonym. I therefore did the work over the pen name of Wilberforce Jenkins. The series was very well received, and for over a year was one of the most popular syndicate features running, as a result of which Wilberforce Jenkins began to receive a great many letters from a great many people—so many as almost to make me personally jealous of his growing fame. Among other communications received was one from Major Pond, which ran somewhat like this: <div class="blockquot"> New York, March 12, 1901.     Wilberforce Jenkins, Esq. Dear Sir.—I have been reading with a great deal of interest your sparkling biographies of the Men of To-day in the New York "Blank." I don't want to flatter you, but you have more real humor in your thumb than all the rest of the funny men of the day rolled into one have in their million and a half fingers. Have you ever considered the desirability of using your gifts on the lecture platform? If you have, let me know. If you can talk half as well as you write, you will be a winner. Come and see me some day and talk it over. I think we can do business together. Very truly yours,                                     James B. Pond.     </div> The situation was too rich to neglect, and I resolved to have a little innocent fun with the major.[332] I repaired almost immediately to the telephone and rang him up. The connection made, I inquired: "Is this Major Pond?" "Yes," was the reply. "Who are you?" "Major J. B. Pond of the Pond Lyceum Bureau?" I continued. "Yes, I'm Major Pond. Who's this talking?" he answered. "I am Wilberforce Jenkins, the Who's What and Why man, Major," said I. "Well—say, old man," said he, with a pleasant touch of enthusiasm in his voice, "I'm mighty glad to hear from you. That's A-1 stuff you are running in the Blank. Did you get my letter?" "Yes," said I. "That's why I am ringing you up." "Good!" said he. "Ready to talk turkey, are you?" "Well—I don't know about that, Major," said I hesitatingly. "Of course I know who you are, and the kind of things you do; but—well, to be quite frank with you, I don't know whether I want to do business with you or not." "Oh!" said the major. "That's it, is it? Well—what seems to be the matter?"[333] "Oh, nothing much," said I. "Only I was talking with a man about you the other day, and from one or two things he said—" "What did he say?" the major blurted out. "Well, to begin with, he said you were an old palaverer," said I. "He intimated that there was a good deal of what you might call hatwork in the quality of your conversation. He said he'd done business with you once, and while he liked you personally you were not all you seemed to think you were as an impresario." "Who the deuce ever told you that?" demanded the major. "You say he did business with me once?" "So he said," said I. "And he was pretty outspoken about it too. He told me his tour with you was a rank failure." "I'd like to know his name," said the major, and I could almost hear the dear old gentleman biting into the wire. "Well, I guess he wouldn't mind my telling," said I. "There wasn't anything particularly confidential about our talk. His name is Bangs—John Kendrick Bangs." My name came back at me over the wire like an[334] explosion of dynamite. "Bangs!" retorted the major. "Good Lord—Bangs! Does he call a trip up to Albany and back a tour? I guess he was a failure! I can tell you things about Bangs as a platform performer that'll show you mighty quick whose failure it was, and if you want to bring him along to hear what I have to say on that subject, bring him. The idea! My Heavens, old man—why, he—" "Oh, never mind all that, Major," said I. "I'm only telling you what he said. I don't have to take it all as gospel truth, you know." "Well I guess not!" snorted the major. "Now I'm very busy these days," I continued, "and I really haven't got time to go to your office; but if you will take lunch with me to-morrow at the Century Club, about one o'clock, we can talk this thing over." "I'll be there," said the major. "One o'clock sharp, and meanwhile if you run across J. K. tell him with my compliments that he can go to thunder. Tour! I like that!" "All right, Major," said I. "Don't fail me." And there our telephone conversation closed. The following morning I arranged at the club to[335] have the major ushered into the reception room in case he called and asked for Wilberforce Jenkins, and as the hour approached I lingered around to see the fun. Faithful to the minute the major arrived at one o'clock, inquired for Mr. Jenkins, and was requested to wait in the reception room, since Mr. Jenkins had not yet come in. After he had been sitting there for about five minutes I decided that the time for action had arrived; so I walked into the reception room myself. "Why—hello, Major!" said I, as cordially as I really felt. "How are you these days?" "I'm all right," he said coldly, ignoring my outstretched hand. "What are you doing here?" I asked. "I don't know that that's any of your business, Bangs," said he, bridling up; "but I don't mind telling you that I've come to meet a man who when it comes to writing real humor has got you skinned eight billion miles." "Good!" said I. "Who is this eighth wonder of the world?" "His name," said Major Pond, "is Wilberforce Jenkins."[336] "Oh, Lord!" said I. "That faker? Well, I am at least glad to know what your standards of humor are." "Faker?" retorted the major. "You seem to have some gift for saying nice things about your friends, Bangs," he added witheringly. "Friends?" said I, with a laugh of scorn. "You don't call that idiot Wilberforce Jenkins a friend of mine, do you? You must think I let myself go pretty cheap." "Well, he seemed to think you were a friend of his—at least he told me so—but of course a man may be mistaken in respect to that," he observed significantly. "Well, don't you believe a word he says, Major," said I. "I know Wilberforce Jenkins all the way through, and he and truth aren't upon speaking terms. You say he has invited you here to meet him?" "To take lunch with him," said the major. "Well of all the pure unmitigated nerve!" said I. "That shows you what sort of fellow Jenkins is. Why, Major, he isn't even a member here! He has a ten-day card from me; but that doesn't entitle him to invite you or anybody else here.[337] You'd better come upstairs and have lunch with me." "I'll starve first!" said the major. "Oh, all right," said I. "If you won't, you won't; but I'll bet you five dollars right now that Wilberforce Jenkins doesn't come!" "I don't bet," said the major. "I gave up gambling after that tour of yours up to Albany and back. It doesn't pay." I retired to a writing table at one end of the room, and pretended to be busy at letter writing for some ten or fifteen minutes, keeping one sly eye on the major the while. He was visibly chafing. Now and then he would take out his watch, and gaze intently into its telltale face. Then he would rise and inspect the pictures on the walls. When half-past one came and there was no Wilberforce Jenkins in sight his patience was manifestly near its end, and regarding that as the psychological moment I again approached him. "'He cometh not, she said,'" I quoted in my most plaintive tones. "And what's more, Major, he won't never be here. He never kept a promise or an engagement in his life. Come along—change your mind and take lunch with me."[338] "I wouldn't lunch with you if—" he began. And then I burst out laughing. I could not carry the farce a bit further. "Major," said I, "the reason why I know all about this Wilberforce Jenkins and his general unreliability is very simple—I am Wilberforce Jenkins myself." The old gentleman gasped. His face was a study for a moment, and then with a great laugh he sprang to his feet, and seized me by the arm. "Here, Bangs," he said, "get your hat and come along with me! We'll eat at Delmonico's." "But you said just now you wouldn't take lunch with me," I protested. "Yes, but by Simeon," he retorted, "I never said that you wouldn't take lunch with me, and by the Eternal you'll come or I'll carry you!" And the only hatchet that ever threatened our friendship was buried on the instant. Major Pond was indeed a rare and a loyal spirit. He always credited James Redpath with being the Father of the Modern Lyceum, and perhaps he was right. The Modern Lyceum owes much to James Redpath; but as for me I prefer to award its paternal honors to Major Pond. His interest in it, and his affectionate attitude toward[339] those he helped along its sometimes rugged path, were too strictly fatherly to warrant any lesser title at the hands of one of its most grateful sons. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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