T. De Witt Talmage Part 24

He was always so happy it was hard to believe that he was overworking; yet I feared his labour of love would end in exhaustion and possible illness. Everything in the world was beautiful to him, and yet beauty was not a matter of externals with him. It radiated from him, even when it was not about him. Especially was this noticeable when we were away together on one of his short lecturing trips. At these times we were quite alone, and then, without interruptions, in the sequestered domain of some country hotel he would admit me into the wonderland of his inner hopes, his plans for the future, his ideas of life and people and happiness. Once we were staying in one of these country hotels obviously pretentious, but very uncomfortable--the sort of hotel where the walls of the room oppress you, and the furniture astonishes you, and there are no private baths. He sat down in the largest chair, literally beaming with delight.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he said; "now I take my home with me; before I used to be so much alone. Now I have someone to talk to."

There was nothing comparative in his happiness; everything was made perfect for him by the simplicity of his appreciation. I used to look forward to these trips as one might look forward to an excursion into some new and unexpected transport of existence, for he always had new wonders of heart and mind to reveal in these obscure byways we explored together. They were all too short, and yet too full for time to record them in a diary. These were the hours that one puts away in the secret chamber of unwritten and untold feeling. I turn again to the pages of our sc.r.a.p book, as one turns to the dictionary, for reserve of language.

In November of 1898 I find there a clipping that reminds me of the day Dr. Talmage and I spent at the home of Senator Faulkner, in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The Anglo-American Commission was in session in Was.h.i.+ngton then, and during the following winter. The Joint High Commission was the official t.i.tle, and we were invited by Senator Faulkner with these men to get a glimpse of that rare Americanism known the world over as Southern hospitality. The foreign members of the Commission were Lord Herschel, Sir Wilfred Laurier, Sir Louis Davis, and Sir Richard Cartwright. Our host was one of the Americans on the Commission.

We left Was.h.i.+ngton about noon, lunched on the train, and reached the old ancestral home in a snow storm. All of the available carriages and carry-alls were at our disposal, however, and we were quickly driven to the warm fireside of a true Southerner, who, more than any other kind of man, knows how to brand the word "Home" upon your memory. We dined with true Southern sumptuousness. Never shall I forget the resigned and comfortable expression of that little roast pig as it was laid before us. To the Englishmen it was a rare chance to understand the cordial relations between England and America, in an atmosphere of Colonial splendour. The house itself has not undergone any change since it was built; it stands a complete example of an old ancestral estate. As we were leaving, our host insisted that no friend should leave his house without tasting the best egg-nog ever made in Virginia. The doctor and I drove to the station in a carriage with Lord Herschel. He was a man of great reserve and high breeding. On the way he showed us a letter that he had just received from his daughter, a little girl in England, telling him to be sure and come home for the Christmas holidays, and not to let those rich Americans keep him away.

This was the beginning of a series of dinners given by members of the Joint High Commission in Was.h.i.+ngton during the winter, to which we were often invited. A few months later Lord Herschel died in Was.h.i.+ngton. Dr.

Talmage was almost the last man to see him alive. He called at his hotel to invite him to stay at his house, but he was then too ill to be moved.

During the early Fall of 1898 the Doctor lectured at Annapolis. It was his first visit to the old historic town, and he was received with all the honour of the place. We were the guests of Governor Lowndes at the executive mansion, where we were entertained in the evening at dinner.

Just before the Christmas holidays, Dr. Talmage made a short lecturing trip into Canada, and I went with him; it was my privilege to accompany him everywhere, even for a brief journey of a day.

In Montreal, while sitting in a box with some Canadian friends, during one of the Doctor's lectures, they told me how deep was the affection and regard for him in England.

"Wait till you see how the English people receive him," they said; "you will be surprised at the hold that he has on them over there." The following year I went to England with him, and experienced with pride and pleasure the truth of what they had said.

The end of our first year together seemed to be only the prelude to a long lifetime of companions.h.i.+p and happiness, without age, without sorrow, without discord.

THE SECOND MILESTONE

1899-1900

In his study no wasted hours ever entered. With the exception of the stenographer and his immediate family no one was admitted there. It was his eventful laboratory where he conceived the greatest sermons of his period. I merely quote the opinions of others, far more important than my own, when I say this. It is a sort of haunted room to-day which I enter not with any fear, but I can never stay in it very long. It has no ghostly a.s.sociations, it is too full of vital memories for that; but it is a room that mystifies and silences me, not with mere regrets, for that is sorrow, and there is nothing sad about the place to me. I can scarcely convey the impression; it is as though I expected to see him come in at the door at any moment and hear him call my name. The room is empty, but it makes me feel that he has only just stepped out for a little while. The study is at the top of the house, a long, wide, high-ceilinged room with many windows, from which the tops of trees sway gently in the breeze against the sky above and beyond. I spent a great deal of time with him in it. Sometimes he would talk with me there about the themes of his sermons which were always drawn from some need in modern life.

With the Bible open before him he would seek for a text.

"After forty years of preaching about all the wonders of this great Book," he would say, "I am often puzzled where to choose the text most fitting to my sermon."

His habits were methodical in the extreme; his time punctually divided by a fixed system of invaluable character. His inspirations were part of his eternal spirit, but he lived face to face with time, obedient to the law of its precision. I think of him always as of one whose genius was unknown to himself.

We could always tell the time of day by the Doctor's habits. They were as regular as a clock that never varies. At 7.30 to the second he was at the breakfast table. It was exactly one o'clock when he sat down to dinner. At 6.30 his supper was before him. Some of our household would have preferred dining in the evening, but in that case the Doctor would have dined alone, which was out of the question.

Every day of his life, excepting Friday, Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, the Doctor walked five miles. In bad weather he went out m.u.f.fled and booted like a sailor on a stormy sea. His favourite walk was always from our house to the Capitol, around the Library of Congress and back. He never varied this walk for he had no b.u.mp of locality, and he was afraid of losing his way. If he strayed from the beaten path into any one of the beautiful squares in Was.h.i.+ngton he was sure to have to ask a policeman how to get home.

Fridays and Sat.u.r.days Dr. Talmage spent entirely in his study, dictating his sermons. How many miles he walked these days he himself never knew, but all day long he tramped back and forth the length of his study, composing and expounding in a loud voice the sermon of the week. He could be heard all over the house. We had a new servant once who came rus.h.i.+ng downstairs to my room one morning in great fear.

"Mrs. Talmage, ma'am, there is a crazy man in that room on the top floor," she cried. She had not seen nor heard the Doctor, and did not know that that room was his study. On these weekend days we always drove after dark. An open carriage was at the door by 8 o'clock, and no matter what the weather might be we had our drive. In the dead of winter, wrapped in furs and rugs, we have driven in an open carriage just as if it were summer. Usually we went up on Capitol Hill because the Doctor was fond of the view from that height.

My share in the Doctor's labours were those of a watchful companion, who appreciated his genius, but could give it no greater light than sympathy and admiration. Occasionally he would ask me to select the hymns for the services, and this I did as well as I could. Sunday was the great day of the week to me. It has never been the same since the Doctor died. Our friends.h.i.+ps were always mutual, and we shared them with equal pleasure.

The Doctor's friends.h.i.+p with President McKinley was an intimate mutual a.s.sociation that ended only with the great national disaster of the President's a.s.sa.s.sination. Very often, we walked over in the morning to the White House to call on the President for an informal chat. A little school friend, who was visiting my daughter that winter, told my husband how anxious she was to see a President.

"Come on with me, I will show you a real President," said Dr. Talmage one morning, and over we went to the White House. While we were talking with the President, Mrs. McKinley came in from a drive and sent word that she wished to see us.

"I want to show you the President's library and bedroom," she said, "that you may see how a President lives." Then she took us upstairs and showed us their home.

While we did not keep open house, there was always someone dropping in to take dinner or supper informally, and I was somewhat surprised when Dr. Talmage told me one day that he thought we ought to give some sort of entertainment in return for our social obligations. It was not quite like him to remember or think of such things. On January 23, 1899, we gave an evening reception, to which over 300 people came. It was the first social affair of consequence the Doctor had ever given in his house in Was.h.i.+ngton.

My husband's memory for names was so uncertain that when he introduced me to people he tactfully mumbled. On this occasion Senator Gorman very kindly stood near me to identify the people for me. I remember a very dapper, very little man in evening clothes, who was pa.s.sed on to me by the Doctor, with the usual unintelligible introduction, and I had just begun to make myself agreeable when, pointing to a medal on his coat, the little man said:

"I am the only woman in the United States who has been honoured with one of these medals."

I was very much mystified and looked up helplessly at Senator Gorman, who relieved me at once by saying, "Mrs. Talmage, this is the celebrated Dr. Mary Walker, of whom you have heard so often."

It was difficult for Dr. Talmage to a.s.similate the social obligations of life with the broader demands of his life mission, which seemed to constantly extend and increase in scope into the far distances of the world. More and more evident it became that the candlestick of his religious doctrine could no longer be maintained in one church, or in one pulpit. The necessity of breaking engagements out of town so as to be in Was.h.i.+ngton every Sunday became irksome to him. He felt that he could do better in the purposes of his usefulness as a preacher if he were to bear the candle of his Gospel in a candlestick he could carry everywhere himself. I confess that I was not sorry when he reached this decision and submitted his resignation to the First Presbyterian Church in the spring of 1899, after our return from a short vacation in Florida.

On our trip South I remember Admiral Schley was on the train with us part of the way. The Admiral told the Doctor the whole story of the Santiago victory, and commented upon the official investigation of the affair. My husband was very fond of him, and his comment was summed up in his rea.s.suring answer to the Admiral--"But you were there."

It was during our stay in Florida that Dr. Talmage and Joseph Jefferson, the actor, renewed their acquaintance. The Doctor never saw him act because he had made it a rule after he entered the ministry in his youth never to go to the theatre to see a play. In crossing the ocean he had frequently appeared with stage celebrities, at the usual entertainments given on board s.h.i.+p for the benefit of seamen, and in this way had made some friends among actors. He was particularly fond of Madame Modjeska, whom he had met on the steamer, and whose character and spirit he greatly admired.

Jefferson was a great fisherman, and most of his day was spent on the water or on the pier. There we used to meet him, and he and Dr. Talmage would exchange reminiscences, serious and ludicrous. One of the Doctor's favourite stories was an account of a terrific fight he saw in India, between a mongoose and a cobra. Mr. Jefferson also had a story, a sort of parody of this, which described a man in _delirium tremens_ watching in imaginary terror a similar fight. Years before this, when the Doctor had delivered his famous sermon in Brooklyn against the stage, Jefferson was among the actors who went to hear him. Recalling this incident, Mr.

Jefferson said:--

"When I entered that church to hear your sermon, Doctor, I hated you.

When I left the church, I loved you." He talked very little of the theatre, and seemed to regard his stage career with less importance than he did his love of painting. He never grew tired of this subject.

When we were leaving Palm Beach, Mr. Jefferson said to me, "I know Dr.

Talmage won't come and see me act, but when I am in Was.h.i.+ngton I will send you a box, and I hope the Doctor will let you come."

Dr. Talmage's resignation from his church in Was.h.i.+ngton took place in March, 1899. I quote his address to the Presbytery because it was a momentous event occurring in the gloaming of what seemed to us all, then, the prime of his life:

"March 3, 1899.

"To the Session of the First Presbyterian Church of Was.h.i.+ngton.

"Dear Friends--

"The increasing demands made upon me by religious journalism, and the continuous calls for more general work in the cities, have of late years caused frequent interruption of my pastoral work. It is not right that this condition of affairs should further continue.

Besides that, it is desirable that I have more opportunity to meet face to face, in religious a.s.semblies, those in this country and in other countries to whom I have, through the kindness of the printing press, been permitted to preach week by week, and without the exception of a week, for about thirty years. Therefore, though very reluctantly, I have concluded, after serving you nearly four years in the pastoral relation, to send this letter of resignation....

"T. DEWITT TALMAGE."

I had rather expected that the Doctor's release from his church would have had the desired effect of reducing his labours, but he never accomplished less than the allotment of his utmost strength. Rest was a problem he never solved, and he did not know what it meant. My life had not been idle by any means, but it seemed to me that the Doctor's working hours were without end. When I told him this, he would say:--

"Why, Eleanor, I am not working hard at all now. This is very tame compared to what I have done in the years gone by."

His weekly sermon was always put in the mail on Sat.u.r.day night, as also his weekly editorials. Sunday the sermon was preached, and on Monday morning the syndicate of newspapers in this country printed it. He made always two copies of his sermon. One he sent to his editorial offices in New York, the other was delivered to the _Was.h.i.+ngton Post_. I was told a little while ago that a prominent preacher called on the editor of this newspaper and asked him to publish one of his own sermons. This was refused, even when the aforesaid preacher offered to pay for the privilege.

"But you print Talmage's sermons!" said the preacher.

"We do," replied the editor, "because we find that our readers demand them. We tried to do without them, but we could not."

Dr. Talmage's acquaintance with men of national reputation was very wide, but he never seemed to consider their friends.h.i.+p greater than any others. He was a great hero wors.h.i.+pper himself, always impressed by a man who had done something in the world. There was a great deal of praise being bestowed about this time on Mr. Carnegie's library gifts.