T. De Witt Talmage Part 26

The first service in England which Dr. Talmage conducted was in Cavendish Chapel at Manchester. The next was at Albert Hall in Nottingham, under the auspices of the Y.M.C.A. He was described in the Nottingham newspapers as the "most alive man in the United States." A great crowd filled the hall at Nottingham, and as usual he was compelled to hold an open-air meeting afterwards. The first lecture he ever delivered in England was given in this place twenty-one years before.

Nothing interfered with the routine of the Doctor's habits of industry during all this European trip. He had taken over with him the proofs of about 20 volumes of his selected sermons for correction, and all his spare moments were spent in perfecting and revising these books for the printer. His sermons were the only monument he wished to leave to posterity. It has caused me the deepest regret that these books have not been perpetuated as he so earnestly wished. In addition to this work he wrote his weekly sermon for the syndicate, employing stenographers wherever he might be in Europe two days every week for that purpose. And yet he never lost interest in the opportunities of travel, eagerly planning trips to the old historic places near by.

Near Nottingham is the famous Byron country which Dr. Talmage had never found time to visit when he was in Europe before. We were told, at the hotel in Nottingham, that no visitors were allowed inside Newstead Abbey, so that when we ordered a carriage to drive there the hotel people shrugged their shoulders at what they regarded as our American irreverence. The rain was coming down in torrents when we started, the Doctor more than ever determined to overthrow British custom in his quiet, positive way. Through slush and mud, under dripping trees, across country landscapes veiled in the tender mist of clouds, we finally arrived at the Abbey. The huge outer gates were open, but the driver, with proper British respect for the law, stopped his horses. The Doctor leaned his head out of the carriage window and told him to drive into the grounds. Obediently he did so, and at last we reached the great heavy doors of the entrance. Dr. Talmage jumped out and boldly rang the bell. A sentry appeared to inform us that no one was allowed inside the Abbey.

"But we have come all the way from America to see this place," the Doctor urged. The sentry, with wooden militarism, was adamant.

"Is there no one inside in authority?" the Doctor finally asked. Then the housekeeper was called. She told us that the Abbey belonged to an Army officer and his wife, that her master was away at the war in South Africa where his wife had gone with him, and that her orders were imperative.

"Look here, just let us see the lower floor," said Dr. Talmage; "we have come all the way from New York to see this place," and he slipped two sovereigns into her hand. Still she was unmoved. My daughter, who was then about 14, was visibly disappointed. England was to her hallowed ground, and she was keenly anxious to walk in the footsteps of all its romance, which she had eagerly absorbed in history. Turning to the Doctor, she said, almost tearfully:

"Why, Doctor Talmage, how can they refuse you?"

The housekeeper caught the name.

"Who did you say this was?" she asked.

"Doctor Talmage," said my daughter.

"Dr. Talmage, I was just reading the sermon you preached on Sunday in the Nottingham newspaper, I am sure if my mistress were at home she would be glad to receive you. Come in, come in!"

So we saw Newstead Abbey. The housekeeper insisted that we should stay to tea, and made us enter our names in the visitors' book, and asked the Doctor to write his name on a card, saying, "I will send this to my mistress in South Africa."

In the effort to remember many of the details of our stay in England and Scotland, I find it necessary to take refuge for information in my daughter's diary. It amused Dr. Talmage very much as he read it page by page. I find this entry made in Manchester, where she was not well enough to attend church:--

"Sunday, A.M.--Doctor Talmage preached and I was disappointed that I could not go. The people went wild about the Doctor, and he had to make an address after church out-of-doors for those who could not get inside.

Several policemen stood around the church door to keep away the crowd.

I saw the High Sheriff driving home from church. He was inside a coach that looked as though it had been drawn out of a fairy tale--a huge coach painted red and gold, with crowns or something like them at each of the four corners. Two footmen dressed in George III. liveries were hanging behind by ribbons, and two on the box, all wearing powdered wigs. To be sure, I didn't see much of the Sheriff, but then the coach was the real show after all."

Many of the details of the side trips which we made through England and Scotland have escaped my memory. In looking over my daughter's diary I find them amplified in the manner of girlhood, now lightly touched with fancy, now solemn with historical responsibility, now charmed with the glamour of romance. Dr. Talmage thought so well of them that they will serve to show the trail of his footsteps through the gateways of ancestral England.

We went to Haddon Hall with Dr. Wrench, physician to the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re. We drove from Bakewell. In this part of my daughter's diary I read:--

"It was a most beautiful drive. Derbys.h.i.+re is called the Switzerland of England. The hills were quite high and beautifully wooded, and our drive lay along the river's edge--a brook we would call it in the States, but it is a river here--and winds in and out and through the fields and around the foot of the highest hill of all, called the Peak of Derbys.h.i.+re. We pa.s.sed picturesque little farmhouses, built of square blocks of rough, grey stone covered with ivy. We drove between hawthorn hedges, through beautiful green fields and orchards. From the midst of a little forest of grand old trees we caught sight of the highest tower of the castle, then we crossed over a little stone bridge and pa.s.sed through the gates. Another short drive across the meadow and we stopped at the foot of a little hill, looking up at Haddon Hall.

"We walked up to the castle and stood before the great iron-studded oak door, which has been there since the days of Queen Elizabeth. It had not been opened for years, but a smaller one had been cut in it through which visitors pa.s.sed. For over 200 years no one had lived in the castle. It was built by the Normans and given by William the Conqueror to one of his Norman Barons. Finally by marriage it became the property of Sir George Vernon, who had two daughters, famous for their beauty.

Margaret Vernon married a Stanley, and on the night of the wedding Dorothy Vernon eloped with Mr. John Manners. The story is very romantic.

The ballroom from which Dorothy stole away when the wedding party was at its height is still just as it was then, excepting for the furniture.

From the windows you can see the little stone bridge where Manners waited for her with the horses. Haddon Hall became the property of Dorothy Manners and has remained in the hands of the Rutland family, being now owned by the Duke of Rutland.

"That is the romance of Haddon Hall, but one could make up a hundred to oneself when one walks through the different rooms. What a queer feeling it gives me to go through the old doorways, to stop and look through the queer little windows, and on the courtyard, wondering who used, long ago, to look out of the same windows. I wonder what they saw going on in the courtyard?

"We climbed to the top of the highest tower. The stairway wound upward with stone steps about three feet high cut out of the wall. At intervals we found little square rooms, very possibly where the men at arms slept. What a view at the top! The towers and roofs and courtyards of the castle lay before us. All around us the lovely English country, and as far as the eye could see, hills, woodland, and the winding river. It was glorious. Maud and I danced a two-step in the ballroom.

"If stones could only talk! Well, if they could I should want a long confab with each one in the old courtyard of Haddon Hall. Who can tell, William the Conqueror himself may have stepped on some of them."

We drove from Haddon Hall to the Peac.o.c.k Inn for luncheon, going over to Chatsworth for the afternoon. Again I turn a few leaves of the diary:

"Chatsworth is one of the homes of the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re. The park is fourteen miles across and I don't know how big it is, but Dr. Wrench told me the number of acres, and I think it was three or four thousand.

We drove five miles through the park before reaching the gates of Chatsworth--shall I call it house or castle? I have pictures of it, and it is a good thing for I could not describe it. Dr. Wrench, being the Duke's physician, was able to take us through the private rooms. On entering the Hall, a broad marble staircase leads to the corridors above, from which others branch out through different parts of the house. We walked miles, it seems, until we got to the Duke's private library. When you are once in the room the doors are shut. You cannot tell how you got in or how you will get out. On every wall the bookcases are built in and there is not an opening of any kind; not a break in the rows and rows of books. The explanation is simply this: the doors themselves are made to look like book shelves, painted on.

"Chatsworth is so large that were I living there I should want a Cook's guide every time I moved. One picture gallery is full of sketches by Hogarth, and pictures of almost every old master you ever heard of, and some you never heard of. Opening out of this gallery are great gla.s.s doors leading into halls into which the different bedrooms open. In one bedroom the walls and ceiling were covered with oil paintings, not hanging but literally painted on them. The bed was a huge four-poster.

The curtains were of heavy brocaded satin. The windows looked out on terraces, garden and fountains. I like this room best of all. We were taken through the state apartments where I saw on a throne a huge chair of state on a platform, with canopy over it, with the Duke's crest in gold woven upon it. In one of the drawing-rooms we saw a life-size portrait of Henry VIII., a real true one painted from life, and one of Philip II. of Spain, and of Charles V., and of Anne of Austria. The Duke had sent special word from London to have the fountains in the park play for us, and we watched them from the window. They are beautiful. Such nice shower baths for the marble statues on the terrace!

"The Prince of Wales has often visited Chatsworth, and a funny story was told about one of his visits. It was after dinner and the drawing-room was full of people. Whenever Royalty is present it is expected that the men will wear all their decorations. Well, the Earl of Something-or-other had forgotten one of his, and someone reported this fact to the Prince who sent for the culprit to be brought before him. At the time the Prince was seated on one of the huge lounges, on which only a giant could sit and keep his feet on the floor. The Prince was sitting far back and his feet stuck straight out in the air. When the guilty man was brought up to be reprimanded the att.i.tude of the Prince was far from dignified. His Royal Highness was not really angry, but he told the poor Earl of Something-or-other that he must write out the oath of the Order that he had forgotten to wear. It was a long oath and the Earl's memory was not so long."

We went from Nottingham to Glasgow. The date, I find, is May 1, 1900. It was always Dr. Talmage's custom to visit the cemetery first, so we drove out to the grave of John Knox. In Glasgow the Doctor preached at the Cowcaddens Free Church to the usual crowded congregation, and he was compelled to address an overflow meeting from the steps of the church after the regular service. The best part of Dr. Talmage's holiday moods, which were as scarce as he could make them because of the amount of work he was always doing, were filled with the delight of watching the eager interest in sightseeing of the two girls, Miss Maud Talmage and my daughter. In Glasgow we encountered the usual wet weather of the proverbial Scottish quality, and it was Sat.u.r.day of the week before we ventured out to see the Lakes. My daughter naively confesses the situation to her journal as follows:--

"This A.M.--Got up at the usual starting hour, 7 o'clock, and as it looked only dark we decided to go. At breakfast it started to rain again and Mamma and the Doctor began to back out, but Maud and I talked to some advantage. We argued that if we were going to sit around waiting for a fair day in this country we might just as well give up seeing anything more interesting than hotel parlours and dining-rooms.

"We started, and just as a 'send off' the old sky opened and let down a deluge of water. It rained all the time we were on Loch Lomond, but that didn't prevent us from being up on deck on the boat. From under umbrellas we saw the most beautiful scenery in Scotland. Part of this trip was made by coach, always in the pouring rain. We drove on and on through the hills, seeing nothing but sheep, sheep, sheep. Doctor Talmage asked the driver what kind of vegetables they raised in the mountains and the driver replied--'mutton.' We had luncheon at a very pretty little hotel on Loch Katrine, and here boarded a little steamer launch, 'Rob Roy,' for a beautiful sail. I never, no matter where I travel, expect to look upon a lake more beautiful. The mountains give wildness and romance to the calm and quiet of the lake, and the island.

Maud read aloud to us parts of 'The Lady of the Lake' as we sat out on deck."

In Edinburgh Dr. Talmage preached his well-known sermon upon unrequited services, at the request of Lord Kintore, the son of the Earl of Kintore, who had suggested the theme to him some years before. In fact the Doctor wrote this sermon by special suggestion of the Earl of Kintore.

Incidents great and small were such a large part of the eventful trip to Europe that it is difficult to make those omissions which the disinterested reader might wish. The Doctor, like ourselves, saw with the same rose-coloured gla.s.ses that we did. We were very pleasantly entertained in Edinburgh by Lord Kintore and others, but the most interesting dinner party I think was when we were the guests of Sir Herbert Simpson, brother of the celebrated Sir James Y. Simpson, the man who discovered the uses of chloroform as an anaesthetic. We dined in the very room where the discovery was first tested. When Dr. Simpson had decided upon a final experiment of the effects of chloroform as an anaesthetic, he invited three or four of his colleagues and friends to share the test with him. They met in the very room where we dined with Sir Herbert Simpson and his family. The story goes that when everything had been prepared for the evening's work, Dr. Simpson informed "Sandy,"

an old servant, that he must not be disturbed under any circ.u.mstances, telling him not to venture inside the door himself until 5 a.m. Then, if no one had left the room, he was to enter. "Sandy" obeyed these instructions to the letter, and came into the room at 5 in the morning.

He was very much shocked to find his master and the others under the table in a stupor. "I never thought my master would come to this," said Sandy. He was still in the employ of the family, being a very old man.

Dr. Talmage's engagements took him from Edinburgh to Liverpool, where he preached. It was while there that we made a visit to Hawarden to see Mrs. Gladstone. The Doctor had been to Hawarden before as the guest of Mr. Gladstone, and was disappointed to find that Mrs. Gladstone was too ill to be seen by anyone. We were entertained, however, by Mrs. Herbert Gladstone. I remember how much the Doctor was moved when he saw in the hall at Hawarden a bundle of walking sticks and three or four hats hanging on the hat-rack, as Mr. Gladstone had left them when he died.

From Liverpool we went to Sheffield, where Dr. Talmage preached to an immense congregation. It was in May, the time when all England is flower-laden, when the air is as sweet as perfume and the whole countryside is as fascinating as a garden. It was the coaching season, too, and the Doctor entered into the spirit of these beautiful days very happily. We took a ten days' trip from Leamington after leaving Sheffield, coaching through the exquisite scenery around about Warwick, Kenilworth, and the Shakespeare country in Stratford-on-Avon. Most of these reminiscences are full of incidents too intimate for public interest. Like a dream that lifts one from prosaic life into the places of precious remembrance I recall these long, happy days in the glorious sunset of his life.

We returned to London in time for the Doctor's first preaching engagement there on May 28, 1900. The London newspapers described him as "The American Spurgeon."

"And now before the services opened at St. James' Hall a congregation of 3,000 people waited to hear Dr. Talmage," says a London newspaper. Then it goes on to say further:--

"Dr. Talmage, who has preached from pulpits all over the world, may be described as an 'American Spurgeon.' None of our great English speakers is less of an orator. Dr. Talmage is a great speaker, but his power as an orator is not by any means that of a Gladstone or a Bright. It lies more in the matter than in the manner, in his wonderful imagery, the vividness with which he conjures up a picture before the congregation.

He is a great artist in words. Dr. Talmage affects nothing; he is naturalness itself in the pulpit, and the manner of his speech suggests that he is angry with his subject. The sermon on this occasion lent itself well to a master of metaphor such as Dr. Talmage, it being a review of the last great battle of the world, when the forces of right and wrong should meet for the final mastery."

Dr. Talmage rarely preached this sermon because it was a great tax on his memory. It included a suggestion of all the great battles of the earth, a vivid description of the armies of the world marching forward in the eternal human struggle of right against wrong until they were masked for the last great battle of all, when "Satan would take the field in person, in whose make-up nothing bad was left out, nothing good was put in."

It is very remarkable to see the universal acknowledgments of the Doctor's genius in England, one of the London newspapers going so far as to describe him in its headlines as "America's Apostle." Nothing I could write about him could be more in eulogy, more in sympathy in comprehension of his brilliant sacred message to the world. England proclaimed him as he was, with deep sincerity and reverence.

His favourite sermon, and it was mine also, was upon the theme of unrequited services, the text being from I Samuel x.x.x. 24, "But as his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff." It was in this sermon that Dr. Talmage made reference to Florence Nightingale, in the following words:--

"Women, your reward in the eternal world will be as great as that of Florence Nightingale, the Lady of the Lamp." While in London he preached this sermon, and the following day to our surprise the Doctor received the following note at his hotel:--

"June 3, 1900.

"10, South Street, "Park Lane.

"Dear Sir-- "I could gladly see you to-morrow (Monday) at 5.--Yours faithfully, "FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

"T. DeWitt Talmage, of America."

I have carefully kept the letter in my autograph alb.u.m.

Dr. Talmage and I called at the appointed time. It was a beautiful summer day and we found the celebrated woman lying on a couch in a room at the top of the house, the windows of which looked out on Hyde Park.

She was dressed all in white. Her face was exquisitely spiritual, calm, sweet with the youth of a soul that knew no age. She had never known that she had been called 'The Lady of the Lamp' by the soldiers of the Crimea till she read of it in the Doctor's sermon. She was curious to be told all about it. In conversation with the Doctor she made many inquiries about America and the Spanish war, making notes on a pad of what he said. The Doctor told her that she looked like a woman who had never known the ordinary conflicts of life, as though she had always been supremely happy and calm in her soul. I remember she replied that she had never known a day's real happiness till she began her work as a nurse on the battlefield.