Meeting a Great Man

Improvement era Vol. XXI JUNE, 1918 No. 8

Meeting a Great Man

By Alfred Lambourne

When the Play-house was in its prime, there was a sort of rude grandeur about its scene-painter's gallery. In almost all theaters the scene-painter does his work from what is termed "the bridge," but the gallery in that grand old theater, was fifteen feet wide, forty-six feet long, and twenty feet in height, and it was reached at either end up a flight of angled stairs. That scene-painter's gallery is associated in the writer's mind with a number of men noted or famous in their day in the religious world, among whom might be mentioned Rev. Joseph Cook, of Boston Monday lectures; De Witt Talmage, of the Brooklyn Tabernacle; the evangelists, Moody and Sankey; Henry Ward Beecher; Robert G. Ingersoll, and Charles Kingsley, the English divine, speaker of the Westminster sermons and controversialist with Cardinal Newman. Now he wishes to tell of his first meeting with the "Mormon" leader, Brigham Young. It was on a late afternoon in autumn the rehearsal for that ;

night's play was over, the scene-painter's brush was moving rapidly upon the broad spread of canvas before him, and he thought himself alone. Anon was heard the sound of firm, yet almost inaudible footsteps upon the stairs. Then the maker appeared, and it was the great man. Unheralded, the "Mormon" leader had come to the Play-house upon a tour of inspection. Brigham Young was famed for completeness; he possessed a genius for details. Carefully the President examined each water-tank, each barrel of salt. He appeared to think that day of the Play-house's danger from fire. He broke, with the end of his gold-headed cane, the thick crusts which had formed over the tops in the barrels. I watched him shake his

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head, and compress his lips; there came a frown upon his face. His orders for safety, one could see, had been neglected; he did a labor which should have been performed by others. No doubt some one would be reprimanded. It is my belief that during the handshake, which came a few minutes later, between the writer and "Moses of the West," and in which the writer felt the power of that personal magnetism, I might say a little tingling of emotion from head to toe, that the great man "sized me up," as Americans are wont to say, spiritually, mentally and physically, with those steady, keen and searching eyes. This was the great man who had caused the Play-house to be. He caused the theater to be built, and with it and with the dance, he counter-balanced the effect of isolation, of the stern nature around them, upon the "Peculiar People" of whom he was the leader. A local historian once styled the then President of the Church and Governor of the Territory, as "the last of the Puritans." In a certain way the name was well given, in another it was amiss. The "Mormon" leader was an upholder of the drama, a believer in the beneficial effect, mental as well as physical, of the dance. Brigham Young was, indeed, singularly like, and yet unlike, those who came across the seas in the Mayflower; he was singularly like, yet unlike that one to whom he has sometimes been compared, the lord protector of England, Oliver Cromwell. There was a similarity between the social experiment of "Equality" at Brook Farm in Massachusetts, and the religious experiment, the "Order of Enoch," in Utah. There was this difference however; the experiment in — the east was based on intellectuality among its members being such great men and thinkers as Ralph Waldo Emerson Nathaniel Hawthorne, the humanitarian George Ripley, and the famous — Margaret Fuller but the movement in the West, on religious faith, antedating both. He was "of the lion type," so pronounced the artist who came from the East to paint the life-size, full-height portrait of the "Mormon" leader when Governor of the Territory of Utah. "No," said another artist, who painted him some ten years later, "of the fox." Both artists were in the right. Brigham Young was both lion and fox. Cromwell and he might have read much alike their Bibles; yet the Puritan of England took the sword, and the more modern and western Puritan was more the statesman. More than once the writer of this heard the roar of the "lion of the Lord." He had looked, too, into the eyes of the king of heasts, and into those of Brigham Young. But the "Mormon" leader could act the part of a Richelieu. — In him there was the blend but this is a record of things seen, I leave analysis to others.

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Many famous men once came to the famous Play-house. Was it not a peculiar institution of the "Peculiar People"? Thither came once Henry Ward Beecher. I tell of this in order to draw a comparison. Henry Ward Beecher was an accomplished actor. We know with what startling effect he once impersonated a slave-dealer in Plymouth Church. Brigham Young was a wonderful mimic. In the Tabernacle one could both look upon and listen to his skill as an actor. None could better use the whip of satire; none could better bring ridicule or antipathy to the one of his dislike. None possessed greater personal magnetism. Often his congregation laughed and almost shed tears in a breath. No wonder he loved the drama! How often I had heard men and women, who had been laughing the one moment, exclaim in the next, and as with one voice, "Amen!" But now those two great men who could be so impassioned were passive. I mean at the time when I beheld them meet, behind the curtain on the Play-house stage. Henry Ward Beecher, the scholar, the famous divine and popular man of thought of the East; Brigham Young, that famous leader of an unpopular sect; the man of action of the West for a — moment they looked into each other's eyes. Then the "Mormon" President passed on to the entrance of his private box, and Beecher's lecture began. In build the two men appeared almost as twin brothers; Beecher's face, however, was the more pleasant of the two. There was upon it something more of benevolence; something more kindly and paternal, the more emotional. Brigham Young's face was the more reserved in expression, the more stern, the more masterful; it showed greater power. But the men, otherwise, were much alike. Certainly I consider it one of the most interesting sights which I had ever beheld. But one might just as well have attempted to solve the riddle of the sphynx, as to decipher at that moment, from the faces of those two great men, what were their thoughts, what was their impression of each other.

Meeting a Great Man; yes, I met him in more places than one. But this is about the Play-house. It is surely quite a dif- — ficult thing to imagine something never before seen, one might — safely state, in any other theater the ten daughters of the famous pioneer leader of a religious community, the governor of the Territory in which the Play-house stood, the builder of the Play-house itself, in a ballet upon the stage! Yet such was the truth. And the ballet appeared in the spectacular production of "Cinderella, or The Glass Slipper." The steps of the Play-house, too, was a place of vantage from which one could see the return of the Church leader and governor from his ex-

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cursions to visit "his people" in the "Dixie" settlements, as the villages to the south were called. From those steps could be seen the flash of the morning and evening gun from Fort Douglas on the hill; and above those steps once hung a banner inscribed with the legend: "The East and West United with Iron Bands." This told of the coming of the railroad when the dream of Dan- iel Webster had become a reality: "There lies the East, there lies India." And past the Play-house, too, in those days, used to pass the big, massive-wheeled carts, drawn by slow-paced oxen, and with huge squares of granite fastened by ponderous chains, swinging beneath the axle-beams. Those squares of granite came from where the monstrous boulders, rounded by the elements, toned by the suns of centuries, and lying where roared a Wasatch mountain stream, were being split by the quarrymen and sent to be carved and built into the "Mormon" temple walls. But we are away from our story. On the night of that day on which we saw the President return from the south, he came near to being assassinated. A short distance from the Playhouse stood a jail. In that jail was confined, within an iron cage, a most dangerous madman. "Mad Sherman," the man was called; he would spare the President, he said, if he would furnish him a rifle and a wife, that he might live among the flowers and trees of the mountains as Adam did in the Garden of old. But that day of the President's return, the madman, by some neglect of his keeper, escaped from the cage and lived an hour of liberty. Near the Church office he watched, by the little door in the wall in front of the "Bee-hive" and the "Lion House;" in his hand he held a sharpened nail. But during that — hour of watching the President did not come forth the madman was cheated of his prey.

— Meeting a Great Man and wherever one met that man he was impressed with his power. It was the same whether it were upon the Temple Square, upon the street, in a wild of nature, or within the Play-house walls. It always pleased the scenepainter to tell verbally the little anecdote that follows; firstly, because he is inclined to believe with the historical analyst, Carlyle, that one such action recorded reveals to us more, a man who once lived, than a thousand glittering generalities; secondly, because he has trudged over that same piece of mountain road and seen "the President" in that same vehicle into which he took up the logger, and, thirdly, because it shows the sympathy which always exists between a first-class man and the humble; a slight anecdote, indeed, and yet one which reveals one source of the power in the man of whom we write. In the palmy days of the Play-house, there used to be held,

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by the shores of a deep mountain lake at the head of a Wasatch canyon, what was known as the Big Church Picnic. The pine is yet standing, trimmed of its upper branches, of course, that served as a flag pole on those occasions. The players attended that picnic. But this is not about actors. On one of those days, as the string of vehicles that brought back the picnic — party at the end of the week the picnic lasted from the Mon- — day morning until the Saturday night was winding its way down the canyon road, it so happened that there was also, trudging his way homeward, a poor mountain wood-cutter, a logger, a man loaded down with his blankets, his pots and kettles, and making his way but wearily, through the hot dust of the road. — Nothing remarkable about that but wait! Mr. Second-class Man went by, Mr. Third-class Man went by. Did either of them stop to take up the poor logger? No. Neither one nor the other offered to carry along his road the poor, tired wayfarer. Only there was more dust upon the man than there was before. Mr. President's carriage went by. No! that is wrong. Mr. President's carriage did not go by. The man who had been ignored by the many, was taken up by the one. The President of the Church, the Governor, the Trustee-in-trust and what not, gave a place in his carriage to the logger. That humble builder in the commonwealth was carried homeward, deposited at his very door.

And the funeral of Brigham Young? It is impossible for the scene-painter to disassociate that event from his memories of the Play-house. How hushed and still was the place that day! The presence of its founder seemed everywhere. He seemed to be in the Green-room, upon the stage, in the auditorium, for he had been so often there. On the scene-painter's gallery were the idle brushes, there lay dry the brilliant colors on the big palette. The chrome, the vermillion, the cobalt; how they shone The white, the black, how symbolic they were !

One could hear from the scene-painter's gallery, the footsteps of the gathering crowds upon the streets. In the Tabernacle, the scene-painter listened to the rolling of the organ, the singing of the choir, and the sermons, too. He stood not twenty feet away when the massive casket was lowered into the open tomb. Then, again, after the crowds that followed on foot, behind the hearse, the interment in the little private cemetery, the roped streets, the passing of country vehicles that had come from afar; how more, then, than still the Playhouse seemed ! In the Tabernacle was the vacant seat, there was the vacant seat in the theater. It seemed a strange thing to have known that man of so many-sided mentality in his life

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and to have looked upon him when dead. There is something awesome in looking upon the ended life, the remains of men of action, the makers of history; and there certainly was that emotion when I looked upon the dead face of Brigham Young. President of the "Mormon" Church, pioneer, Governor of a Territory, founder of banks and mercantile institutions, builder of the Play-house, patron of the drama —there it was.

On the evening of the funeral, the writer met an artist friend. He had taken the death-mask, casts of the hands. He spoke of how delicate and small were the hands, and the dead man's feet; but that I knew already. The best portrait of Brigham Young was one taken late in life. I believe it was the last. The President was not in a very amiable humor that day; there were clouds upon the horizon that day, and the humor shows upon the face, yet it was in the writer's o.pinion the most excellent of all his portraits. It was a somewhat memorable day in the "City of the Saints," in which the writer looked his last time upon the living Brigham Young. On that day occurred a tremendous explosion of giant powder upon Arsenal Hill, near where now stands the Capitol. A huge boulder, torn from the hill-side, was hurled over the Play-house to plunge through a building on the opposite side of the street. The theater shook as never before, showers of glass fell from the wrecked sky-light of the scene-painter's gallery, and the dust filled the auditorium and stage like a fog. The scene-painter let fall his brushes, went up the hill, later, to pick up the fragments of a human body. Tragedy and comedy were mingled around the Play-house that day. Many people believed that the end of the world had come, and prayed in the open streets; up at the military post, upon the eastern slope, the military were mustered out, and their rifle barrels and swords flashed back the sunlight, but for whaf purpose they were called into rank, they themselves did not know. When I last saw President Young was some three hours later. He stood upon the carriage step, which bore the legend, "B. Y. 1855," before the Church office, midway between the "Lion" and the "Bee-hive" houses. He was motionless; he wore his broad, green-lined cloak, and one corner of this was thrown back over his right shoulder, and in his hand he carried the gold-headed cane. It is in this pose, for he appeared like a statue, that I best remember the famous man. Yet, I cannot recall if "the President" was among the highly nervous audience that gathered in the Play-house that night.

A word or two more about the leader of the "Mormon" people and the Play-house, and I have done. "Uncle Brigham"

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or "The Great Chief," as he was often called around the Playhouse, occupied the lower proscenium box on the east side of the stage; that is, he did so during such performances as those in which he wished to see the actors at close range. On the presentation of scenic pieces he sat in a rocking-chair, with wide, flat-topped arms, placed about the center of the east side of the parquette. One bench was shorter there than the others — the seats in the parquette were then benches lined with crim- — son plush so as to allow a space for the placing of this chair. Sometimes "the President" would shift places during the same performance, from box to parquette, or vice versa. When the Play-house was remodeled this chair was removed from its position and taken to an upper room of the theater. The writer remembers that, for that chair then played an important part in his life.