Stories of Authors, British and AmericanChubb, Edwin Watts
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Stories of Authors, British and American
Chubb, Edwin Watts
Authors, American -- Biography; Authors, English -- Biography
"The passage is nothing, now it is over; I am rather ashamed of gloom
and disquietude about such a trifling journey. I have made scores of
new acquaintances and lighted on my feet as usual. I didn't expect to
like people as I do, but am agreeably disappointed and find many most
pleasant companions, natural and good; natural and well read and well
bred too, and I suppose am none the worse pleased because everybody
has read all my books and praises my lectures (I preach in a
Unitarian Church, and the parson comes to hear me. His name is Mr.
Bellows, it isn't a pretty name), and there are 2,000 people nearly
who come, and the lectures are so well liked that it is probable I
shall do them over again. So really there is a chance of making a
pretty little sum of money for old age, imbecility, and those young
ladies afterwards.... Broadway is miles upon miles long, a rush of
life such as I have never seen; not so full as the Strand, but so
rapid. The houses are always being torn down and built up again, the
railroad cars drive slap into the midst of the city. There are
barricades and scaffoldings banging everywhere. I have not been into a
house, except the fat country one, but something new is being done to
it, and the hammerings are clattering in the passage, or a wall or
steps are down, or the family is going to move. Nobody is quiet here,
nor am I. The rush and restlessness please me, and I like, for a
little, the dash of the stream. I am not received as a god, which I
like too. There is one paper which goes on every morning saying I am a
snob, and I don't say no. Six people were reading it at breakfast this
morning, and the man opposite me this morning popped it under the
table-cloth. But the other papers roar with approbation."
In this letter, of which we have read a fragment, Mr. Thackeray
inclosed a clipping from the New York _Evening Post_. This is what the
newspaper had to say: "The building was crowded.... Every one who saw
Mr. Thackeray last evening for the first time seemed to have had
their impressions of his appearance and manner of speech corrected.
Few expected to see so large a man; he is gigantic; six feet four at
least; few expected to see so old a person; his hair appears to have
kept silvery record over fifty years; and then there was a notion in
the minds of many that there must be something dashing and 'fast' in
his appearance, whereas his costume was perfectly plain; the
expression of his face grave and earnest; his address perfectly
unaffected, and such as we might expect to meet with, in a well-bred
man somewhat advanced in years. His elocution also surprised those who
had derived their impressions from the English journals. His voice is
a superb tenor, and possesses that pathetic tremble which is so
effective in what is called emotive eloquence, while his delivery was
as well suited to the communication he had to make as could well have
been imagined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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