Mark Twain Academy of Music - January 1885
Mark Twain at the Academy of Music on Broadway in January 1885
In January 1885, beloved author and humorist Mark Twain entertained 1,500 people at the Academy of Music on Broadway. The Milwaukee Journal said the high hats and swells roared with laughter at the author’s monologues and offhand remarks. In between the laughs, Twain read from Huckleberry Finn and several short stories. With one hand in his pocket, he slowly strolled across the stage, making each person feel as if he was speaking directly to them.
Herman Melville had written five unsuccessful novels prior to 1859 and was barely able to support a growing family on his meager earnings. Scathing reviews from critics and lackluster retail sales would have convinced most would-be authors to pursue another occupation. But the stubborn writer lectured in any city that guaranteed him a modest stipend as a speaker.
He wasn’t the only one. In Milwaukee, Melville appeared at Albany Hall on East Wisconsin Avenue. He recounted his travels to Rome, the Holy Land and islands in the Pacific Ocean. A reviewer quipped that Melville nearly put the dozing audience into full sleep mode. Faced with the truth about an inability to earn a living as an author, Melville became a customs inspector in New York City. When his writing was rediscovered in the 1920s, Melville had been dead for 30 years. Moby Dick, the story of an insane sea captain pursuing an elusive whale, became one of the great American novels of all time.
Sherlock in Cream City
In 1894, British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spoke to a capacity audience at Plymouth Church (then located on East Wells). During his remarks he praised the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, James Barrie and several others. Doyle admitted that the creation of Sherlock Holmes was influenced by the detective stories of Edgar Allen Poe. He said the Holmes stories employed a scientific system of detection used to solve the mysteries, Doyle, who enjoyed visiting the United States, said, “Americans have only begun to use their opportunities. The culture will be more widespread than ours in England.”
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Jane Addams, founder of the Chicago social settlement Hull House, spoke at Plymouth Church in 1889. Addams urged her audience to find ways to respond to the needs of the time. A reviewer noted that “Miss Addams is not what one would call a handsome woman in the popular acceptance of the term, but she has a face beautiful and it’s refinement and intelligence.”
Belle Boyd, the “Mata Hari” of the Civil War, appeared at Jacob Litt’s Dime Museum in 1885 and talked of being a 16-year-old Confederate spy. Her curvy, buxom figure enchanted Union soldiers and she overheard bits and pieces of private conversations as she served them beer. Belle then gave General Stonewall Jackson this information for which she was paid.
At the end of the Civil War, Belle earned a fortune in theaters and opera houses performing a racy melodrama of her life as a sexy spy. In 1900, she suffered a fatal heart attack while in Wisconsin Dells. Only 56 years old, Belle Boyd was buried in the Dells’ Spring Grove Cemetery.
Up from Slavery
Frederick Douglass, activist, writer and government consultant, delivered a fiery speech in Milwaukee in 1856. In 1859, future president Abraham Lincoln made a campaign stop in the park near 13th and Wells.
Booker T. Washington spoke at St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1896 to stress the importance of education for young black men and women. Some of his remarks became part of his 1901 autobiography, Up from Slavery.
John Muir, writer and founder of the Sierra Club, spoke at the YWCA in 1913. He talked of his role in conservation and creating Yosemite and Sequoia national parks.
