The Story of Chautauqua. Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Episcopal Church. The Normal Committee of the Union was charged with the oversight of the projected meetings; Lewis Miller was appointed President, and John H. Vincent, Superintendent of Instruction.
Although held upon a camp ground and inheriting some of the camp-meeting opportunities, the gathering was planned to be unlike a camp meeting in its essential features, and to reach a constituency outside that of the camp ground. Its name was a new one, "The Assembly," and its sphere was announced to be that of the Sunday School. There was to be a definite and carefully prepared program of a distinctly educational cast, with no opening for spontaneous, go-as-you-please meetings to be started at any moment. This was arranged to keep a quietus on both the religious enthusiast and the wandering Sunday School orator who expected to make a speech on every occasion. On my first visit to Fair Point—which was not in '74 but in '75—I found a prominent Sunday School talker from my own State, grip-sack in hand, leaving the ground. He explained, "This is no place for me. They have a cut-and-dried program, and a fellow can't get a word in anywhere. I'm going home. Give me the convention where a man can speak if he wants to."
In most of the camp meetings, but not in all, Sunday was the great day, a picnic on a vast scale, bringing hundreds of stages, carryalls, and wagons from all quarters, special excursion trains loaded with visitors, fleets of boats on the lake or river, if the ground could be reached by water route. No doubt some good was wrought. Under the spell of a stirring preacher some were turned from sin to righteousness. But much harm was also done, in the emptying of churches for miles around, the bringing together of a horde of people intent on pleasure, and utter confusion taking the place of a sabbath-quiet which should reign on a ground consecrated to worship. Against this desecration of the holy day, Miller and Vincent set themselves firmly. As a condition of accepting the invitation of the Camp Meeting Association to hold the proposed Assembly at Fair Point, the gates were to be absolutely closed against all visitors on Sunday; and notice was posted that no boats would be allowed to land on that day at the Fair Point pier. In those early days everybody came to Fair Point by boat. There was indeed a back-door entrance on land for teams and foot passengers; but few entered through it. In these modern days of electricity, now that the lake is girdled with trolley lines, and a hundred automobiles stand parked outside the gates, the back door has become the front door, and the steamboats are comparatively forsaken.
In addition to the name Assembly, the exact order of exercises, and the closed ground on Sunday, there was another startling departure from camp-meeting usages—a gate fee. The overhead expenses of a camp meeting were comparatively light. Those were not the days when famous evangelists like Sam Jones and popular preachers such as DeWitt Talmage received two hundred dollars for a Sunday sermon. Board and keep were the rewards of the ministers, and the "keep" was a bunk in the preachers' tent. The needed funds were raised by collections, which though nominally "voluntary" were often obtained under high-pressure methods. But the Assembly, with well-known lecturers, teachers of recognized ability, and the necessary nation-wide advertising to awaken interest in a new movement would of necessity be expensive. How should the requisite dollars by the thousand be raised? The two heads of the Assembly resolved to dispense with the collections, and have a gate fee for all comers. Fortunately the Fair Point grounds readily lent themselves to this plan, for they were already surrounded on three sides by a high picket-fence, and only the small boys knew where the pickets were loose, and they didn't tell.
The Sunday closing and the entrance charge raised a storm of indignation all around the lake. The steamboat owners—in those days there were no steamer corporations; each boat big or little, was owned by its captain—the steamboat owners saw plainly that Sunday would be a "lost day" to them if the gates were closed; and the thousands of visitors to the camp meeting who had squeezed out a dime, or even a penny, when the basket went around, bitterly complained outside the gates at a quarter for daily admission, half of what they had cheerfully handed over when the annual circus came to town. During the first Assembly in 1874, the gatekeepers needed all their patience and politeness to restrain some irate visitors from coming to blows over the infringement of their right to free entrance upon the Fair Point Camp Ground. There were holders of leases upon lots who expected free entrance for themselves and their families—and "family" was stretched to include visitors. Then there were the preachers who could not comprehend why they should buy a ticket for entrance to the holy ground! The financial and restrictive regulations were left largely to Lewis Miller, who possessed the suaviter in modo so graciously that many failed to realize underneath it the fortiter in re. Behind that smiling countenance of the President of Chautauqua was an uncommonly stiff backbone. Rules once fixed were kept in the teeth of opposition from both sinners and saints.
|
|
|
Let me anticipate some part of our story by saying that at the present time there are from six to eight hundred all-the-year residents upon Chautauqua grounds. Before the Assembly opens on July 1st, every family must obtain season tickets to the public exercises for all except the very youngest members and bedridden invalids. A lease upon Chautauqua property does not entitle the holder to admission to the grounds. If he owns an automobile, it must be parked outside, and cannot be brought through the gates without the payment of an entrance fee, and an officer riding beside the chauffeur to see that in Chautauqua's narrow streets and thronged walks all care is taken against accident. The only exception to this rule is in favor of physicians who are visiting patients within the enclosure.
The catholicity of the plans for the first Assembly must not be forgotten. Both its founders were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church and loyal to its institutions. But they were also believers in and members of the Holy Catholic Church, the true church of Christ on earth, wherein every Christian body has a part. They had no thought to ignore the various denominations, but aimed to make every follower of Christ at home. Upon the program appeared the names of men eminent in all the churches; and it was a felicitous thought to hold each week on one evening the prayer meetings of the several churches, each by itself, also to plan on one afternoon in different places on the ground, for denominational conferences where the members of each church could freely discuss their own problems and provide for their own interests. This custom established at the first assembly has become one of the traditions of Chautauqua. Every Wednesday evening, from seven to eight, is assigned for denominational prayer meetings, and on the second Wednesday afternoon in August, two hours are set apart for the Denominational Conferences. The author of this volume knows something about one of those meetings; for year after year it has brought him to his wit's end, to provide a program that will not be a replica of the last one, and then sometimes, to persuade the conferences to confer. But if a list were made of the noble names that have taken part in these gatherings, it would show that the interdenominational plan of the founders has been justified by the results. It is a great fact that for nearly fifty years the loyal members of almost every church in the land have come together at Chautauqua, all in absolute freedom to speak their minds, yet with never the least friction or controversy. And this relation was not one of an armed neutrality between bodies in danger of breaking out into open war. It did not prevent a good-natured raillery on the Chautauqua platform between speakers of different denominations. If anyone had a joke at the expense of the Baptists or the Methodists or the Presbyterians, he never hesitated to tell it before five thousand people, even with the immediate prospect of being demolished by a retort from the other side.
A conversation that occurred at least ten years after the session of '74 belongs here logically, if not chronologically. A tall, long-coated minister whose accent showed his nativity in the southern mountain-region said to me, "I wish to inquire, sir, what is the doctrinal platform of this assembly." "There is none, so far as I know," I answered. "You certainly do not mean, sir," he responded, "that there is not an understanding as to the doctrines allowed to be taught on this platform. Is there no statement in print of the views that must or must not be expressed by the different speakers?" "I never heard of any," I said, "and if there was such a statement I think that I should know about it." "What,