Henry Ward Beecher was once, according to a new book by Debby Applegate, "The Most Famous Man in America." Despite the fact that Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, among others, lived during his time.
"I really believe the title is true," Applegate said by phone from her home in New Haven, Conn. "Henry Ward Beecher was really well known by everyone.
"Some knew him only by stereotype. He was, perhaps, a combination of Billy Graham, Al Sharpton and Paris Hilton. Beecher became the common property of every American, and it lasted for almost 40 years."
At least, Beecher may have been the most colorful orator of the 19th century. Beginning in 1850, he delivered spectacular sermons at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights and then became an equally popular lecturer all over the country. He was noted for his memorable voice, his open and sometimes wild gestures, and his dead-on impersonations of celebrities at the time.
The biography is unusually entertaining.
Though Applegate lives in Connecticut, she is a native of Oregon. Since her father was a Mormon and her mother was a Catholic, she sees herself as "an outsider" who went to church with both her Mormon cousins and her Catholic cousins.
She became fascinated with Beecher soon after moving East to go to school in Massachusetts at Amherst College — coincidentally Beecher's alma mater. She realized she had never before met a Congregationalist or an Episcopalian. Astounded with Beecher's charisma, Applegate wrote her senior thesis, as well as her doctoral dissertation, at Yale University on this irreverent, funny, literary man.
"The dissertation was really scholarly," said Applegate. "When I signed a contract for the book with Doubleday, I thought I knew a lot about Beecher. But the academic things I wrote were hifalutin. So I decided to look at some of the personal letters I hadn't seen yet, and those Victorians really wrote letters. The sheer amount of material I quickly discovered was overwhelming."
Then Applegate had to turn her dissertation into a book for the general reader instead of the scholar. "It took me a little while to learn the craft to get people to turn the page." It took her seven more years to get the book ready to publish.
Applegate sees Beecher as someone who "transcended all the categories we take for granted. He adopted the idea of the unconditional love of God, and he didn't believe in hell. Sometimes his sermons don't read well today, because he often talked off the top of his head. But there are flashes of brilliance and compassion in the sermons, with fantastic ideas couched in persuasive ways.
"But they are disjointed. They're not as persuasive as Daniel Webster's speeches. But (Beecher's) sermons were emotional. The people who listened to Beecher remembered it for the rest of their lives."
If most people today are not familiar with Beecher, it is because "oratory is too transient," Applegate said. In Beecher's time, "The church was the last bastion in America for oratory. There was nothing like someone on the stage — alone. It was a way of engaging people that you don't get from reading."
The major events that defined Beecher's reputation were accusations that he had committed adultery with Elizabeth Tilton, wife of journalist Theodore Tilton — both members of his congregation. It was not the first time Beecher was suspected of having an affair. Even though Theodore Tilton sued Beecher in a Brooklyn civil court, it ended in a hung jury.
"Sometimes," said Applegate, "I would say to myself, 'What a jerk!' It's still impossible to make a 100 percent conclusion about his sexual guilt. If I had been on the jury, I would say he was guilty. But he genuinely liked women and when he was young, he was surrounded by his sisters and the girls who were boarding in his house.
"Although he liked young women, the women with whom he had affairs were not free-thinking, radical types. He liked literary ladies. They liked him because he was sensitive and could talk about his feelings."
During his last years, the scandal still hanging over his head, his sermons lacked some of their fire. But he talked about guilt and transgression, even if he was more guarded. "He made a fortune in the last 10 years of his life as a lecturer. He made two major tours across the country. Easterners were a little more forgiving, but even when crowds would threaten him, he still packed the halls. They wanted to know if he was a libertine or a saint, and in every place he won them over," said Applegate.
Applegate believes that "his place in history would be more secure had it not been for the scandal."
Her goal in writing the book is "to give Beecher back to America. He had large flaws. He was a man of contradictions. But he was charming."
"To not know Henry Ward Beecher is to not know Benjamin Franklin."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com