The Most Famous Man in America -- The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate, Doubleday '06, $27.95, 527 pages, ISBN #0-385-51396-8. Index, bibliography, source notes, grouping of b&w photographs.
The last time I predicted a book would win a Pulitzer Prize was in 1995. I was introducing to an audience Joan Hedrick, who had just written a biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a week later Hedrick's book captured the big one. So it's ironic that a biography of Stowe's brother, the charismatic 19th century preacher Henry Ward Beecher, should lead me to go out on a limb and suggest that Debby Applegate's first book is likely to flirt with the shortlist of the major awards, if not to pick off one of the top prizes.
As a family of letters, the Beechers are likely to go down in American history along with the Jameses and Adamses. No less than eight members of Beecher's immediate family are published authors. And not only was Henry Ward Beecher the most popular clergyman in America during his life, but his father, Lyman Beecher, held that status before his son.
In today's fragmented culture, few if any preachers are among the most popular cultural leaders. But before CDs, DVDs, TV, radio and movies, entertainment and enlightenment was limited to the stage and the pulpit, and in the Victorian age, the stage was looked down upon as somehow immoral. So Lyman and Henry Beecher were the rock stars of their age.
But the similarity ends there. Lyman was a product of the early 1800s, when people worshipped an angry, vengeful God and themselves were "like spiders over a flame," as theologian Jonathan Edwards had characterized parishoners not that long before. As the seventh of twelve children, some analysts say Henry Ward Beecher had a middle-child's lifelong need for approbation. Consequently, he was averse to punishment, to him or by him, and inclined towards love. As such, he evolved a rather loose, interpretive, non-literal response to scripture and worshipped a God of Love. While that seems unremarkable to today's Christians, Beecher's teachings were nothing less than revolutionary.
Homely in repose, with arresting eyes and long, flowing hair, Beecher caught fire in the pulpit, speaking largely without notes and stamping his foot three times in succession for emphasis. His first dreary pulpit was in Indiana, where his expansive views were unwelcome. But his inspiring sermons became known nationwide and soon he was called to the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., then the third most populous city in America. He married early, and he and Eunice Beecher experienced threadbare years before packed sanctuaries led to lucrative lecture tours, fiction and nonfiction writing, and newspaper editing, all of which netted him a good deal more than his ample parson's salary.
Part of Beecher's appeal was an animal magnetism that appealed to both men and women. He could charm birds out of the trees, and soon rumors spread that he was charming female parishoners out of their undergarments. One of America's most celebrated civil trials was brought by his once-close colleague, Theodore Tilton, who sued Beecher for alienation of the affections of his wife, Elizabeth. The six-month trial, attended by hundreds of reporters from around the world, ended in a hung jury.
Applegate, who earned her Yale PhD in American Studies, handles the adultery charges surgically, peeling the onion methodically to try to get at the core of things. But the trial record of the Beecher/Tilton suit is so replete with statements of guilt by both Henry and Elizabeth, followed by recantations, then reaffirmations, then waffling, that it's mind boggling. Common sense tells us, however, that a morally pure person would find it hard to admit adultery under any circumstances.
The case of Chloe Beach, another close friend of the Beechers, seems more likely to implicate the preacher, with the family minister dropping in frequently when her husband, Moses Beach, was traveling. Chloe eventually became pregnant and delivered a baby girl, Violet, several weeks before she told friends she was due and without any indication the baby was premature. In following years, Chloe and Henry exchanged rather intimate gifts, and Henry had a formal studio portrait taken with Violet, whom Applegate describes as resembling Beecher. Applegate's graphic description of why multilayered female attire of the Victorian era wouldn't have deterred an eager swain is alone worth the price of the book.
But, as with Bill Clinton, it takes a narrow frame of reference to judge a man solely by his sex life, although mendacity does speak to character. To the extent Beecher strayed, he might have agreed with Clinton that "I did it because I could." But Beecher's larger life is stunningly successful and his sermons riveting. Debby Applegate not only does a tightly-researched job of crafting this biography, but she's sure-footed at building dramatic tension without sounding breathless. She has written a fine addition to the annals of 19th century biographies.
