Excerpt of Banquet at Delmonico's by Barry Werth
(Page 7 of 14)
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In 1856, after seeing a review of Spencer’s Principles of Psychology,
Youmans sent to England for the book, read it, and - three years before
Darwin’s Origin - pledged himself to a life of promoting and marketing
the concept of evolution. This meant, by and large, sponsoring Spencer
while tirelessly disseminating his work. By 1860, five years after his breakdown,
Spencer was nearing the pitch of despair. Undeterred by the failure
of Principles, he had decided to examine and unify through evolution
the whole range of human history and thought - "Synthetic Philosophy,"
he called it - but he was lonely, anxious, disappointed, and depressed. The
sole survivor of his parents’ ten children, unmarried, a former civil engineer
and writer and subeditor at The Economist who moved among rented
quarters supported by a modest family inheritance, he envisioned producing
a systematic nine-volume account of evolution in philosophy, biology,
sociology, ethics, and politics. Taking morphia to sleep to little avail, he
spent his days circulating a brief prospectus outlining the project. He
hoped to raise enough money to support himself through the agency of
friends and admirers including novelist George Eliot, who loved him,
once telling him "If you become attached to someone else, then I must
die," and Huxley, who invited him into England’s scientific clerisy, the
X-Club, a national force equivalent to the Saturday Club and the Lazzaroni
combined.
Youmans saw Spencer’s circular and contacted him the next day to
offer his aid in procuring American subscriptions. A forerunner of the
modern agent/impresario, he secured Spencer a New York publisher, Appleton
and Co.; pressed for - and won - royalties on a par with native
authors’ at a time when most American houses ignored international
copyrights; churned out scores of reviews and notices with publication of
each new volume, which he placed in newspapers and magazines across
the country; pressed other reviewers into service; helped Spencer organize
and popularize his most arcane thoughts; and cultivated literary
clubs, college professors, editors, ministers, politicians, tycoons, and labor
councils. In 1865, when Spencer doubted he could afford to go on with the
project, Youmans made up his mind to raise subscriptions with the express
purpose of getting Spencer out of debt, delivering in person $7,000
in American railroad stocks and the best gold watch he could buy,
a testimonial from Spencer’s admirers in this country. Despite relapses
of failing eyesight and crippling rheumatism, he continued to
lecture on Spencer’s behalf, dragging himself around the Midwest in unheated
trains to proselytize in town after town where often, he would recall,
he encountered "a protracted meeting in full blast at every church in
town except the Episcopal, and a general feeling of pious rage at my appearance
on the scene."
Now, Youmans received Spencer’s reply in midocean. Youmans was
traveling to Europe to promote a grand new venture that he hoped would
erase the stain and failure of his own last enterprise, a weekly paper of
culture and science, Appleton’s Journal, which he edited. After having
promised the public a serious forum for research, he quickly had been
forced to scale the magazine back when the publisher demanded fewer
pieces on new ideas and more on social comings and goings and the arts.
Undeterred, he hoped to induce Europe’s leading scientists to contribute
small volumes, written for the general public, to a series to be published
simultaneously in several countries and languages - a set of gospels for
the new scientific age. Determined to remain abroad until he signed up
masters in each field and publishers in several capitals, he was grimly uncertain
of his prospects: "very much in my own mind," as he wrote his
mother. Away from his wife, Kate, celebrating his fiftieth birthday alone
on board, Youmans reported that although the sea was calm and the passengers
agreeable, the passage was only "tolerable. Meals could be enjoyed
but for the horrible, sickening ship smells."
Excerpted from Banquet at Delmonico's
by Barry Werth. Copyright © 2009 by Barry Werth. Excerpted by
permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights
reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
