The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [258]
Myself, I kept quiet after a few days of this. In my presence, these sorts of things were all they could talk about. Someone would ask me a question, and I would begin my answer, and at my second or third hesitant word, my interlocutor would exclaim, "Yes! Just as I thought!" and then go on and on about how he or she (many of the most ardent abolitionists were shes) deeply felt that his or her own views were fully borne out by my experiences and everything that I was saying, and then I would hear a full discourse on every aspect of the issue, more aspects of the issue than I’d ever thought existed. These men and women went away shaking their heads, of course, but also smiling. They made large, agreeable groups, and their opinions were much bolstered by one another. I got to be something of a celebrity for attempting to aid the escape of a slave, and they loved to have me talk about Lorna. Some even wept openly at her story, and one day, someone "very close to Mr. Thayer himself" asked me to give a series of lectures, or perhaps one lecture only, about her. Something, anything. How good this would be as a way of raising money for the cause of abolition in Kansas could not be expressed.
I was disinclined to do this, and I pondered my disinclination at length. Did I owe it to Lorna to tell her story to the world? Was that my last gesture for her, to use her and what we had done together to raise money to buy guns and cannon to be sent to Kansas? Mr. Thayer’s friend candidly admitted one thing—Lorna herself would never benefit from my telling her story. There was no telling what had happened to her; she’d gotten sold south, just like someone out of Mrs. Stowe’s book, and if she was as obdurate as I made her out to be, well, not all masters were as forgiving as this Mr. Day seemed to be. There could be no hope for Lorna individually, but her cause could be helped through helping the cause of all of those in bondage, and money, money, money, that was the key. Every man who’d been to Washington, D.C., knew that as well as he knew his own mother’s name. Thomas’s mother herself appealed to me to give this lecture. She was a very old woman, bedridden most of the day. Thomas had indeed been her favorite of all the boys, and it was clear that his death was not supportable for her. She was very kind and loving to me, and she made up her mind that I must do this lecture for Thomas and his beliefs and what he died for. I couldn’t explain that I found myself increasingly unable to speak about any of these issues—that the very certainty of everyone around me drove all certainty out of me. She pleaded with me, and I agreed.
The hall was the same size as, or larger than, Danake Hall in Quincy, the only other place of the sort that I’d ever entered. Even the stage was nearly the same size as the stage whereon I’d viewed those scenes from Macbeth and Dombey and Son more than a year before. And it was crowded. The title of my lecture, given it by Mr. Thayer’s friend, was "Latest News from the War in Kansas, with a FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT of a foiled SLAVE ESCAPE in Missouri." Mr. Thayer himself was expected to attend but got delayed out of town, and I never met him.
Standing on the stage, looking out at the audience, was daunting and horrifying, especially after the lights that lit them up were doused and I couldn’t see past the torches at my feet, which dazzled my eyes. I could hear them, though, shuffling and wheezing and coughing and sneezing and moving about, and even though I knew they were New Englanders and didn’t tote guns and shoot them off routinely, as westerners did, guns seemed to be out there, as we all knew what the funds would be going for. I began to speak, and a voice or two shouted, "Louder!" and so I pressed