Carolyn Eastman - The strange genius of Mr. O : the world of the United States first forgotten celebrity

CAROLYN EASTMAN

Published by the
OMOHUNDRO INSTITUT E OF EARLY AMERICAN HISTOR Y AND CULTURE,
Williamsburg, Virginia,
and the
UNIVERSIT Y OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS,
Chapel Hill

The Omohundro Institut e of Early American Histor y and Culture is sponsored by the Colleg e of William and Mary . On November 15, 1996, the Institute adopted the present name in hono r o f a bequest from Malvern H . Omohundro, Jr.

2021 Carolyn Eastman

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover illustration: Don Quixote. Engraving, 1823.
Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, MS194

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Eastman, Carolyn, author. | Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, publisher.

Title: The strange genius of Mr. O : the world of the United States first forgotten celebrity / Carolyn Eastman.

Description: Williamsburg, Virginia : Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture ; Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020032959 | ISBN 9781469660516 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469660523 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : Ogilvie, James, 17601820. | OratorsUnited StatesBiography. | OratoryUnited StatesHistory19th century. | OratorySocial aspectsUnited States. | CelebritiesUnited States.

Classification: LCC B O E 195 2021 | DDC 191dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032959

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

{ THE STRANGE GENIUS OF MR. O }

They arrived early, trying to get seats close to the stage. Each ticket cost a dollar, the equivalent of a full days wages for a laborer, and those able to spend that kind of money wanted to have a good view. They wore their best clothes, even if in some cases they hadnt been fashionable in years. Having read rapturous reports about James Ogilvies performances in larger towns and cities elsewhere in the country, they knew hed seen bigger crowds and had socialized with wealthier and more stylish people. How would they compare? As they alighted from their carriages at Captain Whiddens Assembly House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, some found themselves self-conscious of how they might perform for this celebrity performer.

Walking upstairs, the attendees could feel proud of the Assembly Rooms elegance, for it highlighted Portsmouths aspirations. The largest room in the city, it was used for all large gatherings: meetings, dances and dancing lessons, Fourth of July banquets, and the ventriloquist who also performed sleight of hand magic tricks. Three decades earlier, the newly elected George Washington had called this space one of the best I have seen anywhere in the United States when he made a tour of the nation in 1789. At about eighteen hundred square feet, it featured sparkling chandeliers hanging from high ceilings. Sconces on the walls for additional candles accentuated the gilded wall decorations carved to look like bouquets of flowers. In anticipation of Ogilvies many attendees, the buildings owner had packed the room with benches, easily removed on other nights for dances. Just weeks earlier on the Fourth of July, they had decorated the room with a red, white, and blue canopy and the very chair Washington had sat in when he visited, all bringing attention to a full-length portrait of the president. Now, as townspeople moved inside, they sought to avoid sitting next to the two or three men who were already intoxicated. Ogilvie had spent a lot of money lighting the room with more candles than usual, and he would be able to see who in the audience misbehaved, looked bored, or started snoring.

The room quieted shortly after seven oclock as he stepped on the stage. Ladies fanned themselves, trying to maintain the appearance of feminine delicacy in the rooms collective heat. They knew already that Ogilvie was tall and very thin, for theyd seen him in town for weeks beforehand as he had made arrangements for the talks. As they waited for him to begin, he appeared even more awkward, cold despite the rooms warmth. He grew still for a moment, perhaps mustering his energy. Would this performance be as masterful as they had heard? Would he have full range of what he called his powers? In those few moments before he started speaking, the audience seemed to hold its breath.

But when his deep, sepulchral voice sounded through the room, his body seemed to transform and loosen. Watching the gracefulness of his movements reminded them of what they had read about the great orators of the classical worldCicero, Senecaas Ogilvies physical posture onstage conveyed authority, self-possession, moral certainty. He began with no preface, none of the usual thanks to the audience, no humble comments about hoping to be worthy of their attendance; he simply leapt into his subject. When we review and analyze our pleasures and our pains, he began, looking around the room, even the most vulgar mind must see the scantiness and evanescence of the former, [and] the multiplicity, variety and permanence of the latter. Evidence of the worlds pains was everywhere, he said. Consider the pages of history: a black catalogue of corrosive calamities, he continued. The alliteration of hard C s cut like the cracks of an electrical storm through the room, undergirded by the roll of the R s in corrosiv e delivered in his Scottish accent. Consider, too, evidence from our own lives: How many moments of exquisite agony? With that, some in the audience flashed to the illnesses and deaths of loved ones, children, spouses. As he delivered the words exquisite agony, his thin hand delicately touched his heart, accentuating the poignancy of the sentiment.

Moving across the stage, his gestures and facial expressions helped to build the dark mood of the subjects he discussed. In one moment, he reached out toward his listeners and looked at them entreatingly with his soft blue eyes, as if he knew they might resist his argument. Alternately, he might cast his eyes down or scowl with a ferocity that made his eyes appear almost black, forcing his listeners to feel along with him the worlds of suffering he described, those existential pains. A few lines later, his assertion that man is but a shadow and life but a dream seemed so melancholically eloquent, so Shakespearean, that it raised goosebumps on the arms of the gentlemen and brought several of the ladies mouths to open unconsciously. Their nervousness had left them. Their silence was complete.

They began to realize that Ogilvie was going to ask the audience to feel sympathy for those tormented by suicidal thoughtsa stunning position that challenged the moral, religious, and legal oppositions to suicide.

And with that, they were hooked.

James Ogilvie may be the earliest and most significant American celebrity youve never heard of. His career revealed many of the hallmarks of celebrity we recognize from later eras: glamorous circles of friends, eccentric clothing, scandalous religious views, narcissism, and a reputation for the habitual use of narcotics. He had quirks: the tendency to neglect his personal hygiene and to tell acquaintances that he would ultimately inherit an earldom in Scotland. Despite his idiosyncrasies, he enjoyed the friendship and patronage of some of the most important men in the nation, including Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, the physician Benjamin Rush, and the novelist Washington Irving. Influential society women were equally vital to his success, including him in evening soirees and parlor gatherings and introducing him to networks of family and friendspotential supporters all. He became so familiar in the years after 1808 that newspapers referred to him simply as Mr. O, a long O that mirrored the same sound in the word orator y and even mimicked the shape of an open mouth. Yet some of the same Americans who admired him most fervently during his heyday came to forget him during the decades after his death in 1820a purposeful forgetting that now seems so notable because the names of his supporters still resonate more than two hundred years later.