In September 1895, Launceston was favoured with a visit from
the Reverend Hugh Reginald Haweis, then undertaking the third leg of a world
speaking tour which included Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific and Ceylon.
Rev. Haweis was a prolific author, noted preacher and gifted
orator on a variety of subjects. Naturally the Launceston Mechanics' Institute
was the venue for his public lectures in Launceston, and he spoke on three
consecutive nights on the topics of "Music and Morals",
"Tennyson, Browning, Oliver Wendell Holmes, with personal recollections
and dramatic recitations" and "The music of nature and the music of
man", the last with violin, whistle and other accompaniments. On the
following Sunday he preached at St John's in the morning and Holy Trinity in
the evening.
The Launceston Examiner provided extensive coverage of Rev.
Haweis's lectures, describing him as possessing "a wonderful power of
eloquence, his only fault perhaps being the extraordinary rapidity of his
utterances." (5 Sept 1895, p.6) A small attendance on the opening nights
was attributed to the unsettled state of the weather, but better crowds were
reported at the final address on Friday night.
No doubt many in his audience would have been familiar with
his ideas, as the Institute had in its library at least fifteen of his books,
principally on religious and musical topics. His wife Mary was also a
well-known writer and her book The Art of Beauty (1878) was held by the Library.
Additionally, the Library held copies of Cassell's Magazine,
which Haweis edited for a time around 1870. It was under Haweis's editorship
that Garibaldi, with whom Haweis had served in 1860, was persuaded to
contribute his memoirs to the magazine.
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| Port. of Rev. Haweis engr. by G J Stodart from Music and Morals |
Following Haweis's return to England he published a
two-volume account of his world tours entitled Travel and Talk, 1885-93-95 : My
hundred thousand miles of travel through America, Australia, Tasmania, Canada,
New Zealand, Ceylon and the paradises of the Pacific in 1896. The Institute
received its copy in May 1898, and surely readers must have turned eagerly to
the second volume to read his impressions of Tasmania. If so they would have
been disappointed. Despite the promise of the title, four pages only were
dedicated to Tasmania, and most of those to a letter Haweis received from
Bishop Montgomery on his return to London.
These volumes are now held in the Local Studies collection
at Launceston LINC still carrying the original bookplates of the Institute.
Other titles held in the surviving Mechanics' Institute collection include his
best known works Music and Morals (in the 12th ed.), My Musical Life (1884),
the five volumes in his Christ and Christianity series (1886-7), American
Humourists (1883), and the early works Thoughts for the Times (1872), Speech in
Season (1874) and Current Coin (1876).
A curiously belated account of the Reverend's life and
career was contributed to the Launceston Examiner and published on 17 September, eight days after his departure for Melbourne;
REV. H. R. HAWEIS, M.A. (Communicated.) Now that this famous
London preacher and lecturer has been heard in Launceston, some particulars
concerning his life and work will be read with interest. Outside of Great
Britain, Mr Haweis is far better known in America than in the Australian
colonies, and the fact of his name not being so familiar to Tasmanians may
account, in same measure, for the rather moderate audiences at his first two
lectures in Launceston. He has preached and lectured on many occasions in the
United States, and has also been one of the "Lowell" lecturers in
Boston.
Mr Haweis was born in England and educated at Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he graduated and took his B.A. degree in 1859. After
a few years' work as curate in the East End of London, he was appointed
incumbent of St. James's, Westmoreland-street, Marylebone, where he continues
to draw crowded congregations, his church, perhaps, attracting more leading men
and women in the world of art and letters than any other in London. His best
known works are "Music and Morals," " My Musical Life," (in
which one can get a fine idea of Wagner's music), "Speech in Season,"
"Current Coin," "Winged Words," "Thoughts for the
Times," " Arrows in the Air," and " Christ and
Christianity." He has also written a number of hymns and "Unsectarian
Family Prayers." Mr Haweis is a brilliant and a many sided man, and he has
built up such a force of thought that it can be turned at will upon almost any
subject, and his shrewd common sense, aided by his powerful intellect and
subtle thought, enables him to dive beneath the surface and analyse swiftly and
unerringly the various subjects which he takes up. As a preacher he excels in
clear, logical, and common sense expositions of the Scriptures, and he thinks
out and preaches upon the various social problems of the day. His language is
simple, yet forcible, and it at once denotes the scholar, although at times he can
soar into beautiful imagery. His illustrations are peculiarly apt and very
frequently humourous, and he delivers sterling home truths in such a manner
that they never fail to carry conviction to his hearers, and his earnestness
and the intensity of his thought often lead to that wonderful rapidity of
utterance which carries his congregation entirely with him. The great charm
about Mr Haweis is his personality; he is thoroughly natural, and there is a
powerful magnetism about him which attracts one and all. As a clergyman he is
ever ready to extend the hand of fellowship to preachers of other
denominations, irrespective of their creed or nationality; he is essentially
cosmopolitan. As a lecturer he is both original and humourous, and he has the
faculty of completely riveting the attention of his audience the whole time he
is on the platform. His subjects cover a wide range, and include music, poetry,
the drama, and science, and he has also given a series of lectures on
"American Humourists" He has lectured on "Violins" and
"Church Bells," on both of which he is considered an authority. When
in practice he was probably the best amateur violinist in England. He is also
accounted an excellent judge of violins, and numerous applications are made to
him by professionals and amateurs alike for his opinion, which is always freely
given. Mr Haweis was at one time editor of Cassell's Magazine; he also wrote
for Good Words, and he was on the original staff of the London Echo for leading
articles and musical criticisms. He was one of the select preachers appointed
by the Dean of Westminster for the course of Services for the People at the
Abbey, and he has at times lectured for the Royal Institution. He was one of
the first to advocate the establishment of "penny readings" in
London. He is in favour of cremation, and he has written a cremation prelude
entitled "Ashes to Ashes." This is necessarily a short and incomplete
sketch of one of London's foremost preachers and thinkers of to-day, and of a
man who in the number and variety of his talents is probably unique.
Perhaps if Rev. Haweis's publicity had preceded rather than
followed him attendance at his lectures would have been improved. The Reverend
had elected to travel to Tasmania independently of his Australian agent, R. S.
Smythe. In Travel and Talk, Rev. Haweis describes Smythe's promotional skills
thus; "in every town I entered, my name in letters two feet long, white on
a pale blue ground, stared me in the face, at the railway stations, on the
omnibuses, at the hotels. The descriptive handbills were wonderful. One might
suppose the whole civilised world was nothing but one vast listening ear,
waiting for the least whisper that might fall from my lips." (Vol 2,
p.149).
