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Thursday, March 3, 2005
BRICKWALL BUSTER #8
From an old Chicago news article dated May 13, 1903:
"With Passing Away of His Wife Last August All Desire to Live Was Gone.
Richard Henry Stoddard, author, poet literatent, died yesterday morning at his residence, No. 329 East Fifteenth street.
Since his wife's death last August he had failed rapidly. About a week ago rheumatism of the heart developed. It was known long before, however, to his devoted adopted daughter and the physicians that his death was only a question of a few weeks at the most, for all desire to live was gone. Although tenderly attached to Miss Alice Brender, his heart was with the dead--the wife and his beloved son Lorimer.
Funeral services will be held to-morrow at 4 o'clock in the church of the Messiah, Park avenue and Thirty-fourth street. The pastor emeritus, Rev. Robert Collyer, will officiate, assisted by the pastor, Rev. Minot J. Savage. The body will be taken to Sag Harbor and buried beside his wife and son.
All the details of the funeral are in charge of E. Clarence Stedman and Ripley Hitchcock, every effort being made to spare the feelings of Miss Brender, the adopted daughter. It is twelve years since Alice Brender took the place of a daughter in the Stoddard home. In that time she became as dear as if she were their own child. Every one knowing this ideal family knows how Mr. Stoddard, standing beside his wife's new made grace, announced that he had adopted Miss Brender, this formal action being in recoknition (sic) of the tender care she had given his wife.
As Mr. Stoddard lies dead in the little home so full of sacred memories, the only one who mourns him as her own is Miss Brender. Of those assembled in the Stoddard home as a part of the family circle only two are left, aside from Miss Brender--Mrs. Richard Harvey, the step-sister of Mrs. Stoddard, whose home is at Nyack, and her brother, George Barstow, of Mattapoisett, Miss.
"Mr. Stoddard's death was painless, " said Miss Brender yesterday. "He just slept from this world into the next and did not know the end was coming. He had been dying, I think, ever since his wife passed away. Never after her funeral did he leave the house. He had neither the strength nor the ambition to try.
"Never, in all my experience, have I known two people who were so devoted. Their lives were so intertwined it was impossible for one to live without the other. Had they been my own parents they could not have been more kind, more dear to me."
The last literary work upon which Mr. Stoddard was engaged was in connection with his "Recollections, Personal and Literary," covering a period of more than fifty years, and affording a glimpse from his point of view of many of the leading writers of that time, notably Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe and Thaceray. This work will be issued in the Autumn, probably with introduction from Edmund Clarence Stedman.
The last of the distinguished authors that included Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Irving is now gone that Henry Stoddard is dead. He was born in Hingham, Mass., on July 2, 1825.
His early years were passed with his widowed mother in Boston, their life in that far time being a bitter struggle with poverty. They removed to New York, his entire life thereafter being spent in this city. Mr. Stoddard was in turn apprentice to an iron moulder, a lawyer's clerk, a reporter, bookkeeper, and then poet and author."
A Curtain Call
Good fellows of the lettered line,
To whom I owe this Curtain Call,
I thank you all, I greet you all,.
Noblesse oblige! But while I may;
Another word, my last, may be:
When this life-play of mine is ended,
And the black curtain has descended,
Think kindly as you can of me,
And say, for you may truly say,
"This dead player, living, loved his part,
And made it noble as he could,
Not for his own, poor personal good,
But for the glory of his art."
- This peom was recited by Richard Henry Stoddard
at a dinner in his honor years ago.
Visit Genealogy at GenealogyBuff.com
From an old Chicago news article dated May 13, 1903:
"With Passing Away of His Wife Last August All Desire to Live Was Gone.
Richard Henry Stoddard, author, poet literatent, died yesterday morning at his residence, No. 329 East Fifteenth street.
Since his wife's death last August he had failed rapidly. About a week ago rheumatism of the heart developed. It was known long before, however, to his devoted adopted daughter and the physicians that his death was only a question of a few weeks at the most, for all desire to live was gone. Although tenderly attached to Miss Alice Brender, his heart was with the dead--the wife and his beloved son Lorimer.
Funeral services will be held to-morrow at 4 o'clock in the church of the Messiah, Park avenue and Thirty-fourth street. The pastor emeritus, Rev. Robert Collyer, will officiate, assisted by the pastor, Rev. Minot J. Savage. The body will be taken to Sag Harbor and buried beside his wife and son.
All the details of the funeral are in charge of E. Clarence Stedman and Ripley Hitchcock, every effort being made to spare the feelings of Miss Brender, the adopted daughter. It is twelve years since Alice Brender took the place of a daughter in the Stoddard home. In that time she became as dear as if she were their own child. Every one knowing this ideal family knows how Mr. Stoddard, standing beside his wife's new made grace, announced that he had adopted Miss Brender, this formal action being in recoknition (sic) of the tender care she had given his wife.
As Mr. Stoddard lies dead in the little home so full of sacred memories, the only one who mourns him as her own is Miss Brender. Of those assembled in the Stoddard home as a part of the family circle only two are left, aside from Miss Brender--Mrs. Richard Harvey, the step-sister of Mrs. Stoddard, whose home is at Nyack, and her brother, George Barstow, of Mattapoisett, Miss.
"Mr. Stoddard's death was painless, " said Miss Brender yesterday. "He just slept from this world into the next and did not know the end was coming. He had been dying, I think, ever since his wife passed away. Never after her funeral did he leave the house. He had neither the strength nor the ambition to try.
"Never, in all my experience, have I known two people who were so devoted. Their lives were so intertwined it was impossible for one to live without the other. Had they been my own parents they could not have been more kind, more dear to me."
The last literary work upon which Mr. Stoddard was engaged was in connection with his "Recollections, Personal and Literary," covering a period of more than fifty years, and affording a glimpse from his point of view of many of the leading writers of that time, notably Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe and Thaceray. This work will be issued in the Autumn, probably with introduction from Edmund Clarence Stedman.
The last of the distinguished authors that included Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Irving is now gone that Henry Stoddard is dead. He was born in Hingham, Mass., on July 2, 1825.
His early years were passed with his widowed mother in Boston, their life in that far time being a bitter struggle with poverty. They removed to New York, his entire life thereafter being spent in this city. Mr. Stoddard was in turn apprentice to an iron moulder, a lawyer's clerk, a reporter, bookkeeper, and then poet and author."
A Curtain Call
Good fellows of the lettered line,
To whom I owe this Curtain Call,
I thank you all, I greet you all,.
Noblesse oblige! But while I may;
Another word, my last, may be:
When this life-play of mine is ended,
And the black curtain has descended,
Think kindly as you can of me,
And say, for you may truly say,
"This dead player, living, loved his part,
And made it noble as he could,
Not for his own, poor personal good,
But for the glory of his art."
- This peom was recited by Richard Henry Stoddard
at a dinner in his honor years ago.
Visit Genealogy at GenealogyBuff.com
