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This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
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This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
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This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Gilder Richard Watson was an editor, poet, public-spirited citizen. He became a reporter on the Newark (New Jersey) Advertiser, of which he was later editor.
Background
Richard Watson Gilder was born on February 8, 1844, in Belle Vue, Bordentown, New Jersey.
The earliest Gilders in America had come, as he believed, from Kent via Barbados, and settled probably in Delaware. It is known that his great-grandfather was a farmer of that state. His grandfather, a “measurer” of Philadelphia, was chairman of the Board of Builders of Girard College.
His father, William Plenry Gilder, was a minister of the Methodist Church who is said to have done some earlier editorial work in Philadelphia, and who at the time of Richard’s birth was conducting the Belle Vue Female Seminary at Bordentown.
His mother, Jane Nutt, was the daughter of a major in the War of 1812.
Education
In 1848, the elder Gilder sold his school at Bordentown and bought another at Flushing, Long Island, and here Richard secured his early education, the only boy in a school for girls.
At the age of twelve or thirteen, the future editor engaged in the amusement, not uncommon with bookish boys, of publishing a paper of his own. The school at Flushing proved unprofitable, and the father returned for a time to preaching, serving charges at Redding and Fair Haven, Connecticut; but he soon started another school, at Yonkers, New York, where his young son gave some assistance as a teacher. At the opening of the Civil War, he became an army chaplain, and the family returned to Bordentown.
There is no detailed record of Richard’s schooling during this time of frequent family changes, but he must have received some disciplinary training, and he developed an aptitude for writing. For a short time at Bordentown he read law.
He received at various times honorary degrees from Dickinson, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Wesleyan.
Career
In 1863, Gilder secured the reluctant consent of his motherand joined the 1st Philadelphia Artillery, a volunteer company which saw a little service at the time of the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania.
Years afterward, he discovered that this brief experience entitled him to membership in the Grand Army of the Republic, and he is said to have prized the insignia of that organization above most of his other honors.
After the death of his father in 1864 it was necessary for him to aid in the family support, and he became paymaster on the Camden & Amboy Railroad, and afterward reporter on the Newark Daily Advertiser, which he left to join in founding the Newark Morning Register.
He also began writing for Hours at Home, and for some months in 1869-70, he edited this magazine in New York and at the same time kept his connection with the Register in Newark.
In November 1870, Hours at Home was merged in the newly founded Scribner’s Monthly, of which J. Holland became editor, and Gilder assistant. He performed the duties of a managing editor, conducted a department, “The Old Cabinet, ” and had charge of the art features of the magazine.
This last responsibility was an important one, since Scribner’s Monthly and its successor, the Century, were leaders in developing magazine illustrating to a point never before attained by a general literary periodical.
Through Helen Hunt, afterwards Mrs. Jackson, Gilder met in 1872, Helena de Kay, a grand-daughter of Joseph Rodman Drake and at the time a student of painting at Cooper Institute.
In the same year, he became acquainted with Rossetti’s translation of the Vita Nuova, and this work, together with his growing love for the young artist, inspired the sonnets published in Scribner’s Monthly in 1873, and included in the collection, The New Day issued in October 1875.
From his boyhood, he had been writing verse, but none of his early productions is of note; and it is doubtful if any of his later poems excelled the best of these love sonnets.
With the acceptance of the position on Scribner’s Monthly Gilder began his life-work, and almost immediately after their marriage the home of the Gilders became a center of intellectual and artistic life.
Among those who frequented The Studio in the early days were La Farge, Saint Gaudens, Stanford White, Joseph Jefferson, Madame Modjeska, and many of the leading writers of New York.
Here Whitman, at a time when most people looked at him askance, received a welcome which he recalled years later with almost effusive appreciation.
It was here that the Society of American Artists was founded in 1877, and the Author’s Club in 1882; and here were entertained a long list of men and women distinguished in art and literature, both American and foreign.
Later, Grover Cleveland and his wife became intimate friends of the Gilders, and were often guests both in the city and at Marion. In 1879, the family went abroad for a year, largely on account of Gilder’s health, which had suffered from overwork.
For some time, Dr. Holland had been unable to carry the full responsibilities of editor-in-chief, and his assistant’s duties had been correspondingly increased.
In 1881, he died, just as Scribner’s Monthly came to an end and was succeeded by the Century - nominally a death and a rebirth, practically only a change of name.
Gilder succeeded to the editorship, a position that he held for the rest of his life.
The list of his varied activities in his later years and of the boards and committees on which he served is too long to be repeated. As examples may be mentioned service in Anti-Tammany municipal campaigns; writing, speaking, and organizing in favor of the free importation of works of art; and the writing of the inscriptions for the buildings of the Pa'n-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901.
During his later years, he was in great demand as a speaker on commemorative occasions and at universities and colleges, choosing such subjects as “Certain Tendencies in Current Literature, ” “The Citizen and the Nation, ” “A Literary Man’s Estimate of Grover Cleveland, ” “Literature and Diplomacy. ”
The decorative illustrations for some of these were furnished by Mrs. Gilder. Most of his poems were short, the longest being “The Great Remembrance, ” something more than two hundred lines of iambic pentameter read before the Society of the Army of the Potomac at a reunion in Boston in 1893.
Long after Di Cesnola was dead and the directorship of the Metropolitan Museum had passed into hands that he approved, he could go out of his way in a personal letter to recall his accusations of “liar, falsifier, and fraud”; and a few months before his death, when the Corporation of Trinity Church was being urged to preserve St. John’s Chapel, Varick Street, as an interesting specimen of colonial architecture, he burst forth in a tirade reviving memories of the tenement controversy in which he had engaged nearly half a generation before, and anathematized the trustees as the author’s later years the duties of his vocation and of his avocations pressed hard upon him, and his health became more and more precarious.
He took respites abroad in 1895-96 and in 1900, and was often forced to be absent from his office for considerable periods at other times. He remained active, however, and delivered a public address only two weeks before his death, which occurred at the home of a friend in New York City.
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Politics
Gilder had earlier been a Republican, but he supported Cleveland in his three successive campaigns for the presidency, and was often referred to as one of the chief Mugwumps.
A natural conservative, with an Easterner’s view of economic matters, he strongly opposed Bryan in 1896, and, though a low-tariff man, supported McKinley as the best way of making his opposition effective.
Views
Gilder was at his best in the sonnet and simple lyric measures, and many of his pieces, as was fitting for an editor and a publicist, deal with current events or pay tribute at an appropriate moment to men and women of his time.
Much of his work was happily phrased, but he hardly caught the popular ear, and few of his lines are generally familiar to-day; nor did he often attain quite the flawlessness of form that makes the poets’ poet.
Quotations:
“I dare say I am various other things that I cannot remember, but if you can state on positive evidence that I am a poet, I would rather that than all the rest put together. ”
Personality
A man of sounder literary taste and less inclined to sentimentality than his predecessor, Gilder had something of a journalist’s sense of what the public wanted, yet had too much integrity to cater to lower tastes.
As the Civil War, receded in time he saw the desirability of having it treated in adequate literary fashion by actual participants, and arranged for a series of papers, “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, ” written by Northern and Southern survivors, and the serial publication of Nicolay and Hay’s “Abraham Lincoln: A History. ”
A plan for the publication of Grant’s Memoirs was frustrated when Mark Twain secured the book for another firm. These special articles were of course in addition to the usual contents of a literary magazine, in the selection of which the editor showed sound and yet catholic taste.
With his earnest devotion to ideals, a great capacity for work, and a willingness to be helpful even when he was imposed upon, Gilder was drawn into an active part in many civic and social movements.
If Gilder’s personality is to be judged by the number, the variety, and the devotion of his friends, he must have been the most lovable of men. He seems, however, to have been at times a good, or at least a persistent, hater.
Connections
On June 3, 1874, Gilder was married to Helena de Kay.