AN ALPINE PICTURE.

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BOOKS AND SEASONS.

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In Thomas Bailey Aldrich, whose death was briefly
announced in The Times of Wednesday, America has lost
the most brilliant man of letters of the generation that
succeeded the Concord group. He was born in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, in November, 1836, when Longfellow
and Emerson were in their prime, and he reaped
the benefit of their labours by coming into an age which
they had familiarized with literature and cultivation.
Mr. Aldrich early became a journalist, and was connected
with the New York Evening Mirror, Willes's Home
Journal, and other papers. The outbreak of the war
saw him as newspaper correspondent, and in 1865 he
became the editor of Every Saturday. Nine years in
that post were followed by seven of miscellaneous work,
till in 1881 he reached the height of his career as
journalist by becoming editor of the Atlantic Monthly, a
position he held till 1890. Meanwhile he had written
much original matter both in prose and verse. His genius
was many-sided, and it is surprising that so busy an
editor and so prolific a writer should have attained the
perfection of form for which Mr. Aldrich was remarkable.
Among his novels “Prudence Palfrey” and “The
Stillwater Tragedy” are the best known. From his
country home at Porkapog, Mass., he sent out the charming
“Porkapog Papers,” as graceful and delicate as their
title was ungainly. He described with the skill of a
Hawthorne his native town by the sea, and in “Marjorie
Daw” and other works he proved himself an “American
humourist” of a characteristic type. One of his
books, “The Story of a Bad Boy,” has achieved
notable distinction; it has been translated into
French in a series entitled “Education et Récréation,”
and into German as a specimen of American humour. It
is, however, as a poet that Mr. Aldrich was chiefly
entitled to recognition, and on his poetry that his fame
will rest. Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman regarded him
as “the most pointed and exquisite of our lyrical craftsmen”;
and the words are well chosen. He was the
doyen and the leader of the school of American poetry
which is now being displaced by Mr. Bliss Carman and
others, who are apparently more virile than the preceding
generation. His was the poetry of exquisite finish and
not of great force or profundity. To say that his lyrics
are vers de société in the highest form is not to rate their
content too low nor their manner too high; and it is in
lyric song rather than in the longer poems, such as
“Wyndham Towers,” that Mr. Aldrich excelled. Some
of his poems—that on the intaglio head of Minerva,
“When the Sultan goes to Ispahan,” and “Identity”—
are in every anthology of American literature, and have
won their author fame throughout the English-speaking
world.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH DEAD.

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Suddenly Loses Strength After Partially
Recovering From an Operation.

Boston, March 19.—Thomas Bailey
Aldrich died at his home in Mount Vernon
street, late this afternoon aged 70.

Some weeks ago Mr. Aldrich underwent
a severe surgical operation at the
Homœpathic Hospital in this city, and
although for a time his convalescence was
extremely slow the past two weeks have
been so promising that yesterday the
patient was removed to his home.

It was thought the change would prove
beneficial, although it was recognized
that his condition was still serious.

Early to-day Mr. Aldrich suddenly became
worse and gradually lost his strength.
He died a about 5 o'clock.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich was a close link
between the old school of American writers
among whom were Longfellow, Lowell,
Whittier and Holmes, and the men of the
present day. It has been said of him, as
of Oliver Wendell Holmes, that “he was
one of the last leaves dropped from the tree
of distinctively New England literature.”

He was born November 11, 1836, at Portsmouth,
N. H., the seaport of quaint nooks
and fine old houses, which under the name
of Rivermouth forms the setting of many
of Mr. Aldrich's poems and stories, including
his own autobiographical narrative of
“A Bad Boy.” He had not a very thorough
education as a boy and was practically a
self-educated man, because he was obliged
to abandon the plan of a university education
when his father died. Much of his
earlier life was spent at New Orleans, but
he returned to Portsmouth when he was
16 years old. A kinsman who was a merchant
in New York gave the boy a place
as a clerk in his counting house. The work
was rather distasteful because Mr. Aldrich's
tendencies were even then in the direction
of literature.

Of necessity he worked as a clerk for three
years, but he employed all his spare moments
laying the foundation of a career
better suited to his talents and inclinations.
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He wrote for several magazines and newspapers,
both prose and verse, and many
of his efforts would have been creditable
for a writer of more mature age. It was not
long before his writings attracted the attention
of the public, and when he was
19 years old the editors of the Home Journal
invited him to Boston. There he met Henry
L. Pierce at the home of a mutual friend.
Mr. Pierce, a man of discrimination, believed
Aldrich was a young man of rare
literary ability and encouraged him.

From 1870 till its suspension in 1874 Mr.
Aldrich was the editor of Every Saturday
a small magazine. Then he became a regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly
and worked almost exclusively for it until
1881, when his friend William Dean Howells
resigned its editorship to him. He was
editor of the Atlantic Monthly until 1890,
when he retired from active editorial work.

When his friend and literary patron,
Henry L. Pierce, died in 1896, Mr. Aldrich
found that Mr. Pierce had left a country
estate at Ponkapog, Mass., consisting of a
house, barn, and two acres of land, and in
addition $200,000 in cash to himself and his
wife. The twin sons of Mr. Aldrich, Charles
F. and Talbot F., each received $100,000 from
Mr. Pierce.

Mr. Aldrich tried his hand in turn at
poetry, fiction, the essay and the drama,
and was successful with all. He was a success
as a magazine editor also, a literary
achievement quite distinct from the others
named. The chief criticism of Thomas
Bailey Aldrich often was: “He does not
write enough.”

Among his works are: “The Ballad of Baby
Bell and Other Poems,” “Cloth of Gold.”
“The Story of a Bad Boy,” “Flower and
Thorn,” “Mercedes, and Later Lyrics,”
“Marjorie Daw, and Other People,” “Prudence
Palfry,” “The Queen of Sheba,”
“The Stillwater Tragedy,” “From Ponkapog
to Pesth,” “Wyndham Towers,” “The Sisters'
Tragedy,” “An Old Town by the Sea,”
“Two Bites at a Cherry, and Other Tales,”
“Unguarded Gates.” “Judith and Holofernes,”
“A Sea Turn, and Other Matters,”
“PonkapogPapers” and “Judith of Bethulia,”
a tragedy in four acts.

Mr. Aldrich's home in Boston was on
Beacon Hill.

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