An American journalist, critic and Shakespearean scholar; born in New York city, May 22, 1822; died there, April 8, 1885. His journalistic work was in connection with the New York Courier and Enquirer (1851–58), and World (1860–61); and the London Spectator (1863–67), for which he wrote “Yankee Letters.” Among his published books are: “Biographical and Critical Hand-Book of Christian Art” (1853); “Shakespeare’s Scholar” (1854); “National Hymns: A Lyrical and National Study for the Times” (1861); “Memoirs of the Life of William Shakespeare, with an Essay towards the Expression of His Genius,” etc. (1865); “Poetry of the Civil War” (1866); “Words and their Uses” (1870); “England Without and Within” (1881); “The Riverside Shakespeare,” with biography, introduction, and notes (1883, 3 vols.); an annotated edition of Shakespeare (1857–65, 12 vols.). He published one novel, “The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys” (1884).
Personal
A very tall young man, with a strong and not markedly handsome face, known as Richard Grant White. He talked well, [1840] and had a marked tendency to allude to the writings of one Shakespeare, of whom he appeared to be a “Scholar.” He had also some very pronounced ideas connected with philology, giving promise that some day he might be heard from with reference to spellings, derivations, the morals of literature, etc.
His life was retired, and his intimates were not numerous. At concerts and at the opera his tall, erect, and striking figure (he was six feet and three inches), resembling that of an English guardsman, was very familiar to habitués. He was a man of many accomplishments and achievements, but almost exclusively devoted to literary and artistic pursuits.
There was a certain whimsicality in his temperament, as there was in the temperament of Mr. Charles Astor Bristed, which amused his friends and enraged his enemies. A ripe scholar, he was contemptuous toward the crass ignorance (for it could be nothing less) which questioned his dicta, either in regard to music, of which he was a student and a proficient; or language, in which he was acute rather than learned; or art, of which he was a skilful connoisseur; or, worse than all, the niceties of Elizabethan erudition. Courtly and polished in his personal address, his pen was apt to run away with him when once he put it on paper. His composure was exasperating,—exasperating to his equals, and maddening to his inferiors, which most of his assailants assuredly were. If he could have shut his eyes to some of the foibles of his countrymen, as the best of his countrymen shut their eyes to some of his foibles, he would have had a pleasanter time of it; and he liked a pleasant time. But he was like Iago—“nothing if not critical.”… I can hardly say that I knew this accomplished man-of-letters, though I was acquainted with him for a quarter of a century and upwards…. The world is said to be a very small place, we meet the same people so often; but I have not found it so. The last time I met Mr. White was at the Authors’ Club a year and a half ago. We lived within hailing distance of each other, only two streets apart, he with a southern exposure in his rooms, I with a northern one in mine. There was no reason why we should not have met often, or only the reason that the world is very, very large,—in a busy crowded city like this.
The whole life of Richard Grant White was passed in New York. He was born there and he died there, and in all the intervening years his absences from the town were few and brief…. His knowledge of his own country from personal observation was also unusually limited for an American of any condition. Yet, long as he lived in New York, he never conceived any real affection for the great commercial capital. He was a stranger in a strange city…. From first to last he had no intimates among the writers of his day. Until the establishment of the Authors’ Club, a short time before his death, he belonged to none of the associations of his craft…. He lived wholly apart from the ways and the sympathies of the literary class around him. He went to them neither for applause nor for intellectual stimulus…. He was keenly sensitive about the dignity of his profession and the conduct becoming a gentleman. He prided himself on never having been an applicant for any place or favor. He would not elbow his way to a superior seat; for, of all God’s creatures, the being now described as a “hustler” was most odious in his eyes…. Mr. White was looked upon, by the younger writers more especially, as an arrogant and conventional man, starched, affected, and supercilious, incapable of other emotion than self-admiration,—vain, conceited, and a coxcomb. This impression was strengthened by the formality of his manners, the precision of his speech, and the suggestion in the cut of his garments and the character of his utterance that he was an Anglomaniac, who felt himself above his calling and his colleagues. As he was two inches upward of six feet in height, and carried himself with remarkable erectness, he did overtop them physically…. He was incapable of malice himself,—as incapable as he was of jealousy,—and though he had a keen sense of humor, as he demonstrated very conspicuously, he never resorted to its use as a cloak for envy and malignity. He could not accuse himself of any lack of courtesy to those with whom he came in contact, for he was always courteous and considerate to the last degree. If he never permitted obtrusive familiarity, neither did he himself fail in showing due regard for others.
General
He has, for years, been recognized as a thinker and scholar of singular independence of character. He has shown, in treating every object he has discussed, so confident a mastery of the subject matter relating to it, and has been so bold in rigidly following out to their logical conclusions the novel, and occasionally somewhat eccentric, trains of thought he has started, that he has become a constantly questioned although still a palpable force in our literature. Perhaps he is most eagerly read by those who most vehemently disagree with him in opinion. On the whole, it may be said that no other American man of letters has had his great merits more grudgingly allowed, and his minor defects more assiduously magnified…. What most attracts us in his career as a professional American man of letters is the courage with which he has expressed his opinions, whether popular or unpopular; the patience with which he has investigated the materials of literary and social history on which just opinions regarding such matters are founded; and the acuteness, independence, force, and fertility of thought he has brought to the discussion of every debatable question which has attracted his attention as a critic and a scholar. We might clamorously demur to many of his most confident judgments, but the spirit which animates him as a thinker and seeker after truth appears to us pure, wise, and unselfish.
The death of Mr. White has left a blank in American letters which only one writer, Mr. Horace Howard Furness, can be said to fill. He was our foremost Shakespearean scholar, and was recognised as such by all competent judges abroad, even by those who dissented from many of his conclusions…. If I am any judge of English prose, the prose of Mr. White, when at its best, is frank, lucid, direct, and manly.
The satirical power which the late Richard Grant White possessed was little known to the public, because he studiously avoided the presentation of his claims on that score…. By his scholarly attitude and work, as well as by his frequent anonymous contributions to press criticisms of books, he rendered good service to the cause of American letters.
White’s faults as a critic were a severity sometimes amounting to ill-nature; an egotistic self-assertion that was unjust to his opponents; an inability to state fairly the other side of a question; a fondness for petty discussions; and an occasional prolixity. As a writer on Shakespeare and an editor of his works, he dwelt with increasing and one-sided force upon the defects of Shakespeare’s personality, until the puzzled reader wondered how Hamlet or Juliet could be evoked from the brain of so mean a man. But White exposed and shamed many pretentious ignoramuses, Shakespearean and other; he ridiculed and routed the wretched crew of annotators, “conjectural” readers, and forgers of text; and he made very clear (especially in “The Life and Genius of Shakespeare,” vol. I. of the twelve-volume edition) the true and the false in the Shakespeare life-legend. Not a philologist himself, he promoted the study of the forms and uses of words; and in general he performed a sound service to American criticism by his very cynicism and coldness. Here was a writer who could sharply challenge sentimentality and half-knowledge, within his particular field. His notes on England are much inferior to Hawthorne’s or Emerson’s both in description and in analysis; and his one novel, portentously called “The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys; with the Episode of Mr. Washington Adams in England, and an Apology,” is a laughable failure.
His “Words and their Uses,” an admirable and unhackneyed guide to sound prose composition, was published in 1870; his “Every Day English,” about ten years later. During this period he also wrote monthly papers for “The Galaxy” magazine, and articles, sometimes critical, sometimes controversial. In the latter, he was especially felicitous; few men were better able to annihilate an opponent, while maintaining thorough good-humor…. White’s musical criticisms have not been rescued from the periodicals in which they originally appeared, yet they are the best that have been written in this country.
