CHARLES A. DANA.
Died October 18, 1897, at Glen Cove, Long Island. Aged 78 years.
THE death of Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York "Sun," has been so fully noted in the daily and weekly press that there would be little occasion to recur to it here but for the fact that, ever since the founding of McClure's Magazine, Mr. Dana has been one of its warmest friends and wisest counsellors. For some years before, indeed, he had been the constant encourager and adviser of the editor and founder of the magazine, in another publishing enterprise; and he continued his generous support and guidance to the day of his last illness. It was out of the wish to help the magazine, rather than from a desire to make them public, that he consented, about a year ago, to put his invaluable recollections of the Civil War in shape for publication; and other instances could be cited of his prompt and substantial friendship.
For thirty years Mr. Dana has been one of the most fearless, brilliant, and influential men in the press of the United States: one who made a paper which every man in the profession felt that he must read and which every observer of the times wanted to read. This paper was a reflex of Mr. Dana's own self. Indeed, so intimately and completely did his personality pervade the New York "Sun" that throughout the whole country it was quite as customary to hear people saying, "Dana says so," as "The 'Sun' says so:" a kind of public recognition of the individual force of the editor which has had but one parallel in the United States—Horace Greeley and the "Tribune."
The distinguishing marks which Mr. Dana put upon the "Sun" were the freshness and unexpectedness of its point of view, the comprehensiveness of its range, the clever and distinctive English style in which it is written, and its disdain of humbug and melodrama.
These qualities were the natural outcome of Mr. Dana's own intellect and tastes. His mind was vigorous, independent, comprehensive. He had a strong sense of humor, and a buoyant, joyous nature to which nothing human was alien. He saw things in unexpected ways, and had the audacity to put them as he saw them. The cleverness and crispness of his presentation of things made the "Sun" the most stimulating and entertaining paper in America. There was a sense of life and a vigor about it which made the oldest theme seem new. Whether one agreed with the paper or not, he read it for the purely intellectual pleasure he got out of it. In this the "Sun" has been unique.
The scope of the "Sun" was merely that of the editor's own mind. Certainly no man in American journalism has equaled Mr. Dana in variety of interests and extent of acquirements. He had a power of accumulating stores of knowledge not unlike that of Herbert Spencer. And he knew things thoroughly. There was nothing of the sciolist, the smatterer, about him. He knew not only his own time and own country, but all times and all countries. Although he was always hotly interested in politics, he found leisure to cultivate innumerable lines of thought and to keep himself abreast of all the intellectual movements of the day. Piled high on a side table in his private office were all the latest books, and dozens of them went through his hands every week. On his orderly table, waiting for an idle moment, were sure to be seen the latest magazines, a copy of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," of "Cosmopolis," or of some other learned review. Speculative philosophy, science, history, political economy, every phase of thought, interested him. At the same time he had a taste which was almost a passion for pictures, flowers, and ceramics; and his knowledge of orchids, of modern paintings, and of Oriental wares was extensive. Languages were a special delight to him. He spoke several, and was always learning a new one. Russian was the last he undertook, and during the last winter a Russian dictionary was always within his reach at his office.
Mr. Dana's interest in foreign tongues never caused him to neglect his own. For years he labored vigorously and persistently to improve newspaper English, making life miserable for writers who split their infinitives, misused "in the midst of," or committed any other sin against grammar or good taste. In spite of its incessant struggle for precise and idiomatic English the "Sun" never became pedantic or over-nice. Indeed, its language was often as unexpected as its opinions. It employed colloquialisms freely, and used slang with irresistible effect. Almost every day, too, its editorial page teemed with words and expressions of great force not in common vogue. Mr. Dana aimed quite as much to show the wealth, flexibility, and expressiveness of English as to wage war on those who broke its common law.
There was no cant or pretension about Mr. Dana's forceful editing, and those qualities never had a bitterer enemy. His attitude in literary matters is an illustration. He gave much space always in his Sunday journal to book reviews, to original verse, and to fiction. The digest of serious works, particularly in the line of history, which he introduced into the Sunday "Sun" is the most valuable book-reviewing for the general public that is done in this country; but at the same time he had a department of book reviews of which the particular province was to uncover pretension, melodrama, and unwholesomeness. A writer who showed a vital quality of feeling, thought, or expression, whatever his crudities, was sure of encouragement from Mr. Dana; but for a literary poseur he had nothing but ridicule.
The vigor and intensity with which Mr. Dana for so long directed the "Sun's" policy, and the almost universal attention his opinions on all sorts of political and literary questions received, have put out of sight his earlier career; although, as a matter of fact, he was for more than twenty years before he took the "Sun" ardently and actively interested indifferent phases of the greatest intellectual agitation which our country has ever experienced.
The socialistic movement which took so strong a hold on the East in the 40's attracted Mr. Dana when he was but a boy, and when by the failure of his eyes he was obliged to leave Harvard College, he went at once to Brook Farm, with most of the members of which he was acquainted. Before he had been there many weeks he was elected a trustee, and continued with the movement until the unfortunate
