The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1884-04-30
A GREAT NOVELIST DEAD,
Charles Reade, at His Death the
Greatest Enghsh Writer of FIc-
ton, Passes Away, in HIS
SEVENTEEN Year.

IUenl OI WDOse uedtn WOulu cause
such wide felt and honest sorrow as
the tidings brought last Saturday
that Charles Reade will write no
more. Other authors of prose fic-
ton there may be whose subtitle
observation and whose dainty work
manship are priced more highly by
the few, but there 10 not ons of the
survivors, who can lure and fire the
sympathies of 80 large an aufiience.
His feelings and thoughts and fan
cies were evolved within the lines
and uttered in the accents of broad
human nature, and experience has
shown that, Notwithstanding many
veerings of conventional predilec-
ton, fame thus builded is built
upon a rock.
Charles Reade was born in Ispden
Oxfordshire, in 1914, and was the
youngest son of John Reade, a sub
stantial gentleman of that place. In
1885 he was graduated frsm Magda
len College, Oxford. He afterward
studied law, and was called to the
bar by the Society of Lincoln's Inn.
He never practised law, however.
but at % years of age gave himself
wholly up to literary work, writing
PLAYS and stsrfes which were pub
lished anonymously in the maya
zines and newspapers of the day
AS a novelist, dramatist, and polemic
writer his name and his works are
fresh to every reader of current lit
erature. Personally Mr.. Reade was
a large, broad-sheuldered man, of
robus physique, looking much youR-
ger than hi. years until, within a
few years, several domestic afflic-
tiOns aged him. He had long been
sufferer from bronchiti3 and NOV
ed some time ago from the malari-
Gus locality in which his house stood
to a house next his elder brothers
on the Uxbridge road He calleC.
his former house "Naboth's Vine
yard, because he had defended it
successfully, after a four years bat
tie against corporation that wan
| ted it.
Charles Reade's biography has
never been compiled. His readers
have often fancisd that he must have
had actual service as a common sea
man, or haye studied and prsctised
medicine and law. His life has been
quiet and uneventful. An Oxferd
man taking his right rank for clas-
.ical attainments, he was trained for
the law, but was self-apprenticed as
playwright and novelist. His nov
els do not contain autobiography in
disguise. Yet they reveal unerringly
the manliness of his character, the
passionate earnestness of his nature
His detestation of hypocrisy and
cant, his hatred of injustice and
wrong, his splendid courage and tre-
mendous energy in working out
practical reforms, in pleading the
cause of the oppressed and in fight |
ing the battle of the poor prisoner,
the plundsred author, and the victim !
of trade. unien or nad-house, gave
him a proud preeminenee as a nov
elist who was not writing either for
money or reputation, but with posi-
tive ends and distinct moral purpos-
es always before his eyes. In the
literary loom which he so industri-
ously piled, the strong fibre of his
own pure, generous and resolute
manhood was never once broken
off.
Charles Read was a very method
ical worker, and neglected no helps.
1t was his habit to form scrap-bsoks
containing whatever strange, or star
tlsng events or stories appeared in
the daily press, and of these books,
which he called his "brains," " he had
accumulated a formidable number.
Believing as he did that an author is
entitled to appropriate matterwhere-
eever he finds it, provided that
he adapts it. it is net remarkable that
he should several times have been
charged with plagiarism, nor that in
some of these instances his defence
should have been rather adroit than
satisfactory. He possessed fertility
of invention which made him indie
pendent of extraneous assistance,
however, and his original work will T!
bear comparison with the strongest |
in English fiction, either past or
present. He has been charged with .
inordinate vanity. The truth doubt
less is that he was aware of his own .
ability, and did not hypOcritically /
depreciate it. That he possessed
most sterling character is certain. |
He was ever ready to defend the op
pressed careless of the odds, and with .
a fire and energy which nothing
could restrain. His hand was al
ways open to pitiful tale, and the
many authentic stories OF his benev
olence show him to have had
knightly and tender heart. lrrita
table and fiery ne was, and impa-
tient of bores and fribbles, to whom
he could not always behave with
conventional courtesy. But he was
a faithful friend, defender Of the
lowly, fierce and implacable foe to
cruelty, fraud and oppression in all
their forms. And when in those
books of his which will become
classic he is in the full tide of passion
ate denunciation of wrongs, he car
ries his reader away upon the cur
rent of his enthusiasm, and impress
ses the deepest conviction of the
truth of his positions. The char
ming, sweet and delightful women
of his tales are said to have had for
their models his own mother and
sister, and the man may well be es-
teemed fortunate whose estimate
of womanheod is placed so high,
through the permanent boon OF such
relationships.
Muraerers Lyached.