The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1898-10-20
HAROLD FREDERIC DEAD.
The Famous Correspondent and Author
Passes Away at Henley.

London, Oct 49, - The London corre-
spondent of the New York Times, Harold
Frederic, died this morning of heart dis
ease at Henley.
Mr. Frederic was born in Utica, N. ",
on Aug 10, 1856, and grew to manhood
amid the men and women whose por-
traits he has drawn with such vivid
ness in two of his novels. His career
illustrates how youth with courage
character, ambition and capacity can
overcome every obstacle in his way and
win an honorable position for himself.
When young Frederic was two years old
his father. who was in the railway
service, was killed i'll an accident. The
boy attended the common schools until
he was u, when he went to work on
farm. Not relishing the life of farmer.
he drifted into one trade after another,
until he entered the service of photog-
rapher. Here he remained several years,
until he was compelled by failing eyeSight
TO sto~ work entirely.
point in Frederic's career. He wrote a
few stories and found his vocation. At
the age of 10 he became reporter on the
Utica Observer, and in three years he had
been advanced to the position of editor of
the paper. This responsible office he held
for three years; and several of the char
acters and incidents of his first story,
"Seths Brothers Wife" revive the ex-
periences of those days. Three years
later, although young man of only %, he
was called to still more responsible Of
fee, the editorship of the leading republi-
can newspaper of the state capital, the
Albany Journal. When he had served two
years in this capacity. Mr.. Frederic was
appointed European correspondent of the
New York Times, with his headquarters
in London. His letters by telegraph and
mail to the Times formed an interesting
and valuable series of reviews of foreign
topics.
So varied a career brought Mr. Fred
eric in close contact with many types of
American character and enriched his eX-
perience beyond the lot of most men. The
quality that differentiated his carefully
sketched pictures of rural and town life
in central New York from the work of the
leaders among his fellow-American au-
thors was his frank recognition of an UNI
dercurrent of some form of paSsion-hate,
aYarice, love, jealousy, or what not--aS
controlling motive in the lives of men and
women. The novelist's depth of insight
into human nature, and his art in depict
ing the working of the passions that he
found there, gave his stories certain
rvigor and masculine breadth of style that
one does not find in some of the more SUI
perficial studies of contemporaneous
American society, He had, moreover,
Imagination, and was not without humor.
His realism was of the kind of which Bal
FAC was a master.
Among his friends Mr.. Frederic was an
agreeable and genial companion. His
made his talk interesting; and his abund-
ant spirits, his force of character and his
quiet sense of humor made themselves
constantly felt among those who knew
him
It is doubtful if any profession makes
greater or more exhaustive demands upon
ones time and energy than Journalism.
That Harold Frederic should have been
able to find intervals of leisure while en-
gagged in newspaper work to write during
the past six or seven years three such
novels as "Seth's Brother: Wife, THE
Lawton Grip and ''In the Valley" indi-
Gates clearly the possession of a strong
termination to leave some record of his
observations of life and character more
carefully studied than is possible in
epheperal contributions to the newSpap-
per. Mr.. Howels himself testified to the
value of these studies. two of which por-
tray certain phases of the civilization of
the present day in central New York in
much the same spirit, though with a bid
er and finer grasp of his materials, that
runs through the New England novelists
work.
In answer to the question: What
American writer is being the most widely
read in England at present." recently put
to Ian Maclaren by the interviewers on
his arrival in this country he replied in
variably without hesitation, Harold
Frederic; we consider his latest book,
The DamnatiOn of Theron Ware, or IL
Elimination, as we know it. the strongest
book of the year" 1t is a singular fact,
only to be explained perhaps by the law
of contrast. that the genial sympathetic,
attracted by a work that is decidedly de-
pressing and pessimistic in tone, and be-
longing in its treatment of realism to the
literature of disillusion.