"Elbridge S. Brooks."
Of the many tributes to my brother's memory I shall here quote but two. The first is from Julian Hawthorne and is addressed to the Editors of the Critic; the second is the resolution of sympathy sent to Mrs. Roe by the members of the Authors' Club.
"You will probably be asked to find room in your columns for many letters from the friends of E. P. Roe. I apply for admission with the others, on the ground that none of them could have loved him more than I did. The telegram which to-day told me of his death has made my own life less interesting to me. He was so good a man that no one can take his place with those who knew him. It is the simple truth that he cared for his friends more than for himself; that his greatest happiness was to see others happy; that he would have more rejoiced in the literary fame of one of his friends than in any such fame of his own winning. All his leisure was spent in making plans for the pleasure and profit of other people. I have seen him laugh with delight at the success of these plans. As I write, so many generous, sweet, noble deeds of his throng in my memory,—deeds done so unobtrusively, delicately and heartily,—that I feel the uselessness of trying to express his value and our loss. He was at once manly and childlike: manly in honor, truth, and tenderness; childlike in the simplicity that suspects no guile and practises none. He had in him that rare quality of loving sympathy that prompted sinners to bring their confessions to him, and ask help and counsel of him,—which he gave, and human love into thebargain. Among his million readers, thousands wrote to thank him for the good that his books had awakened in their souls and stimulated in their lives. He knew the human heart, his own was so human and so great; and the vast success of his stories, however technical critics may have questioned it, was within his deserts, because it was based on this fact. No one could have had a humbler opinion of Roe's 'art' than he had: but an author who believes that good is stronger than evil, and that a sinner may turn from his wickedness and live, and who embodies these convictions in his stories, without a trace of cant or taint of insincerity,—such an author and man deserves a success infinitely wider and more permanent than that of the skilfulest literary mechanic: and it is to the credit of our nation that he has it."
Authors' Club, 19 West 24th Street, New York.
January 19, 1889.
Mrs. E. P. Roe,
Dear Madam—I am instructed by the General Meeting of the Authors' Club to communicate to you the following minute of a resolution that was then adopted. It runs as follows:—
"On motion of Mr. E. C. Stedman it is unanimously resolved that by the death of Mr. E. P. Roe this club has lost a member who was endeared to his fellow-members by more than ordinary ties. His kindly disposition and charm of conversation and manner, his wide charity, made him an always welcome companion, and though circumstances did not admit of his frequent attendance at its meetings, his constant interest in the club was evinced by numerous attentions which showed that he was present in spirit if not in person.
"This club recalls with a sense of sorrowful satisfaction that the last act of the late Mr. Roe in connection with the club was the generous entertainment of its members by himself and his wife, a few weeks before his death, at his home at Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, an event which will ever dwell in the grateful remembrance of those who were present on the occasion, and in scarcely a less degree of those members who were unable to avail themselves of the privilege.
"At its Annual Meeting this club desires to assure Mrs. Roe and the members of her family of its sincere sympathy with her in the bereavement which she has sustained, to convey to her its grateful acknowledgment of the abundant hospitality she exercised toward the club on the occasion of its visit to her home last June, and to thank her for her generous gift of an admirable portrait of her late husband."
I have the honor to be, Madam, with great respect,