Poetic legend says that on a moonlight night, two thousand years ago, along the shores of the gulf of Patras, a mighty voice was heard, crying "Great Pan is dead!" And from the mountains and the valleys, the woods and grottoes, where stood the altars of those who worshiped at the shrine of Pan, was reechoed back the cry, "Great Pan is dead!" On the second of April, when the winged lightning bore over a continent, and to foreign lands beyond the sea, the news that W. C. Brann of the ICONOCLAST was dead, in every land where his writings are known, from men and women who worship at the shrine of genius, went up the wailing cry, "Brann of the ICONOCLAST is dead." Oh, death! thou grim and imperious master of us all, how dreadful to the living are your silent darts, that are ever striking with impartial hand the old man in his dotage, the strong man in his prime, the brave man in his courage and the craven in his fear.
W. C. Brann was 43 years of age, and had just arrived at that period when he was beginning to realize the hopes and aspirations of years, when he was stricken down amid the rejoicings of many and the sorrows of many thousands more. He was born in Coles County, Illinois, and at the age of two and a half years, by the death of his mother, was placed with a sister some two years older than himself, in the care of Mr. Hawkins and his wife, who lived on a farm in that county. He remained with them ten years, and then, longing to be something more than a farm hand, he packed his small belongings in a little box and at night, when all was still, he took the box under his arm and went out into the lonely darkness of the moonless night, without money, friends or education, to commence the struggle which ended in his untimely death at Waco.
Mr. Brann always spoke in the most kindly terms of Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins, and when he purchased his home in this city, he offered to share it with them, but having grown old and being comfortably situated they did not desire to change.
The first place he secured was that of a bell boy in a hotel, and from that passed on to other situations, realizing all the time, what every proud spirited boy would do under the circumstances, the bitterness that friendlessness, ignorance and poverty bring to the struggle of life. Among other things he learned the trade of painter and grainer, also that of printer, all the time storing his mind with what scraps of education that his life of poverty and toil permitted. After he gathered sufficient education he became a newspaper writer, and in 1877, at Rochelle, Ill., was married to Miss Carrie Martin, who, with two children, Grace and William Carlyle, "Little Billy," as we call him, survive him. After the death of Mrs. Brann's mother, he took to his home one of her sisters, now Mrs. Marple of Fort Worth, and although often driven to the most desperate straits to make a living, he proved to her to be both a brother and a father. He continued his newspaper career in Illinois and Missouri, until some thirteen years ago, when he came to Texas, and gradually became known by his connection with various papers of the State. For a short time he had an interest in a paper called the ICONOCLAST, published in Austin, but he soon found himself back at his old trade, that of driving his pen for others. At last, worn out by long years of unremitting and generally poorly requited toil, wearied with waiting for opportunity to write as he wished but could not do as an employee of others, he determined to again strike out for himself, as he had done in his early boyhood, and in 1894 came to this city and established the ICONOCLAST, which was a success from its first issue, and continued to grow in circulation as he grew in reputation as a writer, until the copy that witnessed his death reached an issue of nearly 90,000.
The world, for several generations, has been discussing whether Shakespeare wrote the plays that bear his name, thousands believing that it was impossible for a man who had no more education than Shakespeare had in his youth, to have exhibited the varied knowledge and learning that characterize his works, therefore these attribute them to Sir Francis Bacon, one of the most brilliant and best educated men of his time. All the evidence goes to show that at the age of 18, when Shakespeare married, that he had acquired with a "little Latin and less Greek," the ordinary education accorded to the sons of the well-to-do middle-class Englishmen of his time, of which his father was one. At 18 Mr. Brann had barely secured the rudiments of an English education, and had he lived to the age of Shakespeare, there is no telling to what heights, intellectually, he would have risen. From a slight knowledge of his hopes and aspirations, I can say, that while he dearly loved the ICONOCLAST, as a vehicle by which he could convey to the world his thoughts, he had aspirations that went far beyond it, and proposed that during the next ten nor twelve years, after his mind had been fully stored for the work, to leave as a legacy to the world, in a continuous work, his conception of the wrongs done to humanity, the evils that spring from them and the remedies to be applied. And all who have read him closely and noticed how, month by month, he grew greater and brighter, will surely join in saying, that the loss of such a work from such a man, at the meridian of his intellectual life, is only second, if not equal, to the loss of the unwritten volumes of Buckle's "History of Civilization."
Alas! that such a man, with such a great future before him should have died standing on the very threshold of his work.
In the private relations of life Mr. Brann was as extraordinary as in his public career; he presented that combination that is so rare that even novelists do not attempt to paint it, the combination of the lover and the husband, and as a father, a friend, a lover of humanity, with a broad mantle of charity for all, he had few equals.
While he wrote in prose, he was a poet, and of him can be truly said:
"The thoughts that stir the poet's heart
Are not the thoughts that others feel,
From the world's creed they are all apart,
And oftener work his woe than weal.
They are born of high imaginings,
Kindled to life by passion's fire,
As o'er earth's dross his fancy flings
The golden dreams that wrap his lyre."