Read part one here.
After the death of their daughter, Marion, in 1876, the Gilders felt the weight of the world on their shoulders. They went to Bordentown to stay with aunt Maria and to bury their child in the family plot of the local cemetery.
Sometime after his return to New York, Richard expressed his grief in his journal to his dear friend and noted naturalist, John Burroughs (1837-1921): “I am glad that you had some acquaintance with little Marion, whom we buried the other day. Such a brief life seems to take such frail hold of mankind, and yet, I never knew a person who impressed me more with his or her individuality… it was September, quiet and sad, with gleams of inspiration from natural beauty. We went often to Marion’s grave. We left an evergreen wreath there.”
Earlier that year, Richard and Burroughs circulated a letter to newspapers mentioning a series of possible public lectures by Walt Whitman (1819-1892) on the death of fallen President Abraham Lincoln and what his legacy meant to the nation. Meeting the unassuming poet with his signature flowing beard for the first time the previous year, Richard as a poet, was impressed with his body of work. Whitman agreed to the proposal but postponed his first lecture for a year due to severe health issues. Close to the anniversary of Lincoln’s death, on April 14, 1879, Whitman held his first lecture in New York City’s Steck Hall.
Over the next 11 years, these traveling lectures proved to be popular with audiences. In some cases, Whitman would recite the four poems that he wrote about Lincoln. They gave Whitman the financial stability that he needed and generously thanked Richard and Burroughs for their friendship and support. He considered Richard a “sane man in the general madness” of “that New York delirium.”
As much as Richard tried to pace himself, the hectic amount of work led to “nerve exhaustion.” Ordered by his physician to take a required rest, he, his wife, and their son Rodman (born in 1877), welcomed a scenic excursion through Europe for 15 months in 1879-80. Upon their return, Richard was healthy enough to resume his duties again. But soon fate intervened once more.
A year later, Dr. Josiah G. Holland (1819-1881), the founder of Scribner’s Monthly, unexpectedly died, passing the mantle to Richard as editor-in-chief. In taking charge, his first big decision was renaming the periodical to The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine. Filled with lavish illustrations from emerging artists like James McNeil Whistler, Frederick Remington, Thomas Moran, and others, it soon became one of the most accomplished magazines of its day.
Contributing writers included Mark Twain, Jack London, Henry James, Stephen Crane, US Presidents Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt, and absorbing prose penned by Walt Whitman. By 1890, the magazine peaked at over 200,000 subscribers.
As the number of subscriptions and Richard’s reputation grew, so did his family. The Gilders would eventually have seven children; five would survive to adulthood. With the need for more space, the Gilders bought a summer home along the headwaters of Buzzard’s Bay in the sleepy village of Marion, Massachusetts in 1882. The gray-shingled cottage blended into the natural scenery of a meadow except for a high set of stairs that led to the front door. In the back, the property sloped to the water’s edge.
Not far from a stand of white pines were the rock walls of an abandoned refinery for storing whale oil. Richard hired famed architect Stanford White (1853-1906) to design a large stone fireplace and transform the structure into a rustic art studio for his wife.
In 1886, President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) and his young wife, Frances Folsom (1864 -1947), rented a cottage in Marion called Harbor Lane. They would reside there for the next four summers, visiting the Gilders on occasion. Although they both eventually found other summer homes to buy, they remained friends until the end.
In 1887, the Gilders had another friend, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) create a low-relief portrait of Mrs. Cleveland as she modeled for him in the stone studio. Five years later, he completed a 17-inch medallion of her portrait. Cast in bronze, the medallion was presented to Richard a decade later from his wife as a birthday gift.
This was not the first time that Saint-Gaudens made something special for the Gilders. In 1879, they and their infant son, Rodman, sat for Saint-Gaudens when he produced their likeness on his first bronze relief. For eternity, their expressions are somber without the faintest traces of a smile. They may have lived in an ivory tower, but were not imprisoned by its walls. Richard saw inhumanity on a daily basis, and tried to correct its course.
In October of 1884, former president and Civil War Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, was diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer. Coming to terms with his fate, he looked gaunt as he walked into Richard’s magazine office at The Century and discussed a plan to write his personal memoirs while he was still competent.
Such a publication seemed the best solution to guarantee financial support for his wife and family after his death. Following the meeting, Richard remarked in a letter to a colleague: “General Grant has just been in…spent some time here and wants us to publish his book or books. It makes me sad to see him so lame… I will tell you of our interview on Saturday. It was in every way satisfactory and I think a good impression was made on both sides… His ideas agree with ours to make a good book… at a fair commission.”
However, when writer, humorist, and publisher Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (1835-1910), heard about the financial offer that Richard proposed, his publishing company presented a counter offer that was more liberal than The Century could provide. Grant heartedly and emotionally accepted. Taking the loss in stride, Richard noted about Twain: “he succeeded in carrying off the prize.”
In the end, Grant’s “Memoirs” were a great triumph, handsomely paying his widow the largest single royalty check in history at that time. Despite the outcome, the prize was reclaimed years later when Twain’s company faltered and was acquired by none other than The Century.
Furthermore, Richard was humbled that the Grant family requested that his poem, The Dead Comrade, be read at the great general’s funeral.
In the autumn of 1888, the Gilders sold their home first home in New York City and purchased a larger home on Clinton Place (now Eighth Street) in the neighborhood of Washington Square. Richard boasted that he finally had work space large enough to cater to his projects.
Quite the humanitarian, he founded and became president of New York’s Kindergarten Association, the New York Association for the Blind, and the first chairman of the Tenement House Commission, in which he made recommendations to the city government regarding substandard living conditions and fire hazards amongst tenement dwellers. However, he and his wife were against women’s suffrage, emphasizing that the right to vote would corrupt their morals and displace families.
In 1893, they sold their summer home and vacationed in the Berkshire Mountains for five years before purchasing a farm in the town of Tyringham, called Four Brooks Farm. The Gilders welcomed their first guests, former President Cleveland and his family, to the farm in the summer of 1899.
After the passing of Mark Twain’s wife, Olivia Clemens (1845-1904), the writer turned to the Gilders in his hour of grief. Her unexpected death left a huge void in the family that was hard to heal. Nothing mattered except the need to grieve away from their home of close memories.
Twain noted to Richard: “I am as one who wanders and has lost his way… she was our breath, she was our life, and now we are nothing.” He asked the Gilders if he and his daughters could stay at their farm and during that summer, and they did so. Twain’s youngest daughter, Jean, suffered from epilepsy, but found comfort in the country scenery and caring for the horses.
On a starry evening in late July, she and Rodman Gilder had the pleasure of riding a saddle horse together. The horse had been obtained from Italy for companionship. As they entered the town of Lee, all appeared cordial until the bells from a trolley below the Pleasant Street Bridge frightened Jean’s horse. Unable to avoid the collision, Jean was thrown and sustained a broken angle. Tragically, the horse was dragged and killed.
Jean was then assisted on the trolley by Rodman and taken to a local doctor, where her injury was dressed and treated. It wasn’t the recovery that Twain had intended, but was grateful that the outcome was not worse.
As the years wore on into a new century, technology progressed at an accelerated rate. The early days of the automobile, airplane, and radio were upon us. So were refinements in the printing industry that allowed competitors to fulfil the public’s appetite for quality illustrations at a cheaper rate.
This spelled the decline of The Century, which hovered around 125,000 subscribers. Implementing counter measures, Richard focused on publishing more nonfiction articles without the coarse language and condescending disposition that other magazines relished. He also delved into publishing three volumes of poems that he wrote.
As deeply immersed as he was in his work, he couldn’t swim against the current of the future.
In early November of 1909, he became severely ill and collapsed while conducting a lecture. Rushed to the hospital, he was declared by physicians to be suffering from the effects of stress. Two weeks later, Richard and his family were staying at the 9 W. 10th St. address of his close friend and longtime writer for his magazine, Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer (1851-1934), as he was invited to give a major presentation on her new book about the history of New York City.
Standing before a room filled with distinguished dinner guests, he stopped midway through his talk and collapsed to the floor. Disbelief blanketed the audience as realization confirmed the worst. At the age of 65, he had died of heart failure. Helena was stunned.
With his presence gone, his beloved magazine continued until 1930, but it never again regained its status as America’s best known periodical magazine.
And so, Richard was laid to rest next to his family, in the town where he was born and personal memories thrived. He never forgot Bordentown or its kindness. In essence, he adhered to the inner angels that made him a good citizen.
His poem, “The Dead Comrade,” offers poignant reflections about his life just as importantly, as it was recited at President Grant’s funeral:
Come, soldiers, arouse ye!
Another has gone;
Let us bury our comrade,
His battles are done.
His sun it is set;
He was true, he was brave,
He feared not the grave,
There is naught to regret.