Articles on the death of Charles Claude Bailey Seymour

“Calamity is a common thing, and no human heart can escape from the grief that it engenders. But some forms of calamity are more startling than others, alike in character and in suddenness, and have a deeper and widers cope of affliction. Such a distress—sudden, sharp, and bitter—has fallen upon the journalism of our country, and upon a great multitude of personal friends, in the death of Mr. Charles C. B. Seymour, the musical and dramatic editor of The Timtes. Mr. Seymour expired at his residence, in Union-square, yesterday morning, about 9 o’clock, after an illness of five days. His disease was rheumatism of the brain. He was in the fortieth year of his age, having been born—at London, England—on the 10th [possible 18th, difficult to read] of December, 1829. An Englishman by birth, Mr. Seymour was yet a thorough American in character and feeling. He came to this city in 1849, and his first avocation here was that of teaching. When The New York Times was started, in 1850, he sent articles to it, [illeg.] a venture, which attracted immediate attention by the ability and brilliancy so displayed, and was presently engaged on the editorial staff of that paper. His position—which he has occupied ever since, with the fullest credit and the highest honor—was one in which critical faculties of the first order must be continually exercised—one that requires learning, taste, courage, impartiatlity, sensibility of temperament, and energetic industry that nothing can tire. To say that he filled it superbly—so as to make no pause, and to leave no void in the performance of exacting and incessant duties—is merely to do him simple justice. But it was not his ability alone that commended him to the sincere respect of those sensitive classes whereof he wrote, and that knit him to the hearts of his fellow-workers. His temperament was sweet, and his life was gentle. He sympathized to the quick with every manifestation of talent. He took the world with an innocent gaiety of mood that was contagious and delightful. He was a ready and a true friend in time of trouble. He was not afflicted with vanity. He did not vaunt the prerogative of the editor. He was a simple man, who took his part in the everyday work of life, and did his best to make it faithful and worthy. How zealous he was in toil, only those can fully appreciate who have been his associates in the same line of labor. Intense and continuous application to the art of writing had given him that brilliant facility which never degenerates into commonplaces [sic]. How clear and terse his style was—how delicately, the light of his humor played along the silver threads of his thought—there is no need to remind the thousands of readers who have so often enjoyed the musical and dramatic column of The Times. There have been days within the last year when his pen has faltered in its work, but that was the inevitable result of enfeebled health. Though seemingly robust, he very often suffered from severe attacks of asthma. The disease that has ended his life found him weakened by one of these attacks, and past the endurance of pain. He will be remembered by many with admiration and by some with love. His rank as a man of letters rests mainly upon his brilliant labors in journalism—labors which, in his as in every kindred case, must grow dimmer and dimmer with each succeeding day. One memorial of him, more permanent in character, remains—in a volume of biography that he wrote for Harpers, by whom it was published some ten years ago. It is a book that shows studious research, conscientious thought, rare skill in the analysis of character, and the usual crystal clearness of his style. Of incidents in his life there were few that concern the public. He was, we remember, The Times correspondent at the Paris Exposition, where his services, as one of the American Commission, were recognized by the presentation of a medal from the Emperor of the French. From January to July, 1865, he was associated with Mr. Theodore Hagen in The New-York Weekly Review, which paper he edited with marked discretion and taste. Some two years since he married, and he leaves a widow and infant child. Mr. Seymour’s funeral will take place at Grace Church, on Wednesday, at noon.”