Since 1903, members of Arts and Letters have delivered commemorative tributes to fellow members who have passed away. These remarks celebrate and reflect on the lives and work of the members being honored and acknowledge their contribution to the arts. A selection of tributes is now available in the digital archive below. As we prepared this archive, we were reminded that these tributes reflect their times, and, in some instances, include terminology and social and moral judgments we do not endorse.
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Of the five members of the Academy whom it is my privilege to commemorate, four showed how local is the maxim of the specialists that a man can do only one thing well, and reinforced the ancient opinion that talent of a high order is a force that can be applied successfully along several lines of aptitude and interest. Richard Watson Gilder was a poet, an editor, and a man of those affairs which concern the common welfare; and in each of these capacities his work was memorable. His formal education did not go beyond the old-fashioned seminary, but his vital education was a by-product of all his activities. The bugle sounded in his youth, but there were more commanding calls for him. Journalism afforded him a brief apprenticeship in preparation for the editorial direction of Hours at Home, of Scribner's Monthly, and finally of the Century Magazine, a connection of life-long duration and of effective service to the rising art and widening literature of the country. His nature was quick to respond to the unspoken appeal of neglected children and to the evil conditions of over-crowded tenements; he was a citizen whose ideals sent him into most laborious and painstaking work, and inspired him with the vision of a city that should be clean, wholesome, and beautiful. Organized decency and organized art found in him an apostle whose gifts of mind and of character made him a leader; while the activity of his hands and the deep stirrings of his heart enriched his poetry and gave it a fine sincerity, a moving sense of brotherhood with men in their various fortunes. The slender volumes of verse in which his life and art find record have been gathered into a single book of lyrics; for he was a song-writer after the older English fashion. His sensitive imagination; his delicate touch, invigorated by conviction and thought; his artistic temperament, enamoured of the beautiful and drawn to new and freer poetic forms, gave his verse vitality and charm, half-pathetic and half-prophetic of the better fortunes of the race to come.