Richard Grant White

Richard Grant White (May 23, 1822 – April 8, 1885)

Early life White was born on May 23, 1822, in New York City to Richard Mansfield White (1797–1849) and Ann Eliza (née Tousey) White (1802–1842). The elder White also served as secretary of the Allaire Iron Works company.

His father was the second son of the Rev. Calvin White (b. 1762), (His great-grandfather was Moses White, himself the eldest son of Deacon Isaac White, who was born in Upper Middletown in 1727 and was a hatter by trade who married Huldah Knowles of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1749.) His grandfather Calvin, who served as rector of Christ’s Church in Middletown, Connecticut, was first married to Phebe Camp and secondly to Jane Mardenbrough.

White prepared for college at Dr. Muhlenberg's Institute in Flushing on Long Island and Columbia Grammar School. He distinguished himself as a scholar of letters and mathematics and was the orator and Grand Marshal at Commencement. He later received a M.A. from New York University as well.

Career He studied medicine, with Dr. Alfred C. Post, and read law, with Judge Woodruff, and was admitted to the Bar in 1845. In an editorial in the New York Times after his death, it was written:

By the death of Mr. Richard Grant White American literature loses an interesting writer and a variously accomplished man. Mr. White's Shakespearean studies are, perhaps, the most satisfactory results of his scholarship; more so, certainly, than his labors in verbal criticism. In these latter an extreme sensitiveness led him to regard every difference of opinion as almost a personal offense, and by reason of this peculiarity of temper his abilities were rated by the reading public less highly than they really deserved. His essay prompted several responses, including from the New York Times, which wrote in February 1881, "It is a libel, pure and simple, made up of an exaggerated statement of some of the poorest results contained in the report with some touches of false coloring. Mr. White's conclusions on the first count are, therefore, vitiated. His argument that the theory of public schools is false is a 'medley of fallacies.'"

Upon the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, White became the chief of the United States Revenue-Marine (which later became the United States Coast Guard), an armed customs enforcement service, in New York. and "Shakespeare's Scholar". He also wrote books on subjects, such as 'Revelations: A Companion to the New Gospel of Peace " and a civil war satire, "The New Gospel of Peace, According to St. Benjamin". He was a vice-president of the New Shakespeare Society of London, England and edited a twelve-volume edition of Shakespeare from 1857 to 1865.

Personal life On October 16, 1850, he was married to Alexina Black Mease (1830–1921), the daughter of Charles Bruton Mease and Sarah Matilda (née Graham) Mease, a Charleston family who was then living in New York. a prominent Beaux-Arts architect and partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, who designed many houses for the rich as well as numerous public, institutional, and religious buildings. In 1906, he was murdered by millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw over White's relationship with Thaw's wife, actress Evelyn Nesbit.

White owned a violoncello now part of the collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

White died of pneumonia at his home on 330 East 17th Street in New York City on April 5, 1885. After a funeral at St. Mark's Church, he was buried at Rosedale Cemetery in Orange, New Jersey.

Published works On Shakespeare

Memoirs of Shakespeare Studies in Shakespeare Shakespeare's Scholar (1854) Essay on the Authorship of the Three Parts of Henry VI (1859) Riverside Shakespeare (1883 and 1901)

Other topics The New Gospel of Peace by St. Benjamin (pseudonym used by White) (1866). A satire of the civil war written in biblical language. The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys (1884), a novel Recent exemplifications of False Philology with contributions by Richard Grant White / by Fitzedward Hall. (This was a critique of Words and their uses.) National Hymns, How They are Written and How They are Not Written (1861)