| ***** She had known Frederick
W. Sims since the 1850s when he had worked at the Savannah Republican.
He may have aided her during a visit to Savannah in 1869, when she was
trying to forge publishing connections Bryan may also have encountered
the "old and dear friend" earlier in 1875, when she was is New York
City. He had journeyed from there to California, where he killed himself
in San Francisco on May 26. The previous day Sims had reached out to
Bryan She recalled: |
| He had been distinguished for his learning,
his pure intellectual busy life, his generous charity. He was now old,
broken in health and spirits, lonely dependant. He felt himself a burden
and life became "too hard." He wrote me a sad little letter and sent me
a singular poem ... in which a mortal, weary of existence and
contemplating suicide, questions his Creator, questions his own
intuitions as to its right or wrong. The earnest inquiry was left
unanswered, but my poor friend must have solved it for himself. The next
day after the poem and letter were written, he was found in his room,
sitting beside the window -- dead. The yellow sunset afterglow was on
his peaceful face and white hair, a vial of morphine lay beside him.
{p2} |
| {From Mary Edward Bryan, Her
Early Life and Works; Canter Brown, Jr., Larry Eugene Rivers, 2015.
She is reputed to have been the first woman to publish fiction under her
own name and become a mass selling success.} |
|