Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/93

 VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

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When his old comrades stood by his cof- fin, and, shaken with sobs, looked down on that gracious figure, "hushed in the alabas- ter arms of death" and clad in the simple jacket of gray, in which, more than forty years agone, he had swept through the dust and sweat of battle, storming into the fight in all the joyous valor of his youth — gazing on his delicate patrician features, clear cut as a Sicilian cameo and accentuated into an even finer beauty than that they wore in life — surely there must have flashed through the mind of more than one of them those words that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Gloucester touching the dead king:

A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman Framed in the prodigality of nature The spacious world cannot again afford.

"Lift is an instrument with many stops," and, good player that he was, he used the best of them with courage, constancy, vigor and discernment. In his young manhood, he knew^ what it was to be very poor — he came, in later years, to know what it was to be very rich, but the sweetness of his nature and the vigor of his soul disdained to consider the temptations that both ofifer, and he remained, through storm and sun- shine, just the same — his own simple self, ])ure, fearless, just, generous and loving.

Those who did not know him, if their eyes ever chance to light on these pages, will say that what has been set down here is all mere eulogy. No doubt, it will sound like eulogy to them. Yet every word of it is simple truth, only marred in the telling, for to those who knew him as he really was, any portrait, drawn by even the most "practiced hand," must prove at best but a blurred semblance of the noble gentleman, whose simple, unselfish, godly life disdains, as it w^ere, all human panegyric.

And now we have lost that bright and vigorous and lovable personality, that repre- sented to not a few of us so much of the joy of life. As is the inexorable law of being, even the memory of that radiant figure shall first grow dim, and then altogether die out, as the men and women of his gener- ation pass away, unless, indeed, a grateful capital shall seek to perpetuate in enduring bronze the form and figure of one jvistly counted the greatest citizen of the common- wealth in his day and generation. Whether this be done or not, the tradition of his ro-

bust and gentle virtues and of his manifold activities for the well-being of his state and his people, must, we repeat, long endure.

To some of us it was given to know him long and well — to sympathize with his en- thusiasms and to take pride in his achieve- ments — above all to discern the beauty of his daily life, that still lives on "in hearts he touched with fire." To the least of these, it has seemed a pious duty to set down, even if in homeliest fashion, what he himself saw and knew of this vivid and beneficent personality, to the end that future gener- ations shall have something more than mere tradition oft'ered them, when they inquire how this noble "Virginia Worthy" lived and died. For his public service they must seek the public record.

And when the young Virginian of a hun- dred years to come shall bend over the page that chronicles the history of his mother- slate, and shall scan with kindling eye and flushing cheek the long roll of those, who have made her "glorious by the pen" and "famous by the sw^ord," though he shall see there greater names, which, perchance, may quicker stir the pulse's play, yet shall he see there none worthier of his reverence or of his emulation than the name of Joseph Bryan. W. Gordon McCabe.

(Note. — This paper was prepared at the special request of the Executive Committee of the Virginia Historical Society).

John Stewart Bryan, eldest son of Joseph and Isobel Lament (Stewart) Bryan, was born at Brook Hill, Henrico county. Vir- ginia, the home of his mother, October 2^^, 1871. His education was obtained in pri- vate preparatory schools and universities : I'homas S. Norwood's University School, Episcopal High School, University of Vir- ginia, B. A. and M. A., 1893, and Harvard University Law School, LL. B., 1897. In 1898 he began in Richmond the practice of the profession he had chosen, and for which he had specially prepared — the law. In 1900 he became editorial writer on the Richmond "Times-Dispatch ;" in 1906 president of the Times-Dispatch Company ; in 1909 president of the Richmond News-Leader Company. Mr. Bryan is a member of the historical, charitable and social organizations of Rich- mond. Mr. Bryan married, June 4, 1903, Anne Eliza, second daughter of David Bry- don and \\'illie (Buffington) Tennant, of Petersljurg. Children: Amanda Stewart, born July 13, 1904; David Tennant, born