Born at New Haven, Conn., Sept. 22, 1828; killed at the battle of Rig Bethel, June 10, 1861. An American author, and officer (of New York Volunteers) in the Civil War. He was military secretary to General Butler, with the rank of major. He wrote “Cecil Dreeme” (1861), “John Brent” (1862), “Edwin Brothertoft” (1862), “The Canoe and the Saddle” (1862), “Life in the Open Air” (1863).

Personal

  Theodore Winthrop’s life, like a fire long smouldering, suddenly blazed up into a clear, bright flame, and vanished. Those of us who were his friends and neighbors, by whose firesides he sat familiarly, and of whose life upon the pleasant Staten Island, where he lived, he was so important a part, were so impressed by his intense vitality, that his death strikes us with peculiar strangeness, like sudden winter-silence falling upon these humming fields of June. As I look along the wooded brook-side by which he used to come, I should not be surprised, if I saw that knit, wiry, light figure moving with quick, firm, leopard tread over the grass,—the keen gray eye, the clustering fair hair, the kind, serious smile, the mien of undaunted patience. If you did not know him, you would have found his greeting a little constrained,—not from shyness, but from genuine modesty and the habit of society. You would have remarked that he was silent and observant rather than talkative; and whatever he said, however gay or grave, would have had the reserve of sadness upon which his whole character was drawn. If it were a woman who saw him for the first time, she would inevitably see him through a slight cloud of misapprehension; for the man and his manner were a little at variance. The chance is that at the end of five minutes she would have thought him conceited. At the end of five months she would have known him as one of the simplest and most truly modest of men.

General

  Our American life lost by his death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its manifestations. That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was none the less true,—was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true. Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature, or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature which concerns itself with American life.

  There has been perhaps no loss to the literature of the nation from the war so severe as that of Theodore Winthrop. It is at the same time—and it is one of the remarkable occurrences which mark a period in every respect exceptional—almost certain that we owe the gift of his writings to the public to the war. The sacrifice of the soldier secured the fame of the author…. “John Brent,” his second novel, carries us across the Plains from California in a style such as pen has never crossed them before. The book should have been called “Don Fulano,” in honor of the matchless steed who so faithfully bears his master to the redressal of wrong and setting up of right, at eventful crises. A horse has seldom been so admirably described, so sharply individualized. It is a work to rank with the great masters of the chisel and the palette as well as of the pen. The descriptions of prairie life, of the mountain passes, the wavy landscape, the far-off approach of caravans, are admirable. So too is the individualization of the characters, the fresh, vigorous overland mail-carriers, the Oregon frontiersman, the disgusting rabble of Mormons from Lancashire.

  Mr. Winthrop’s writings show a freshness, a versatility, and a vigor which make his early death a loss greatly to be deplored. Had he lived, there can be little doubt that he would have become one of the greatest lights of American letters.

  The last sentence, in evident deprecation of the charge of partiality, points to the fact that Winthrop’s wandering life was a hindrance to the concentration of his energies; even to the perfection of his style…. On the other hand, the adventurous activity of his nature is the source of much of the charm of his work, which, like that of Sidney, to whom Mr. Curtis is fond of comparing him, was more than a mere promise. His claim to recognition lies not merely in his having been an actor as well as a dreamer, but in the fact that he has done substantial and peculiar though imperfectly-appreciated, work. He belonged in part to the class of the older writers in whose minds incident predominated, but he was also an analyst of the school of Hawthorne, and might, with length of years have been his most legitimate successor. The first phase is represented by his novel, “John Brent,” in great measure a graphic record of his experiences in the Far West, mingled with imaginative romance. The descriptive passages in this book, especially that of the chase, rivet our attention because they are brought into contact with scenes of emotion and passion, and are not mere transcripts of still life, such as we find on the gaudily-printed papers of old inn walls. “Edwin Brothertoft” is a tale of the Revolutionary War, which only misses being a classic by its frequent crudity of expression and ultra-ferocity of plot.

  They are strong stories, full of action and passion, but are written in a self-conscious, abrupt style; the sentiment is forced and the characterization unnatural…. Winthrop lacked experience, and in aiming to be original, became cramped and artificial: but he aimed high, and there are germs of good possibilities in his pages.

  His novels, though in parts crude and immature, have a dash and buoyancy—an outdoor air about them—which give the reader a winning impression of Winthrop’s personality. The best of them is, perhaps, “Cecil Dreeme,” a romance that reminds one a little of Hawthorne, and the scene of which is the New York University building on Washington Square, a locality that has been further celebrated in Henry James’s novel of “Washington Square.”