It's a grave subject. Brann is dead. Brann was a
fool. The fools were the wisest men at court; and
Shakespeare, who dearly loved a fool, placed his wisest
sayings into the mouths of men who wore the motley.
When he adorned a man with a cap and bells it was as
though he had given bonds for both that man's humanity
and intelligence. Neither Shakespeare nor any other
writer of books ever dared to depart so violently from
truth as to picture a fool whose heart was filled with
perfidy.
The fool is not malicious. Stupid people may think
he is, because his language is charged with the lightning's
flash; but they are the people who do not know the
difference between an incubator and an egg plant.
Touchstone, with unfailing loyalty, follows his master
with quip and quirk, into exile. When all, even his
daughters, have forsaken King Lear, the fool bares himself
to the storm and covers the shaking old man with his
own cloak. And when in our own day we meet the avatars
of Trinculo, Costard, Mercutio and Jacques, we find they
are men of tender susceptibilities, generous hearts and
intellects keen as a rapier's point.
Brann was a fool.
Brann shook his cap, flourished his bauble, gave a toss
to that fine head, and with tongue in cheek, asked
questions and propounded conundrums that stupid hypocrisy
could not answer. So they killed Brann.
. . .
Brann was born in obscurity. Very early he was cast
upon the rocks and nourished at the she-wolf's teat.
He graduated at the university of hard knocks and
during his short life took several post-graduate courses.
He had been wage-earner, printer's-devil, printer,
pressman, editor.
He knew the world of men, the struggling, sorrowing,
hoping, laughing, sinning world of men. And to those
whom God had tempted beyond what they could bear, his
heart went out. He read books with profit, and got great
panoramic views out into the world of art and poetry;
dreaming dreams and sending his swaying filament of
thought out and out, hoping it would somewhere catch and
he would be in communication with another world.
Discreet and cautious little men are known by the
company they keep. The fool was not particular about his
associates; children, sick people, insane folks, rich or poor
--it made no difference to him. He sometimes even sat at
meat with publicans and sinners.
He was a mystic and lived in the ideal. This deeply
religious quality in his nature led him into theology, and
he became a clergyman--a Baptist clergyman.
But no church is large enough to hold such a man as
this; the fool quality in his nature outcrops, and the jingle
of bells makes sleep to the chief pew-holder impossible.
So the fool had to go.
Then he founded that unique periodical, which, in
three years, attained a circulation of 90,000 copies. This
paper was not used for pantry shelves, lamp lighters, or
other base utilitarian purposes. It cost ten times as much
as a common newspaper, and the people who bought it
read it until it was worn out. All the things in this paper
were not truth; mixed up amid a world of wit were often
extravagance and much bad taste. It was only a fool's
newspaper!
In this periodical the fool railed and jeered and stated
facts about smirking complacency, facts so terrible that
folks said they were indecent. He flung his jibes at stupidity,
and stupidity sought to answer criticism by assassination.
Texas has a libel law patterned after the libel law of
the State of New York. If a man takes from you your
good name you can put him behind prison bars and place
shutters over the windows of his place of business.
The people who thought Brann had injured them did
not invoke the law. They invoked Judge Lynch----
A mob seized the fool, and, placing a rope about his
neck, led him naked through the October night, out to
the theological seminary, which they declared he had
traduced.
There they smote him with the flat of their hands, and
spat upon him. It was their intention to hang the fool,
but better counsel prevailed, and on his signing, in
terrorem, a document they placed before him, they gave him
warning to depart to another state. And on his promising
to do so, they let him go.
But the next day he refused to leave; and his flashing
wit still filled the air, now embittered through the outrage
visited upon him.
His enemies held prayer-meetings, invoking divine aid
for the fool's conversion--or extinction. One man quoted
David's prayer concerning Shimmei: "bring thou down
his hoar head to the grave in blood!" And others still,
prayed, "let his children be fatherless and his wife a
widow."
But still the fool flourished his bauble.
Then they shot him.
That hand which wrote the most Carlylean phrase of
any in America is cold and stiff. That teeming brain
which held a larger vocabulary than that of any man in
America is only clay that might stop a hole to keep the
wind away. That soul through which surged thoughts
too great for speech has gone a-journeying.
Brann is dead.
No more shall we see that lean, clean, homely face,
with its melancholy smile. No more shall we hear the fool
eloquently, and oh! so foolishly, plead the cause of the
weak, the unfortunate, the vicious. No more shall we
behold the tears of pity glisten in those sad eyes as his
heart was wrung by the tale of suffering and woe.
His children are fatherless, his wife a widow.
Brann the Fool is dead.--The Mirror.
April 14th, 1898.
* * *
WILLIAM COWPER BRANN.