Sarah Nast. He remembers him as a gentle and witty companion, as the creator of our conception of Santa Claus, as a sad and lonely man whose life ended poignantly in a foreign land. The paper boy concluded that the house was haunted; and when he finally saw the Lord himself peering out of the window, he was definitely through and would deli ver no more papers to that house!Of course, I was not old enough to appreciate that my grandfather was having financial problems; but I later learned that it distressed him that he was unable to be as generous to his family and friends as he had been during his more affluent years.I recall Thomas Nast as a relatively short man, perhaps five feet six or seven, always impeccably dressed in dark jacket with boutonniere, waistcoat with gold watch chain, a stickpin in his ascot tie, and gray striped trousers such as worn with a cutaway. 1808-1875 -- Humor. There is not a pane of glass in the whole city.… The river is so close … when the tide is out the smell is in; when it comes back again it washes the smell away.The picture of you and the grandchildren is up. I was fortunate in being a favorite of his as a boy, no doubt because my mother, Edith Nast, was very close to her father and I was his eldest grandson.Most of my grandfather’s paintings had to do with Civil War subjects, many of them based on sketches he had made on the scene thirty years earlier. New York; the family lived first and New York and later in Morristown, New Jersey. 1846 Immigrated to the United States with his mother, Appolonia Abriss, and his sister, Catherine. Among the sketches that he handed out to reporters as his ship was about to sail was one of himself shaking with trepidation as he stood on the red-hot equator, while “Yellow Jack,” symbolic of yellow fever, popped out of a box and pestilential fumes poured out of a volcano in the background.My grandfather departed from New York by steamer in July, 1902, convinced, as revealed in a sketch that he left behind, that he would never return. He and his wife, Sarah Edwards, settled in Morristown, New Jersey and raised five children together. One, a merciless and funny self-caricature in oil painted eighteen years later, depicts the artist’s complete bewilderment and despair at being duped. It was an imposing three-story house with mansard roof and widow’s walk, set well back from the street, from which it was hidden by tall evergreen trees. I should enormously enjoy meandering around (to big towns—I don’t want to go to the little ones) with you for company.My idea is not to fatten the lecture agents and lyceums on the spoils, but put all the ducats religiously into two equal piles, and say to the artist and lecturer, “Absorb these.” …Call the gross receipts $100,000 for tour months and a half, and the profit from $60,000 to $75,000 (I try to make the figures large enough and leave it to the public to reduce them).I did not put in Philadelphia because P____ owns that town, and last winter when I made a little reading-trip he only paid me $300 and pretended his concert (I read fifteen minutes in the midst of a concert) cost him a vast sum, and so he couldn’t afford any more. But the dollar sign and the question mark on his travelling bag tell the story. In addition, sanitary conditions were poor and yellow fever was prevalent. There he was captured and returned to the United States. Title: Sarah Edwards Nast Creator: Thomas Nast Date Created: c. 1882 Physical Dimensions: h36.4 x w27.2 cm (Image) Type: Pencil and ink on paper Rights: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Jack Finney Illustrated News (for which he covered the Heenan-Sayers fight of 1860 and Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services It makes me homesick, but I’d rather be homesick than have any other kind of sickness. Oops, some error occurred while uploading your photo(s). Nast, Jr. It seemed incredible in view of the optimistic reports and liberal dividends he had been receiving.