Samuel B. (Samuel Beach) Axtell letter to Theodore F. Dwight

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  Dwight, Theodore F. Letter

  Manuscripts

  This collection consists of an autograph album containing handwritten notes, letters, poems, and drawings by approximately 200 friends and acquaintances of American author Charles Warren Stoddard, including leading American literary figures, journalists, poets, critics, politicians, and actors of the late 19th century. Among the many notable contributors are Samuel Clemens, Bret Harte, and Joaquin Miller. The earliest item in the book is an 1863 dedication by Thomas Starr King, and continues with contributions primarily from members of San Francisco literary society beginning in the mid-to-late 1860s through the late 1890s, as well as from friends in other locales where Stoddard lived or traveled including Louisville, Kentucky; Washington, D.C.; Massachusetts; New York; and Hawaii. A letter from L.C. Bayles (page 23) introduces lines of verse with the note "in accordance with your request," reflecting Stoddard's curation of the album as a compendium of verse and personal sentiments tailored towards friendships and literary musings. The volume includes two photographs of groups of men and women, captioned, "Riverdale, N.Y., July 4th 1890" (page 116). There are manuscript poems and lines of verse, often penned specifically for Stoddard, from literary friends including Isaac Hull Adams; Daniel Dulany Addison; Benjamin Parke Avery; William Barry; Fred Buel; James F. Bowman; George Burrows; Carrie Carlton; Bliss Carman; Pierre Cauwet; Robert W. Chambers; Sarah M. Clarke; Ada Clare; Katherine E. Conway; Ina D. Coolbrith; R.M. Daggett; Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren; Malcolm Douglas; Theodore F. Dwight; Eugene Field; Hamlin Garland; Grace Greenwood; Bret Harte; Jerome Hart; John Hay; Charles Hinton; Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.; William Dean Howells; Daniel E. Hudson; Thomas A. Janvier; Tremenheere Johns; Ralph Keeler; George Kennan; Orpheus C. Kerr; Alice Kingsbury (Cooley); Rudyard Kipling; Emilie Lawson; James Linen; Fitz Hugh Ludlow; Adah Isaacs Menken; John Malone; Joaquin Miller; Morton Mitchell and Laddie Mitchell; James Whitcomb Riley; James Jeffrey Roche; Edgar Saltus; Richard Henry Savage; Emma D.E.N. Southworth; Frank Soulé; Bella Z. Spencer; Horatio Stebbins; Maria Longworth Storer (with sketches); J.D. Strong; M.D. Strong; H.A. Stuart; T.R. Sullivan; Bayard Taylor; Charles Wadsworth; Charles Henry Webb; May Wentworth; George Edward Woodberry; and R.C. Wyllie. Prose and letters from L.C. Bayles; Frederick Billings; Ezra S. Carr and his wife, Jeanne C. Smith Carr; Samuel Clemens; Laura Cuppy; G.B. Densmore; Annie Fields; Archibald C. Gunter; Francis King Harte; Louise E. Holden; Jules Luquiens; C.T.H. Palmer; Theodore Roosevelt; Anna Josephin Savage; Rodney L. Tabor; Charles A. Wetmore; Virgil M. Williams; and Thérèse Yelverton. Drawings include ones by Reginald B. Birch; John S. Bugbee; Arthur Lemon; G. Thomas; and Theodore Wores. There are also brief notes and/or signatures of individuals including Charles Francis Adams; Henry Adams; Frances Hodgson Burnett; Ada, Dyas; Louise Imogen Guiney; Iza Duffus Hardy; Clarence King; Francis D. Millet; Thomas Nelson Page; Theodore Roosevelt; Charles Dudley Warner; and Lydia Woodworth. The contents are handwritten on blank pages in an "Album" published by Leavitt & Allen, consisting of 241 pages including an engraved title page and frontispiece and [8] other engraved plates with illustrations by Creswick, W.H. Bartlett, W. Tombleson; J. Smillie and T. Addison Richards; engravings by J. Sartain; J. Bannister; Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Smillie; J. White; and C.T. Giles. Edges gilt.

  mssHM 35075

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  Dwight Bartlett letters to family

  Manuscripts

  Series of seventeen letters sent by Dwight Bartlett from Nevada and Utah to his family in Connecticut between 1870 and 1873. The letters are addressed to his mother Christine Fisher Bartlett and sister Christina Bartlett Carpenter (later Brainerd). Bartlett's letters provide vivid accounts, many of them disparaging, of his experiences with and observations of life in the West. He writes throughout of his homesickness, illnesses, monetary losses, and the advent of the railroad. He also specifically writes about the Shoshone and Ute Indians in Utah and of the Mormons, who he derides as having "very few men of intelligence and wealth...so they lack the elements that give strength and dignity to a community" (1870, Jan.5); of traveling to San Francisco to organize a company to work the mines in the Cope District (he later wrote that the trip "accomplished nothing"), of the contrast in opportunities for those with a "little style" and poor workingmen, and of his belief that unemployment, especially on the Pacific Railroad, was caused by Chinese laborers (1870, March 5); of the lack of opportunities in the mines near Pine Grove, Nevada, of passing up an opportunity to accompany an expedition to Big Horn because "it is almost certain death for white men to go there unless they go in large numbers and well armed," of his lack of respect for political figures such as U.S. Grant and Ben Butler, of his low opinion of Nevada Indians ("certain...writers have thrown a false and foolish glamour around the character of the Indian"), and of the "frog pond lawyers" in mountain camps (1870, July 27); of the danger of the mines near Virginia City, of which he writes "a larger proportion of men who work in these mines have been killed than of those who were in the war," particularly at the Yellow Jacket Mine (1870, Sep.15); of attending the legislature at Carson, where "it is said votes were sold dog cheap," of the frequent activities of vigilante committees, who stormed a jail and hung a prisoner, and of the jails being so full that "old bums can get drunk with impunity for there is no place to put them" (1871, March 29); of a traveling bull and bear fight and of the haunting of a cabin near Dayton, Nevada, by a spirit named Anne (1871, Aug.2); of fires in Virginia City and Pioche and the subsequent escape of prisoners (1871, Oct.2); and of an earthquake centered near Inyo, California (1872, Apr.13).

  mssHM 26633-26649

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  Samuel Hopkins Willey letter to Miss Lord

  Manuscripts

  Letter from Samuel Hopkins Willey to a Miss Lord, sent from San Francisco. In the hastily written letter Willey writes that he has put up "articles of my soliciting" and that he has mislaid a prospectus and would like to be sent another copy. He also writes that "it is very hard for me in the press of care to do work for this school."

  mssHM 73058

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  Joseph Hooker letter to Ogden Hoffman

  Manuscripts

  Hooker encloses a copy of "the report of my first battle," which he says will be withheld from publication for a few days but it will "be the cause of no little excitement." He also writes that "I have a glorious division."

  mssHM 19014

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  A. B. Frost letter to Carolyn Wells

  Manuscripts

  Frost wrote this letter to author Carolyn Wells from his home in Pasadena, California. In the last part of the letter, Frost responds to a question about whether he ever sketched Walt Whitman by saying "No, I never made a drawing of Walt Whitman. I wish I had. I regard him as a humbug, a poser, a self advertiser."

  mssHM 82429

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  W.R. Isaacs MacKay letter to Joseph Libbey Folsom

  Manuscripts

  MacKay hopes that Folsom's health is improving, and writes to Folsom that "Congress could not fail to exonerate you from all accountability" and that "one thing is certain, you have not been dealt fairly with." He hopes that Folsom's "business troubles are finally closed." He laments the choice of John Bigler for governor of California, saying "I could hardly suppose that California could have sunk so low."

  mssHM 19075