Final Memorials of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Caroline Dall’s Copy
[Dall, Caroline H.] Final Memorials of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Edited by Samuel Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1887.
8vo.; frontispiece; tissue guard; illustrated; slight loss of paper to gutter; green cloth, spine stamped in gilt; lightly rubbed; extremities lightly frayed.
Together with:
Autograph letter signed, “N. Wadsworth,” to Mrs. Dall, May 11, 1898; one leaf folded, three pages covered.
First edition of this examination of the final fifteen years of Longfellow’s life as told by Samuel Longfellow, author of The Life Of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, through the later journals and correspondence as well as recently acquired earlier material. Longfellow also includes “the tributes and reminiscences by various hands, which present many traits and incidents of Mr. Longfellow’s character and life, and show something of what he was by the impression which he left upon those who came into his company,” as well as a memorial, bibliography, genealogy, and other supplementary material. 2610 copies; BAL12260. Caroline H. Dall’s copy, with her full ownership signature on the front endpaper, opposite a pasted-in obituary clipping noting Longfellow’s death. Also with a three page autograph letter signed by N. Wadsworth tipped-in at the rear, answering Dall’s questions about his father and General Paley’s experiences in Maine during the Revolutionary War; it merits quoting in full:
Father was never City Enquirer. Gen. Paley was captured at Thomaston, ME, in Feb. 1787. He had been in charge of the Maine Coast, but the time of his men had expired and he was left with only half a dozen soldiers, when he was surprised & captured by an expedition sent from the British position at Cast[rul]. He escaped from the fort at Cast[rul] on a stormy night after about two months imprisonment.
I enclose a note just received from Mr. Wheelwright on the closing of the West Church which I hope will answer the question you had in mind. Sincerely yours …
Though no intimate relationship between Dall and Longfellow has been documented, Dall tread firm ground on the outskirts of his intellectual circles, and in at least two instances Longfellow proved a warm ally by acting as intermediary between her and the center of that small universe. Dall wrote to Longfellow in 1854 on behalf of a German professor, Dr. Munch, recommending him for a professorship at Smith College. Longfellow replied that while he could not offer “much if any encouragement for Dr. Munch” in the face of the numerous applications from American academics, who were, he felt, perhaps better suited to the position, he would “with great pleasure lay his claims and qualifications before the President and Corporation.” In 1868, he gamely replied to her request for “two autographs” for unnamed “young people”; thanked her for sending along her article on Gale Hamilton—likely an unsigned review of Hamilton’s book, “Woman’s Wrongs: A Counter-irritant” (Boston, 1868), in Atlantic Monthly, XXI (April 1868), p. 509; and promised to solicit two autographs of Lowell for her young friends, adding humorously, of Lowell: “I do not believe [he] can be such an ‘intimate enemy’ of yours as you seem to imagine.”
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