"My Garden Acquaintance" in THE ATLANTIC ALMANAC 1869 with an excerpt "Three Unpublished Letters" in THE CENTURY February 1896 along with the ACTUAL Three Unpublished Letters bound in
Boston & New York: Ticknor & Fields and The Century Co., 1869 and 1896. First Edition. Hardcover. Small quarto (6" x 8-1/4") in full triple gilt-ruled black morocco leather with five raised bands and gilt-lettered spine, gilt dentelles. Illustrated with chromolithograph title page and 4 chromolithographs, one for each season. Lowell's article, "My Garden Acquaintance" appears in the ALMANAC which also includes contributions by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Using White's THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE as a launching point, Lowell's article is a delightful account of observations and interactions with various types of visiting birds--hummingbirds, robins, orioles, flickers, etc. The "Three Unpublished Letters" excerpt from THE CENTURY by Mary A. Clarke prints three letters by Lowell and her commentary on them. Tipped in are the three AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED (ALSs) consisting of 8 pages by Lowell along with one envelope. All three were written in May 1890. Lowell would die the following year. Some excerpts from these wonderful letters: "I used to be thought a fairly good observer; indeed, Darwin once paid me the doubtful compliment of saying to me, 'You ought to have been a naturalist.' I have lived in the same house (except when in Europe) for seventy-one years, and robins find good building-sites in my trees. I once counted seventy on my lawn at the same time.... As for their singing during the day, I am surprised that your friend has never heard their 'rain-song,' which times itself by the fore-feeling of a shower in the air.... All the same, though I can't quite give in to your friend, I like her all the better for taking sides with a bird against a man. The worst of them are better than we deserve." In the second letter, Lowell states, "If I said that birds were better than men I was not to be taken too seriously. But you shall not put me down in the peremptory fashion. I didn't say they were better than women, did I? You know I didn't, nor ever will!... For the first time in my life I have been seriously ill this winter, and am still to a certain extent invalided by my physician. The less I feel myself worth, the pleasanter it is to hear that I have been something to somebody, especially to one who loves Tennyson, so easily the master of us all." In the final letter, Lowell admits a discovery: "This gives me the chance to make a correction. In my first note to you I mentioned that I had been led to raise my opinion of the robin as a solo singer by the fine performance of one which I had heard this year. But I had been deluded. The bird which had shaken my opinion turns out to have been a rose-breasted grosbeak.... It is the difference between Shelley and Shenstone.... I am feeling very well, but have to be very careful of myself, which is a bore. I have made the wholesome discovery that at seventy one gets beyond middle life." Some dampstaining to text of the ALMANAC; letters Fine. Rubbing to front joint with partial split, covers tight. Near Fine and quite unusual. Item #020937
Price: $2,500.00