Description:

Butler Benjamin

One and half pages, 4.75” x 7.75” (tipped into a larger sheet measuring 7” x 10.5”); [Washington]; March 3, [1835]. Light ghosting from an engraving no longer present affects the second page of the letter; sheet that the letter has been tipped into has been irregularly trimmed along one side.

 

A hurriedly written letter to a Mr. A. Dickens: “In relation to Mr. Wheaton, have the kindness to say to Mr. Forsyth that I prepared and handed to Mr. Webster a clause which he agreed to offer as an amendment, similar to one suggested by Mr. Forsyth, & that if the bill has yet passed, Mr. Wheaton will be greatly disappointed, if he be not transferred to Berlin. I shall call on Mr. F. on the subject, & also the Prest.” Dated “3rd March” below Butler’s signature.

 

We were not able to identify the recipient, A. Dickens, but he was likely a confidant of Secretary of State John Forsyth, who served under President Andrew Jackson. Butler was serving as Jackson’s Attorney General at the time he wrote this letter. Henry Wheaton was appointed minister to Prussia in 1835, having previously served in Denmark, and it is likely this transfer that Butler is addressing.

Provenance: This item was recently discovered in an extra illustrated volume of “History of the City of New York” by Mary L. Booth, New York W. R. C. Clark, 1867. Originally two volumes, the monumental task of expanding the work to twenty-one volumes done by none other than Emery E. Childs, Esq. of New York City. In volume one of this work exists a lovely india ink drawing of Mary L. Booth, along with a notation, “presented by her to E E C,” in pencil. Next to the title page we find an original letter of Booth to Childs dated April 4, 1872, “I am in receipt of your favor of the 4th inst., and am grateful to hear that you are taking the trouble to illustrate my History of the City of New York in the manner you describe. I shall be happy to see you, should you favor me with a call as I am usually in my office during business hours and should be pleased to facilitate your Enterprise by any means in my power.”

 

It is assumed that the book took several years to assemble, at which point, assumedly through Childs, it made its way to Senator Charles B. Farwell of Chicago, who took the seat of John A. Logan in 1887. Farwell had an extensive library that fortunately survived the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, having been housed in his Lakeside home. In the American Bibliopolist of November 1871, there is an article about the devastation to libraries caused by the tragedy. “Mr C. B. Farwell’s library is also fortunately far out from the city, at his country house, and is safe … The same remark will also apply to the extensive collection of books and curiosities belonging to Mr. E. E. Childs.” This establishes the Chicago connection between Childs and Farwell.

 

That these letters were preserved for over 140 years and having never been on the market for that period is remarkable on many levels. It is the state of being wedged in these volumes that also accounts for what is mostly the pristine state of preservation. 

  

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