Description:

Garfield James



James Garfield Memorial Poems Presented to Widow Lucretia Garfield

 

1st edition hardcover copy of J.C. McClenahan's In Memoriam. Gems of Poetry and Song on James A. Garfield. (Columbus, Ohio: J.C. McClenahan & Co., 1881), the front flyleaf inscribed "Compliments of J.C. McClenahan + Co." The book was presented to Lucretia Garfield and annotated "Dec. 5. 1881, C.O.R." beneath the author/publisher's inscription.

 

Burgundy morocco leather boards with elaborate ebonized embossed decoration to front and back covers, gilt-stamped spine with raised bands, gilt-stamped pastedown border, and gilt-edged text block. A handsome portrait of Garfield accompanied by his facsimile signature appears on a front flyleaf. A printed bifold insert of Edna Dean Procter's poem "O Loved and Lost!" (probably a last-minute addition to the volume included after printing) is tucked in the front. In near fine condition. Overall light toning and scattered foxing. The covers show moderate surface wear, and the front cover hinge is slightly worn. Measures 12mo, or 5.875" x 7.5" x .625".

 

The 144pp book contains 80 entries, the vast majority of which are poems, celebrating the life and commemorating the very recent death of Garfield. (The book was published just three months after Garfield's death in mid-September 1881.) Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Julia Ward Howe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Bronson Alcott among others contributed to the volume. (See Walt Whitman, "The Sobbing of the Bells," p. 113; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "President Garfield," p. 27; Julia Ward Howe, "J.A.G.," p. 70; Oliver Wendell Holmes "After the Burial," p. 27; and Bronson Alcott, "Carmen Auguratum Auspicans," p. 81.) The volume also reproduces eulogies and letters from contemporaries, as well as Garfield's own poems and favorite hymn.

 

J.C. McClenahan, the author and publisher of the volume, wrote: "The object of the compiler of the present volume was to collect into a neat form, for preservation, a choice collection of the beautiful sentiments expressed in verse on our beloved and departed President, by the poets of all nations, but more especially those of our own land." (1) Evident throughout the anthology is an attempt to process Garfield's death through literary means, thereby evaluating Garfield as a man, president, and martyr. For instance, many writers recall where they were when they heard Garfield had died, such as Walt Whitman did, in his "The Sobbing of the Bells":

 

"The sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news every-where,

The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the people.

(Full well they know that message in the darkness,

Full well return the sad reverberations),

The passionate toll and clang -- city to city joining,

sounding, passing,

Those heart-beats of a Nation in the night." (113)

 

James Garfield (1831-1881), a college-educated lawyer, served as an Ohio delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1863 and 1880. The Civil War veteran did not wish to run as a Republican candidate for President in 1880, but he won anyway. On July 2, 1881, President Garfield was shot in a Washington train station lounge by disgruntled office seeker Charles J. Guiteau (1841-1882). The second bullet lodged near Garfield’s pancreas but was irretrievable despite Alexander Graham Bell’s attempts to locate the bullet using the newly developing science of metal detection. After two and a half months of excruciating convalescence in the White House and along the New Jersey shore, Garfield died from complications of an infection at age forty-nine.

Lucretia Garfield, or “Crete” as she was lovingly called by her husband of twenty-three years, impressed many by her strength and stoicism in the months and years following her husband’s death. Lucretia became involved in preserving records related to her husband’s presidency in the thirty-six years before her death in the spring of 1918.

 



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