Description:

Howe Julia

1pp AMS on watermarked cream stationery inscribed overall and signed by American author Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) as “Julia Ward Howe” at bottom recto. With docket inscription verso. In near fine condition, with expected paper folds. Sheet measures 5.5” x 9.125”.

 

This 90+ word manuscript is part of a draft of a memorial tribute to Anne Lynch Botta (1815-1891). Like Howe, Botta was an accomplished poet in her own right, but she also hosted a significant New York literary salon that attracted many Romantic and Transcendental writers of the day. Many of these intellectuals later contributed to her 1893 "Memoirs of Anne C. L. Botta: Written by Her Friends". Howe’s contribution was called “A Laurel Wreath”.

 

The purpose of this remembrance was twofold. On the one hand, Howe used the piece as an opportunity to mourn for her remarkable friend. But the piece must also be considered as a type of literary exercise, for Howe hoped that the eulogy would be published in its upcoming “memorial volume”. (It later was, on pages 58-59 of the first edition.)

 

Our manuscript portion reads in full:

 

“The malignant and idle gossip with which the great World overflows was not allowed to invade the borders of her domain. Where she presided, heavenly Charity had at least one representative. If this poor tribute to her many merits should appear to you to deserve a place in your memorial volume, I shall be glad to have it appear as a testimony to my affectionate remembrance of one on whose grave I would willingly place the civic wreath as well as the Poet’s laurel. Yours with ? sympathy, Julia Ward Howe”.

 

We are missing the beginning of Howe’s “A Laurel Wreath”, which describes Mrs. Botta’s salon. In the beginning of “A Laurel Wreath”, Howe writes: “I now still do behold her [Mrs. Botta] as I have so often seen her, surrounded by the excellent company which she so well knew how to gather about her, herself the much-endeared center of an appreciating circle …”.

 

Julia Ward Howe is best known for her poem the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, written during the first year of the Civil War. Howe’s tribute to fellow writer Anne Botta was penned some thirty years later.

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