[Rarebooks] FS: Archive of James Russell Lowell Letters on Birds with First Publication

[Charles Agvent]

LOWELL, James Russell. "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1869 with an excerpt "Three Unpublished Letters" in THE CENTURY February 
1896 along with the ACTUAL Three Unpublished Letters bound in.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. 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"Three Unpublished Letters" excerpt from THE CENTURY by Mary A. Clarke 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. (#020937)        $2,500

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