The numbers of autograph copies of books presented to Mrs. Moulton by their authors she left, by memorandum, to the Boston Public Library, with the request that Professor Arlo Bates make the selection. These now form a memorial collection, each volume marked by a book-plate bearing an engraved portrait of Mrs. Moulton. Professor Bates has written an account of this collection, which, as it has not before been published, may be included here as not only interesting from the inscriptions which it contains, but as indicating the range and variety of Mrs. Moulton's literary friendships.
Facsimile of Book Plate from the Memorial Collection of the Books of Louise Chandler Moulton
Boston Public Library
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THE MOULTON COLLECTION
"From the library of Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton it has been my task—sombre yet grateful—to select a collection of autographed books and first editions to be given to the Public Library of Boston as a Memorial. Between eight and nine hundred volumes were found worthy, and of these no small number are of rarity and much interest. Mrs. Moulton had not only the books presented to her personally by the writers, but from the library of Philip Bourke Marston she inherited many others enriched by the autographs of famous men and women. The list is too long to be given in anything like entirety, but it included Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Mathilde Blind, Frederick von Bodenstedt, Charles Bradlaugh, Alice Brown, Madison Cawein, F.B. Money-Coutts, John Davidson, Austin Dobson, W.H. Drummond, Eugene Field, Richard Garnett, Richard Watson Gilder, Robert Grant, Edmund Gosse, Louise Imogen Guiney, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, H. Rider Haggard, John Hay, William Ernest Henley, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lord Houghton, Henry James, Amy Levy, Lady Lindsay, Frederick Locker, James Russell Lowell, Stéphane Mallarmé, Joaquin Miller, George Moore, Felix Moscheles, the Hon. Roden Noel, Thomas Nelson Page, John Payne, Nora Perry, Mr. and Mrs. James B. Piatt, James Whitcomb Riley, Amélie Rives, C.G.D. Roberts, Christina Rossetti, William Sharp, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Bayard Taylor, John T. Trowbridge, Mrs. Humphry Ward, William Watson, Theodore Watts-Dunton, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Mary Wilkins.
"The exact number of authors represented has not been counted, but probably the autographed volumes, of which there are about six hundred, do not contain more than a fifth of that number of well-known names. Some signatures are by unknown authors who sent their books to Mrs. Moulton because of her prominence; and in a limited number of cases such have been thrown out as obviously not worthy of a place in the collection. The variety of the personal acquaintances among distinguished writers, however, illustrates very strikingly the breadth of Mrs. Moulton's sympathies and the remarkable extent to which she kept in touch with current literature. In not a few cases, moreover, the inscriptions show how often her encouragement or wise counsel had been helpful to the writer. In 'The White Sail,' Miss Guiney writes: 'To Louise Chandler Moulton from her lover and debtor'; Charles Bradlaugh, in 'The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick': 'From the author to his critic'; F.B. Money-Coutts, in 'King Arthur': 'A poor return for her kind interest'; John Davidson, in 'New Ballads': 'From her obliged friend.' Others of this sort might be quoted, and while dedicatory inscriptions are not always to be taken too seriously, no one could know Mrs. Moulton and her helpful kindliness without realizing to how many writers her sympathetic criticism and judicious advice had been of marked value. C.W. Dalmon, in a copy of the limited edition of 'Song-Favors' writes: 'To Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton for her kindness' sake, and for the sake of "Philip, our King"; and the remembrance of that kindness in so many hearts is to Mrs. Moulton a lasting monument.'
"From the many and varied inscriptions in these books I have selected a handful which seem to me interesting, and which Mrs. Moulton's friends will, I hope, find so. In going over the library I was struck with the range in time which these autographs cover. It gave a feeling of being in touch with a past almost that of our grandmothers' to come upon Le Tellier's 'L'Histoire Ancienne' with the inscription: 'Louise Chandler Moulton from Madame Emma Willard, Troy Female Seminary, May 30th, 1856'; or upon 'Lucy Howard's Journal,' bearing upon the fly-leaf: 'Mrs. Ellen Louise Moulton, with the love of her friend, L.H. Sigourney, Hartford, Conn't. Christmas, 1857.' The latter volume is dated by the publishers 1858, so that the trick of making the title-page state its age with feminine inexactness is less recent than is generally supposed. Who to-day knows anything about Madame Willard, or has other remembrance of Mrs. Sigourney than that of seeing her name attached to moralizing selections in the reading-books of our remote youth?
"Older still than these, although the fact that Mr. Trowbridge has happily been with us to the present time makes him seem less a figure of the past, are the inscriptions in the first and second series of Emerson's 'Essays': 'Ella Louise from Paul Creyton, April 10th, 1854'; 'To Ellen Louise from J.T.T., April 10th, 1854.' To the same year belongs a copy of 'Mrs. Partington,' in which is written: 'To my granddaughter, Ellen Louise, Ruth Partington by B.P. Shillaber.' I confess to something of a wistful feeling at these reminders of a time in the midyears of a century already dead, when I was in the nursery and 'Ellen Louise,' 'Paul Creyton,' and 'Mrs. Partington' were the literary stars glimmering out with yet ungauged power in the sky where Emerson and Whittier and Longfellow were the fixed and shining lights.