Apr 08, 2014 - Sale 2344

Sale 2344 - Lot 171

Price Realized: $ 1,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(MASSACHUSETTS.) Bartlett, Joseph. A long series of letters from an eccentric Harvard graduate to his protégé. 22 Autograph Letters Signed from Bartlett to William Jenks, plus one related letter by Jenks; various sizes and conditions. Vp, 1796-1823
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Joseph Bartlett (1762-1827) was a 1782 Harvard graduate whose erratic career as a lawyer, literary figure, and (briefly) state legislator ended with him spending his final years in indigence. Most of these letters were written in 1796 and 1797, a period when Bartlett was actively involved in Harvard Phi Beta Kappa affairs as an alumnus in Woburn and Cambridge, MA. Here he writes to his protégé, Harvard senior William Jenks (1778-1866), aggressively pursuing a friendship with the younger man and arranging for his medical care and board during a severe illness. In his 19 August 1796 letter, he wrote "Your success in life is near, very near, my heart. If I can at any time afford you any assistance, you may ask with confidence & with certainty. Was my purse as deep as my sympathy I would supply ev'ry want & wipe away ev'ry tear wrung by misery. I confide in you; never expose my letters. Consider them as sacred between us."
Three of the letters are written long after Jenks's graduation, as Jenks went on to a successful career in the clergy, while his mentor Bartlett entered a downward spiral. An 1812 retained draft from Jenks to Bartlett encloses $30 "in acknowledgement of Mr. Bartlett's former attention & kindness," along with a rough accounting of how much Bartlett may have spent on his behalf. In 1813, Bartlett acknowledges that Jenks has sent him $50, which he describes as "unequal to my equitable demand" and looks forward to "a more generous remuneration." In 1823 he again reminds Jenks of past favors and describes himself as "in absolute distress without common necessaries or decent cloathing."
An early biographical dictionary described Bartlett as "one of the eccentric men and wits of the bar. . . . He led, for some time, a wild, irregular life, to which he was introduced by a set of companions, gay like himself, to whom his wit and reckless manners made him acceptable . . . . He had not industry nor steadiness of purpose sufficient to accomplish any important object, or to obtain any valuable reputation. In his last days, he had become a burden to his friends and acquaintances, and closed his irregular and useless life at Boston, October 27, 1827" (Willis, History of the Law, the Courts, and the Lawyers of Maine, 439-443).