Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 164

Price Realized: $ 438
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
(MASSACHUSETTS.) Letters by and about the Rev. Charles H.A. Dall, missionary to India, concerning his dysfunctional marriage. 8 letters, mostly addressed to the Rev. Dall's wife Caroline Wells Healey Dall; generally minor wear. Various places, 1871-77
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The Unitarian missionary Charles Henry Appleton Dall (1816-1886) spent most of his career in India, leaving his wife and children at home in Boston. His wife Caroline Wells Healey Dall (1822-1912) was a more noteworthy historical figure, a pioneer of the women's rights movement and author on a wide variety of subjects. Offered here are 3 of his letters home to Caroline--and 5 related letters from other parties which hint at clouds of controversy regarding her absent husband.

Rev. Dall's first letter is dated 2 August 1871 from a steamer in the Arabian Sea, as he returned from an eventful two-month vacation in Europe. He mentions "John Ruskin's study & classroom at Oxford," a visit to the studios of American artists William Wetmore Story and Harriet Hosmer in Rome; and visits to Venice and Mount Vesuvius. He regrets that his wife has been unable to share these sights, and supposes "I am to finish my life in Bengal." A postscript was written from port in Calcutta five days later, regarding their son's planned expedition to the Aleutian Islands: "I have scrutinized all accessible newspapers in vain to find any a/c of our brave Will's expedition & departure." A 27 December 1871 letter is written from Calcutta, the date of his daughter Sarah Keene Dall's wedding in America. He regrets being unable to attend. He adds: "I fear you will think me cold-hearted in telling you about Aldrich & the strange errors he is circulating here out of his perverted brain & heart. . . . If you decide that I am insane . . . your estimate & mine of your duties to your husband in this matter differ very widely, and until you clear it up by treating me as sane, must darken the sky between us." Dall's final letter is dated from the Nilgiri Hills in S.W. India, 8 November 1877. Regarding a financial settlement, he remarks with apparent sarcasm: "With 12 or 13 thousand dollars of your own, you will be able to show your talents as a manager of money for the first time in your life, & to make good your self-praise as a 'business woman.'" He continues with an apparently mocking discourse regarding her "insane brother George" who had been placed in an asylum in Paris at great expense, and "who so longed for gentleness and patience and considerate affection from those who God called to love him, but did not."

With the Rev. Dall's three letters are three from Lewis Washburne Aldrich (1843-1874), who went to Calcutta in 1869 as Dall's associate missionary and returned in some sort of cloud two years later. His long partial letter written to Rev. Dall during this period catalogues Dall's harsh treatment of servants and abrasive manner. Then on 11 September 1871 Aldrich writes to Mrs. Dall: "I am very sorry that I was so weak as to take the course which I did with Mr. Dall. I did very wrong and am sorry for it." However, on 28 September he writes "I have rec'd this week letters from Calcutta which put matters in a new light. I shall . . . put the matter between Mr. D and myself into the hands of the public. I have stood all the abuse and misrepresentation that I intend to. . . . Back here and in Calcutta everything has been said against me that could be invented while I have had no opportunity to meet the charges." A fellow Unitarian clergyman, Charles Lowe of Somerville, MA, writes two weeks later on 13 October 1871: "I presume your note from Mr. Aldrch may be similar to one which I received from him which was so steeped in jealousy and suspiciousness . . . that I could only feel pity for him. . . . Mr. Dall has unfortunate peculiarities of temperament--that we all know. But there are proofs enough of his devotedness & his valuable service in India."

Finally, a short and banal letter from Boston publishers Lee & Shepard is addressed to Mrs. Dall, explaining that a particular payment had never been received on her behalf. In verso, she has written a note hinting that Mr. Dall may have mishandled the $300: "In case this note survives me. . . . Never did he give one dollar to my books. Never did I spend a dollar of his for them."

See lot 1 for an Alaskan letter by their son, the explorer William Dall.