PHILADELPHIA - The handwriting is firm and fine, the kind of penmanship we hardly see now. The language, if a bit archaic, clearly expresses the author's emotional conflict.
He was trained to be a soldier, and now his time has come. But not, Col. Robert E. Lee tells his commander, Union Gen. Winfield Scott, as he thought it would:
Arlington, Washington City P.O.
April 20, 1861
General:
Since my interview with you on the 18th instant I have felt that I ought not longer to retain my commission in the Army. I therefore tender my resignation, which I request you will recommend for acceptance.
It would have been presented at once, but for the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted all the best years of my life & all the ability I possessed.
During the whole of that time, more than 30 years, I have experienced nothing but kindness from my superiors, & the most cordial friendship from my companions.
To no one Genl have I been as much indebted as to yourself for uniform kindness & consideration, & it has always been my ardent desire to merit your approbation.
I shall carry with me to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration, & your name & fame will always be dear to me. Save in the defence of my native State, I never desire again to draw my sword.
Be pleased to accept my most earnest wishes for the continuance of your happiness & prosperity & believe me most truly yours
R. E. Lee
Lee had been asked by President Lincoln to lead the United States Army against the Confederate forces that, eight days earlier, had fired on Fort Sumter. Instead, a few days after writing this letter, Lee assumed command of the Confederate military.
But first he had to resign and to tell his longtime commander goodbye.
I held Lee's two-page letter earlier this month, held it simply by requesting to do so.
The staff at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, an astonishing collection of rare books and documents, only asked when it would be convenient for me to see the letter. I did not need to present academic credentials to assert some standing.
"It's important to us that these letters and books can be seen - even an "amateur's' interest is really welcome," Michael J. Barsanti said as he handed me Lee's letter. "You don't need a letter of recommendation."
Although Barsanti holds a Ph.D. from the nearby University of Pennsylvania and is the museum's director of special projects, he is a shirt-sleeves, call-me-Mike, looking-at-this-is-pretty-neat kind of guy.
He was as intrigued as I when he produced a rectangular case of battered leather. He opened it to reveal a small notebook, and he carefully thumbed a few pages to reach one on which was written, in pencil:
Appomattox CH, VA, April 9, 1865.
The handwriting beneath was much smaller than Lee's and in places was illegible. So Barsanti explained that we were looking at the diary of Gen. U.S. Grant's secretary, and on this page were the notes of Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, essentially ending the Civil War.
Almost four years to the day after declining to lead the Union forces, Lee was surrendering to the man who ultimately had been given that job. Here were the personal comments of those present for the beginning and end.
From Don Quixote to Dracula
These rare items, with letters attesting to their authenticity - and letters vouching for those letters - are among the 300,000 manuscripts and letters, 30,000 volumes and thousands of pieces of fine and decorative art that form the Rosenbach Museum & Library.
It was founded in 1954 after the deaths of A.S.W. Rosenbach and his older brother and business partner, Philip.
At the turn of the 20th century, Philip was dealing in exquisite furnishings, artwork and archaeological artifacts. Completing a doctorate on Elizabethan drama in 1903, Abraham opened a shop dealing in rare books and documents, such as the royal "patent" now hanging on a wall in the museum.
That document, measuring perhaps 3 feet across, was given by King Charles II to Sir William Davenport, granting him a near-monopoly for staging theatrical works in England.
Among the museum's prized items:
James Joyce's handwritten manuscript of Ulysses. Barsanti disclosed that the brothers bought this in 1924 for $1,975. Individual chapters written by Joyce have sold recently for between $900,000 and $1.2-million, Barsanti said. The Rosenbach has all 18 chapters.
A copy of the so-called Indian Bible, written in the language of the Algonquin tribe by missionaries in the late 17th century.
One of the three existing copies in its original binding of the Bay Psalm Book, printed in 1640 - the first book printed in what is now the United States.
Second, Third and Fourth folios - the earliest collections - of Shakespeare's works.
First editions of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, or The Whale - including the copy Melville gave to his friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The finest known first edition, published in 1605, of Don Quixote, plus first editions or manuscripts by Chaucer, Milton, Keats, Wordsworth and Shelley. Most of what survives of Dickens' original manuscripts of the Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby are here, too.
More than 300 letters written by such historic figures as Washington, Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson and Lincoln.
Notes and the outline that Abraham "Bram" Stoker used as he wrote Dracula, published in 1897. Among the pages were some on the stationary of a Philadelphia hotel in which Stoker stayed while he managed a touring troupe of English actors.
A full-scale recreation, filled with the original items, of the Greenwich Village living room of poet Marianne Moore. Among her interests, the Pulitzer Prize winner even wrote poetry about the New York Yankees. So complete is the recreated room that her chinning bar hangs from a doorjamb.
Bought, sold, bought, sold
One of the anecdotes told about the museum focuses on something that the brothers possessed twice but also sold twice, at their cost: the handwritten and illustrated copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that creator Charles Dodgson presented to young Alice Liddell - the real Alice - as a Christmas present in 1862. In 1865, Oxford mathematics professor Dodgson had the story published under the pen name Lewis Carroll.
The brothers Rosenbach bought Alice's original copy at an auction in 1928, for the equivalent of $74,000. They offered to sell it for the same price to the British Museum, but the museum could not meet the price.
The Rosenbachs sold it to another American and, in 1946, bought it again, for $50,000, from the man's estate.
The brothers then sold it again, for the same price as they had paid, to the Library of Congress. The Library, in turn, donated it to the British Museum as a gesture of goodwill.
Last month the Rosenbach, located for the past half-century in what had been the brothers' three-story townhome on a quiet, downtown residential street, reopened after most of a year's construction.
The museum expanded into the townhome next door, named the Maurice Sendak Building.
That renowned children's illustrator has had deep ties to the museum: His interest in the Melville collection - now displayed in Melville's bookcase, on loan from Sendak - and Sendak's friendship with the late Miss Moore.
Sendak began visiting the museum and consulting with its executives soon after the facility opened. To celebrate the expansion into the new building, Sendak has loaned his original paintings for his classic, Where the Wild Things Are, his revealing notes on creating the book, and explanations of what real people various Wild Things represent.
Surprisingly, there is also a gallery of items from Sendak's collection of early Mickey Mouse toys.
Sendak and Mickey both came into the world in 1928, and the artist considers Mickey's face the "personification of joy." He reportedly has 3,000 pieces of Mickeybilia created between 1928 and 1938. To announce the exhibit, Sendak drew himself looking in a full-length mirror and seeing Mickey as his reflection.
Where the Wild Things Are was published in November 1963, but the author had begun it in 1955. In the exhibit are not only his sketches and finished paintings but also actual pages from his journals that reveal his struggle to create the book. Although he had put the work aside for years, his frustration upon resuming the effort in the spring of 1963 is obvious:
"The story bogs - simply, it loses "picture book quality' and gets too literary . . . keep simple - and humorous . . ."
But 11 days later, there is this phrasing, familiar to everyone who has tried to write:
"Final note: Drop this story for time being - I'm forcing it and it won't be forced."
Similarly, Sendak struggled with the title. He had thought of Where the Wild Horses Are. Later, he was casting about: Where Wild Things Are (Or Wild Beasts) (or Something).
The entire text of the book is here too - it fills a single, double-spaced, typewritten page. On it are Sendak's last-minute changes before it went to the printer.
If you go
The Rosenbach Museum & Library is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays. It is closed Mondays and on national holidays.
Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for seniors and students, free for children 4 or younger. The Sendak exhibit is on display through June 29.
Every June 16, the museum stages an outdoor celebration of "Bloomsday" - the day on which Leopold Bloom, hero of the novel Ulysses, made his "odyssey" through Dublin. There are readings from the novel, music and performances.
Original furnishing are displayed in this recreation of Dr. Abraham S.W. Rosenbach’s library, in his townhome that is now a museum.