AMHERST – Famed poet Robert Frost’s deep friendship with Amherst businessman and writer Warren R. Brown, forged a century ago, will be better understood following a recent donation to the Jones Library’s special collections department.
The gift, which comes from Brown’s descendants, includes extensive correspondence from Frost to Brown, including rare Christmas poems that he sent every year.
“The Christmas cards and letters are extraordinary to have,” said curator Cyndi Harbeson. “The letters will be very exciting for researchers and will be a big draw.”
The unrestricted gift contains half a dozen letters written by Frost, 15 Christmas cards he signed, 15 books he inscribed or autographed and an additional dozen or so books about his writing career. The donation also came with newspaper clippings and other ephemera about Frost and letters sent to Brown from other acquaintances.
“This really strengthens the collection’s connection to Amherst, and also adds significantly to what we have for W.R. Brown in general,” Harbeson said.
“They (the Brown family) were so generous,” Harbeson said.
Combined with material on Amherst poet Emily Dickinson, items about Frost take about one-third of the space in the special collections department. There are 12,000 entries on Frost, ranging from letters and manuscripts to gallery proofs, photographs and audio recordings, including a speech he made at the Jones when a room was dedicated in his honor in 1959.
Harbeson said the most special part of the collection is six letters from Frost to Brown, and one letter from Frost’s wife, Elinor, that date from 1931 to 1956. In the earliest letter, Frost discusses buying a home on Sunset Avenue, a street adjacent to the Browns’ home on Lincoln Avenue, where he was a frequent visitor.
Brown, as a realtor with a downtown office, helped Frost acquire his own residence in Amherst, 15 years after they first met, in March 1916, when Frost did a poetry reading for students and professors at Amherst College.
“The biggest thing of interest to scholars will be the tidbits about putting down money to hold the house,” Harbeson said.
Another unusual item in the donation is a prospectus for Frost’s 1923 collection of poems titled “New Hampshire,” as well as a signed first separate edition of this book.
“Some books are quite rare editions, and his inscriptions are interesting,” Harbeson said.
One other item that will generate some excitement, Harbeson said, is a 1949 edition of the “Complete Poems of Robert Frost,” which reads “To W.R. Brown, one of my oldest and best friends in Amherst (or anywhere).”
Though Warren Brown is not well known in the 21st century, special collections has scrapbooks of columns he wrote for the Springfield Republican newspaper in the early to mid 1900s, his portrait and other material related to his life, Harbeson said. Brown also wrote a book titled “Amazing Amherst.”
While the library gets occasional books signed by Frost, unrestricted gifts with this amount of primary material are not common.
“Something like this is so rare,” Harbeson said.
Brown’s descendants were pleased to make the contribution.
“We felt these should be part of the public domain, and the Jones seemed it was the logical place, since the connection is with Amherst,” said Jeff Brown, Warren Brown’s grandson and an Amherst attorney. “We’ve basically given them everything and didn’t retain anything.”
Brown said he believes Frost aficionados will be pleased to learn more about how the friendship between Frost and his grandfather evolved.
Many of the items were rescued from Warren Brown’s former home and then held for years by Jeff Brown’s parents, the late Bruce Brown, who died in 2013, and Marian Brown, 94. But until the family made the decision to make a donation, there was never a good inventory of what they had.
When discussions began with his sister, Margaret and his mother, there was debate whether some of the materials should go to Dartmouth College, which, along with the Jones, is considered among the best repositories for Frost items. Dartmouth is also where both Jeff Brown and his grandfather earned their college degrees.
“It’s one of those things that have been thought about for some time,” Brown said.
But in the end the feeling was that since the Frost and Brown friendship was forged in Amherst a century ago, it was worth keeping these items in town.
Marian Brown said she hopes that a focus on this warm, caring and priceless relationship between two men will be explored in future exhibits.
“They really, really liked each other and had a great deal in common,” she said, observing that Frost and her father-in-law would often meet at his downtown Amherst office
Marian Brown also cited one of her favorite items as one addressed to O.M. Brown from O.M. Frost, with the O.M. signifying “Old Man,” which is something she was told to call him when she married Bruce.
“I don’t think there’s another book in the whole world that says O.M Frost, because they got to calling each other that name,” Marian Brown said.
“My mother got a particular kick out of that. She would show that to people at the Arbors,” Jeff Brown said, in reference to the retirement community where Marian Brown lives.
Jeff Brown said he also enjoys a letter in which Frost writes about his dog getting tangled up with a porcupine, and then inviting Warren Brown to bring his own dog for a visit to New Hampshire, even with the apparent risk that his pet might also get stuck with quills.
A professional appraiser was hired by the family and, while he wouldn’t reveal the exact value if the materials were sold, it’s “valuable enough,” Brown said.
The new materials are already accessible to the public, Harbeson said, and sometime in summer or early fall display cases at the entrance to the department will feature some of these acquisitions.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.