Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight (June 11, 1846 – February 3, 1917) was an American librarian, archivist, and diplomat who was a member of Boston's elite homosexual subculture in the late 19th century. His place in American literary history was secured when he served for almost a decade as Henry Adams's literary assistant and family archivist.
Early life Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight was born in Auburn, New York, the son of Almon Dwight (1814–1902) and Cyria Charge White (1817–1897).
His father professed the Millerite Doctrine, the belief that the second coming of Christ would occur around 1843 or 1844 and, acting on that belief, lived in Jerusalem for four years before Theodore's birth, between 1837 and 1841, where he ran an industrial school.Benjamin W. Dwight, The History of the Descendants of John Dwight of Dedham, Mass., Vol. 2 (New York: John F. Trow & Son, 1874): 1025.
From 1865 until 1869, Theodore Dwight attended Rochester Collegiate Institute and paid his way through school by working in a wholesale saddlery and hardware store.
Career The major portion of Dwight's career was as a librarian and archivist. Later in life, he served as an American diplomat. He occasionally worked as a bookkeeper, editor, and proofreader.
Early literary work Around 1868, Dwight moved from Rochester to San Francisco, where he lived at 256 Bush Street and worked as a bookkeeper for the Pacific Union Express Company. Shortly after arriving in San Francisco, Dwight became a member of the local literary scene that included such established writers as Bret Harte, Ina Coolbrith, and Charles Warren Stoddard.Roger Austen, Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1991): 47. Dwight began writing for Harte's magazine Overland Monthly, primarily about books and autograph collecting.Overland Monthly 3 (October 1869): 342Overland Monthly 5 (August 1870): 139. His writing occasionally drew notice in East Coast publications."New Publications," (Boston) Daily Advertiser, 30 August 1871. His place in the local arts and letters scene was recognized when in January 1872 he was elected a trustee of the San Francisco Mercantile Library Association."The Coming Mercantile Library Election," (San Francisco) Daily Evening Bulletin, 8 January 1872.
In the early fall of 1873, Dwight moved to New York City to take a position in the publishing house of G.P. Putnam’s Sons.”Literary Gossip,” (San Francisco) Daily Evening Bulletin, 11 October 1873.
State Department librarian In 1875, Dwight left Putnam’s and moved to Washington, D.C., where he served briefly as a literary assistant to the American historian George Bancroft.
While working for Bancroft, Dwight became known to the State Department Library senior staff, who eventually offered him the position of Chief of the Bureau of Rolls and Library."Our New Librarian. Sketch of the Trustees' Appointee, Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight," Boston Globe, March 3, 1892, p. 10. The Bureau was the repository of manuscripts related to the foreign relations of the United States, beginning with the Continental Congress in 1774.Bulletin of the Bureau of Rolls and Library of the U.S. Department of State, (No. 1–3). September, 1893 (Washington: Department of State, 1893) Dwight held the position from 1875 until 1888.
While there, Dwight assembled what was at the time called "the best international law library outside of the British Museum.””Our New Librarian. Sketch of the Trustee’s Appointee, Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight," The Boston Globe, 3 March 1892, p. 10.
In 1881, Secretary of State James G. Blaine instructed Dwight to assist the U.S. Government in acquiring a collection of Benjamin Franklin's papers. The papers were on the market in London, England, and Dwight, who was then traveling in Europe, went to London to examine the papers and assess their relevance to American history. He reported to the Senate that the papers "are the veritable records of our history, and are as worthy of a place among the national archives as those of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton."Senate Miscellaneous Documents (No. 21), 47th Congress, 1st session, pp. 1-3, 96-99, cited in: Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., “Franklin’s Papers and The Papers of Benjamin Franklin," Pennsylvania History, Vol. XXII, No. 1 (January 1955): 8-9.
Adams family archivist In 1888, Dwight left Washington to take charge of organizing and indexing the Adams family political papers, including those of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, housed in that historic American family’s so-called “Stone Library” (a reference to its construction in stone) on the Adams estate in Quincy, Massachusetts, a position he held for the next four years.Henry Adams to Elizabeth Cameron, letter dated June 23, 1888. Letters of Henry Adams, vol. III, p. 126. His duties for the Adams family included organizing and indexing the presidential and family papers as well as serving as a proofreader for Henry Adams and his brother Charles Francis Adams Jr.
Boston Public Library In March 1892, Dwight was chosen to head the Boston Public Library, at a critical point in the Library's history. A new building on Boston’s Copley Square was under construction and Dwight's selection was eagerly anticipated by Boston society."Our New Librarian. Sketch of the Trustee's Appointee, Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight," The Boston Globe, 3 March 1892, p. 10. He began his job on April 13, 1892, but his tenure was from the outset characterized by personal and professional turmoil. Henry Adams was aware of the crisis that faced both Dwight and the Library, writing to a family friend: "Rumors reach me about Dwight, and grow more emphatic, but I am in deadly terror of him, and want to escape being drawn into the inevitable collapse of his ambitions. I never had so much difficulty in keeping out of a quarrel as in this case."Henry Adams to Lucy Baxter, letter dated December 10, 1893, Letters of Henry Adams, Vol. IV, p. 144. [Lucy Baxter (1836–1922) was a close friend of Henry's mother, Abigail Brown Brooks.]
On December 19, 1893, Dwight gave four-months' notice that he would leave the Library on April 30, 1894, but Library trustees immediately granted him a leave of absence for the remainder of his term, stating publicly that his departure was due to "poor health and inability to stand the cares and responsibilities of the office."Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston Public Library: A Centennial History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956): 130. Rumors in Boston suggested that his resignation was not voluntary. The Boston Globe opined:
Dwight may also have been moonlighting elsewhere in a way that interfered with his duties at the Library. In 1895, within a year of his departure from the Boston Public Library, he published two volumes of Civil War History for the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, of which he was a member: Campaigns in Virginia 1861-1862, The Virginia Campaign of 1862 Under General Pope and Critical Sketches of Some of the Federal and Confederate Commanders.Both volumes: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1895. Dwight's work on these two hefty volumes must have been underway for a least two years before their publication.
With his reputation as a librarian ruined in Boston, Dwight wrote to his friend Isabella Stewart Gardner on August 27, 1894, that he had no prospects there, but might move to Chicago and seek work there. "My efforts to be patient & cheerful usually end in failure," he wrote to Gardner, a reference to the emotional problems that Adams and others had noted off and on for years.Theodore Dwight, Letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner from Boston, August 27, 1894, Gardner Museum Archives, Accession No. ARC.001384.
U.S. Consul at Vevey In 1904, Dwight's friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked Secretary of State John Hay to appoint Dwight as U.S. Consul at Geneva. Dwight, by now living in England, accepted the position but tried unsuccessfully to impose conditions on the terms of the appointment. The State Department withdrew the nomination.
Some months later, Lodge again asked Hay to appoint Dwight as Consul, this time at the much smaller American Consulate at Vevey, Switzerland. Hay agreed, and by 1905, Dwight had taken over the post in Vevey.Henry Adams to Elizabeth Cameron, letter dated April 10, 1904, Letters of Henry Adams, Vol. V, p. 570–572; and Letters of Henry Adams, Vol. V, p. 572, note 1.
Personal life Club memberships Dwight was a member of several prominent men's clubs and historical organizations, including the Cosmos Club,Cosmos Club: Act of Incorporation and By-Laws, with a list of officers and members (Washington: Cosmos Club): 6. the American Antiquarian Society,Boston Daily Advertiser, April 30, 18885, p. 2 the Massachusetts Historical Society,Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 15 (1876–1877): 386-387. the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, the Tavern Club, and the St. Botolph Club. In 1884, he was made an honorary member of the Harvard College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa Alpha.Catalogue of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa Alpha of Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1912): 189.
Friendship with Henry Adams Sometime around October 1881, Dwight, then librarian of the State Department, became acquainted with American historian Henry Adams, who was researching his landmark publication, The History of the United States of America (1801 to 1817).Henry Adams, Letter to Francis Parkman, October 4, 1881, Letters of Henry Adams, Vol. II, p. 440-441. Adams worked with thousands of pages of original documents housed in the State Department archives and came to rely on Dwight, who was meticulous, hard working, and knew the State Department collection inside and out.
Sometime around 1885, Dwight began moonlighting as a personal and literary assistant to Henry Adams.Austen, Genteel Pagan, p. 112. Though the exact nature of his duties are unclear, they almost certainly included proofreading and editorial work on Adams’s History of the United States.
During the summer of 1885, Dwight lived in Adams's house at 1607 H Street, facing Lafayette Square. Dwight managed the house and its staff while Adams and his wife were on vacation in Virginia. Adams viewed Dwight as a friend rather than caretaker; for example, Adams encouraged him to make use of his wine cellar during the couple's absence.Henry Adams to Theodore Dwight, letter dated June 28, 1885, Letters of Henry Adams, vol. II, pp. 618-619. After Adams's wife died in December 1885, Dwight moved in with Adams to help him run the household and, as Dwight described in a letter to a friend, to "support his bereavement."Theodore Dwight to George Kennan, letter dated March 1, 1886. Cited in Letters of Henry Adams, vol. II, p. 641, note 3. He continued his work at the State Department while living in Adams's home for the next three years.
In March 1888, Adams and Dwight traveled together to Cuba by way of Florida, where they visited friends of Adams before sailing to Cuba for a visit of two weeks. In a letter to a friend, Adams called Dwight his "companion". In Havana, the two men attended a bull fight, a carnavale mascarade, and the opera, but ultimately found the city to be too noisy and, in Adam's opinion, a "gay ruin".Henry Adams to Charles Milnes Gaskell, letter from Los Baños de S. Diego [Cuba], March 8, 1889, Letters of Henry Adams, Vol. III, p. 105-107; and excerpt from Henry Adams’s diary, March 20, 1888, Letters of Henry Adams, Vol. III, p. 107-108.