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Prescott's Ties with Mexico
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Extract
As spring came to Boston and success to William Hickling Prescott in 1838, the jubilant author of The History of Ferdinand and Isabella settled on another Spanish theme, the conquests of Mexico and Peru, and quickly launched his second historical excursion. Never one to frequent archives in person, Prescott reactivated established scholarly channels when he informed London bookdealer Rich and Madrid-based diplomat Middleton of his new needs. In addition, one Spanish friend won by his first work, Angel Calderón de la Barca, helped to introduce Prescott to Spain's most eminent historian, Fernández de Navarrete. In short order the corps of cooperative men that included historians, book-dealers, diplomats, and copyists began to shuttle toward Boston thousands of pages of material relevant to the historian's new. project.
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References
1 Literary Memoranda, April 4, 1838, William Hickling Prescott Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society (hereinafter designated P-MHS); and see Wolcott, Roger (ed.), The Correspondence of William Hickling Prescott 1833-1847 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925), 22, 25, 26, 31-32, 35, 41.Google Scholar
2 By February 25, 1839 the materials out of Madrid related to the conquest of Mexico had cost Prescott $857.37; see his Order Book, P-MHS. For illustrative Spanish activity, see Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 41-46, 65, 68-70.
3 J. R. Poinsett to Prescott, January 15, 1839, P-MHS.
4 Prescott to Count Cortina, January 25, 1839 and Prescott to Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza, undated draft, P-MHS; and Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 92.
5 Prescott to Manning & Marshall, January 25; T. W. Woods to Manning & Marshall, January 26; W. Burrough to J. R. Poinsett, February 7; and J. R. Poinsett to Prescott, February 8, 1839, P-MHS.
6 Prescott to Manning & Marshall, January 25, 1839, P-MHS.
7 Manning & Marshall to Prescott, March 27 and April 22, 1839, P-MHS.
8 Peter S. Du Ponceau to Prescott, April 20, 1839, P-MHS. Resident in Philadelphia in the mid-1830's, Nájera was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society on January 15, 1836. Prescott's identification with that body, dating from April 20, 1838, began while Du Ponceau was its president. See Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, 1840- ), I, 11-13 and III, 225.
9 Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 66-68 reproduces most of the Prescott letter; see also Prescott to Manning & Marshall, April 25, and Manning & Marshall to Prescott, June 15 and November 11, 1839, P-MHS.
10 Prescott to Powhatan Ellis, May 21, 1839, P-MHS.
11 Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 110.
12 Manning & Marshall to Prescott, June 15, and November 11, 1839, P-MHS.
13 Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 112.
14 Ibid., 112-113, 120, 127, 137.
15 Ibid., 115.
16 Ibid., 137, 168, 186, 237. In the Conquest of Mexico Prescott used this portrait as the frontispiece of the first volume and the facsimile signature as an illustration in the third volume, facing the divisional title of the sixth book.
17 Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 220, 228, 250, 261-263, 277. The unauthenticated portrait of Montezuma served as frontispiece to the second volume of the Conquest of Mexico.
18 Ibid., 220, 227 and Lucas Alamán to Angel Calderón de la Barca, June 9, 1841, P-MHS.
19 Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 119-120.
20 Ibid., 150, 169-170, 251.
21 Ibid., 186-187.
22 Fanny Calderón de la Barca to Prescott, January 19, 1841, P-MHS.
23 Published in 1843 simultaneously in Boston by Little, Brown & Company and in London by Chapman and Hall, Life in Mexico during a Residence of Two Years in that Country knew the following assists from Prescott: he convinced the author to publish her letters; he found publishers for her in England and in the United States; he wrote a signed preface to the work; and he reviewed it.
24 For the indirect pattern of Alamán's communication via Calderón de la Barca, see Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 220, 227 and Lucas Alamán to Angel Calderón de la Barca, June 9, 1841, P-MHS.
25 Prescott to Lucas Alamán, December [?], 1842 and Alamán to Prescott, February 25, 1843, P-MHS. A total of ten letters from Alamán to Prescott between 1843 and 1852 are in P-MHS.
26 Prescott to Lucas Alamán, January 9, 1844, P-MHS.
27 Lucas Alamán to Prescott, April 29, 1844, P-MHS.
28 Historia de la Conquista de Méjico, con un bosquejo preliminar de la civilización de los antiguos mejicanos, y la vida del conquistador Hernando Cortés (2 vols., Méjico: V. G. Torres, 1844).
29 Historia de la Conquista de México, con una ojeada preliminar sobre la antigua civilización de los mexicanos, y con la vida de su conquistador Fernando Cortés (3 vols., México: Ignacio Cumplido, 1844-1846).
30 Lucas Alamán to Prescott, February 1, 1845, P-MHS.
31 Disertaciones sobre la historia de la República Megicana (2 vols., Mágico, 1844), I, 45n.
32 Prescott to Lucas Alamán, March 30, 1845, P-MHS, a portion of which is reproduced in Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 533-534; Prescott to Little, Brown & Company, May 30 and Prescott to Alamán, July 9, 1845, P-MHS.
33 Lucas Alamán to Prescott, April 29 and Prescott to Alamán, June 5, 1845, P-MHS.
34 Prescott to Lucas Alamán, June 5, 1845, P-MHS.
35 Prescott to Lucas Alamán, September 16, 1845, P-MHS.
36 Wolcott (ed.), Correspondence, 571.
37 Ibid., 583. Although Prescott never substantially revised his Conquest of Mexico, he was continuously interested in doing so and gave the project some thought in the last year of his Ufe; see Literary Memoranda, autumn 1858, P-MHS. Kirk's edition of that work, published in the 1870's, made heavy use of the notes of both Mexican editions.
38 Lucas Alamán to Prescott, September 28, 1846, P-MHS.
39 Prescott to Lucas Alamán, January 17; Prescott to Ignacio Cumplido, January 18; Prescott to José Fernando Ramirez, January 18; and Isidro R. Gondra to Prescott, August 18, 1849, P-MHS.
40 Ignacio Cumplido to Prescott, May 19, 1848, P-MHS.
41 José Fernando Ramirez to Prescott, April 3, 1849, P-MHS. Ramirez's work was published in Mexico in 1847, with José López Rayón as co-editor.
42 Lucas Alamán to Prescott, March 17, 1849, P-MHS.
43 Manuel Guillermo Martínez, Don Joaquín Garcia Icazbalceta: His Place in Mexican Historiography (Washington, 1947), despite limitations, is the best single approach to the literature of Garcia Icazbalceta. Sharing Henry R. Wagner's view (in “Joaquín García Icazbalceta,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s. XLIV (1934), 104) that Prescott's works probably inspired the initiation of Garcia Icazbalceta's scholarly career, the present writer would further suggest that the Mexican's great concern about preserving documents possibly stemmed, in part, from his personal awareness of the wanton destruction which accompanied the war between the United States and Mexico.
44 Prescott to Lucas Alamán, September 12, 1849, P-MHS.
45 Prescott to Lucas Alamán, February 4, 1850, P-MHS.
46 Ignacio Cumplido to Prescott, August 14 and Prescott to Cumplido, September 24, 1849, P-MHS. Not long before this Cumplido had met Prescott in Boston. The unsigned biographical sketch is “Guillermo H. Prescott,” El Album Mexicano, II (1849), 49-51.
47 Ibid., 51-60; also see Wagner, “Joaquín García Icazbalceta,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s. XLIV (1934), 104, 120-121.
48 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Lucas Alamán, November 5, 1849; Garcia Icazbalceta to Prescott, March 2, 1855; and Alamán to Prescott, November 14, 1849, P-MHS.
49 Prescott to Joaquín García Icazbalceta, December 24, 1849, P-MHS.
50 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, February 10, 1850, P-MHS. A total of twenty-three letters from Garcia Icazbalceta to Prescott between 1850 and 1856 are in P-MHS.
51 Ibid.
52 Lucas Alamán to Prescott, November 14, 1849 and Prescott to Alamán, February 4, 1850, P-MHS.
53 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, II (1835-1855), 445, 447, 450, 466, 471, 478, 534. These volumes, along with those received on November 20, 1851 and June 9, 1853, are in the society's collection. Some are inscribed “From the Author.”
54 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, V, 179, 181.
55 Prescott to Angel Calderón de la Barca, December 19, 1850, P-MHS.
56 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, May 18, 1850, P-MHS.
57 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, July 5, 1850, P-MHS. The Garcia Icazbalceta translation is Historia de la Conquista del Perú (2 vols., México: R. Rafael, 1850).
58 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, August 10, 1850, P-MHS.
59 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, January 29, 1851, P-MHS.
60 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, May 7, 1851, P-MHS.
61 See Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, October 15,1851, P-MHS.
62 Ibid.
63 J. Miguel Arroyo (for the Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística) to Prescott, September 15, 1851, P-MHS.
64 José Fernando Ramírez to Prescott, September 27, 1851, P-MHS.
65 Miguel Lerdo de Tejada to Prescott, February 26, 1852, P-MHS. The first volume of this three-volume work was published by Cumplido in 1850.
66 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, lune 1 and October 30, 1852, P-MHS.
67 Lucas Alamán to Prescott, December 26, 1852 and Prescott to Alamán, June 5, 1853, P-MHS.
68 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, June 27, 1853, P-MHS.
69 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, April 6, June 27, and November 29, 1853, P-MHS.
70 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, September 30, 1854, P-MHS.
71 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, January 20, 1852 and March 2, 1855, P-MHS. Busy and suffering delays with his many projects, the Mexican never did translate Philip the Second.
72 José Fernando Ramirez to Prescott, April 17, 1855, P-MHS. Exiled from Mexico, Ramirez headed for Europe to work on the Diego Duran manuscript which he eventually published as Historia de los indios de Nueva España y islas de tierra firme (2 vols., Mexico, 1867-1880).
73 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, December 22, 1855, P-MHS.
74 Joaquín García Icazbalceta to Prescott, May 27, 1856, P-MHS.
75 The last letter from García Icazbalceta, is dated November 5, 1856. Incidentally, no letter from the Mexican scholar to Prescott can be found in Felipe Teixidor (ed.), Cartas de Joaquín García Icazbalceta (México, 1937).
76 Joaquín García Icazbalceta (ed.), Colección de documentos para la historia de México (2 vols., México, 1858-1866), I, viii, cxxxivn. An item by item statement of Garcia Icazbalceta's dependence upon Prescott is in ibid., I, xiv-xlii passim. The second volume, quickly exceeding the time span of Prescott's interests, knows no such equivalent dependence upon him.
77 Prescott had no significant ties or influence in any other part of Latin America with the exception of Chile. In 1853 Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna visited the historian in Boston. In 1855 twenty-five-year-old Diego Barros Arana, with a covering letter crowded with admiration for Prescott, sent a copy of the first volume of his Historia jeneral de la independencia de Chile to Boston. A year later the Chilean sent the second volume of that work to Prescott, commenting, “He continuado en mi tarea con mejor empeño y entusiasmo para hacerme acreedor al juicio de un maestro tan competente.” In 1858 Pedro Félix Vicuña, admiring certain institutions in the life of the United States, indicated that such admiration sprang, in part, from the fact that the United States had produced a Prescott. See Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna to Prescott, April 17, 1853; Diego Barros Arana to Prescott, January 13, 1855 and January 29, 1856; and Pedro Félix Vicuña to Prescott, August 30, 1858, P-MHS.