Lewis Meriwether Dabney: A Memoir and Letters

Whitefish MT: Privately Printed, 1924. Presumed first edition/first printing. Hardcover. Good.. x, [4], 276 pages. Illustrations. Occasional footnotes. Cover has some wear and soiling Inscribed by Stella Hutcheson Dabney (widow of Lewis Meriwether Dabney) with hand-written gift card also signed by his widow laid in. From an on-line posting: "Lewis Meriwether Dabney had a long and honorable career as a lawyer and citizen. The book consists of an excellently compiled and finely written biography by Mrs. Dabney, which includes an analysis of the character and mental attributes of Lewis Dabney, written by his brother, Samuel H. Dabney, a Houston lawyer; many of the papers of Lewis Dabney; and a foreword by another brother, Dr. Charles William Dabney, also of Houston. Born in Virginia Lewis Meriwether Dabney was born in Hampden-Sidney, Price Edward County, Virginia, descended form prominent families of the Old Dominion. He attended the College of Hampden-Sidney, an institution founded I 1776 by Patrick Henry and others, but transferred in 1882 to the University of Texas, when his father, Dr. Robert Lewis Dabney, moved to Texas to become a member of the faculty of the University of Texas upon the opening of this institution. Dr. Dabney had held the chair of systematic and polemic theology in Union Theological Seminary in Hampden-Sidney. In the University of Texas he filled the chair of philosophy, psychology and political economy. Lewis Dabney took an elective course, largely classical, in the new University, and then the law course. Many men who afterward rose to distinction were his classmates, among them A.S. Burleson, T.W. Gregory, R.L. Batts, R.L. Henry, R.E.L. Knight, W.J.J. Smith, and William Thompson. In 1888 Mr. Dabney moved to Dallas and entered upon the practice of law. In 1895 he was united in marriage with Miss Stella Hutcheson of Houston, also of Virginia parentage on both sides, the daughter of Captain Joseph Hutcheson, member of Congress. He soon attained distinction as a lawyer, especially in the field of commercial and financial law, to which he devoted himself exclusively after the first few years. Those who knew him prized him for his legal ability, and as a scholar, thinker and gentleman who had the courage of his convictions and rare gifts of expression, together with a well-developed sense of humor Preferred Private Life These attributes and qualities are reflected in a number of his papers and letters that are reproduced in the book. Notable among these is his address before the Texas Bar Association in 1910, a satirical commentary upon court procedure in Texas, entitled Pleading and Practice in the Land of Canaan, his address before the Dallas Bar Association in 1917, entitled The Homestead Law Considered From an Economic Standpoint, and the letter written June 25, 1917 to his wife and children, and found with his will and read four years later. But, as his brother, Dr. Charles William Dabney, says in the foreword: Many of his papers are lost and much of his best work in unrecorded. He loved the quiet life of a scholar in his library, and was at his best in private conferences in his office or in the company of his friends. There he shone as few men have done. Wife Sketches Character In her introduction to the book, Mrs. Dabney gives a picture of her husband that will be recognized by all who knew him intimately. These passages from it are striking. The roots of his being deep down in the traditions of Virginia, his hopes and ambitions flowering in the West, he lived in two civilizations, modified and influenced by both. Himself a strong individual and conservative, he believed in a republican representative government developed by the Anglo-Saxon races.