Edward Lathem, Dartmouth dean, Frost's editor
Scholar and author, dean and librarian emeritus at Dartmouth College, Edward Connery Lathem was a confidant of Robert Frost and edited a 1969 volume of the poet's work that for many years was the definitive collection.
An exacting, engaging editor, Mr. Lathem was just as adept at companionship and at bringing to life the lives of writers and the history of the college that was his intellectual home for more than 60 years.
"He was in many ways a man of the 19th century who lived in the present day," said Peter Gilbert, executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council and Frost's executor. "Ed Lathem was an original, a formal person, but enormously warm and caring. Through thoughtfulness and courtesy he raised friendship to an art form."
On Friday, Mr. Lathem was working at his desk in his office at Dartmouth College when he collapsed and died. He was 82 and lived in Hanover, N.H.
"He was a shy person who almost whispered, but you had the sense that he was speaking from the ages and for the ages," said David M. Shribman, who collaborated with Dr. Lathem on a book of Frost's speeches at colleges that will be published this fall. "He was a remarkable scholar and had a wonderful gift for friendship."
Though Mr. Lathem had been awarded a doctorate from Oxford University in England, he had little use for dignified titles, at least when it came to himself. "Mr. Lathem" was about as formal as he allowed.
Nevertheless, he rose to high positions at Dartmouth during the decades when, as a writer and editor, he published more than 30 books, ranging from a reminiscence of his encounters with Dr. Seuss to several volumes related to Frost.
Mr. Lathem joined the Dartmouth library staff in 1952 and was head librarian by 1968. Five years later, his rank was elevated, and he assumed the dual title of librarian of the college and dean of libraries. In 1982, he became the first person named counselor to the president, a formal recognition of a role he had long played as a close adviser.
"Edward Lathem served Dartmouth in various capacities for nearly 60 years," said a statement from Dartmouth president James Wright. "And he made a profound difference as librarian, as a leader in establishing and stewarding the Montgomery Endowment, and as a true man of letters. He was a wise counselor and warm friend to Dartmouth presidents and their families."
To the art of friendship, which Wright said he and his wife, Susan, would miss, Mr. Lathem brought a presence that recalled an earlier time.
"In an Internet era, Edward Connery Lathem wrote letters. In an era of word processors, Edward used a fountain pen," Shribman, a former Washington bureau chief for the Globe and now executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote in a tribute published Sunday in his newspaper. "In an era of bytes, Edward cherished nibs. In an era of extravagance, Edward was frugal. In an era of excess, Edward was a minimalist. In an era of informality, Edward always wore a bespoke suit and a white tie."
Mr. Lathem was born in Littleton, N.H., served in the Army after high school, and then went to Dartmouth, from which he graduated in 1951. He received a master's in library service in 1952 from Columbia University and, while already working at Dartmouth, a doctorate from Oxford in 1961.
His association with Frost began at Dartmouth, when the poet was teaching and Mr. Lathem was one of his students, and evolved. Frost was best man when Mr. Lathem married Elizabeth French in 1957. French, a physician, died in 1992.
Mr. Lathem also became Frost's editor. While "The Poetry of Robert Frost," which Mr. Lathem published in 1969, became the standard Frost text, some critics and poets strongly disagreed with his editing, which included standardizing some punctuation and spelling.
In "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," for example, Mr. Lathem added a comma that changed, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep," from earlier Frost editions, to: "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep."
Adding the comma after the word dark, critics argued, turned the phrase into a list of three adjectives, rather than allowing the phrase "dark and deep" to modify lovely. Robert Pinsky and Donald Hall, each a former US poet laureate, both took issue with such changes.
"The reading I've given it is the accurate one," Mr. Lathem told The New York Times in 1995, when the Library of America published "Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose and Plays," saying the new volume corrected "unauthorized editorial changes."
"I have no idea who is right about this one, but I know if you went into Edward's office, he would pull down his volumes filled with Frost's annotations explaining exactly what he meant, signed 'RF,' " Shribman said.
No service or funeral is planned for Mr. Lathem, who was just as involved in his community as he was on the college campus. For two decades he was a trustee of Howe Library in Hanover, and for 30 years was elected to the town position of fence viewer.
"He had a great sense of humor and was curious and thoughtful across a wide variety of issues and topics," Gilbert said. "He was authentically caring for the people in his presence, interested in you, a perfect host drawing out his guests or his luncheon companion."
Mr Lathem also, in recent years, shared a golden retriever with the family of his friend Dr. Edward Merrens.
"He didn't think he could do it alone, so he would have the dog on weekends and we would have it during the week," Merrens said.
Such an arrangement befitted a man "who had a refined sense of style," Merrens said. "He loved cufflinks, he loved tie tacks, and made gifts of them to friends."
The more lasting gifts, however, were his presence and the many letters that he wrote with a fountain pen, then walked to the Hanover post office.
"If you were his friend," Shribman said, "you could count on hearing from him on the phone at least three times a week and by mail three times a week." 