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Mary Webb. “Father’s Path.” Typescript poem, one leaf, 10¼″ x 8″, white wove watermarked paper. Sixteen lines in two stanzas, two ink corrections. Originally titled “The Father’s Path”; the word “The” has been crossed out. “Mary Webb / (Mrs. H. B. L. Webb.)” is written (in black ink) at the bottom of the poem. Devastated by her father’s death at age 67 in January 1909, Webb grieved so acutely that she suffered from fever, weakness, accelerated metabolism and migraine for the next three years—a relapse of the Graves’ disease that had first occurred seven years before (at age 20). Gradually, Mary worked through her grief by composing prose and poetry dedicated to her much-loved Father’s memory. This early poem of rhymed, metrical lines was published in the Vineyard in August 1913 under the title “My Father’s Path.”