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Booth Tarkington

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:200.00 - 400.00 USD
Booth Tarkington

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Auction Date:2014 Apr 16 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
TLS, four pages, 7.25 x 10.5, personal letterhead, April 22, 1945. Letter to Ralph Knight at the Saturday Evening Post. In part: “On the point of the genesis of the present story, the new translation of the Ms. of Sugar, 12th Century Abbot of St. Denis and builder—or at least re-builder—of St. Denis is now about to be published…I don’t need to say that I read it with a profound interest…but that did happen to be the effect of a passage that quite suddenly stood out to me as the germ, so to say, of a possible ‘Rumbin story.’ This passage dealt with two objects of great value for centuries in the treasury of St. Denis. They were a chalice and a ‘Gondola,’ and already of long historical interest sacredly, they began to be a part of more modern history with a violent suddenness during the French Revolution when the Sansculotte government laid hands upon them. Then in 1804, As Napoleon became Emperor, thieves got them out of the Bibliotheque Nationale. The chalice, artfully buried within a plaster cast of an antique bust, got over to England and was surreptitiously sold to an English collector…Both the chalice and the ‘Gondola’ are described in detail by Sugar…The ‘Gondola,’ however, was either luckier or less lucky than the chalice because its whereabouts are a mystery…The ‘Gondola’ wholly disappeared from the knowledge of all honest men…maybe somebody’s using it for a butter-dish or perhaps it’s still inside a dirty old plaster cast in somebody’s cellar, maybe a bombed one.” In fine condition, with first two paragraphs crossed out in pencil by Tarkenton, a couple of other pencil notations on first page, area of mild toning to each page, and staple holes to top left corners.