Auction Date:2012 Mar 14 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, 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 signed “S. L. Clemens,” one page, 6 x 9.5, Wm. H. Hoyt & Co. Real Estate Brokers letterhead, April 26, 1902. Letter to Miss K. I. Harrison in New York. In full: “Please place $5,000 to my credit in the Guaranty Trust Company Monday, I shall draw it out Tuesday.” A couple trivial holes and thin areas to upper portion, a few creases and mild toning, a bit heavier at top, otherwise fine condition.
In the weeks prior to writing this letter, Clemens was exploring the Caribbean aboard the yacht of his friend and benefactor, financier Henry Huttleson Rogers. Rogers was a director at the Guaranty Trust Company, and while by 1902 Clemens was financially sound, the $5,000 mentioned in the letter may nevertheless have constituted a loan. Rogers had come to the beleaguered author’s financial rescue some ten years before, and since then he was both Clemens’ close friend and financial advisor. They would play billiards together, smoke cigars, and among their running jokes, Rogers was always accusing Clemens of stealing when his visited his home. “He is not only the best friend I have ever had,” wrote Clemens, “but is the best man I have known.”
The letter is addressed to Rogers’ secretary, Katharine I. Harrison, an imposing woman of six feet whose icy demeanor with would-be callers for Rogers gained her the nickname ‘the Sphinx’ on Wall Street. It is likely that the $5,000 withdrawal was for a down payment on Hillcrest, a mansion with stables built in 1882 on 18 acres of land in Tarrytown, New York, that the Clemens family purchased in April 1902. Clemens lived there for two years, but sold it in 1904 after a dispute with the village of Tarrytown regarding the assessment of the estate.
Auction Location:
5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
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