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Auction: 18038 - Autographs, Historical Documents, Ephemera and Postal History
Lot: 3166

Autographs
United States
Mark Twain
1895 two A.L.S. to Sir Francis de Winton; the first dated 6 May from the Hotel Brighton in Paris just before his return to America after a long stay in France. He has asked for an introduction to friends in Australia and begins the letter, "By gracious, now I'm scared of my own daring! ... Give me a line to one friend of yours down there ..." and concludes, "I am nursing the gout again in this hotel, waiting for next Friday to come, when we all break for Southampton & America ...." and is signed "S.L. Clemens"

The second, long letter, is dated 19 June and on his Quarry Farm, Elmira N.Y. note paper, here he writes, "I am in bed & been there a month, nursing & propagating & perfecting a carbuncle. It is on my leg. In the beginning it had the look and ways of a volcano ..." and continues with some detail. He adds, "I find the Princess Louise's autograph in one of my long-time-ago note-books. Those were lovely days; & she - indeed she was just charming. What a good happy humorous laugh she had; & such good hearty human ways too. I sent her my honestest homage by the Prince of Wales from Hamburg two or three years ago, & he said he would deliver it." and is signed "S.L. Clemens". A rare and desirable pair of letters. Photo

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 – 1910) better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1875) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".


Major-General Sir Francis Walter de Winton (1835 – 1901) was a British Army officer, colonial administrator and courtier in the Household of the Duke of York.

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