Early ALS signed “Wm. H. Taft,” two pages both sides, 5 x 7.75, July 26, 1885. Taft writes from “Fenton’s” to Major H. P. Lloyd in Cleveland. In part: “Here I am, comfortably settled and as happy as a king (if indeed kings are happy at all)…. Prof. and Mrs. Hart came on the same train with me and Henry Hanna…. [In Utica] I stayed … at a very clean comfortable little hotel. There I found an old gentleman who wished to ‘go in’ to Fenton’s…. The old gentleman turned out to be Judge Foster of Rome, New York. He has been a state senator. It was when the Senate sat as a Court of Errors. He was a member of Congress in ’37 and ’38 and in ’44 was appointed by the Governor to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Silas Wright. He was in the Senate with Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Tom Corwin and all of those old boys…. He told me he had made more money since leaving the bench than in all the rest of his professional life put together…. He comes into the Adirondacks each year to fish and rough it for a year [sic]…. I found that everyone was here whom I wished to see and it was not long before I was pulling a light boat over the calm surface of the lake and was looking not as much at the beautiful scenery which surrounded us as the ‘man’ at the helm…. Will Herron [evidently a relative, probably a brother, of Taft’s future wife, Helen Herron] has an explanation of that little scene of which I told you that would make a horse laugh but which I have no doubt his mother believes implicitly. I am not so sure about the crudity of the other girl. The excuse is something like that offered by another man ‘who was caught doing what he hadn’t ought.’ The woman gave it me [sic] and I did eat. I only laughed when Nellie [Helen Herron] told me the explanation and ventured no opinion as to its truth or force….” Taft and Herron were married on June 19 of the following year. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope addressed in Taft’s hand. Tiny edge separations at mailing folds and light show-through of text, otherwise fine condition. Taft letters of this early date are uncommon. Auction LOA John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and R&R COA.
