ALS, one page, 4.5 x 7, Gad's Hill Place letterhead, October 16, 1867. Handwritten letter to Lady Molesworth, widow of the radical politician and socialite Sir William Molesworth, arranging to call on her the day before leaving for his American reading tour. In full: "I can arrange to call on you on the 7th of November at any time that will best suit you, but I cannot dine, as I must leave the day for my own people. I depart from London next morning. I have steadily refused to enter into any engagement whatever with any speculator, for America. I go entirely on my own account and bound to nothing. Many thanks for your kind note." In fine condition. Encapsulated in a PSA/DNA authentication holder.
This letter was previously part of the collection of Senator Carl Levin. A lifelong Democrat, ardent advocate for civil rights, and staple of the United States Senate from 1979 to 2015, Senator Levin was also a longtime client of RR Auction. As a collector, he favored his political heroes—Harry S. Truman, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—as well as those figures emblematic of the American spirit, like Robert Frost, Joe Louis, and Helen Keller.
