writer (1835-1910). Autograph letter signed ("Mark Twain"). Riverdale-on-Hudson. 3 pages. 8vo. On black-edged mourning paper. With envelope.
$ 9,055 / 8.500 €
(60583)
To Miss Helen Ingleby "& the other friends", of Heacham Hall, Norfolk, describing how his family and friends would play the Meisterschaft to audiences of hundred friends ("...not ten of whom knew the German tongue, but they always had an enjoyable time just the same, for we played it with tremendous spirit. I think I appeared in only one scene... it was between papa & the German boarding-house Frau, & these parts were done in English, & were not written down, but made up as we went along – as a convenience for us incapables, as I was not able to memorize a part...").
'IT IS A PLEASANTLY ASTONISHING THING TO BE GREETED WITH SALUTATIONS FROM THE BLOOD OF POCAHONTAS' Mark Twain writes to a descendant of John Rolfe and Pocahontas at Heacham Hall, Norfolk; this being the Rolfe family seat, which the princess and her son, Thomas Rolfe, visited in 1618, a year before her death; Twain adding that "it is a long time since anything less expected has happened to me. It makes me feel pretty recent, as to American origin". His three-act Meisterschaft (1888) was described as a 'Patent Universally-Applicable Automatically-Adjustable Language Drama... adjustable to any tongue, and performable in any tongue'..