Clemens, Samuel L.:

$3,950 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED ("SL CLEMENS") TO VIRGINIA FRAZER BOYLE]. Clemens writes appreciatively of a gift, or after receiving some of Boyle's writings, either in manuscript or book form: "They arrived last night, & I have drunk to them & from them 'with my heart,' & to the holy & pathetic things which they stand for & symbolize, the golden days of a vanished youth. I give you my best thoughts for them & for the darling poem, which is lovely & beautiful, & eloquent with the spirit of those same lost & lamented days." Boyle, as both poet and fiction writer, was closely associated with literary evocations of the Old South (at the age of 10, she was christened by Jefferson Davis as the "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy"). Her 1900 collection of local color stories, Devil Tales, achieved some success, and just perhaps that is the collective "they" to which Clemens here refers. He continues on, at length, proposing a meeting with her, in company with her husband, Thomas R. Boyle (to whim he directs a paragraph of jousting banter) when they come to New York, and extending warm felicitations on behalf of his wife and daughters, "for they are good creatures, considering." Signed "Sincerely yours SL. Clemens." Boyle printed a portion of this letter, in company with a poem in tribute to Clemens, in her late collection, Songs from the South.

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