SIXTEEN-PAGE AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ('Mother'), to her only child Maurice, expressing her intense love for him ('My adored son my dear dear very beloved son...the violent and infinite love I have for you trained my will like a knight ready for a tournament, and I battled death, breath for breath, death rattle for death rattle, but love triumphed again...'), suggesting that this might be her last letter ('...I am writing you my last letter in case of a mishap...I nearly died, poisoned by an invisible poison which was in me...they came to tell me that they needed to operate that very evening at ten o'clock, that the plates had shown an enormous stone. They didn't conceal from me that the operation was of the gravest kind...') and giving a very full account of the symptoms of her kidney failure and the treatment she is receiving in the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, naming each of the specialists including her own French doctor [Felix] Marot, Dr [Leo] Buerger (1879-1943) and 'Lepmann' [Emanuel Libman] ('...the foremost diagnostic expert in the United States'), with details of her expenditure ('...I have spent an insane amount of money...At the Savoy Hotel, I had three hundred francs per day. Here it is two thousand francs for a week, without meals, which I have brought to me from Delmonico's...') and reflecting that Dr Pozzi who had operated on her eight or ten years earlier might have saved her leg from amputation had his X-ray apparatus worked and supported his instinctive diagnosis ('...He would have operated on me, and I would perhaps have kept my leg, for they are convinced here that the incessantly recurrent intoxications inflamed and augmented my arthritis. So four operations, all told; let us hope that this will be the last...'), and ending 'I embrace you, I love you, oh! how I love you!!', in French, written in pencil, 16 pages, quarto, on her headed grey-edged stationery bearing her initials and motto 'Quand meme', original envelope, [Mount Sinai Hospital, New York], no date [but April 1917]
SIXTEEN-PAGE AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ('Mother'), to her only child Maurice, expressing her intense love for him ('My adored son my dear dear very beloved son...the violent and infinite love I have for you trained my will like a knight ready for a tournament, and I battled death, breath for breath, death rattle for death rattle, but love triumphed again...'), suggesting that this might be her last letter ('...I am writing you my last letter in case of a mishap...I nearly died, poisoned by an invisible poison which was in me...they came to tell me that they needed to operate that very evening at ten o'clock, that the plates had shown an enormous stone. They didn't conceal from me that the operation was of the gravest kind...') and giving a very full account of the symptoms of her kidney failure and the treatment she is receiving in the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, naming each of the specialists including her own French doctor [Felix] Marot, Dr [Leo] Buerger (1879-1943) and 'Lepmann' [Emanuel Libman] ('...the foremost diagnostic expert in the United States'), with details of her expenditure ('...I have spent an insane amount of money...At the Savoy Hotel, I had three hundred francs per day. Here it is two thousand francs for a week, without meals, which I have brought to me from Delmonico's...') and reflecting that Dr Pozzi who had operated on her eight or ten years earlier might have saved her leg from amputation had his X-ray apparatus worked and supported his instinctive diagnosis ('...He would have operated on me, and I would perhaps have kept my leg, for they are convinced here that the incessantly recurrent intoxications inflamed and augmented my arthritis. So four operations, all told; let us hope that this will be the last...'), and ending 'I embrace you, I love you, oh! how I love you!!', in French, written in pencil, 16 pages, quarto, on her headed grey-edged stationery bearing her initials and motto 'Quand meme', original envelope, [Mount Sinai Hospital, New York], no date [but April 1917]
Try LotSearch and its premium features for 7 days - without any costs!
Be notified automatically about new items in upcoming auctions.
Create an alert
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
