Description:

Booth Edwin

Edwin Booth ALS written at the Players Club



1p ALS on "The Players, 16 Gramercy Park" letterhead inscribed overall and signed by celebrated nineteenth-century actor Edwin Booth (1833-1893) as "Edwin Booth". The Players Club logo is embossed in the upper left corner of the first page, as well as on the companion envelope. Cream bifold stationery in very good condition, with isolated discoloration, expected folds, and minor splitting. Each page measures 4.5" x 6.75". The envelope, postmarked from New York and bearing a 2 cent green George Washington stamp, is weathered and letter-opened at top.



Edwin Booth wrote his "dear young friend" eighteen-year-old Hildegarde Hawthorne (1871-1952) from the Players Club on November 15, 1889. "I thank you will all my heart for your sweet letter so full of good words for me on my birthday … believe me your very happy old friend", Booth wrote. The Shakespearean actor and theatrical producer had turned 56 two days previously.



Booth resided on the top floor of 16 Gramercy Park, later known as the Players Club, between 1888 and his death in June 1893. The actor had purchased the townhouse, renovated it, and decorated it with his theatrical memorabilia. He later reopened the bottom floors as an exclusive gentlemen's club whose fifteen founding members included Mark Twain. (Booth's untouched bedroom, with its dark Victorian furnishings, can still be visited in the Lower East side today: https://untappedcities.com/2016/03/30/the-edwin-booth-bedroom-preserved-in-time-at-the-players-club-since-1893/).



The Players Club attracted members of a creative bent. For example, glancing through the membership roll of The Players Club from 1917 is like a who's who of American artists, musicians, writers, and actors: Childe Hassam (joined 1891), John Philip Sousa (1906), A. Sterling Calder (1910), James Montgomery Flagg (1914), etc.



Hildegarde Hawthorne wrote supernatural and children's short stories, novels, and biographies of Romantic writers like her grandfather, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). She published her first work in the children's magazine St. Nicholas at age 16, roughly two years before sending Booth her birthday wishes.



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