Description:

Grover Cleveland ALS Declining Dartmouth College Lecture Invitation

A 2pp autograph letter signed by 22nd and 24th U.S. President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) as "Grover Cleveland" near the center of the second page. Written at Gray Gables, Cleveland's summer home in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, on August 1, 1897, on bifold grey and blue-speckled stationery paper. With one cross-out located on the fifth line. Expected wear including paper folds, the central horizontal fold discretely repaired. A few isolated scuffs to the back, else near fine. The third and fourth pages are blank. 4.375" x 6.875."

Ex-President Cleveland was just six months out of office after the end of his second presidential term in March 1897. Cleveland left the White House and retired to his estate Westland Mansion in Princeton, New Jersey, and summered at Gray Gables, the rambling Cape Cod style farmhouse in Buzzards Bay that the Clevelands had purchased in 1890. Cleveland had used the farmhouse as the Summer White House during his second term.

Cleveland wrote this letter to Robert F. Marden (1876-1935), then a rising senior at Dartmouth College, in full:

"Aug. 1. 1897

Robert F. Marden Esq

Dear Sir:

I have received your letter asking me to deliver a lecture at Dartmouth College at some time during the coming winter.

I would be glad to grant (?) your wishes (?) in this matter; and I assure you there would be no question as to time if I could bring myself to the belief that I ought to push aside other difficulties and make the engagement.

This I cannot do. Therefore I feel constrained to decline your very courteous and gratifying invitation.

Yours very truly

Grover Cleveland."

Robert Fiske Marden graduated from Dartmouth College the following year, in 1898. According to his obituary published in Washington, D.C.'s "Evening Star" on March 14, 1935, Marden was a prominent banker and businessman from Lowell, Massachusetts who had served as the longtime editor of the "Lowell Courier Citizen." Robert's older brother Philip Marden (1874-1963), also a Dartmouth alum, was a travel writer.

Grover Cleveland is the only U.S. President to serve non-consecutive presidential terms, the first between 1885 and 1889, and the second between 1893-1897. A Democrat, Cleveland first became involved in politics in his early 30s, while serving as Sheriff of Erie County, New York, Mayor of Buffalo, and later Governor of New York.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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