Description:

Cleveland Grover

3pp ALS on tan colored bifold paper inscribed overall and signed by former U.S. President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) as "Grover Cleveland". In very good to near fine condition with some minor paper folds and creases, each page measuring 4.375" x 6.75".


Cleveland wrote this wry letter on November 18, 1901 from Princeton, New Jersey detailing his upcoming travel itinerary to friend John Sergeant Wise (1846-1913). Cleveland, along with his old friend Commodore Elias Cornelius Benedict (1834-1920), were soon to depart on a sporting trip hosted by Wise. In the letter, Cleveland adopts the tone of a punctilious and unreasonably demanding houseguest to great comedic effect.


Cleveland wrote: "I am to board train No. 47 down at Princeton Junction at 10.13 Thursday night. I am to take nothing better, in the matter of clothes, than the suit I travel in. I am to take no guns or other articles of sporting outfit … I am to be left at Princeton Junction, Monday morning Nov. 18th - the Norfolk and New York train stopping for its purpose of dumping me, about 6.13."


Cleveland's droll and self-deprecating letter continued: "While at Cape Charles I am not to be plied with wine or any such nonsense - nor are my whiskey and rum privileges to unduly curtailed; abique hoc that I am not to be responsible for their supply. I am not to be required to exhibit my bad shooting to a greater extent than suits my inclination. Finally I am to be constantly grateful for all that is done for me, and to do everything suggested by my considerate host without questions, 'anything herein contained to the contrary notwithstanding.'" Both Cleveland and his correspondent Wise were trained lawyers, which perhaps explains Cleveland's two casual references to legal terminology.


Cleveland had asked Wise to allow Commodore Benedict to accompany their party in late October. The ex-president thought the excursion would distract Benedict, who had lost his only son Frederick Hart Benedict (1860-1901) in a motor vehicle accident near West Point, New York in mid-October. But perhaps too Cleveland wanted to return Commodore Benedict's kindness. In 1893, Cleveland had convalesced aboard Benedict's 138-foot-long steam yacht Oneida after a secret surgery to remove a cancerous growth from his left jaw.


Elias Cornelius Benedict was a highly successful banker, stockbroker, and industrialist. He was an avid sportsman and Commodore of the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club of Long Island.


John Sergeant Wise served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. The lawyer later served as a Virginia Congressman and wrote several books, notably his antebellum memoir The End of an Era (1899).


Grover Cleveland is the only U.S. President to have served 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. Cleveland's administrations focused mainly on domestic issues, like corruption, the gold standard, tariff reform, and subduing labor unrest. After 1897, Cleveland retired to his estate Westland Mansion in Princeton, New Jersey.


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