2023-03 HCA Auctions
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/8/2023
Thomas Brackett Reed (1839-1902) Vigorous U.S. Republican Party leader who, as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1889-91, 1895-99), introduced significant procedural changes (the Reed Rules) that helped ensure legislative control by the majority party in Congress. He wrote brilliant articles for many fine journals in his day. Six pages of a journal album entirely in his pen of what appears to be a eulogy, but reads more like a love letter to his dear friend Joseph Upham, whose original albumin photo is pasted to the front. Very poignant and with a vibrant pen, we are compelled to quote approx. half of it: "An Album, My dear Joe, may be the saddest thing in the world. To find so many qualities of head and heart gone so utterly to seed is mournful enough always but doubly mournful if those qualities belonged to us. I beg you will not imagine from this solemn beginning that I have many ears for your future. Only a horrible doubt will creep in. If you would just cut Chadbourne; leave plants to their own reflections, bugs to die a natural death and take lovingly to the exact sciences the only domain of perfect truth, my hopes and expectations would be perfectly clear. As it is I fear I shall hear of you as a victim of misplaced confidence, dying in a bog, surrounded by the finest specimens, or devoured by a Boa who does not appreciate your philosophical desire to inspect him. The gloom of remote antiquity shrouds the origin of Chess. We find it as far back as history carries us. …you were "the burning and shining light". * Your moves were always great,…especially terror to my heart was your masterly "Pawn to Ring's fourth." Sparring also came down from the ancients Perhaps the first fight on record was that between Cain and Abel, in which Cain shamelessly violated the rules of the ring by using a club. Certain it is that he went about the world forever after with a black mark on his forehead,* perhaps another under his right eye…In this noble art you are a proficient. If I say that you could not whip Heenan, it is not because I wish to wound your pride of personal character … because you have not yet reached that perfection of which you are capable . In this notable art I have, in my humble way, endeavored to cope with you and. I trust that whenever you see "straight from the Shoulder" you will recall our struggles for the belt once "encostume" and. once without costume. On your firmness of purpose your chivalric devotion to the weaker side, I could linger lovingly for many pages…Your Orthodoxy is eminently dubious. But I have no fears. When you have thoroughly reasoned it out that Christianity is a deceit, your firmness, Chivalric &c aforementioned will make you espouse the weaker side and you will land at last, I trust on the "Shining Shores". If you do I fear I shall never see you more; though that may depend somewhat on the width of the gulf mentioned in Scripture. If after this discriminating "'-Religious Treatise, extract from Prophet Jeremiah Young dedication Read it without stops. Eulogy you do not cherish my memory I shall deem it high time for Astraea Redux and the "Cycle of the Golden Year". I might tell you what I expect you to do in the world But "tis a vile world '! Fair Play is so rare that it is eminently a jewel. All I dare hope for anymore is, that he will finally triumph over the World, the Flesh and the Devil. My most earnest wish for you is that your triumph may be swift and sure. Your Friend, Thomas B. Reed" One of Reed's famous epigrams you may have heard: "A statesman is a politician who is dead.". In Fine condition.
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