Price: $650.00
Unbound. Small card with printed initials "A de C." Measuring 5½" x 3½". A note signed "Annie" to "My dear James." Written on both sides, near fine. The first part of the note mentions the death and attendant services of a mutual acquaintance. The second part mentions that they spent the 4th (of July) in Oneonta and delivers a piece of news, apparently about her brother: "Horace announced his engagement today - to a young widow - husband and she were returning from honeymoon, he went down on the Titanic. The note is dated "Wednesday" in ink, from context and research the note is from 1913.
There were approximately a dozen honeymooning couples on the *Titanic*. The Scottish-born Mary Farquharson Marvin survived but lost her husband Daniel Marvin. Not knowing she was pregnant, she gave birth to a daughter that October. According to the website *Encyclopedia-Titanica*: "Mary was not single for long and began a courtship with Horace Silliman de Camp (b. 22 October 1886), a native of Canastota, New York who was engaged in the lumber business and who was previously acquainted with Daniel Marvin and his family. The two met at her mother-in-law's holiday home at the Adirondacks and their engagement was announced in August 1913. The couple were wed on Christmas Day that same year at the Harlem Presbyterian Church, 5 West 125th Street, New York. They honeymooned in Egypt and upon their return to the USA lived in a newly purchased house in Great Neck, Long Island." Curiously, according to *The New York Times*, one of the page boys who strewed white rose petals before the bride was the then five-year-old future science-fiction author, L. Sprague de Camp.
A slight but poignant note expressing the impact on the marital lives of those in the *Titanic* tragedy.
Item #438701
