Writing from his deathbed - photo 1
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Writing from his deathbed

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$ 11 875
Auction dateClassic
16.10.2020 10:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 411475
Lot 67 | Writing from his deathbed
GRANT, Ulysses (1822-1885). Four autograph notes to Dr. George F. Shrady, [Wilton, N.Y.,] ca June-July 1885. [With:] signature ("U.S. Grant") on a card [Wilton, N.Y., 18 July 1885].

One page each, 75 x 131mm. In pencil; card, 58 x 97mm; envelope identified on the recto as "Last autograph of Gen Grant. Written for Mrs Shrady – is sent by Dr. Shrady." Housed in a custom clamshell case.

A terminally-ill Grant's notes to his physician—written in the final weeks of life. A group of four notes written by Grant and passed to his physician while unable to speak due to throat cancer during his final weeks of life. Diagnosed in the fall of 1884, his condition had worsened enough by the next spring that his doctors recommend he leave his New York City home for the country, and on 17 June 1885, Grant left the city for the last time, taking up residence at a friend's summer cottage upstate near Mount McGregor, New York. It was there that he completed his memoirs, the royalties from which would secure his family's financial security after his death.

During his last weeks of life, Grant would pass notes to visitors when his voice gave out to exhaustion. The notes reveal a man in continual discomfort, but resigned to his fate. According to Shrady's 1908 memoir of his visits to Grant during his five weeks of life, he had great difficulty sleeping at night, although he did not suffer a "great amount of pain," but tossed and turned, being unable to "feel satisfied in one position." He struggled for comfort, at one point asking Shrady if it was advisable to "have a sort of bed made in the bath carriage when I want to rest." (The "bath carriage" was likely a wheelchair equipped with a bedpan.) Grant resisted the use of morphine as a sedative—fearing addiction—and elected only to use it when he felt physical pain. The resultant sleepless nights left him exhausted, compelling him to write to Shrady on his arrival at the cottage one morning: "I have thirteen fearful hours before me before I can expect relief. I have had nearly two hours with scarcely animation enough to draw my breath." Believing any attempt to improve his health was merely "postponing the final event," he concluded, "I am ready now to go at any time. I know there is nothing but suffering for me while I do live."(See Shady, G. General Grant’s Last Days. New York, 1908.)

The notes are accompanied by an ink signature which Grant gave to the doctor at his request. On the verso of the envelope that housed the signature, Shrady wrote that the signature had been done "for me by him at Mt McGregor on my visit to him the week before his death & is probably the last one he ever wrote” and identifying the date as “July 18, 1883 [sic 1885].” Provenance: descendants of George F. Shrady by private sale to a West Coast dealer, 1995.
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