"I cannot feel that he is gone ... "
5 Typed Letters Signed ("Dick") to the wife of his mentor and old friend, Adam C. ("Kit") Carson.
Washington, D.C., Boston, and New York: May 20, 1941 - May 8, 1944.
Price: $2,500.00
About the item
Each one page. 1 vols. 8-1/2 x 10 inches. "I cannot feel that he is gone ... " Final letter is torn and tape-repaired, with no loss of text; others are very good to fine.
Item #25769
When Richard Byrd was just twelve years old in 1900, Adam ("Kit") Carson, a friend and associate of his father's in the family's law firm, invited the young Byrd to visit him in the Philippine Islands. Young Byrd, characteristically, accepted immediately and enthusiastically, displaying the curiosity and yearning for adventure that marked his later life.
But the relationship with Carson grew and deepened, and in this sequence of letters to Carson's wife, written over forty years later, Byrd's reverence for his aged and dying friend is apparent. In the first letter, from Boston, dated May 20th, Byrd writes: "Dear Eleanor, Will it be too late to come to Riverton next Tuesday? I would like to be there even if Kit is too ill to see me ... Don't forget that I am going through this with you. I know how tough it is."
Then, on June 2, "I am writing this letter to let you know that I am with you constantly in thought and spirit. I have Kit's photograph in my room and I cannot feel that he is gone. Indeed, he can't be absolutely gone because he will be as he has always been a real factor in my day to day life ... "
Again, on July 9, "I want to tell you again please not to think that I am not constantly thinking of you and the children and, as for old Kit, he is so much in my thoughts that I have had several dreams about him lately. He is not non-existent for me because he is still a real factor in my life as he has always been ... "
Finally, three years later: "There is hardly a day passes that I do not think of old Kit, and of course when I think of him, I think of you and the children"
