Summer Magic Auction

The Great Maurice (C.S. Maurice). Scrapbook of Political, Sports, and Entertainment Correspondence to a Magician Who Claims to Foresee the Future. V.p., 1926—42. Approximately 95 leaves, folio, pebbled and blind-embossed scrapbook album, belonging to The Great Maurice, “Dream Interpreter, Psychic, Card Manipulator, and Modern Mystic,” hundreds of pieces, mainly correspondence and postal documents, but also newspaper clippings and a few photos and postcards. Numerous correspondents reply to letters from Maurice, who predicts election outcomes, winners of sports events, matters of health and illness, business successes, and more, the contents including: a run of 1930s—40s letters to Franklin Delano Roosevelt concerning his re-election as governor of New York and to the presidency, two TLSs by Roosevelt signed as governor, two postal return receipts signed “Franklin D. Roosevelt” and “President,” plus several letters from the president’s secretaries, on White House stationery; a sympathy reply card signed by Beatrice Houdini after the death of Harry Houdini; a run of letters related to Herbert Hoover’s campaign for president, including a Hoover TLS, Charles Curtis TLSs (2), and TLSs signed by governors or governors’ secretaries of Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Delaware, Kansas, and other states, as well as officials from the DNC and RNC, U.S. senators, mayors, judges, and others; TLSs from boxers Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey; replies from representatives of Charlie Chaplin and Cecil B. DeMille; numerous vaudeville managers; and more. Many accompanied by carbons or originals of Maurice’s typed letters, who offers his predictions, or “fulfillments,” based on the contents of his dreams. Backstrip splitting and held with string, some pages disbound, page edges brittle, but contents generally unaffected.