Sep 29, 2022 - Sale 2615

Sale 2615 - Lot 288

Price Realized: $ 1,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(WEST--NEVADA.) H.L. Williamson. Broadside poem on Nevada military life titled "A Trip to Pandemonium." Letterpress broadside, 9 1/4 x 7 inches; apparently removed from a scrapbook, mount remnants on verso, top and bottom edges unevenly trimmed. Elko, NV: Elko Independent, [1872]
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Additional Details

An epic poem framed as a dialogue with the devil, filled with humorous references to United States Army officers stationed at Camp Halleck in Nevada, including camp commander Colonel James Biddle and many others. The Shoshone Indians and "that land where the Mormons go" are also discussed. It can be easily dated by the stanza on the coming Grant-Greeley presidential contest. It concludes with an admonition: "When you go to Elko, in your new suit of blue / Keep away from the whiskey--'tis the best you can do." No other copies traced in OCLC or at auction. Provenance: from the papers of career Army officer Erskine M. Camp (see lot 51), who is mentioned in passing in this poem as "valiant and gay."