Roosevelt, Thedore. Autograph letter signed to his nephew Theodore Robinson, [Nairobi], 26 Oct 1908

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE

AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ("THEODORE ROOSEVELT") TO HIS NEPHEW, THEODORE DOUGLAS ROBINSON, DISCUSSING THE DISTRIBUTION OF FUNDING THROUGHOUT HIS WELL-KNOWN POST-PRESIDENTIAL SAFARI. 

4 pages (7 7/8 x 5 3/8 in.; 175 x 136 mm) on a bifolium, third and fourth pages written vertically, separate address envelope bearing two stamps, "On safari" [Nairobi], 26 October 1909, with an engraved portrait; small clean tear at crease on second leaf affecting signature. 

Roosevelt's famed big-game hunting expedition in Africa was sponsored primarily by the Smithsonian Institution, which was to benefit by gaining specimens of the animals shot during the trip, and by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Roosevelt intended to pay his and his son Kermit's personal expenses largely through a writing contract with the publisher Scribner's. His brother-in-law Douglas Robinson and nephew Theodore Robinson managed much of the actual details of the trip's finances in America. 

Written one day prior to his fifty-first birthday, Roosevelt laments on his advancing age and deficient eyesight noting "Kermit has now passed me by as a hunter, for my slightl superiority in marksmanship does not offset his better eyes, and above all his great superiority in endurance and agility..."