FOUR-PAGE AUTOGRAPH LETTER TO TOUR MANAGER JAMES B. POND SIGNED BY NOTED ENGLISH EXPLORER ROSITA FORBES APOLOGIZING PROFUSELY FOR NUMEROUS "CRIMES" SHE HAS COMMITTED. by Forbes, Rosita. (1890-1967). Noted English expilorer and travel writer - [1926].

New York: February 17, [1926]., [1926].. Very good. - Four-page letter penned in black ink & filling both sides of 2 sheets of 9-1/4 inch high by 6 inch wide Hotel Webster letterhead with the address printed in raised lettering at the top of each sheet. Signed "Rosita Forbes". At top left of each sheet there is a small slit & tear where a fastener has been removed. Together with a Pond Bureau illustrated flier announcing 3 additions to his list of lecturers, including Forbes. Very good.

An amusing letter addressed to "Lord James", metaphorically prostrating herself for several offenses she has committed. First, she missed a Brooklyn lecture by mistaking the scheduled time and is desperate to make it right so that Pond will not be blamed for her error. Second, she has asked for a check after a lecture rather than waiting for the fee to be sent to Pond. She admits that she is short of cash and has sent to England for additional funds: "Your America is so ruinous, that till the draft comes, I'm quite broke!" Third, "the worst sin of all of having been such an unprofitable investment for you this year...."

Though Rosita Forbes started traveling at an early age, following her marriage to Major Ronald Forbes, it wasn't until after a nervous breakdown following her husband's death in World War I that her travels started in earnest. At first she served as an ambulance driver in France during the war and subsequently traveled around the world "by way of American Hawaii, Papua, Sumatra, Java, Cochin China, Siam, and China". In China she was taken prisoner during the revolution and ended up doing Red Cross work for the Chinese army. In 1919, she resumed her travels through Africa and the Middle East and was in Jerusalem for the riots of 1920. "From here her journeys are chronicled in her lectures....After her return from Kufra she met and married Col. Arthur McGrath of the British War Office...." Astonishingly, all this had been accomplished by the time she was thirty years old.

Rosita Forbes described her journey around the world in her first book, "Unconducted Wanderers" (1919). Disguised as a Moslem, she traveled across the Libyan desert to the oasis of Kufara from 1920-21. This journey is described by her in "The Secrets of the Sahara Kufara" (1924).