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An outstanding nine-page account from a survivor mentioning the last minutes of Captain Smith, Bruce Ismay, the Straus’s, and Guggenheim 75. Rose Amelie Icard. Titanic survivor who travelled as the personal maid to Mrs. Martha Evelyn Stone. Icard and Stone were rescued by the Carpathia in lifeboat 6. Amazing handwritten account, in French, written by Rose Amelie Icard, nine pages, 8.25 x 10.5, written in the 1950s. In part (translated): “The most tragic memory of my seventeen years trip around the world is the Titanic wreck. I am 83 years old, but it is a time of my life that I will never forget. I was in Paris when through an interpreter male friend I got acquainted with Mrs. George Stone, widow of an American husband, President of the Bell Company, a general telephone company, who was looking for a person liking to travel to accompany her.…It was Mrs. Stone who took the tickets in London and told me delighted that we were going to embark on the most beautiful liner. Nights before I had dreamed of death, of trunks smashed open, maybe a presentiment told me that I would not have chosen the Titanic. Captain Smith, even though on the verge of retiring, was designated by the White Star Line to command this floating palace for her maiden voyage; I can still see him, a handsome old man with a white beard. It is him who helped me get in the lifeboat…A French ship, ‘the Touraine’ I believe, had indicated ‘Attention,’ Icebergs!! But the President Bruce Ismay asserted that there was nothing to fear, that the Titanic was unsinkable.…Around eleven o’clock: Mrs. Stone and I went to bed. Forty-five minutes later, while the liner was at full speed a horrifying shock threw us out of bed. We were going to find out what was happening when an officer told us on the way ‘it is nothing go back to your cabin.’ I replied ‘listen to this loud noise, it seems like water is surging in the ship.’ Back in the cabin, I saw that our neighbor across had gone back to bed…We felt under our feet the deck heel over the abyss…At that time we witnessed unforgettable scenes where horror mixed with the most sublime heroism. Some women still in ball dresses, a few of them getting out of bed, barely dressed, tousled, panicked, were rushing toward the embarkations. Commandant Smith had shouted, ‘women and children first.’ Officers and sailors firm and calm in the crush were taking women and children by the arm and directed them toward the lifeboats. Next to me were two handsome elderly Mr. and Mrs. Straus, owners of Macys Department Stores in New York, she refused to get in the boat after having let her maid get in it. She hung on her husband’s neck while telling him ‘We have been married for 50 years, we never were apart, I want to die with you.’ They put the boat nearby the almost faint new spouse of millionaire J. Jacob Astor. coming back from their honeymoon, she was 19 years old, him 50 years old. She hung onto him, he had to push her back with force…By miracle Mrs. Stone and I found each other in the same boat, where we were about thirty people. The officer told us ‘Row hard, you only have twenty-five minutes to save your life.’ I took the oars and rowed with so much energy that I had bloody hands and paralyzed wrists; because we had to be quick to escape the immense abyss that the Titanic was going to open while sinking…While we were moving away on the nearly calm sea, only slightly lit by the lantern that the officer was holding, I did not keep my eyes off the (Titanic) blazing lights. Suddenly complete and impenetrable obscurity, horrible screams, shouting broke in the midst of creaks from the ship, then it was all. I sometimes still dream about it…When we were assembled in the Carpathia dining room, painful scenes unwound; young women were there without their husband, mothers without their son; a young mother whose son was snatched by a wave had gone crazy and mistook a child presented to her for her own. Some survivors told the story of atrocious moments in the course of which all human feeling opposed. There were sublime gestures. A stranger took his lifejacket off to offer it to an elderly woman who had not found a place in the embarkation and told her: ‘You pray for me.’ After having helped rescue women and children billionaire Benjamin Guggenheim put on formal clothes, a rose on the lapel, to die.” In fine condition, with a central horizontal fold and some light corner creases. Accompanied by a lengthy French newspaper article about Icard, dated August 22, 1951. Estimate $2,000 - 3,000