Copy of Columbus Letter Is a Windfall : History: Long overlooked at the Huntington Library, it proves to be the oldest version known.

Before he left on his final voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus was worried that he might not return home. So he wrote to his son, Diego, instructing him on handling the family estate and even how to provide for the explorer’s mistress.

“Beatriz Enriquez is commended to your protection out of your love for me as much as you might have for your mother . . . ,” Columbus, then a widower, wrote in Spanish of the woman he never married because of caste distinctions. Columbus went on in the letter to give his son advice about marriage, relatives, the Spanish Royal Family and debts to Italian bankers.

The original of that 1502 letter long has been lost. But now a rare handwritten copy made about 100 years later and thought to be the only one made from the original has been discovered attached to a manuscript at the Huntington Library in San Marino. Jubilant library officials, who announced the find Tuesday, will display the letter in an exhibit commemorating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ first visit to the Americas.

“I don’t think anybody realized at first how important it was,” William Frank, the Huntington’s associate manuscripts curator, said in explaining why the copy of the letter was ignored in the library for more than 60 years. The copy was found inside a genealogical work about Portuguese royalty that railroad magnate and library founder Henry Huntington purchased from a London auction house in 1926.

Last year, Frank was reviewing manuscripts when he noticed that the Columbus letter was mentioned on the sales slip for the genealogy. (The link is that a granddaughter of Columbus married into the Royal Family of Portugal.)

Frank assumed that other collections must have older and better copies. But research in Europe, he said, proved that the Huntington version is about 150 years older than any other version known.

The three-page letter reinforces portraits of Columbus as a complex person, extremely concerned about money and social status, but loyal enough to his mistress to ensure that she was taken care of. The Columbus letter does not differ significantly from later versions, and that should make historians “feel a lot more secure” in using the material, Frank said.

Also announced Tuesday was a $300,000 grant to the Huntington for the Columbus 500th anniversary exhibit from the Fundacion Ramon Areces. That Spanish cultural and scientific philanthropy was established by the founder of El Corte Ingles, a large department store chain in Europe that also owns the Harris’ Department Stores in the San Bernardino area. Some of the grant will be used to bring schoolchildren to the exhibit, called “Spain in the Americas, 1492-1600,” which is to open in February and run six months.

During a news conference at the Huntington, Eduardo Garrigues, Spain’s consul general in Los Angeles, referred to the controversy surrounding the many Columbus events planned worldwide next year. Critics say that 1492 should be mourned, not celebrated, for starting the slaughter of American Indians and the exploitation of resources by European imperialists. But Garrigues said he hoped people of differing political views will recognize Columbus’ trip “as an important, momentous event in the history of the world.”