Han grows stronger daily:1 relishes her food, and consumes as much as she used when well: Yet she has very bad spells, which she rather encourages: This however is constitutional, and for which, her good old deceased friend, Dr. S. P. Thayer,2 pronounced, irremedial , by medicine—Mr Heyde, he used to say, We know of no medicine that can cure it: still he always sympathised her, kindly, tenderly, and declared her to be, physicaly duk.00402.002_large.jpg a perfect woman.
She has omitted taking bromide, now, for 8 nights. If she could be persuade to desisted from rubbing a most pernicious coloring ointment, into her scalp, with an old tooth brush, her improvement would be greater. She denied the practice, but I have observed, from behind her chair, a complete scab allmost or the blood starting from the irritation:
Christ, O! Christ! It makes me religious, and discouraged with women. Why gray hair is fashionable: and then cork screw curls, drawn over her forehead to cover wrinkles.
C L HCorrespondent:
Charles Louis Heyde (ca.
1820–1892), a French-born landscape painter, married Hannah Louisa Whitman
(1823–1908), Walt Whitman's sister, and they lived in Burlington, Vermont.
Charles Heyde was infamous among the Whitmans for his offensive letters and poor
treatment of Hannah. For more information about Heyde, see Steven Schroeder,
"Heyde, Charles Louis (1822–1892)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).