431 Stevens Street1
Camden New Jersey
U S
America
Dec: 2—Ev'ng
Rec'd to-day a copy of your
Encheiridion2—seems a little beauty of book-making. I
suppose you have rec'd the copies of new L of G : I sent you over three weeks since,
addressed same as this card.3
Walt Whitman
Notes
- 1. This letter bears the
address: T W H Rolleston | Lange Strasse 29 | Dresden | Saxony. It is
postmarked: Philadelphia | Dec | 3; Dresden (?) | I. | 18 12 | 81 | (?). [back]
- 2. Rolleston
(1857–1920) was one of Professor Edward Dowden's students, a poet,
biographer of Lessing, and historian of Irish myth and legends (Whitman and Rolleston—A Correspondence, ed. Horst
Frenz [Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1951], 7). The
correspondence between the two men began in 1879 (see Rolleston's letters in the
John Rylands Library, Manchester, England), but the poet's replies (at least
six) are missing. On October 16, 1880, Rolleston
sent Whitman a copy of his translation of Epictetus which he had printed at his
own expense. The pamphlet is now in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the
Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
In the following year the Enchiridion of Epictetus was
published in London by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. In his copy, also in the
Feinberg Collection, Whitman wrote in 1886 or 1888: "Have had this little Vol.
at hand or in my hand often all these years." The markings in three different
colors testify to the fact that Whitman perused the book. [back]
- 3. Whitman sent a letter to
Rolleston on November 9 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Feinberg
Collection). [back]