Jamaica
April 16th 1860
Dear Brother Walt,
I was at home yesterday as usual everything is going on about the same. Andrew has recovered in a great measure,1 so that he sits up and would probably have been out-doors but the weather has been very wet and cold here for the last week. Mother herself I think is not very well. she has a bad cold that seems to pull her down. I have got one of the worst colds I ever had, and feel extremely unlike myself, still anything of that kind sits lighter on me than on one of Mother's age, and this morning Ed. seemed to be quite sick, that is he couldn't eat and complained of a bad pain in his side, however Mother put a mustard plaster on him and he felt considerably better when I left home.
Mattie and George, the rest of "the family" are well. The Mr Brown2 who has rented the lower part of the house has sent a number of things to the house, carpets &c. Mother has let him fix the front parlor and she has emigrated and taken posession of your room. The Moore people3 have not moved yet, and I believe do not intend to till 7 of May
The Water Works men are all trembling in our boots, the [prospects?] being that we are all going to be kicked out, neck and heels, from the chief down to the Axeman. It seems that Mr F. Spinola4 started a bill at Albany some time last winter trying to oust the new commissioners (King, Lewis &c &c)5 well someone made an amendment casting out the present old Com. the new Com. Chief Eng. &c all the way through, and appointing Mr McElroy6 in place of Mr Kirkwood.7 It has passed one house, and I guess the chances are abt even for its passing the other, as Wells the Contractor8 is helping it with all the power he can muster. I think it will be a dark day for the B. W. W. if he succeeds, but I suppose to the victor belongs the spoils. I know I ain't going to worry, if it does go through.9
Mother wants me to be sure and tell you that you must bring her one of those books by the authoress of "Consuelo"10 also Redpath's "John Brown"11 she says you needn't send them as that would involve cost, but to surely remember to bring them with you when you come home.
I read your letter at home.12 I am glad that you are having so good a time and that your book has such a good prospect of success. I sincerely hope you will meet with no disappointment.
Write me again Walt. I like much to hear how you are getting along. I shall write to you again probably next week. Mattie sends her love.
Your affectionate Brother Jeff.
Notes
- 1. Jeff writes in a letter
to Walt from April 3, 1860, that "Andrew has been
very sick but was getting better on Sunday when I was home. His disease
commenced by a very violent pain in the side, kept up and made worse by an
ignorent Dr. and those around him." An alcoholic, Andrew would die of
tuberculosis or perhaps throat cancer on December 3, 1863. [back]
- 2. John Brown was a tailor
whom Jeff came to despise; see Thomas Jefferson Whitman's letter to Walt Whitman
dated March 3, 1863. [back]
- 3. Jeff refers here either
to E. D. or John Moore, both of whom lived on Myrtle Avenue. [back]
- 4. A member of the New
York legislature from 1855 to 1861, Francis B. Spinola (1821–1891) later
became a brigadier general during the Civil War, and finally a United States
congressman from 1887 to 1891. [back]
- 5. The four members of the
Brooklyn Board of Water and Sewer Commissioners were Gamaliel King, William B.
Lewis, John H. Funk, and Daniel L. Northrup. [back]
- 6. Samuel McElroy preceded
Kirkwood as chief engineer of what was the Nassau Water Company (later the
Brooklyn Water Works). McElroy resigned his position on June 10, 1856, at which
time Kirkwood took over. [back]
- 7. James P. Kirkwood
(1807–1877), a prominent civil engineer and cofounder of the American
Society of Civil Engineers (1852), superintended the construction of the
Brooklyn Water Works as chief engineer from 1856 to 1862. After his work in
Brooklyn, he moved to St. Louis and designed the waterworks which Jeff would
later build. Kirkwood eventually became a nationally known independent
consultant and wrote the standard text on water filtration. [back]
- 8. In 1856 Henry S. Welles
& Co. signed a contract with the Nassau Water Company to build a waterworks
for Brooklyn. Welles was the main contractor for the project from its beginning
to its completion in 1862. [back]
- 9. Since Kirkwood and the
others remained in their positions, the bill apparently did not pass. [back]
- 10. Walt Whitman may have
loaned Louisa Van Velsor Whitman his two-volume edition of George Sand's The Countess of Rudolstadt (New York: William H. Graham,
1848). These volumes were in the poet's library at his death. [back]
- 11. James Redpath
(1833–1891) was the author of The Public Life of Capt.
John Brown (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), a correspondent for the
New York Tribune during the war, the originator of
the "Lyceum" lectures, and editor of the North American
Review in 1886. He met Whitman in Boston in 1860 (Thomas Biggs Harned
Collection of Walt Whitman, The Library of Congress, Notebook #90) and remained
an enthusiastic admirer; see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman
in Camden, ed. Sculley Bradley (New York: Rowman and Littlefield,
1961), 3:459–461. He concluded his first letter to Whitman on June 25, 1860: "I love you, Walt! A conquering
Brigade will ere long march to the music of your barbaric jawp."
See also Charles F. Horner, The Life of James Redpath and the
Development of the Modern Lyceum (New York: Barse & Hopkins, 1926)
and John R. McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath and
the Making of Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2008). Louisa Van Velsor Whitman acknowledged receiving the
"life of john brown" from Walt Whitman on May 3 (?), 1860. For more information
on Redpath see "Redpath, James [1833–1891]." [back]
- 12. Jeff probably refers
to a lost letter from Walt Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. [back]