loc.01138.002_large.jpg
5 East 65th Street
New York City
Evn'g
Aug
3d
Your postal of 29th rec'd —I am here for a few days, after spending a week down on Long Island,
mostly at West Hills and Cold Spring, my parents' places of nativity—& my
own place.1 Dr Bucke has been with me—he has return'd to Canada—I am about as usual—I go on to B. before long,
about the book—
W W
loc.01138.001_large.jpg
Notes
- 1. Whitman met Dr. Richard
Maurice Bucke and Thomas Nicholson in Jersey City on July 23, and went to
Woodside, Long Island, where he stayed with Helen and Arthur Price until July
28. He spent the following four days at West Hills near Huntington. On August 1
he went to New York City, where he stayed with Edgar M. Smith, listed in the
directory as a secretary, until August 6 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E.
Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.). See also Specimen Days (ed.
Floyd Stovall [New York: New York University Press, 1963], 273). In The Long Islander, on August 5, a lengthy article
appeared on the poet by Mary E. Wager-Fisher, who drew upon an earlier piece in
Wide Awake Pleasure Book, 6 (February 1878),
109–115, in which she was greatly indebted to Whitman. In an adjacent
column of the same issue of the newspaper was a report titled "Walt Whitman in
Huntington." [back]