I hope you will be able to come, as you said in your last—If I knew when & where you would arrive in Philadelphia, I would try to meet you—As I wrote you before3 you must come to Market st. ferry Philadelphia, a mile and half, or 2 miles from RR depot, & cross over by boat to Federal st Camden—(The Phil. horse cars run Sundays—run down to foot of Market st—but the Camden ones do not—but it is not very far from the ferry in Camden.)
loc.01632.002.jpgI am very much the same—My being disabled & want of Exercise for 16 months, (and many other wants too,) have saddled me with serious dyspepsia & what the doctor calls gastric catarrh, very obstinate, causing me really more suffering & pain than my paralysis—but though I have bad spells enough, thank God I also have middling good ones—& as I write this have just had my dinner, nice salt oysters, raw, fresh & am feeling quite comfortable—Dear son, I shall look for you
WaltCorrespondent:
Peter Doyle (1843–1907) was
one of Walt Whitman's closest comrades and lovers, and their friendship spanned
nearly thirty years. The two met in 1865 when the twenty-one-year-old Doyle was
a conductor in the horsecar where the forty-five-year-old Whitman was a
passenger. Despite his status as a veteran of the Confederate Army, Doyle's
uneducated, youthful nature appealed to Whitman. Although Whitman's stroke in
1873 and subsequent move from Washington to Camden limited the time the two
could spend together, their relationship rekindled in the mid-1880s after Doyle
moved to Philadelphia and visited nearby Camden frequently. After Whitman's
death, Doyle permitted Richard Maurice Bucke to publish the letters Whitman had
sent him. For more on Doyle and his relationship with Whitman, see Martin G.
Murray, "Doyle, Peter," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia,
ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing,
1998).