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Eleanor Lawney to Walt Whitman, 11 May 1884

About This Item

  • Title: Eleanor Lawney to Walt Whitman, 11 May 1884
  • Date: May 11, 1884
  • Creator(s): Eleanor Lawney
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.03212
  • Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein Nicole Gray
  • Cite this page: Lawney, Eleanor. "Eleanor Lawney to Walt Whitman, 11 May 1884." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 18 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.03212.xml (TEI)
 loc.03212.001_large.jpg (from Eleanor Lawney | young woman) 201 East Broadway, Louisville, Ky. May 11, 1884 Dear Mr. Whitman:

Do your remember how I visited you in Camden one day last June? Perhaps you will remember me by the bouquet of ferns and larkspurs. Now I am out here, and circumstances contrary to my wishes, will keep me here indefinitely.

This is one of my homesick days, and I have been thinking over what there is in the north that I would so much like to see, and hear,  loc.03212.002_large.jpg and among other things I think how much I would like to see you again, and hear you say, as you did before, "I'm glad you came!" I often think about you, and you have written so many lines for me that I wish to say a word back.

When I read I say "Yes, I am she, O you wise poet," and sometimes I think I must put out my hand for you; and I am sure that we have gone together down that brown road a great many times; and perhaps it was my pulse that you heard, like "little tinkling bells."1

 loc.03212.003_large.jpg

I am very glad my eyes found the message you hid away for me—hid so deeply, though, that I barely found it, and at first doubted if there was a message there, or if it was for me.

I love you very much, and feel toward you, as toward all strong and true people, a sense of obligation.

In glad acknowledgement of your companionship, and hoping for you all good things,

Your friend, Eleanor M. Lawney.  loc.03212.004_large.jpg

Correspondent:
Eleanor M. Lawney (1851–1922) was a women's rights activist and later became the first woman to graduate from medical school in Colorado (in 1887).

Notes

  • 1. Lawney quotes from "I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ," a poem first published in 1861 as "Little Bells Last Night" in the New York Leader (12 October 1861: [2]). [back]
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