Talcott Williams to Walt Whitman, 15 April 1886

 loc_vm.01344_large.jpg Ye Painte Shoppe, 1833 SPRUCE STREET PHILADELPHIA. April 15. 1886 My dear Mr. Whitman

It is so late that I must deny myself the pleasure of coming over tomorrow and placing the proceeds in your hands. Instead I hand you these checks, as follows

S Weir Mitchell1	100
H H. Furness	50
J B Lippincott Co.	25
	175

and my own check for one hundred & twenty-nine, (129) dollars, in all $304. Key sum is made up as follows  loc_vm.01345_large.jpg  loc_vm.01346_large.jpg

The Asherah, a little society made up of Chai Leland Harrison, Lincoln Eyre, Wilson Eyre, Thos.​ Wharton, Carl Edelheim

T.W.	45.
R. W. Gilder2	25
D. McKay3	10
C. B. Bryant	10
Mrs Talcott Williams4	5
Miss Horrie Royce	5
Seats sold	19
	129.

I shall be over in a day or two. It would give me, personally, very great pleasure, if it struck you favorably to send Dr. Weir Mitchell an inscribed volume of your poems and a note to the J B Lippincott Co. But the last is scarcely needed.5

Yours lovingly Talcott Williams  loc_vm.01347_large.jpg T. Wms

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Notes

• 1. Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914) was a specialist in nervous disorders as well as a poet and a novelist. In 1878, Whitman met with Dr. Mitchell, who attributed his earlier paralysis to a small rupture of a blood vessel in the brain but termed Whitman's heart "normal and healthy" (see Whitman's letter to Louisa Orr Whitman of April 13–14, 1878). Whitman also noted that "the bad spells [Mitchell] tho't recurrences by habit (? sort of automatic)" (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). For more, see Jennifer A. Hynes, "Mitchell, Silas Weir (1829–1914)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 2. Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909) was the assistant editor of Scribner's Monthly from 1870 to 1881 and editor of its successor, The Century, from 1881 until his death. Whitman had met Gilder for the first time in 1877 at John H. Johnston's (Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer [New York: New York University Press, 1955], 482). Whitman attended a reception and tea given by Gilder after William Cullen Bryant's funeral on June 14; see "A Poet's Recreation" in the New York Tribune, July 4, 1878. Whitman considered Gilder one of the "always sane men in the general madness" of "that New York art delirium" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, August 5, 1888). For more about Gilder, see Susan L. Roberson, "Gilder, Richard Watson (1844–1909)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 3. David McKay (1860–1918) took over Philadelphia-based publisher Rees Welsh's bookselling and publishing businesses in 1881–82. McKay and Rees Welsh published the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass after opposition from the Boston District Attorney prompted James R. Osgood & Company of Boston, the original publisher, to withdraw. McKay also went on to publish Specimen Days & Collect, November Boughs, Gems from Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works, and the final Leaves of Grass, the so-called deathbed edition. For more information about McKay, see Joel Myerson, "McKay, David (1860–1918)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 4. Sophia Wells Royce Williams (1850–1928) was a writer and frequent visitor (with her husband Talcott Williams) to Whitman's Camden, New Jersey, home. [back]
• 5. There is no record of Whitman doing either. [back]