Charley, you would do me a special service if you could get & send me a good photo (or other picture) of Father Taylor, the old sailor preacher. I want it to be engraved for a magazine article1—Picture will be returned—also find out for me when Father T died—No particular hurry—but hope you will be able to help me soon as convenient—
I have had a bad spell nearly all the year—till ab't a month ago—when things turn'd favorably, & I am now about as usual with me—
With good old remembrances— Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
Charles W. Eldridge (1837–1903) was one half
of the Boston-based abolitionist publishing firm Thayer and Eldridge, who issued
the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. In December 1862, on
his way to find his injured brother George in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Whitman
stopped in Washington and encountered Eldridge, who had become a clerk in the
office of the army paymaster, Major Lyman Hapgood. Eldridge helped Whitman gain employment in Hapgood's office.
For more on Whitman's relationship with
Thayer and Eldridge, see David Breckenridge Donlon, "Thayer, William Wilde (1829–1896) and Charles W. Eldridge
(1837–1903)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).