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Robert Pearsall Smith to Walt Whitman, 5 September [1884]

 loc_jp.00045_large.jpg My dear friend,

Can you not come over Friday and stay till Monday with me? Mrs S. & Alys go to Baltimore to the Friends Yearly meeting and Clifford & myself will be left alone. I hope that he has a good transfer of your outer man to canvass1

Yours affy RP Smith  loc_jp.00046_large.jpg

Correspondent:
Robert Pearsall Smith (1827–1898) was a Methodist preacher, writer and businessman. He was the father of Logan (born 1865) and Alys (born 1867), who later became the first wife of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Whitman stayed at the Smiths' house on numerous occasions.


Notes

  • 1. Edward Clifford, an English portrait painter who visited Smith in Philadelphia in 1884, made a drawing of Whitman on November 3 (see Whitman's Daybooks). [back]
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