Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Letters
  3. Correspondence
  4. med.00425

Walt Whitman to Charles W. Eldridge, 3 October [1873]

About This Item

  • Title: Walt Whitman to Charles W. Eldridge, 3 October [1873]
  • Date: October 3, 1873
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: med.00425
  • Source: The location of the original manuscript is unknown. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 247. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to Charles W. Eldridge, 3 October [1873]." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 November 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: med.00425.xml (TEI)

The bad spells in my head continued at short intervals all through Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.1 Today there is a sulking sort of lull—have not had any actual blurs, but all the while ready to have them, and pretty sick and sore and bad, especially in head, confusing me, and affecting my eyes. I have rewritten my Will, with some slight changes and additions, and placed it in the pocket of my trunk here.2 … Ate my breakfast like a man this morning. I don't go out any.

Have been reading Dr. Adam's speech before the Evangelical Alliance in today's "Tribune."3 My eyes gave out before through.

. . . Charley, I think I fully appreciate my situation and the possibilities and contingencies—and honestly think yet I shall come round—that this is a pretty bad flurry, but one which will pass over. . . .

. . . We like the new house.

Notes

  • 1. Transcript. [back]
  • 2. Whitman wrote at greater length about the new will in his October 3–4, 1873 letter to Peter Doyle. [back]
  • 3. The New York Tribune printed the entire address of Dr. William Adams. The Evangelical Alliance, an international meeting of Protestants who sought unity among all Christians, met in New York from October 3–10, 1873. It convened to answer the questions raised by the new Catholic doctrines of papal infallibility and the immaculate conception of the Virgin, as well as the threats posed to Christianity by science and materialism. The Tribune, with unconcealed Protestant zeal, reprinted verbatim virtually all the speeches of the delegates. [back]
Back to top