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Walt Whitman to Alfred Janson Bloor, 24 May [1879]

My dear Mr Bloor2

I have returned the two pamphlets—which I suppose you have rec'd.3 In a letter in the Tribune of to-day I have printed (as I some time since notified you)4 what you said—(well said)—about actors—I remain here till latter part of next week—then to Camden, New Jersey, which is my permanent p o address—Shall count on getting the extracts from your Journal about Mr Lincon's murder & funeral soon as you can conveniently send them.5

Walt Whitman

Notes

  • 1. The New York residence of John H. Johnston, whom Whitman was visiting at the time. [back]
  • 2. Alfred Janson Bloor (1828–1917) was, he informed Whitman on June 9, 1879, a member of the architectural staff that designed Central Park. He was a poet as well as the author of a number of architectural treatises. Whitman quoted from Bloor's letter at the conclusion of his article in the Tribune on May 24 (see The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman: Prose Works 1892, ed. Floyd Stovall [New York: New York University Press, 1964], 342). Bloor had taken exception to Whitman's contemptuous references to actors in his lecture on Lincoln's murder. [back]
  • 3. Unidentified, perhaps some of Bloor's own treatises. [back]
  • 4. A lost letter written on April 29. [back]
  • 5. On June 9, 2879, Alfred Janson Bloor sent to Whitman "a copy of the selections you made from my journal, and also an account of the information Miss Harris [daughter of Senator Ira Harris] gave me as to what she knew of Mr. Lincoln's assassination" (Library of Congress). [back]
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