Washington, September 7, 1867.
W.C. & F.P. Church.1
Gentlemen:
The check for $60. arrived safely this morning. Please consider this a receipt
for said sum.2
I received, some ten days since, the six proof-impressions of the Carol—& am much obliged. (No copies of magazine.)
I forward herewith another poem for the Galaxy. If acceptable,
please, after correcting, let me have a good proof in time.
The right of publishing Ethiopia Commenting,3 in
future book, is reserved to me.
The price of the piece is $25.
I have, in composition, an article, (prose,) of some length—the subject
opportune—I shall probably name it Democracy. It is
partly provoked by, & in some respects a rejoinder to, Carlyle's Shooting Niagara.4 I think it might be
specially appropriate to your purposes & scope. I would propose it to you for a
leading article for January '68 Galaxy. Please write me how
the idea suits you. Or, as I am coming to Brooklyn in a few days, perhaps I may as
well call personally, & get your notions about it.
Walt Whitman.
Notes
- 1. William Conant Church
(1836–1917), journalist and publisher, was a correspondent for several New
York newspapers until he founded the Army and Navy
Journal in 1863. With his brother Francis Pharcellus (1839–1906),
he established the Galaxy in 1866. Financial control of
the Galaxy passed to Sheldon and Company in 1868, and it
was absorbed by the Atlantic Monthly in 1878. William
published a biography of his life-long friend Ulysses S. Grant in 1897, and
Francis wrote for the New York Sun the unsigned piece
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." See Edward F. Grier, "Walt Whitman, the
Galaxy, and Democratic
Vistas," American Literature, 23 (1951–1952),
332–350; Donald N. Bigelow, William Conant Church
& "The Army and Navy Journal" (New York: Columbia University Press,
1952); J. R. Pearson, Jr., "Story of a Magazine: New York's Galaxy, 1866–1878," Bulletin of the New York
Public Library, 61 (1957), 217–237, 281–302. [back]
- 2.
This payment was compensation for "A Carol of Harvest, for 1867," a poem Walt
Whitman submitted to the Galaxy in his August 7, 1867 letter to William Church.
For images and a transcription of the poem as it appeared in the September
1867 edition of the Galaxy, see "A Carol of Harvest, for 1867".
[back]
- 3. This poem was never
published in the Galaxy. It later became "Ethiopia
Saluting the Colors"; see Edward F. Grier, "Walt Whitman, the Galaxy, and Democratic Vistas," American Literature, 23 (1951–1952), 337. Whitman
withdrew the poem in his November 2, 1868 letter
to Francis Church. [back]
- 4. "Shooting Niagara: and
After?" (Macmillan's Magazine, 16 1867: 319–336).
Whitman's piece was published in the December issue. See Grier, "Walt Whitman,
the Galaxy, and Democratic
Vistas," American Literature, 23 (1951–1952),
337–338; and Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1955), 389–391. [back]