431 Stevens st. / cor West. / Camden, / N. Jersey.
Dec. 11–p.m.1
Dear John Burroughs,
I have had another severe spell the last five weeks—head troubles, & stomach troubles,
& liver troubles—the doctor thinks the latter the seat & basis this time of all, or nearly all—head-swimming, faintness, vomiting, &c—but for three or four days past have been easier—am up—didn't go out for three to four weeks, but am venturing out a little now—hope
& quite expect to get at least as well as I was before this spell—
Eldridge has made me a call of two or three hours, (on his return from Boston to Wash'n )—Seems to be nothing very new among our friends at Wash'n —Marvin2 has written me twice—he has been reading your "Notes,"
& is quite possessed with them—also "Dem. Vistas"—
I am writing very little—have a piece, a melange,
prose & verse, in the "Christmas Graphic"3—(comes out in a week or so,) in which I say a brief word about Emerson—
To eke out my letter I send a scrap from paper about death of a young friend of mine4—also another scrap—also another from London Academy,5 (which latter only please return when you write)—
Best love to 'Sula—Merry Christmas—do you get in the new house?
Write me a good long letter—I wish I was with you—
Notes
- 1. The executors dated this
letter 1873. However, that 1874 is the correct year is evidenced by the
following notes. [back]
- 2. Joseph B. Marvin had been
co-editor of the Radical in 1866–1867; see Frank
Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1938–1968), 3:78n. Later he was employed in the
Treasury Department in Washington. On December 15,
1874, Marvin wrote to Whitman: "I read and re-read your poems, and the
'Vistas,' and more and more see that I had but a faint comprehension of them
before. They surpass everything. All other books seem to me weak and unworthy my
attention. I read, Sunday, to my wife, Longfellows verses on Sumner, in the last
Atlantic, and then I read your poem on the Death of Lincoln. It was like
listening to a weak-voiced girl singing with piano accompanyment, and then to an
oratorio by the whole Handel Society, with accompanyment by the Music Hall
organ" (The Library of Congress). His veneration of Whitman is also transparent
in an article in the Radical Review, 1 (1877),
224–259. [back]
- 3. "A Christmas Garland"
consisted of miscellaneous observations on various subjects and occasional
poems; it is reprinted in The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of
Walt Whitman (1921), ed. Emory Holloway, 2:53–58. [back]
- 4. "Death of a Fireman," a
tribute to a Camden fireman named William Alcott, appeared in the Camden New Republic on November 14, 1874. [back]
- 5. George Saintsbury's review of Leaves of
Grass. [back]