Sunday Evng March 111
I send you the proofs of the Introductory Letter. If you return them (send to me) by
Wednesday Evng's mail from Washington—(or even Thursday's)—it will be time
enough.
Every thing seems moving on—not unfavorably at any rate—I am well as
usual—
W W
I wish you would in your next tell me ab't my dear friends Nelly and Jeannie2—
Notes
- 1. This letter is addressed:
Wm D O'Connor | Life Saving Service | Treasury | Washington D C. It is
postmarked: Camden | Mar | 11 | 6 PM | N.J.; Washington, Recd. | Mar | 12 | 7 AM
| 188(?) | (?). [back]
- 2. On March 10 O'Connor informed Whitman that he was
leaving Washington for Providence, R. I., because of the illness of his
daughter. It is an interesting sidelight on the relations of O'Connor and
Whitman that after the resumption of their correspondence in 1882 almost a year
passed before O'Connor referred to his family or Whitman inquired about Mrs.
O'Connor and Jeannie. Until the quarrel Whitman was on intimate terms with the
family; in fact, Mrs. O'Connor continued to write to him for four years after
the estrangement. Despite Jeannie's critical illness the poet referred to her
only in this letter and in his letter to O'Connor of March 14, 1883. O'Connor mentioned her death on May 23 (Oscar Lion
Collection, New York Public Library). In 1888 Whitman observed: "Jeannie's death
was the tragedy of their history—and a tragedy in my history, too. Too
much must not be said of that or the like of that—it gets down in you
where words do not go." Horace Traubel reported that Whitman's "eyes were full
of tears" (With Walt Whitman in Camden [New York:
Mitchell Kennerley, 1915], 2:261). Yet Whitman apparently did not write to
O'Connor about her death or record it in his Commonplace Book (Charles E.
Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]