Camden1
June 13 '83
Evn'g
My dear friend
The corrections you specified have been or will be made, for future printing—(I
wish you would notify me of any others you see also)2—The book is to be published simultaneously here and in London Eng. on the 15th June.3 Typographically, & in
get up, binding &c. the experts all pronounce it a success—it is generally
taken for an imported book, (if that is any
compliment)—the wonder is not that there are a few errors &
plate-breakages—but that there are so
few—your part looks & is even better than I
anticipated from the proofs—more tremendous—the 1883 Letter is vitalest of all—it is like the Old French Revolution of
'934—long, long its provocation &
reason-why—stands there, something, the
only—an immense prologue before it & an immense epilogue after, &
it but a speck in the middle between—an exception—but enough, the mark, the inerasable warning, for a thousand years—
The printed notice enclosed is from a scholar & staunch friend—a Yankee litterateur—W. S. K.—if you feel to do so, I wish you would write him a few words—he is
worthy—Say that I sent you the criticism—his address is
Wm Sloane Kennedy
Cambridge Mass:5
I am well. Did you see the Critic June 9?6 I saw the Tribune notice.
W. W.
Notes
- 1. This letter is endorsed:
"Answ'd June 15/83." It is addressed: Wm D O'Connor | Life Saving Service |
Treasury | Washington | D C. It is postmarked: Philadelphia | Pa. | Jun 13 83 |
6 30 PM; Washington, Recd. | Jun | 14 | 4 30 AM | 1883 | 2. [back]
- 2. Apparently a reference to
the errors cited in O'Connor's letter of May 23
(Oscar Lion Collection, New York Public Library). Whitman did not allude to
Jeannie's death which O'Connor reported in the same letter (see the letter from
Whitman to O'Connor of March 11, 1883). However,
O'Connor on May 14 informed Richard Maurice Bucke of the details of his
daughter's death and of "a bad attack of inflammatory rheumatism," which
incapacitated him for the rest of the year (The Library of Congress, Washington
D.C.). [back]
- 3. The book was published on
June 15 in London and on June 20 in Philadelphia (Whitman's Commonplace Book,
Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919,
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; see also the letter from Whitman to
O'Connor of June 18, 1883). [back]
- 4. In a letter of June 15, O'Connor considered Whitman's comparison
"magnificent and happy" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in
Camden, Saturday, February 16, 1889 , 162). [back]
- 5. On June 15 O'Connor promised to write to William
Sloane Kennedy as soon as his hand healed. [back]
- 6. The June 9 issue of The Critic contained a review of Bucke's book. [back]