Walt Whitman to Abby H. Price, 27 July 1867

About This Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Abby H. Price, 27 July 1867
Date: July 27, 1867
Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Whitman Archive ID: pml.00022
Source: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 335. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to Abby H. Price, 27 July 1867." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 04 December 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
Source File: pml.00022.xml (TEI)

Attorney General's Office Washington July 27, 1867.1 My dear friend,

Will some of you, the first time you go down town, stop at office (or shop) of E. Godkin,2 130 Nassau st. & see if you can get me two or three copies of a new paper, the London Chronicle,3 with a piece about Leaves of Grass &c. I think it must be the paper for June 22—(though it may be June 29—or June 15)—but you must look & see—Godkin is the American agent.

I am well as usual—work in the same office—all goes on the same in the office & generally. Mother has moved to 1194 Atlantic street—(not av.)—opposite Hamilton st. You take Fulton av. cars. Ellen O'Connor is going for the summer to coast of Rhode Island—her little girl Jenny is afflicted with bad swellings &c of joints—appears to be scrofulous—William O'Connor is well—

How are you all? Write me a good long letter—tell me all the news—all about the girls, & Mr. Arnold—& the last from Arthur, & every thing—

So good bye for this time—I send you my love, dear friend, & same to the dear girls—& to all.

Walt.

If you can get the papers, direct them to me Attorney Gen's Office—

Notes

1. This letter's envelope bears the address, "Mrs. Abby H. Price, | 279 East 55th street, | New York City." It is postmarked: "Washington | Jul | (?) | D.C." [back]
2. Edwin L. Godkin (1831–1902) was the founder of the Nation, and a publisher, with a shop at the address Walt Whitman cited. [back]
3. William Michael Rossetti's article on Walt Whitman appeared on July 6, 1867. As Burroughs observed to a friend, it "had a profound effect" (Clara Barrus, Whitman and Burroughs—Comrades [New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931], 48). On April 30, 1867, William Michael Rossetti had called on Conway and had borrowed the 1867 Leaves of Grass, as well as the proofs of Burroughs' Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person; see the Rossetti Papers (London: Sands & Co., 1903), 181, and Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 383. He probably had also seen the material which O'Connor had sent Conway on December 5, 1866 (Yale)—a copy of Burroughs' article in the Galaxy, and his own article in the New York Times on December 2, 1866. [back]