Camden New Jersey
U S America1
Nov 27—I send by mail to-day to same address as this
card, the two Vols. L of G—and TR—please notify me (by postal card will
do) soon as they reach you safely—2
Walt Whitman
Notes
- 1. The envelope for this
letter bears the address: Sydney H Vines B A | Christ's College,
Cambridge [back]
- 2. Sydney Howard Vines
(1849–1934) was among Edward Carpenter's circle of Whitman admirers in
England. On November 13, Carpenter sent Whitman—in a letter now
lost—Vines's request for books. On the same date he sent this letter to
Vines, Whitman sent a letter to Carpenter, noting, "have to-day mailed Mr Vines'
books" (The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman: The
Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York
University Press, 1961–77), 3:103). At that time, Vines was Fellow and
Lecturer in Botany at Christ's College, Cambridge, and later was named
Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford. Whitman received word from Carpenter
on December 19 that "I hear from Vines that your books have arrived" (Horace
Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden (Boston: Small,
Maynard, 1906), 1:189). Vines's copy of Leaves of Grass
inscribed by Whitman, "Sidney H. Vines from the author," was among the books
offered for sale in the Spring 2001 catalog of Bertram Rota, Ltd., an
antiquarian bookseller in London. [back]