Camden New Jersey
Feb: 9 '82
My dear Madam1—
Yours of 9th rec'd —I should be pleased to send you the book—the
price is $2—My Photo & auto[graph] are sold by the Camden Children's Home,2
Haddon av: for their benefit, price $1—Or if you desire I can supply you with one for them—
Walt Whitman
If you send to me, please send p o order—
Notes
- 1. Mrs. Vine Coburn was a
member of a distinguished Maine family; see Walt Whitman
Review 15 (1969), 59n. The two-volume set was sent on March 7 after
Whitman's two-week stay with the Staffords (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles
E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library
of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]
- 2. Whitman began to supply
the Children's Home in Camden with signed photographs on November 17, 1876, and
also sold them himself "for the benefit of the orphans" (Whitman's Commonplace
Book). The photograph, signed "Walt Whitman 1881," is the 1872 photograph of
Frank Pearsall; see frontispiece to The Correspondence
(New York: New York University Press, 1961–69), vol. 2; The Artistic Legacy of Walt Whitman (1970), figure 14; and Specimen Days (1971), plate 148. [back]