Department of Justice
Washington
June
6, 1871.
Mrs. Botta:1
My dear Madam:
I sent you by mail about three weeks ago, (in compliance with your request of April 13,) the MS. of one of my poems, "O Star of France"—also a photographic portrait. Please let me know whether they arrived safely.
With greatest respect.
Walt Whitman
Notes
- 1. Anne Charlotte Lynch
Botta (1815–1891) was a teacher, a poet, and a sculptor. Her "literary"
evenings in New York are mentioned in Bayard Taylor's John
Godfrey's Fortunes. According to the Memoirs of Anne
C. L. Botta (1894), 14, Poe gave his first public reading of "The
Raven" at her home. Her evaluation of Walt Whitman's poetry appeared in her
often reprinted Handbook of Universal Literature (1885
ed.), 535: "Walt Whitman . . . writes with great force, originality, and
sympathy with all forms of struggle and suffering, but with utter contempt for
conventionalities and for the acknowledged limits of true art." [back]