Dear H1—
This comes here, by absurd fault of address2—So I
forward it to you—all goes on about the same with me3—I have rec'd a handsome present of horse & light wagon4—was down to Glendale5 all day last Sunday—all
well—Ruth home, with her baby, Harry home—trouble with throat—Mr
and Mrs Stafford well—
Love to you and your dear mother—
W W
Sept 22
loc.02184.001_large.jpg
loc.02184.002_large.jpg
Correspondent:
Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist
(1857–1914), son of Alexander and Anne Gilchrist, was an English painter
and editor of Anne Gilchrist: Her Life and Writings
(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887). For more information, see Marion Walker Alcaro,
"Gilchrist, Herbert Harlakenden (1857–1914)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. This letter is addressed:
Herbert H Gilchrist | 12 Well Road | Hampstead | London | England. It is
postmarked: CAMDEN | SEP | 22 | 12M | 1885 | N.J.; PHILADELPHIA, P.A. | SEP | 22
| 1885 | PAID; LONDON. N.W. | 7 U | OC 2 | 85. [back]
- 2. Whitman wrote this note
on the verso of an envelope addressed to Gilchrist at Mickle Street. [back]
- 3. On September 23 and 24
Whitman noted a "bad spell—lost eyesight—lost equilibrium." The
attack must have been severe since Louisa and George visited him on September
24. O'Connor was in Camden for two days toward the end of September, and
Burroughs came on October 1 and Eldridge on the following day (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 Thomas Donaldson of November 9,
1885. [back]
- 4. On September 15 Whitman
received a horse and wagon from Thomas Donaldson and twenty-eight friends,
including John Whittier, Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Edwin Booth.
Donaldson, in Walt Whitman the Man (1896), printed the
letters from the donors (173–182). See also the letter from Whitman to
Thomas Donaldson of November 9, 1885. [back]
- 5. Glendale, New Jersey, was
where the Staffords had moved after leaving their farm at Timber Creek, where
Whitman had often visited. He was particularly close to George and Susan
Stafford's son Harry. [back]