2316 Pine Street
St Louis Missouri1
Sunday afternoon Nov 23
Dear friend
I am still here—not yet (as an old Long Island aunt used to say) "not yet out of my misery" but I go out on the streets, or to the Public Library, most every day, & have no doubt I shall be as well as usual before long—I believe I told you I was in nice quarters & very comfortable here2—I send you Mrs Gilchrist's letter, which you needn't return3—Gilder's, which I also enclose, I wish you to send back, some time4—Upon receiving this, post me a card—tell me how the mother is & 'Sula, also the baby, also Smith5—Just got a postal from Mrs Gilchrist giving her address.
1 Elm Villas Elm Road
Heath street Hampstead
London Eng:
The rough map enclosed gives you some idea of my present jaunt, on the red line (the blue lines are old travels of mine)6—I have seen the December Scribner's—What you say of me in Nature & the Poets thoroughly delights, satisfies & prides me7—I saw in the Library a late London Fortnightly in which J A Symonds, touching briefly but very commendingly & mentioning my name, makes quite an extract from Dem[ocratic] Vistas (summing up the general spirit of British literature as being markedly sombre & bilious)8—A B Alcott is expected here, to talk—I may see him—This is quite a place for the most toploftical Hegelian transcendentalists, a small knot but smart—the principal of them, W T Harris,9 editor of Speculative Philosophy, has been often to see me, has been very kind, & I like him much—Probably ten days more will end my stay here, (but I am not fixed)10—A fine day as I write, & I am feeling comfortable. Best love to 'Sula—
Walt Whitman
Notes
- 1. This letter is addressed:
John Burroughs | Esopus-on-Hudson | Ulster County | New York. It is postmarked:
Saint Louis | Nov | (?) | Mo. [back]
- 2. Apparently Whitman wrote
Burroughs two days earlier about William Douglas O'Connor; see the cryptic entry
in his diary (Walt Whitman Review, 7 [1961], 11). [back]
- 3. Her letter of October 6–12 (see the letter from Whitman to
Anne Gilchrist of November 10, 1879). [back]
- 4. R. W. Gilder, writing to
Whitman from England on October 1, mentioned
Charles Bonaparte Wyse, a young Irish poet, who wanted to visit, in his own
words, "this most sympathetic of poets, for whose large & lofty nature my
admiration is merged with love." [back]
- 5. Smith Caswell,
Burroughs's hired-hand, to whom Whitman wrote (lost) on November 4. [back]
- 6. Reproduced by Clara
Barrus in Whitman and Burroughs—Comrades (Boston,
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 188. [back]
- 7. Whitman, in short,
approved of his own contribution to Burroughs's article in Scribner's Monthly (see the letter from Whitman to Burroughs of August 29, 1879). [back]
- 8. In his review of Matthew
Arnold's Selections from Wordsworth, in The Fortnightly Review, 27 (1879), 686–701, Symonds quoted
Whitman's indictment of English literature as "no model for us," but added that
if Whitman had read Wordsworth, "he would have made at least a qualified
exception in his favor." [back]
- 9. See the letter from
Whitman to William Torrey Harris of October 27,
1879. [back]
- 10. Whitman did not leave
St. Louis until January 4, 1880. [back]