It is a perfect day—sunny—cool enough, & I am feeling pretty well & will write you a line—How are you getting along? & how is the baby? & how is Alys2 & all?—
I have written two little poems lately & sold them & got the money for them3—will send them to you when printed. Am better than I was—Am sculpted & portraited lately—(I like 'em)—Love—
Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe
(1864–1945) was a political activist, art historian, and critic, whom
Whitman once called his "staunchest living woman friend." A scholar of Italian
Renaissance art and a daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith, she would in 1885 marry
B. F. C. "Frank" Costelloe. She had been in contact with many of Whitman's
English friends and would travel to Britain in 1885 to visit many of them,
including Anne Gilchrist shortly before her death. For more, see Christina
Davey, "Costelloe, Mary Whitall Smith (1864–1945)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).