Whitelaw Reid to Walt Whitman, 17 July [1878]
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[cut away] Tribune
New York,
July 17, 1[cut away]
[cut away] [Whit]man:
I thought we ha [cut away] cheque on last Sa [cut away] inquiry that it [cut away] I hasten to end [cut away]
[cut away] nks for remembering [cut away] to see the poem [cut away] ln, and for sen [cut away] little volume [cut away] ully to day. [cut away] ing the poem [cut away] and still th [cut away] very best thoug [cut away] oid.
[cut away] best wishes Very truly yours Whitelaw Reid [cut away] [Whitm]an, Esq [Ste]vens St. [C]amden, N. J.
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Correspondent:
Whitelaw Reid (1837–1912)
was the editor of the New York Tribune from 1872 to 1905
and also American ambassador to France (1889–1892) and England (1905–1912). He met
Whitman in the hospitals during the Civil War. Of his relations with the poet,
Reid later observed: "No one could fail then [during the War] to admire his zeal
and devotion, and I am afraid that at first my regard was for his character
rather than his poetry. It was not till long after 'The Leaves of Grass' period
that his great verses on the death of Lincoln conquered me completely." See
Charles N. Elliot, Walt Whitman as Man, Poet and Friend
(Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1915), 213, and Edwin Haviland Miller, "Walt Whitman's Correspondence
with Whitelaw Reid, Editor of the New York Tribune," Studies in
Bibliography 8 (1956): 242–249.