Why have I not written to you? Why has not Spring come?
I have waited for that, waiting a little also till I could get through some work which would have made me uncompanionable.
Now—I go to New York on Saturday June 5 to the Century meeting and remain in NY till Tuesday or Wednesday after. Can not you meet me, so as to return home with me? Apple blossoms surely will be out by then, and some summer warmth to enable you to enjoy your hammock (did I tell you I have one?) on the piazza.
loc.01802.004_large.jpgI want you here and to set you to rights. Can you come then (not for a night or two but to stay indefinitely), or will you rather come later?
Do which may best suit you; but come; and let me know as near as you can when I may look for you.
Affectionately Yours WJ LintonI want a copy of your Mystic Trumpeter2 for England
loc.01802.001_large.jpg WJ Linton see note Apr 4 1888 loc.01802.002_large.jpgCorrespondent:
William J. Linton
(1812–1897), a British-born wood engraver, came to the United States in
1866 and settled near New Haven, Connecticut. He illustrated the works of John
Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, and
others, wrote the "indispensable" History of Wood-Engraving in
America (1882), and edited Poetry of America,
1776–1876 (London, 1878), in which appeared eight of Whitman's
poems as well as a frontispiece engraving of the poet. According to his Threescore and Ten Years, 1820 to
1890—Recollections (1894), 216–217, Linton met with Whitman
in Washington and later visited him in Camden (which Whitman reported in his
November 9, 1873, letter to Peter Doyle): "I
liked the man much, a fine-natured, good-hearted, big fellow, . . . a true poet
who could not write poetry, much of wilfulness accounting for his neglect of form."