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Camden New Jersey1
Aug: 30 '87
Yours rec'd—thanks—Nothing specially new or different with me—Yes,
I am willing Grace2 should go on with the
Calendar—I have not heard a word from Wm3 at Bar
Harbor—
Walt Whitman
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Correspondent:
Charles W. Eldridge (1837–1903) was one half
of the Boston-based abolitionist publishing firm Thayer and Eldridge, who issued
the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. In December 1862, on
his way to find his injured brother George in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Whitman
stopped in Washington and encountered Eldridge, who had become a clerk in the
office of the army paymaster, Major Lyman Hapgood. Eldridge helped Whitman gain employment in Hapgood's office.
For more on Whitman's relationship with
Thayer and Eldridge, see David Breckenridge Donlon, "Thayer, William Wilde (1829–1896) and Charles W. Eldridge
(1837–1903)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. This postal card is
addressed: Chas: W Eldridge | p o box 1705 | Los Angeles | California. It is
postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Aug 3[illegible] | 3 P M | 87. [back]
- 2. In her July 7, 1887 letter to Whitman, Grace Ellery
Channing requested permission "to bring out a Walt Whitman Calendar—of
extracts from your Leaves of Grass." Although she begged for an immediate
response, her father, William F. Channing wrote Whitman on July 29, 1887, reminding the poet that he had not
replied. On August 3, 1888, in a letter to Stedman, O'Connor observed: "I worked
hard to help her to select the gnomons for it—not such an easy matter with
a poet like Walt" (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman,
1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Despite the aid of
Stedman, nothing came of the Calendar. For more information on Channing and the
Calendar, see Joann Krieg,
"Grace Ellery
Channing and the Whitman Calendar," Walt Whitman Quarterly
Review 12 (Spring 1995), 252–256. [back]
- 3. William Douglas O'Connor
(1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet
The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866.
For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]