Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, 17 June 1864

Date: June 17, 1864

Whitman Archive ID: loc.00836

Source: Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 1:234. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Vanessa Steinroetter, Luke Hollis, and Alyssa Olson




Washington
June 17 1864

Dearest Mother

I got your letter this morning—this place & the hospitals seem to have got the better of me—I do not feel so badly this forenoon—but I have bad nights & bad days too, some of the spells are pretty bad—still I am up some & around every day—the doctors have told me for a fortnight I must leave, that I need an entire change of air, &c—

I think I shall come home for a short time, & pretty soon—(I will try it two or three days yet, though, & if I find my illness goes over, I will stay here yet awhile—all I think about is to be here if any thing should happen to George)—

We dont hear any thing more of the Army than you do there in the papers—


Walt

Mother, if I should come I will write a day or so before—


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