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New Haven
May 24th 1876
Mr Walt Whitman
Dear Sir
I want to get your new book (the "Two Rivulets"1 I think it is
called) for a friend of mine on his next Birthday July 1st 1876.
I asked for it at one of the largest book stores in this place
but they did not have it, so I thought the best way would be
to write to you. I would much prefer to send to you for it if
you will be kind enough to send it please let me know the price.
My friend is a great admirer of yours. him and I have lately been
reading your "Leaves of Grass" and
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"Drum Taps"2 and we are very much pleased with them. I admire and
respect you very much for the way in which you write about Mr Abraham
Lincoln, our Brave Soldiers, and the African race. I think Mr Lincoln
was one of the best men that ever lived. our Soldiers we can not
praise them to much and
the poor blacks needs the sympathy of every good man and woman on earth.
If you will be kind enough to notice this note please write a
line to Rachel. M. Cox. 63. St. John. St. New Haven Conn.
and oblige Yours Truly
Miss R. M. Cox
P.S. This friend of mine that I write about wrote to you some
time ago. perhaps you remember him. his name is C. W. Hine.3
I know he would appreciate one of your Books better than anything
else I could give him
R. M. C.
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from Miss R M Cox New Haven
Correspondent:
Rachel Mary Cox Brockett (1845–1919) was born in Pennsylvania. Her family moved to New Haven, Connecticut, when she was still in her teens, and she would remain
there for the rest of her life. She was employed in a rubber factory and later married Fredrick Brockett (1855–1921), a widower and farmer.
Notes
- 1. Published as a "companion volume"
to the 1876 Author's edition of Leaves of Grass, Two
Rivulets consisted of an "intertwining of the author's characteristic verse,
alternated throughout with prose," as one critic from the The New York Daily Tribune wrote on February 19, 1876 (4). For more information on Two
Rivulets, see Frances E. Keuling-Stout, "Two Rivulets, Author's Edition [1876]" and
"Preface to Two Rivulets [1876]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 2. Whitman's Drum-Taps, a volume that consisted of fifty-three Civil War poems, was
published in 1865. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln occurred while Drum-Taps was being printed, and Whitman promptly added
the short poem "Hush'd be the Camps To-day," with a note about Lincoln's death
to the final signature of the book. Whitman then decided to stop the printing
and add a sequel to the book that would more fully take into account Lincoln's
death. Copies of the volume were withdrawn so that the sequel could be added.
Whitman hastily composed several poems, adding eighteen new poems to those that
appeared in Drum-Taps, and all of these poems were
published in a second edition Sequel to Drum-Taps
(1865–1866). Later, these poems were folded into Leaves
of Grass, and by the time the final arrangement of Leaves of Grass was printed in 1881, the "Drum-Taps" cluster that
Whitman included in that volume contained forty-three poems. For more
information on the printing of Drum-Taps (1865), see Ed
Folsom, Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and Commentary (Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa, 2005).
For more on the poems of Drum-Taps and their arrangement
in Leaves of Grass, see Huck Gutman, "Drum-Taps," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed.
J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing,
1998). [back]
- 3. As yet we have no information about
this correspondent. [back]