The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William F. Channing, 4 July 1887
Date: July 4, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01259
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt
Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Notes for this letter were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Ashland, Stefan Schöberlein, Kevin McMullen, and Stephanie Blalock
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Camden New Jersey1
July 4 '87
Dear Doctor—
By request of C W Eldridge2 I sent a copy of author's ed'n Leaves of Grass June 213—and now a second copy same—write me a line please to say whether they reach you safely—I send my love to you & Mrs. C and to the family, your girls & boy—Is Wm O'C4 still there—Many an anxious & loving thought is wafted thither on his account—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
William F. Channing
(1820–1901), son of William Ellery Channing, and also Ellen O'Connor's
brother-in-law, was by training a doctor, but devoted most of his life to
scientific experiments. With Moses G. Farmer, he perfected the first fire-alarm
system. He was the author of Notes on the Medical Applications
of Electricity (Boston: Daniel Davis, Jr., and Joseph M. Wightman,
1849). Ellen O'Connor visited him frequently in Providence, Rhode Island, and
Whitman stayed at his home in October, 1868.
Notes:
1. This postal card is addressed: Dr W F Channing | Pasadena | Los Angeles County | California. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Jul 5 | 8 PM | 87. [back]
2. 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 eventually obtained a desk for Whitman 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)." [back]
3. Channing noted receipt of the volumes in his letter of July 29, 1887. [back]
4. William Douglas O'Connor (1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet "The Good Gray Poet," published in 1866 (a digital version of the pamphlet is available at "The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication"). 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]