The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe, 18 March 1887
Date: March 18, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01361
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 created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Ashland, Stefan Schöberlein, Kevin McMullen, and Stephanie Blalock
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Camden N J—America1
March 18 '87
—I am under the weather again these days—(inaction, indigestion &c) but it will probably pass over with the week— Havn't seen any thing of any of your folks for many days—Logan2 however has just sent me a great parcel of reading matter by express—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe
(1864–1945) was a political activist, art historian, and critic, whom
Whitman once called his "staunchest living woman friend." A scholar of Italian
Renaissance art and a daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith, she would in 1885 marry
B. F. C. "Frank" Costelloe. She had been in contact with many of Whitman's
English friends and would travel to Britain in 1885 to visit many of them,
including Anne Gilchrist shortly before her death. For more, see Christina
Davey, "Costelloe, Mary Whitall Smith (1864–1945)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes:
1. This postal card is addressed: Mrs: Costelloe | 40 Grosvenor Road | the Embankment | London, England. It is postmarked: Camden | Mar | 18 | 6 PM | 1887 | NJ. [back]
2. Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) was Mary Costelloe's brother. For more information on Smith, see Christina Davey "Smith, Logan Pearsall (1865–1946)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]