The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Peter Doyle, 29 August [1873?]
Date: August 29, 1873
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01659
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.
Editorial notes: The annotations, "75," and "1875?," are in an unknown hand.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, Zachary King, Eric Conrad, Alex Kinnaman, and Nicole Gray
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Camden,
Aug.
29.1
My dear son,
Your letter came all right last Monday, & the papers. Send me the Herald to-morrow, (with one blue stamp on) you needn't mind the other Sunday papers—I send you Harper's magazine for September—I am still holding my own—gain a little strength, & am certainly improving though very slowly—both head & leg are bad enough, but general feeling is much better, most of the time—
I have sent Philadelphia papers once or twice & may again—there is nothing in them, but I thought you would know I was still around—The weather here is pleasant, & cool enough, favorable to me—I get out a little every day—am going out when I finish this—Cannot write much to-day—am having a bad head ache all day—still I feel in good heart.
So long, Pete, dear boy,
Walt
Correspondent:
Peter Doyle (1843–1907) was
one of Walt Whitman's closest comrades and lovers, and their friendship spanned
nearly thirty years. The two met in 1865 when the twenty-one-year-old Doyle was
a conductor in the horsecar where the forty-five-year-old Whitman was a
passenger. Despite his status as a veteran of the Confederate Army, Doyle's
uneducated, youthful nature appealed to Whitman. Although Whitman's stroke in
1873 and subsequent move from Washington to Camden limited the time the two
could spend together, their relationship rekindled in the mid-1880s after Doyle
moved to Philadelphia and visited nearby Camden frequently. After Whitman's
death, Doyle permitted Richard Maurice Bucke to publish the letters Whitman had
sent him. For more on Doyle and his relationship with Whitman, see Martin G.
Murray, "Doyle, Peter," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia,
ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing,
1998).
Notes:
1. Though, admittedly, there is little concrete information in this letter to aid in establishing the year, the executors' assignment of this letter to 1875 seems questionable for the following reasons: in a letter to Doyle of August 22, 1873, Whitman also asked for a copy of the Sunday Herald; he expected this letter to arrive in Washington on Saturday, August 30—"Send me the Herald to-morrow"; and in 1875 he invariably gave his Camden street address in the headings of his letters. [back]