Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Peter Doyle, 20 June [1877]

Date: June 20, 1877

Whitman Archive ID: loc.01675

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 note: The annotation, "—1877," is in the hand of Richard Maurice Bucke.

Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Anthony Dreesen, Eder Jaramillo, Kevin McMullen, Nicole Gray, and Kenneth Price



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1929 north 22d street Philadelphia
Wednesday June 20

Dear, dear boy Pete

I am stopping here now for a week or two in the house I believe I have mentioned to you before, & where I wanted you to come & see me—(& still want you, if you have a chance.) But I spend most of my time down at an old farm down in Jersey where I have a fine secluded wood & creek & springs, where I pass my time alone, & yet not lonesome at all (often think of you Pete & put my arm around you & hug you up close, & give you a good buss—often)—

—I am still keeping pretty well for me, have improved much indeed, quite fat, and all sun burnt brick red in the face, & hands as brown as nuts—am pretty lame & paralyzed yet, but walk or rather hobble sometimes half a mile, & have no more (or hardly ever) of those bad prostrated gone-in, faint spells I used to have most every day—so you see I am doing pretty well, my dear1—I still make my brother's house at Camden my headquarters, & keep my room there—address my letters to Camden always—But my sister is not well, has not been for some weeks, (is soon to lie confined)—Upon the whole, am getting along pretty well, & good spirits

The new edition of my books I sell enough of to pay my way very nicely—so I get along all right in that respect—(I don't need much)—how are they getting along at the Navy Yard? I send them my love—(I havn't forgotten the pictures, but they are a long while a-coming)—When you see Mr Noyes2 tell him I should like to come on & pay him a visit this fall—& now good bye for this time, my own loving boy—


Your Old Walt


Notes:

1. The word "boy" has been penciled in as an addition here. [back]

2. Crosby Stuart Noyes, the editor of the Washington Star. See the letter from Whitman to Peter Doyle of October 9, 1868[back]


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