The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Daniel G. Gillette, 4 November 1873
Date: November 4, 1873
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01719
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 Kinnaman, Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, Zachary King, Eric Conrad, and Nicole Gray
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431 Stevens st.
cor West.
Camden, N. Jersey,
Nov. 4, 1873.
My dear Dan Gilette,1
Your kind letter—with that of your English friend Chrissie Deschamps, (so full of kindness & affectionate sympathy, plainly enough from the heart, & not conventional merely)—have reached me to-day. I am getting along pretty well. It seems to be a fluctuating & pretty stout struggle between my general physique & constitution, & my special cerebral ailment—in which I think the physique will yet carry the day.
My best regards & love to you, my friend, & to my English friends the same.
Walt Whitman
Dan, it is very lonesome to me here, I go out hobbling a little, but to no satisfaction, although I am very comfortably fixed in domestic matters. Write to me when you can, send me any stray printed thing you are sure might interest me, or if you come Philadelphiaward come & see me.
Correspondent:
According to the New York Directory of
1874–1875 and the Gouldings Directory of 1877–1878, Daniel G.
Gillette was a clerk in the county courthouse. An undated entry in one of
Whitman's address books (The Library of Congress #108) indicates that Gillette
was at one time employed in the postmaster's office in New York.
Notes:
1. See the letter from Whitman to Gillette of September 26, 1873. Whitman consistently dropped an l in Gillette. [back]