The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton to Walt Whitman, 3 November 1875
Date: November 3, 1875
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01732
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.
Editorial notes: The annotation, "Lord Houghton Nov. '75," is in the hand of Walt Whitman. The annotation, "see notes Sept 12 1888," is in the hand of Horace Traubel.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman, Elizabeth Lorang, Kevin McMullen, Ashley Lawson, John Schwaninger, Caterina Bernardini, Marie Ernster, Amanda J. Axley, Caitlin S. Matheis, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |  image 3 |
York Farm,
Branchtown
P.O.
Philadelphia, Pa.
Nov. 3d, 1875.1
Lord Houghton proposes to visit Mr Whitman next Saturday Nov 6th & would be obliged to him to inform him what hour would be the most convenient
Correspondent:
Richard Monckton Milnes
(1809–1885), Lord Houghton, was an intimate of Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(1809–1892) and William Makepeace Thackeray
(1811–1863), as well as a poet. He was a
collector of famous people; in Dictionary of National
Biography he is characterized as "eminently a dilettante" (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1894), 21. Houghton
wrote to Joaquin Miller on September 1, 1875, from Chicago: "Please give my best
regards to Mr Whitman." On September 5, 1875,
Miller informed Whitman that he was trying to arrange a meeting with Lord
Houghton. Houghton himself wrote to Whitman on September
27, 1875, and proposed a visit at the end of October or early in
November. See In Re Walt Whitman (1893), ed. Horace L. Traubel,
Richard Maurice Bucke, and Thomas B. Harned, 36; and Harold Blodgett, Walt Whitman in
England (1934), 141–143.
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Walt Whitman | 431 Stevens St. | —corner West. | Camden | N. Jersey. It is postmarked: Philad'a | Nov 4 | W | PA. [back]