The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton to Walt Whitman, 27 September 1875
Date: September 27, 1875
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01733
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.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman, Elizabeth Lorang, Kevin McMullen, Ashley Lawson, John Schwaninger, Caterina Bernardini, Marie Ernster, Amanda J. Axley, and Stephanie Blalock
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[Brevoort House,]
New York.
Sep. 27th
Dear Mr. Whitman:
I was only in Philadelphia for a few hours, but I propose to return there for some days the end of next month or the beginning of November
It will give me real pleasure to make your aquaintence having been, I think, one of the first to welcome you into our great old world literature.
I remain
yr very tly
L Houghton
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." 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. On November 3,
1875, Houghton himself wrote to Whitman to ask whether November 6 would be convenient for a meeting. See Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in
Camden (1906–1996), Thursday,
June 21, 1888, 364, and Wednesday,
September 12th, 1888, 310; 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.