Title: William J. Linton to Walt Whitman, 19 May 1875
Date: May 19, 1875
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01802
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, "WJ Linton," is in the hand of Walt Whitman. The annotation, "see note Apr 4 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, Paige Wilkinson, Amanda J. Axley, and Stephanie Blalock
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New Haven Conn.
Box 1188
May 19, 18751
My dear Whitman,
Why have I not written to you? Why has not Spring come?
I have waited for that, waiting a little also till I could get through some work which would have made me uncompanionable.
Now—I go to New York on Saturday June 5 to the Century meeting and remain in NY till Tuesday or Wednesday after. Can not you meet me, so as to return home with me? Apple blossoms surely will be out by then, and some summer warmth to enable you to enjoy your hammock (did I tell you I have one?) on the piazza.
I want you here and to set you to rights. Can you come then (not for a night or two but to stay indefinitely), or will you rather come later?
Do which may best suit you; but come; and let me know as near as you can when I may look for you.
Affectionately Yours
WJ Linton
I want a copy of your Mystic Trumpeter2 for England
Correspondent:
William J. Linton
(1812–1897), a British-born wood engraver, came to the United States in
1866 and settled near New Haven, Connecticut. He illustrated the works of John
Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, and
others, wrote the "indispensable" History of Wood-Engraving in
America (1882), and edited Poetry of America,
1776–1876 (London, 1878), in which appeared eight of Whitman's
poems as well as a frontispiece engraving of the poet. According to his Threescore and Ten Years, 1820 to
1890—Recollections (1894), 216–217, Linton met with Whitman
in Washington and later visited him in Camden (which Whitman reported in his
November 9, 1873, letter to Peter Doyle): "I
liked the man much, a fine-natured, good-hearted, big fellow, . . . a true poet
who could not write poetry, much of
wilfulness
accounting for his neglect of form."
1. This letter is addressed: Walt Whitman | 431 Stevens St | Cor: 7 West St | Camden | NJ. It is postmarked: New Haven | MAY 19 | CT. [back]
2. "The Mystic Trumpeter" first appeared in the Kansas Magazine in February 1872 and in the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle on February 7, 1872. Whitman submitted the poem to William and Francis Church, editors of the Galaxy, for their January 1872 issue in a November 2, 1871 letter; however, they rejected it. "The Mystic Trumpeter" was later published in the small volume As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, which supplemented Two Rivulets, published in 1876. For digital images of the poem as it appeared in the Kansas Magazine, see "The Mystic Trumpeter." [back]