I have many messages for you from your friends in Europe which I promised and so much desired to deliver face to face; and day after day and week after week I promised myself and hoped to come to you, but now I shall not see you till I return; for I am tired of towns and tomorrow set my face to the West. I am weary and want rest, and I cannot rest in cities. My address for a time will be San Francisco and since I cannot see you I should be proud of a letter from you.
I am tired of books too and take but one with me; one Rossetti2 gave me, a "Walt Whitman"—Grand old man! The grandest, and truest American I know, accept the love of your son.
Joaquin Miller3 loc.03136.002_large.jpg loc.03136.005_large.jpg JOAQUIN MILLER. San Francisco California loc.01805.001_large_mflm.jpg Joaquin Miller see notes May 5 1888 loc.01805.002_large_mflm.jpgCorrespondent:
Joaquin Miller was the pen name of
Cincinnatus Heine Miller (1837–1913), an American poet nicknamed "Byron of
the Rockies" and "Poet of the Sierras." In 1871, the Westminster Review described Miller as "leaving out the coarseness
which marked Walt Whitman's poetry" (297). In an entry in his journal dated August 1,
1871, the naturalist John Burroughs recorded Whitman's fondness for Miller's
poetry; see Clara Barrus, Whitman and
Burroughs—Comrades (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1931), 60.
Whitman met Miller for the first time in 1872; he wrote of a visit with Miller
in a July 19, 1872, letter to his former publisher and
fellow clerk Charles W. Eldridge.