Byron Sutherland to Walt Whitman, 30 March 1870
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Jamestown N.Y.1
March 30th 1870
Dear respected friend
Feeling assured that any information of my doings and whereabouts will meet with only the kindest reception from you, I venture once more, after my long silence, to address you.
If any excuse be neccessary , let my respect and esteem be that excuse.
When I wrote you last I was attending the Penn. State Normal School2 at Edinboro:3 Since then I have been in the school room as a student or teacher nearly all of the time I have just finished a very nice essay on school as teacher
(You [torn-away] once said, "That boy has a [cutaway]inion of himself"; but I note [torn-away] telling you facts) and have just entered upon the study of Law; In consequence of my very limited means (as you know) I cannot remain in the office longer than next fall.
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Though we enjoyed our homeless life in Washington I think I have enjoyed my more wandering life since then somewhat better—If the world gives me few pennies it at least gives me few curses, and, some kind words: Is this good philosophy?
Any words of comfort you may choose to send me Dear freind , in reply to this, will be to me "like unto the shadow of a great rock in a weary land"
I do not know that this will find you immediately—you may have "changed base" since '68, though I trust it may.
Good night kind friend— Respectfully, By. Sutherland Walt Whitman
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from Byron Sutherland, March 30 1870. ans. April 4 '70.
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Correspondent:
Noah Byron Sutherland (1846–1915?) was
born in New York; he was the son of John G. Sutherland (b. 1798), a farmer,
and Anna (Anny) Sutherland (1807–1880). Byron Sutherland was a Union soldier during the
U. S. Civil War, and he served in the 145th Pennsylvania Infantry. He met
Whitman in Washington, D. C., and the two began corresponding on August 26, 1865.
Sutherland did farm work in Pennsylvania after the Civil War, and he also
studied law and teaching (among other subjects) at the State Normal School in Erie County, Pennsylvania.
In April 1870, Sutherland was teaching in Jamestown, New York. In reply to
Whitman's request for further information about his life, the former soldier
observed on April 8, 1870: "You remember me in
1865 a green vain (?) lad of Eighteen—without, even, an imperfect knowledge
of the rudimentary English branches, I came home from Washington and applied
myself, as soon as possible, to school and to study . . . My life since we
parted that July day upon the Treasury steps, has been one of hard work and
little recreation—I find on looking back to that time, that I am not so
pure or trusting—that the world isint quite so fair and beautiful as it
seemed then—That the world is not precisely a green pasture for
unsophistocated human lambs to skip in—That I like dreaming less, and work
or excitement better—That I have lost a great deal of Ambition, and gained
a like quantity of stupidity—That I dont know nearly so much as I once
supposed I did." By 1877, Sutherland had moved to Minnesota, where he married
Sarah Raymond Brown Peck (1848–after 1915?), practiced law, and worked as a farmer.
Notes
- 1. This letter is addressed: Walt Whitman | Attorney Gen's Office | Washington D.C. It is postmarked: Jamestown | Mar 31; CARRIER | APR | 4 | [illegible]. [back]
- 2. The State Normal School in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, was first chartered in 1856 as an academy. It became a normal school, meant for the training of teachers, in 1861. The normal school phenomenon had only recently caught on in the United States, with the first normal school having been established in Massachusetts in 1839. [back]
- 3. See Byron Sutherland's letter to Whitman of October 8, 1868. [back]