The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Charles W. Eldridge, 5 April 1887
Date: April 5, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: loc.02024
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.
Notes for this letter were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Ashland, Stefan Schöberlein, Kevin McMullen, and Stephanie Blalock
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Camden New Jersey
April 5 '871
Thanks dear friend for your letter—the third—from California & ab't William2—Continue to write, for I am very anxious & look for the letters—I continue ab't the same,—very feeble, but in good heart.—Am to deliver the "Death of Lincoln" screed3 to-night before the Unitarians, here in Camden—& the 14th April in New York, (if I can get there) the same lecture—Conway4 has been here to see me—I am writing & collating a paper ab't Elias Hicks5—Write soon—
—Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Charles W. Eldridge (1837–1903) was one half
of the Boston-based abolitionist publishing firm Thayer and Eldridge, who issued
the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. In December 1862, on
his way to find his injured brother George in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Whitman
stopped in Washington and encountered Eldridge, who had become a clerk in the
office of the army paymaster, Major Lyman Hapgood. Eldridge eventually obtained
a desk for Whitman in Hapgood's office. For more on Whitman's relationship with
Thayer and Eldridge, see David Breckenridge Donlon, "Thayer, William Wilde (1829–1896) and Charles W. Eldridge
(1837–1903)."
Notes:
1. This postal card is addressed: Charles W Eldridge | P O box 1705 | Los Angeles | California. It is postmarked: [Cam]den, N.J. | Apr 6 | 6 PM | 87; P[hila]del[phi]a | (?)r | 6 | 8 PM | Transit. [back]
2. William Douglas O'Connor (1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet "The Good Gray Poet," published in 1866 (a digital version of the pamphlet is available at "The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication"). For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
3. Whitman first delivered this lecture in New York in 1879 and would deliver it at least eight other times over the succeeding years, delivering it for the last time on April 15, 1890. He published a version of the lecture as "Death of Abraham Lincoln" in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–83). For more on the lecture, see Larry D. Griffin, "'Death of Abraham Lincoln,'" Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, ed., (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
4. Moncure Conway (1832–1907) was a Unitarian minister who lived in England from the 1860s until 1885, where he served as a supporter of Whitman and wrote frequently about the poet. [back]
5. In his Commonplace Book (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.) on February 25 Whitman had observed: "Am collecting 'Elias Hicks' these days." Elias Hicks (1748–1830) was a Quaker from Long Island whose controversial teachings led to a split in the Religious Society of Friends in 1827, a division that was not resolved until 1955. Hicks had been a friend of Whitman's father and grandfather, and Whitman himself was a supporter and proponent of Hicks's teachings, writing about him in Specimen Days (see "Reminiscence of Elias Hicks") and November Boughs (see "Elias Hicks, Notes (such as they are)"). For more on Hicks and his influence on Whitman, see David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman's America (New York: Knopf, 1995), 37–39. [back]