The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Mary A. Fisher to Walt Whitman, 21 September 1889
Date: September 21, 1889
Whitman Archive ID: loc.02077
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: Cristin Noonan, Brandon James O'Neil, Andrew David King, and Stephanie Blalock
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Walt Whitman Esq
Dear Sir
Allow me to ask, could we secure your sevices to give a Reading part of an evening at Chickering Hall for the benefit of our Society & what would be the remunerative required? If you have any preferences as to Month, please state it.1
Respectfully yours
Mary A. Fisher
71 Java St.
Brooklyn E.D.
Sept. 21—89.
(at Chickering Hall)
Correspondent:
Mary A. Fisher (1839–1920)
was the founder of the Home-Hotel Association, which was incorporated in 1888.
The Association's aim was to assist needy authors, artists, professionals and
other "brain-workers." Fisher is requesting Whitman to read at a benefit for
this Association. The address of 71 Java Street was the Association's temporary
address until the group moved to permanent rooms on St. Ann's Avenue in the
Bronx. The Association quickly outgrew those rooms and relocated to Tenafly, New
Jersey, in 1899. For more on Fisher and the Home-Hotel Association, see Fisher's
book, The Story of the Mary A Fisher Home (New York: The
Shakespeare Press, 1915).
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Walt Whitman Esq. | Camden | New Jersey. It is postmarked: [illegible]OKLYN, N. Y. | SEP 23 | [illegible]AM | G; 11; CAMDEN, N.J. | SEP | 24 | 6PM | 1889 | REC'D. [back]