The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Jeannette L. Gilder, 9 April 1881
Date: April 9, 1881
Whitman Archive ID: loc.02207
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. Ted Genoways (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004), vol. 7, and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Stefan Schoeberlein, and Nicole Gray
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431 Stevens Street
Camden New Jersey
April 9 '81
My Dear Miss Gilder
Thanks for the slips of No: 2,1 which have duly come. Also the paper—I believe I shall have to decline writing about Victor Hugo, for you—don't know enough about him2—(the article in to-day's Critic seems to me to have it about right)—
I send you two more batches of Notes—
I am going on to Boston middle of next week—return forthwith.3
Walt Whitman
Send on the proofs as before—Have you ever thought of asking Wm. D. O'Connor of Washington, Life Saving Service Bureau to write for you?4
Notes:
1. "No. 2" was part of a series of six articles entitled "How I Get Around at 60 and Take Notes." [back]
2. Whitman's lengthiest comment on the writings of Hugo appeared in the New York Daily Graphic in 1874; see Prose Works 1892, ed. Floyd Stovall (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 2:759. [back]
3. Whitman delivered his Lincoln speech in Boston on April 15 (see the letter from Whitman to the Staffords of April 15-[17], [1881]). [back]
4. Apparently Jeannette Gilder (1849–1916) never asked William D. O'Connor to write for The Critic. [back]