The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Katharine Hillard, 15 February 1876
Date: February 15, 1876
Whitman Archive ID: loc.02311
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: Alex Kinnaman, Elizabeth Lorang, Eder Jaramillo, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Nicole Gray, Marie Ernster, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |  image 3 |  image 4 |
431 Stevens st.
cor West.
Camden, N. Jersey.
Feb. 15, /761
Dear Miss Hillard:
I have received your letter, & am pleased at the prospect of meeting you at Mr. and Mrs. Lesley's2—say on the 28th, at bet. 12 and 1. (Should I not feel well enough to get over, I will send you a note, & you must then come & see me here. It is easily findable & reachable from Philadelphia.)
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Katharine Hillard (1839–1915)
was the translator of Dante's Banquet (1889) and the
editor of An Abridgment by Katharine Hillard of the Secret
Doctrine: A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy by Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky (1907). A Brooklyn resident, she was a friend of Whitman's
close friend, the women's rights activist Abby Price
(see Whitman's September 9, 1873, letter to
Price). According to a letter from Whitman's mother—Louisa Van Velsor Whitman—to Helen Price
on November 26, 1872, the Prices expected that Arthur Price and Katharine
Hillard would marry (Pierpont Morgan Library). Whitman had known Hillard's
writings since 1871 and mentioned her in his June 23,
1873, letter to his friend, the former publisher and fellow clerk Charles Eldridge. Hillard and Whitman first met in
person on February 28, 1876, and Whitman sent her a copy of Leaves of Grass on July 27, 1876 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of
Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Writing
to Whitman on September 13, 1871, Moncure D.
Conway, who acted as Whitman's agent in England, quoted from a letter he had received
from Katharine Hillard: "I have made a
discovery since I have been here [in the Adirondacks], and that is, that I never
half appreciated Walt Whitman's poetry till now, much as I fancied I enjoyed it.
To me he is the only poet fit to be read in the mountains, the only one who can
reach and level their lift, to use his own words, to pass and continue
beyond."
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Miss Kate Hillard, | 186 Remsen street, | Brooklyn, | New York. It is postmarked: Camden | Feb 15 | N.J. | [Brooklyn | FEB | 16] | [illegible] AM | REC'D. [back]
2. Professor John Peter Lesley (1819–1903) of the University of Pennsylvania was appointed state geologist in 1874. He was also secretary of the American Philosophical Society from 1858 to 1885. In 1849, Lesley married Susan Inches Lyman (1823–1904), the daughter of Judge Joseph Lyman (1767–1847) of Northampton, Mass. His daughters were Margaret White Lesley Bush-Brown and Mary Lesley Ames (both mentioned in Whitman's February 29, 1876, letter to his friend Ellen O'Connor). The English writer Anne Gilchrist spoke glowingly of the "delightful family circle" of the Lesleys (Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist, Anne Gilchrist: Her Life and Writings (1887), 228–229). [back]