Walt Whitman to C. W. Hoare, 22 January 1874

 loc.02320.001_large.jpg 431 Stevens st. cor West. Camden N. Jersey. January 22, '74 C. W. Hoare, Dear Sir,

Your note with the $5 enclosed, has safely reached me here.1

My books, Leaves of Grass, Passage to India,2 Democratic Vistas,3 &c. will be duly dispatched to-night or to-morrow, on their way to your brother in Ireland.4 If convenient, send me word, in due time about their reach'g​ him—as you will probably hear,—I am laid up here invalided—but expect to get round again5

Walt Whitman  loc.02320.002_large.jpg

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Notes

• 1. This communication has not been located. [back]
• 2. First printed as a separate publication containing the title poem, some new poetry, and a number of poems previously published in Leaves of Grass, "Passage to India" was Whitman's attempt to "celebrate in my own way, the modern engineering masterpieces . . . the great modern material practical energy & works," including the completion of the Suez Canal (1869), the Union and Central Pacific transcontinental railroad (1869), and the completion of the Atlantic Cable (1866) (see Whitman's April 22, 1870, letter to Moncure D. Conway). Although Whitman submitted the poem to the Overland Monthly on April 4, 1870, it was rejected on April 13, 1870, for being "too long and too abstract for the hasty and material-minded readers of the O. M." Conway, Walt Whitman's agent in England, was not able to sell the poem to an English journal. John Burroughs observed in the second edition of his Notes on Walt Whitman as a Poet and Person (1871), 123: "The manuscript of Passage to India was refused by the monthly magazines successively in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and London." The poem was eventually included in the final three editions of Leaves of Grass, published in 1871, 1881, and 1891. For more information on "Passage to India," see John B. Mason, "'Passage to India' (1871)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 3. Whitman's Democratic Vistas was first published in 1871 in New York by J.S. Redfield. The volume was an eighty-four-page pamphlet based on three essays, "Democracy," "Personalism," and "Orbic Literature," all of which Whitman intended to publish in the Galaxy magazine. Only "Democracy" and "Personalism" appeared in the magazine. For more information on Democratic Vistas, see Arthur Wrobel, "Democratic Vistas [1871]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 4. As yet we have no information about this person. [back]
• 5. Whitman suffered a stroke in 1873 that left him partially paralyzed and recovering for several years. [back]