The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton, 20 June 1885
Date: June 20, 1885
Whitman Archive ID: loc.02332
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 created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein and Kyle Barton
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328 Mickle street
Camden New Jersey U S A1
June 20 1885
Dear old friend
If convenience helps I want to present two American girls, sisters, Mary Whitall and Alys Smith, of Quaker stock[,] special personal friends of mine—to you—They are traveling in Europe with their parents—Mary can tell you all about my perplexing self to latest dates2—
Walt Whitman
To Lord Houghton
Correspondent:
Richard Monckton Milnes
(1809–1885), Lord Houghton, was an intimate of Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(1809–1892) and William Makepeace Thackeray
(1811–1863), as well as a poet. He was a
collector of famous people; in Dictionary of National
Biography he is characterized as "eminently a dilettante." Houghton
wrote to Joaquin Miller on September 1, 1875, from Chicago: "Please give my best
regards to Mr Whitman." On September 5, 1875,
Miller informed Whitman that he was trying to arrange a meeting with Lord
Houghton. Houghton himself wrote to Whitman on September
27, 1875, and proposed a visit at the end of October or early in
November, and on November 3, 1875, he asked whether November 6 would be
convenient. See Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in
Camden (1906–1996), Thursday,
June 21, 1888, 364, and Wednesday,
September 12th, 1888, 310; In Re
Walt Whitman (1893), ed. Horace L. Traubel, Richard Maurice Bucke, and
Thomas B. Harned, 36; and Harold Blodgett, Walt Whitman in
England (1934), 141–143.
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: "Lord Houghton." [back]
2. The Smiths sailed on June 24 and arrived in England on July 3. When Mary called on June 20 (Whitman's Commonplace Book), Whitman undoubtedly gave her this letter of introduction. [back]