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 derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
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 Tennyson and Thackeray 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), 1:360, 364; 2:310; 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]