The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to John H. Johnston, 25 September [1877]
Date: September 25, 1877
Whitman Archive ID: loc.02555
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: Alicia Bones, Anthony Dreesen, Eder Jaramillo, Kevin McMullen, and Nicole Gray
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431 Stevens Street
Camden New Jersey
Sept 251
Dear Johnston
How are you—& all?—I want to hear about Al and May—& I want to hear about the baby—Please do a little thing for me—there was a white tea-cup & saucer, a "moustache-cup" given me by a soldier, & I left it at your house—if it is unbroken & still there, please have some of your fellows box it neatly & express it here to me—How are all your fellows in the store? Tell them I remember them all so well & so pleasantly—
—I have been down in the country at a secluded primitive farm all summer, living much of the time outdoors by a solitary woody pond, (half the time naked or half-naked)—am now quite fat & all tanned & red—Love to you, my friend—
Walt W
Where & how is Waters? Where is the picture?
Notes:
1. Since this letter apparently refers to Whitman's extended visits to Kirkwood in 1877 and to his stay with the Johnstons in March, the year is almost positive. The reference in the last line to G.W. Waters, who had recently painted the poet's portrait, also points to this year. [back]