The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: William D. O'Connor to Walt Whitman, 13 July 1882
Date: July 13, 1882
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03061
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: Stefan Schoeberlein, Kirsten Clawson, Eder Jaramillo, and Nicole Gray
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Washington, D.C.
July 13, 1882.
Dear Walt:
I enclose a copy of a letter I got yesterday from John Burroughs, as you may like to see what he says of Rossetti. It is incredible that a man who translated Dante, and knows what art and taste sanction in the Divina Comedia, can have so gone back on his old acceptance of your book. It is sad and sickening.
I have your postal card of the 11th. It is funny, but take it for all in all, the newspaper account of the P.M.G's decision is right—the interior sense, as Swedenborg would say, being about as they say. The story has gone broadcast over the country, and must have dismayed the Comstockians.
Comstock, Ingersoll tells me, is not an honest bigot, but an arrant black-hearted scoundrel. This he personally knows of him.
When the new edition comes out, we may expect a row.
George Chainey had better be careful, or they may nip him with a libel suit. He has just done an astonishing thing—printed my private letter in his paper—the letter in which I asked him for information. This is too bad and he ought to know better. A letter of yours also is given. I am surprised at his lack of sense.
Faithfully
W. D. O'Connor.
W.W.