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Joaquin Miller to Walt Whitman, 27 May 1875

About This Item

  • Title: Joaquin Miller to Walt Whitman, 27 May 1875
  • Date: May 27, 1875
  • Creator(s): Joaquin Miller
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.03138
  • 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: Alex Kinnaman Elizabeth Lorang Ashley Lawson Eder Jaramillo John Schwaninger Caterina Bernardini Marie Ernster Amanda J. Axley Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Miller, Joaquin. "Joaquin Miller to Walt Whitman, 27 May 1875." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 11 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.03138.xml (TEI)
 loc.03138.001_large.jpg see notes April 21 1888 REVERE HOUSE, BOSTON. May 27, 75 My dear Walt Whitman

Your kind letter1 is received and the sad news of your ill health2 makes this pleasant weather even seem tiresome and out of place. I had hoped to find you the same hale and whole man I had met in New York a few years go​ and now I shall perhaps find you bearing you a staff and full of pain and torture. However my dear friend as you have lived from within and nor from without I am sure you will be able to bear whatever comes with  loc.03138.002_large.jpg  loc.03138.003_large.jpg that beautiful faith and philosophy you have ever given us in your great and immortal chants.

I am coming to you really soon, as you request; but I cannot say to day or yet tomorrow for I am in the midst of work and am not altogether my own master. But I will come and we will talk it all over together. In the meantime remember that whateer​ befalls you you have the perfect love and sympathy of many if not all of the noblest and loftiest natures of the two hemispheres. Till I see you my dear friend and fellow toiler goodbye

Yours fitfully Joaquin Miller  loc.03138.004_large.jpg Joaquin Miller

Correspondent:
Joaquin Miller was the pen name of Cincinnatus Heine Miller (1837–1913), an American poet nicknamed "Byron of the Rockies" and "Poet of the Sierras." In 1871, the Westminster Review described Miller as "leaving out the coarseness which marked Walt Whitman's poetry" (297). In an entry in his journal dated August 1, 1871, the naturalist John Burroughs recorded Whitman's fondness for Miller's poetry; see Clara Barrus, Whitman and Burroughs—Comrades (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1931), 60. Whitman met Miller for the first time in 1872; he wrote of a visit with Miller in a July 19, 1872, letter to his former publisher and fellow clerk Charles W. Eldridge.

Notes

  • 1. This letter has not been located. [back]
  • 2. Whitman suffered a stroke in 1873 that left him partially paralyzed and recovering for several years. [back]
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