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Justin Huntly McCarthy to Walt Whitman, 3 December 1888

About This Item

  • Title: Justin Huntly McCarthy to Walt Whitman, 3 December 1888
  • Date: December 3, 1888
  • Creator(s): Justin Huntley McCarthy | Justin Huntly McCarthy
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.03246
  • 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 John Schwaninger Eder Jaramillo Caterina Bernardini Ryan Furlong Alex Ashland Ian Faith Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: McCarthy, Justin Huntley and Justin Huntly McCarthy. "Justin Huntly McCarthy to Walt Whitman, 3 December 1888." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 11 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.03246.xml (TEI)
 loc.03246.001_large.jpg Grand Hotel de Mustapha Algiers Monday 3 December 1888 Dear Mr. Walt Whitman

May I, here is this old Africa & very unhappy send a message to you in America who are helping me to bear my sorrow.

This dry month  loc.03246.002_large.jpg I suffered the greatest loss that a young man can suffer by the death of the girl I loved, the girl who was to have been my wife. She loved your poems dearly: she taught me who loved them too to understand them as I had never understood them before. They were among the last things we ever read together but a few weeks ago in England when my life seemed so happy & there seemed to be no shadow of the implacable  loc.03246.003_large.jpg Death. I am reading your poems now again alone & in the bitterness of my heart in this place to which I have come to struggle with my sorrow. They are helping me, they are strengthening me & I wish to send you these few words of thanks & gratitude for the sake of my dead love & my living grief. Camerado, will you give me your hand across the sea.

Justin Huntly McCarthy  loc.03246.004_large.jpg

Correspondent:
Justin Huntly McCarthy (1859–1936) was an Irish novelist and politician. He served as a member of Parliament from 1884 to 1892.

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