Logan Pearsall Smith to Walt Whitman, 27 October 1890
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13 Museum Terrace
Oxford
Oct. 27, 1890
Dear Mr. Whitman
I hope this will find you well—or at least as well as usual. Our delightful
Summer is over, my people are in London, and I am back here in Oxford again. It is
curious how the old town wakes up when the term begins. The
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streets fill up with students, the professors begin lecturing, the games & sports
all begin, and the river is covered with boats. It reminds me of those things you
see in shop windows or museums where you put five cents in the slot and everything
begins going of a sudden. The new "Leaves
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of Grass are very much appreciated here—indeed they are very nice.
Last night I sat up late reading L. of G. to a dear friend of mine1 who is paying me a
visit. To-day has been a glorious, fresh October day, and as we have walked about we
have felt so braced up & cheerful by
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our reading. After all—though one does say it in a university town—life is
more than theories about life, or pictures of it, or learning or rhymes. And even
over Oxford there is the blue unsophisticated sky—
Correspondent:
Logan Pearsall Smith
(1865–1946) was an essayist and literary critic. He was the son of Robert
Pearsall Smith, a minister and writer who befriended Whitman, and he was the
brother of Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe, one of Whitman's most avid followers.
For more information on Logan, see Christina Davey, "Smith, Logan Pearsall (1865–1946)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. As yet we have no information about this person. [back]