The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Logan Pearsall Smith to Walt Whitman, 27 October 1890
Date: October 27, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03827
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: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Ian Faith, Breanna Himschoot, and Stephanie Blalock
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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 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 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 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—
With love as ever
Logan Pearsall Smith
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]