Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Susan Stafford to Walt Whitman, 31 January 1877

Date: January 31, 1877

Whitman Archive ID: loc.03894

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: Alicia Bones, Eder Jaramillo, Vince Moran, Kevin McMullen, Nicole Gray, and Kenneth Price



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Home
Wednsday Evening
Jan 31/77

Dear friend

we recieved your wellcome Letter last evenigng & was glad to hear from you & to know that you are well [&?] happy with your friends in the [City?].1 we are all well as usual I have just [returned?] home from Red Bank where I w [illegible][illed to?] se of my Dear Mother who is at this time to all appearences near Death to day when I left her I felt that it [would?] be the last time that I should se her alive. Dear frend you can judge of my feelings better than I cn discribe them. we shall look fore you down with us Teusday but please do not think of going back in one day I shoul not get go to se you at all

surely you can give us more Than one day from your friends I know they can make you more comefortable than we can but they do not care fore you more than we [illegible]tions

ever your friend
S M. Stafford


Notes:

1. Susan M. Lamb Stafford (1833–1910) was the mother of Harry Stafford (1858–1918), who, in 1876, became a close friend of Whitman while working at the printing office of the Camden New Republic. Whitman regularly visited the Staffords at their family farm near Kirkwood, New Jersey. Whitman enjoyed the atmosphere and tranquility that the farm provided and would often stay for weeks at a time (see David G. Miller, "Stafford, George and Susan M.," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings [New York: Garland Publishing, 1998], 685). [back]


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