The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Harry Stafford, [19 April 1880]
Date: April 19, 1880
Whitman Archive ID: loc.04016
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. . The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3:177. 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, Grace Thomas, Eder Jaramillo, and Kevin McMullen
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Harry,1 I shall come down on Wednesday in the 4 p m train (as I said)—Nothing new—I am well—I had a good day yesterday (Sunday) perfect day—went over to late breakfast to the Steamer Whillden, Arch Street wharf2—every thing jolly and plentiful & sailor-like—there four hours—then in the evening to Col: Johnston's family3—I have got your blue flannel shirts for you—
W W
—love to your father & mother—
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Harry L Stafford | (Glendale) | Kirkwood | Camden County | New Jersey. It is postmarked: Camden | Apr | 19 | N.J. [back]
2. On this visit Whitman was the guest of John L. Wilson, the ship's purser. See also the letter from Whitman to Herbert Gilchrist of December 25, 1878. [back]
3. The artist whom Whitman visited frequently. (See Specimen Days, ed. Floyd Stovall [New York: New York University Press, 1963], 235). Apparently the Johnstons became annoyed at something Whitman said in his (lost) letter to their son on June 9, for on June 21 Scovel informed the poet that "Johns[t]on called here Sunday with your letter to his Boy." Scovel urged Whitman to apologize to the mother and thus "stop Johns[t]on's blathering." [back]