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Ethel Webling to Walt Whitman, 26 October 1891

 loc_vm.02499_large.jpg Dear Sir

It is my birthday and I am so grateful to you for the comradeship of Leaves of Grass that I must write today.

I am an artist & paint portraits sometimes miniatures.

My mother2 and sisters have just reached New York The girls are quite young  loc_vm.02500_large.jpg and going to give Recitations in the States and Canada I hope to come sometime but as I am a worker I must wait until bye and bye.

Thanking you again and again and with greeting

I remain most sincerely Ethel Webling  loc_vm.02501_large.jpg  loc_vm.02502_large.jpg  loc_vm.02497_large.jpg  loc_vm.02498_large.jpg see notes Nov 29 1891

Correspondent:
Ethel Webling (1859–1929) was an English miniaturist and illustrator. She studied at the Slade School of Art and her work was exhibited for several years at the Royal Academy, including a miniature of author John Ruskin in 1888. Her illustration for the poem "Coast Gun L 33" by Martha Foote Crow was reproduced in the December 1893 issue of The Cosmopolitan, see (vol. 16 no 2, page 157). The collection of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust houses her detailed watercolor miniatures depicting an 1898 production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at Her Majesty's Theatre. Ethel Webling's letter to Whitman is included in With Walt Whitman in Camden, November 27, 1891. Her sisters Rosalind, Peggy, and Josephine were dramatic actors, and the latter sister also wrote to Whitman in 1891. See the letter from Josephine Webling to Whitman of November 11, 1891.


Notes

  • 1. This letter is addressed: To | Walt Whitman | 328 Mickle Street | Camden | New Jersey. | U.S.A. It is postmarked: Notting Hill | 22 | OC 26 | 91 | W.; Notting Hill | 22 | OC 26 | 91 | W.; Notting Hill | 22 | OC 26 | 91 | W.; New York | Nov | 6; Paid | 5 | All; B | 91; Camden, N.J. | Nov 6 | 4 PM | 91 | Rec'd. [back]
  • 2. Ethel Webling's mother was Maria Webling (b. 1831), and her father was Robert James Webling (b. 1829), a silversmith and jeweller. [back]
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