The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: John Swinton to Walt Whitman, 12 August 1882
Date: August 12, 1882
Whitman Archive ID: loc.04758
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: Stefan Schoeberlein, Kirsten Clawson, and Nicole Gray
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THE LARGEST MOUNTAIN HOTEL IN THE WORLD.
HOTEL KAATERSKILL.
EDWARD A. GILLET, LESSEE.
Kaaterskill (P.O.) N.Y.
Aug 12 1882
My dear Walt—
Nine years ago, I delivered before a German Society of New York City a lecture on American literature, in which a great deal was said about you. Last winter, after the M.S. had lain all these years in a trunk, I spoke it twice again,—before the Philosophical Society of Brooklyn and that of Williamsburgh. But now comes the fun for you. Some months ago, I sent the lecture, by invitation, as an essay to the great literary magazine of Russia, the Sagranitschuy Viestuik of St. Petersburgh—There it was put into the Russian language and into the Olympian Magazine. Now I have the magazine, and you have a very heavy puff in the organ which is studied by all the powerful and intellectual classes of Russia—about a quarter or a fifth of the whole article. I guess this is your first introduction to Rooshia, to the Czar and his subjects—and I am sure it would be satisfactory to you—You will never read it in the beautiful Russian—for it is a dreadful language; but it is enough for you to know it partly.
I have been staying here for a week, and shall leave in two or three days: but back in the city about the end of the month.
Yours truly
John Swinton