Talcott Williams to Walt Whitman, 11 June 1886
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Ye Painte Shoppe,
1833 SPRUCE STREET
PHILADELPHIA.
June 11, 1886
My dear Walt Whitman:
Some weeks after I had made my last remittance to you1 I received $8 from a
friend & admirer of yours Charles Leland Harrison.2 I have been hoping to bring
it over; but I will put it off no longer and hand you the last fragment of the happiest
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in which I have ever shared. Your postal cards were better than all the letters in
the world. In joy and gratitude at the privilege of being one on whom you rely I am
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From Talcott Williams June '86
(enclosing $8)
Correspondent:
Talcott Williams
(1849–1928) was associated with the New York Sun
and World as well as the Springfield Republican before he became the editor of the Philadelphia Press in 1879. His newspaper vigorously defended Whitman
in news articles and editorials after the Boston censorship of 1882. For more
information about Williams, see Philip W. Leon, "Williams, Talcott (1849–1928)," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. Williams's last letter was of May 4, 1886. [back]
- 2. Charles Leland Harrison (1861–1913) was an executive in a chemical and paint manufacturing company in Philadelphia; he attended Harvard University and wrote in a Harvard publication in 1909: "I regret to say I can claim no distinction in any public way, either literary, scientific, or political" (Class of 1883 Harvard College: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Report of the Secretary, Report VII [Cambridge, MA: University Press, 1909]). [back]