The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Robert Pearsall Smith to Walt Whitman, 5 September [1884]
Date: September 5, 1884
Whitman Archive ID: loc.05853
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: Alex Kinnaman, Stefan Schöberlein, Nicole Gray, and Ed Folsom
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My dear friend,
Can you not come over Friday and stay till Monday with me? Mrs S. & Alys go to Baltimore to the Friends Yearly meeting and Clifford & myself will be left alone. I hope that he has a good transfer of your outer man to canvass1
Yours
affy
RP Smith
Sept 5"
Correspondent:
Robert Pearsall Smith
(1827–1898) was a Methodist preacher, writer and businessman. He was the
father of Logan (born 1865) and Alys (born 1867), who later became the first
wife of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Whitman stayed at the Smiths' house on
numerous occasions.
Notes:
1. Edward Clifford, an English portrait painter who visited Smith in Philadelphia in 1884, made a drawing of Whitman on November 3 (see Whitman's Daybooks). [back]