Robert Pearsall Smith to Walt Whitman, 20 June 1888
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Steamship Aller
June 20th. 1888.
My dear Friend —
It was with much regret that we felt compelled to leave you in your sickness last
week. We hold you in affectionate remembrance as we pass over the waters to England
where once we hoped to have had your company. We beg that you will send us from 
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you feel able accounts of your health and of all that nearly concerns you concerns
us also who love you.
Our passage across the whole way has been nearly as smooth as a duck pond, and my health has been very much benefited by it.
I bear your messages of love and remembrance to your many many friends in 
loc_no.00116.jpg London, who
without my privileges of personal fellowship with you, honour and love you. I hope
that the knowledge of this may often cheer and console you in hours of pain and
weariness. Alys,1 my faithful secretary, joins me in the
expression of the hearty affection with which I am always
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Correspondent:
Robert Pearsall Smith
(1827–1898) was a Quaker who became an evangelical minister associated
with the "Holiness movement." He was also a writer and businessman. Whitman
often stayed at his Philadelphia home, where the poet became friendly with the
Smith children—Mary, Logan, and Alys. For more information about Smith,
see Christina Davey, "Smith, Robert Pearsall (1827–1898)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. Alys Smith (1867–1951) was a daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith and the sister of Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe. She eventually married the philosopher Bertrand Russell. [back]