The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Charles Allen Thorndike Rice, [12 August 1885]
Date: August 12, 1885
Whitman Archive ID: loc.05932
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:403. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: The annotation, "Aug: '85.," is in the hand of Walt Whitman.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein, Kyle Barton, and Nicole Gray
Received from Allen Thorndike Rice1—by Mr. Ferris attorney and through James Redpath2—Sixty Dollars for article Booth and the Old Bowery—which article I reserve the right to include & print in future collections of my writings.
Correspondent:
Charles Allen Thorndike Rice
(1851–1889) was a journalist and edited and published the North American Review in New York from 1876 until his
death. His Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished
Men of His Time (1888) was published by The North American Review
Publishing Company.
Notes:
1. Draft letter. It can be assumed that Whitman sent the receipt to Rice at the same time he wrote to Redpath. The transaction was recorded in Whitman's Commonplace Book on August 15 (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]
2. James Redpath (1833–1891), an antislavery activist, journalist, and longtime friend of Whitman, was the author of The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), a correspondent for the New York Tribune during the war, and the originator of the "Lyceum" lectures. He met Whitman in Boston in 1860, and he remained an enthusiastic admirer; see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, January 4, 1889. He concluded his first letter to Whitman on June 25, 1860: "I love you, Walt! A conquering Brigade will ere long march to the music of your barbaric jawp." Redpath became managing editor of The North American Review in 1886. See also Charles F. Horner, The Life of James Redpath and the Development of the Modern Lyceum, (New York: Barse & Hopkins, 1926); John R. McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); and J.R. LeMaster, "Redpath, James [1833–1891]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]