I1 have looked so long for that autograph copy of "My Captain,"2 for "a place of honor," in my collection in the Iowa State Library!3 Are there any terms upon which you will kindly send it—signed & dated?
Faithfully yours Charles Aldrich Webster City, Iowa Nov 18, 1889. loc_tb.00039.jpgCorrespondent:
Charles Aldrich
(1828–1908) was an ornithologist, a member of the Iowa House of
Representatives, an infantry captain in the Civil War, and founder of the Iowa
Historical Department. He was also an avid autograph collector, especially of
Whitman's. He was so eager that the poet termed him "a very hungry man . . .
never satisfied—is always crying for more and more" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Tuesday, August 20, 1889). Aldrich visited Whitman at his Camden home
numerous times, and he served as a conduit between the poet and William Michael
Rossetti in England, who edited the first British edition of Whitman's work. For
more information, see Ed Folsom, "The Mystical Ornithologist and the Iowa
Tufthunter: Two Unpublished Whitman Letters and Some Identifications," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 1 (1983),
18–29.