Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Alfred Janson Bloor, 24 May [1879]

Date: May 24, 1879

Whitman Archive ID: med.00639

Source: The location of the original manuscript is unknown. The text is derived from a facsimile in the auction catalogs of Joseph Rubinfine American Historical Autographs, West Palm Beach, Florida (Item 44, List 137). The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Ted Genoways (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004), 7:55–56. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Stefan Schoeberlein, and Nicole Gray




1309 Fifth av: near 86th st: New York1
May 24 noon

My dear Mr Bloor2

I have returned the two pamphlets—which I suppose you have rec'd.3 In a letter in the Tribune of to-day I have printed (as I some time since notified you)4 what you said—(well said)—about actors—I remain here till latter part of next week—then to Camden, New Jersey, which is my permanent p o address—Shall count on getting the extracts from your Journal about Mr Lincon's murder & funeral soon as you can conveniently send them.5


Walt Whitman


Notes:

1. The New York residence of John H. Johnston, whom Whitman was visiting at the time. [back]

2. Alfred Janson Bloor (1828–1917) was, he informed Whitman on June 9, 1879, a member of the architectural staff that designed Central Park. He was a poet as well as the author of a number of architectural treatises. Whitman quoted from Bloor's letter at the conclusion of his article in the Tribune on May 24 (see The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman: Prose Works 1892, ed. Floyd Stovall [New York: New York University Press, 1964], 342). Bloor had taken exception to Whitman's contemptuous references to actors in his lecture on Lincoln's murder. [back]

3. Unidentified, perhaps some of Bloor's own treatises. [back]

4. A lost letter written on April 29. [back]

5. On June 9, 2879, Alfred Janson Bloor sent to Whitman "a copy of the selections you made from my journal, and also an account of the information Miss Harris [daughter of Senator Ira Harris] gave me as to what she knew of Mr. Lincoln's assassination" (Library of Congress). [back]


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