Title: Walt Whitman to Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, 28 May 1884
Date: May 28, 1884
Whitman Archive ID: med.00764
Source: Royal College of Music, London. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 5:318. 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, and Nicole Gray
328 Mickle Street1
Camden New Jersey
U S America
May 28 '84
Dear Sir
As far as I understand your request I cheerfully agree to it—As far as I have power to do so I hereby grant you the right of setting my poem of the Death Carol to music & copyrighting the music accompanied by the words, in America.2
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Sir Charles Villiers
Stanford (1852–1924) was a composor and conductor from Dublin,
Ireland.
1. This letter is addressed: C Villiers Stanford | Trinity College | Cambridge | England. It is postmarked: Philadelphia | (?) | May | 28 | 1884 | Paid; Cambrid[ge] | A | Ju 9 | 84. [back]
2. Stanford published "Elegiac Ode," with excerpts from "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," in 1884; see Kenneth P. Neilson, The World of Walt Whitman Music: A Bibliographical Study (1963), 69. [back]