The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to an Unidentified Correspondent, 30 December [1878?]
Date: December 30, 1878
Whitman Archive ID: med.00803
Source: The location of the original manuscript is unknown. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:145. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray
December 30
[Whitman noted that the Gilchrists had moved to another address.]1
Notes:
1. The date and summary of the letter are drawn from an auction catalog put out by the American Art Association for a sale on March 10–11, 1924. The location of this manuscript is presently unknown. The letter was probably written in 1878 after the Gilchrists' departure from Philadelphia in April. After their arrival in New York, at first they took rooms in Brooklyn (see the letter from Whitman to John Burroughs of December 12, 1878), but, on December 29, when Anne Gilchrist wrote to her daughter Beatrice, who was in Boston, she had just moved to 112 Madison Avenue, New York City (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). This note may have been addressed to Jeannette Gilder, as Whitman wrote a post card to her on this date (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Feinberg Collection). [back]