328 Mickle Street
Camden New Jersey
March 10, '87
My dear John Hay,
I send the two sets of books you requested—Also a MS copy of "My
Captain"—also a little Vol: containing my Dartmouth College Commencement-Poem-address in 1872.1 The sets are $10 cash, & the MS $2–$22 altogether, which
please remit me by post office order.2
I am comfortable enough here in a democratic way, & in good heart, but physically
wreck'd & paralyzed. O'Connor3 is now in Southern
California, sick— I send you my remembrance love & thanks—
Walt Whitman
the parcel goes by express
Correspondent:
John Hay
(1838–1905), Abraham Lincoln's private secretary and biographer, as well
as Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State, was an early admirer of Walt
Whitman's poetry.
Notes
- 1. "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free"
(later "Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood") was recited at the Dartmouth
commencement on June 26, 1872. Evidently a student organization hoped to annoy
the faculty by inviting Walt Whitman to Dartmouth, a seat of New England
sobriety and conservatism; see Bliss Perry, Walt Whitman
(1906), 203–205. A dispatch to the New York Times
on June 29, 1872, reported that Walt Whitman "was cordially met by the venerable
gentlemen sitting upon the platform. He then took his position at the desk and
read, with clearness of enunciation, his poem, written for the occasion, 'As a
Strong Bird on Pinions Free.' As Mr. Whitman himself said to the writer, 'There
is no one expression that could stand as the subject of the poem.'" For another
first-hand report of this recitation, see Perry, Walt
Whitman, 203–205. "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free" was later
printed as a pamphlet in 1872. [back]
- 2. The copy of "O Captain!
My Captain!" is dated by Walt Whitman as March 9, 1887, as is a Gutekunst
photograph. [back]
- 3. William Douglas O'Connor
(1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet
The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866.
For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]