Camden,
Aug. 29, '89
Y'rs of yesterday rec'd with picture suggesting piece (illustration in text). Will
this do? I shall want proof (wh' don't forget)—the price is $251—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Henry Mills Alden (1836–1919)
was managing editor of Harper's Weekly from 1863 to 1869
and editor of Harper's Monthly Magazine from 1869 until
his death.
Notes
- 1. On August 25, 1889, Henry Alden, the editor of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, requested a poem. Whitman sent "Death's Valley," and was paid $25 on September 1, 1889 (The Commonplace-Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of
the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C.). The poem accompanied an engraving of George Inness' "The Valley of the
Shadow of Death" (1867); see LeRoy Ireland, The Works of
George Inness (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965), 98–99.
When the poem appeared in April 1892, the frontispiece of the magazine was
a photograph of Alexander's portrait of Whitman, and above the poem appeared a
more recent sketch of the poet by the same artist. A partial facsimile of this
manuscript appears in Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in
Camden, Thursday, May 30, 1889. See also "Death's Valley" (loc.00189) in the
Integrated Catalog of Walt Whitman's Literary manuscripts. [back]