Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Thomas Tylston Greg to Walt Whitman, 16 December 1888

Date: December 16, 1888

Whitman Archive ID: med.00900

Source: The location of this manuscript is unknown. The transcription presented here is derived from With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906–1998), ed. Horace Traubel (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1914), 3:432–433. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Alex Ashland, and Stephanie Blalock




15 Cliffords Inn, E. C.
December, 16, 1888.

My dear Sir:

I should like, if I can do so without impertinence, to send you my grateful thanks for the, almost, new feeling or sense which you and the Leaves of Grass have endowed me. You have, through them, infused into my life and into the lives of many others, a fresher, healthier happiness than we knew of—and we thank you. I send you a paper1 which I read in October last in Warrington, Lancashire, and let my sincerity and enthusiasm be my excuse for the utter inadequacy of treatment of a subject I both love and revere. We English are learning each year to know you better and to value you more. The Harvest of the Leaves is not I fear quite ready—but when it is, and the day is not far off—assuredly the laborers will not be few. May you live to learn the truth of this. I remain, my dear sir, with grateful thanks,


Thomas Tylston Greg.


Correspondent:
Thomas Tylston Greg (1858–1920) was from a wealthy mill owning family in Styal, Cheshire, England. He worked as a solicitor and collected pottery, which he later donated to the Manchester Art Gallery. He was also the author of the collection of essays Through a Glass Lightly: Confession of a Reluctant Water Drinker (1897).

Notes:

1. The paper was published as a pamphlet, which Greg enclosed with his letter: Walt Whitman, Man and Poet: a paper delivered before the Society on the 16th October, 1888 (Warrington: Warrington Literary & Philosophical Society, 1888). See also Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, December 31, 1888[back]


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