The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Robert Adams, 5 November 1890
Date: November 5, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: med.00935
Source: The location of this manuscript is unknown. Miller derives his transcription from a transcript of the letter published in an auction catalogue published by the American Art Association, December 12–13, 1930. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 5:113. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Ryan Furlong, Amanda J. Axley, and Stephanie Blalock
November 5, 1890
Dear Sir,
above find receipt for the money1—& thanks to you. Give my respects to Miss Wixon2—I am sometimes very ill for days & cannot read, write, or talk or be talked to—& on such occasions answer no letters. . . . am sitting here in my den in great old ratan chair (with big wolf skin spread over back) sunny but pretty cold—have a good oak wood fire.
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Robert Adams
(1816–1900) was born in Ayr, Scotland, and immigrated with his family to
the United States as a small child. After working as a grocer for several years
in Fall River, Massachusetts, Robert and his brother John opened a stationery
shop and bookbindery. Prior to the abolition of slavery, Adams aided runaway
slaves along the Underground Railroad between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Adams's obituary includes a statement from Frederick Douglass in which he
described Adams as "the first man to recognize me as a man." It also notes his
friendships with John Greenleaf Whittier, William Lloyd Garrison, and other
well-known abolitionists ("Deaths of Robert Adams and Ransom P. Baker,"Fall River Daily Evening News [April 3, 1900], 8). The
Fall River Daily Evening News of November 1, 1890,
also records that Adams visited Whitman at his home in Camden "a few days ago"
and "arranged for the sale of copies of Whitman's works," adding that Adams
found the poet "feeble and unable to hold a long conference" ("Personal"
[November 1, 1890], 8). For more information on Adams and abolitionism, see Anti-Slavery Days in Fall River and the Operation of the
Underground Railroad, written by his son, Edward Stowe Adams and
published by the Fall River Historical Society in 2017.
Notes:
1. According to the auction record, a receipt for $16, for the four books mentioned in Whitman's letter to Adams of October 28, 1890, preceded the personal note. [back]
2. As yet we have no information about this person. [back]