Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Edmund Clarence Stedman, 17 June 1875

Date: June 17, 1875

Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00369

Source: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 2:334. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Kenneth M. Price, Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, Zachary King, and Eric Conrad




431 Stevens st.
cor West.
Camden,
N. Jersey.
June 17, '75.

My dear Stedman,1

I have rec'd your kind note, & am pleased that you remember me. I shall select some scrap of my MS. & send you soon. The last fortnight I have had an extra spell of debility & head distress, but feel better to-day.

Should you come to Philadelphia come over here, (by ferry from foot of Market st. Phila., very accessible) & see me, & have a chat. I am leisurely preparing a Volume, "Two Rivulets,' (i.e. Real and Ideal) all sorts of things, prose & (my) poetry. Won't be out though for five or six months. Pleasant in some respects here, for me—but pretty lonesome.


Walt Whitman


Notes:

1. Whitman met Stedman during the Civil War; see Whitman's October 20, 1863 letter to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. On June 8, 1875, Stedman had requested "one scrap of paper, which you can spare. …I am one of those American writers who always look upon you as a noble, original, and characteristic poet" (Thomas Donaldson, Walt Whitman, the Man [London: Suckling & Galloway, 1896], 214). [back]


Comments?

Published Works | In Whitman's Hand | Life & Letters | Commentary | Resources | Pictures & Sound

Support the Archive | About the Archive

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, editors.