Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Harry Stafford, 15 August [1878]

Date: August 15, 1878

Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00410

Source: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library, New York, N.Y. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3:133–134. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Grace Thomas, Anthony Dreesen, and Kevin McMullen




Camden1
August 15—3 p m2

Dear Harry

I wrote Bart Bonsall a note yesterday about getting you a situation, & stopt there ab't noon to see him to-day—but they told me he was away & would not be back to-day—There is no news to write—all goes on pretty much the same with me—Harry, I send you a couple of to-day's papers—Things rather dull with me—I am only middling well—(have probably banged around too much the last three months & too much excitement)—


WW

I will be down Saturday in the 4½ p m train3


Notes:

1. The envelope for this letter bears the address: Harry L Stafford | Kirkwood | Camden County | New Jersey. It is postmarked: Camden | Aug | 15 | N.J. [back]

2. On August 14, Whitman applied for a situation for Harry Stafford to Bartram Bonsall, coeditor of the Camden Daily Post with his father, Henry Lummis Bonsall. Henry established the Camden New Republic after the Civil War and later founded the Post, which he sold to his son in 1883; see George R. Prowell, The History of Camden County (Philadelphia: L.J. Richards & Co., 1886), 325–326. Harry began to work at Haddonfield, N.J., about August 20, either for a newspaper or in a printing plant (see the letter from Whitman to Edward Carpenter of September 1, 1878). Probably Whitman was seeking a position for Harry when he wrote on October 9 to William Taylor, the editor of the Woodstown (N.J.) Constitution (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). On November 13 Whitman noted that Harry was at "Atco," but after his visit on December 31, the poet wrote in his Commonplace Book: "has left Atco." [back]

3. Whitman was at Kirkwood from August 17, Saturday, to August 20 (Whitman's Commonplace Book). [back]


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