Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to William D. O'Connor, 25 October [1882]

Date: October 25, 1882

Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00447

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), 3:311. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Stefan Schöberlein, and Nicole Gray




Camden1
Oct: 25 Evn'g:

Quite sick the last ten or twelve days2—havn't been out of the house—great bodily weakness & "misery" in head & stomach—the doctor says from almost entire stoppage of the action of the liver, other causes—malarial &c—I dont hear any thing particular. Do you? Did they send you the Boston Herald's two criticisms on S. D.—very warm, eulogistic (largely extracts)—I shall be all right in a week or less—


W W


Notes:

1. This letter is endorsed: "Answd Oct / 26 & 27." It is addressed: Wm D O'Connor | Life Saving Service Bureau | Treasury | Washington D C. It is postmarked: Camden | Oct | 25 | 5 PM | N.J.; Washington, Recd | Oct | 26 | 5 AM | 1882 | 2. [back]

2. Whitman suffered from a liver disorder from October 17 to 28, 1882 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Dr. Dowling Benjamin, his physician, began to practice medicine in Camden in 1877; see George R. Prowell, The History of Camden County, New Jersey (1886). A newspaper report alarmed the poet's friends: "Walt Whitman is so seriously ill of Bright's disease that few if any hopes for his recovery are entertained." See Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, March 11, 1889, 322–323, and Jeff's letter to his brother on October 29[back]


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