Title: Walt Whitman to Jeannette L. and Joseph B. Gilder, 21 December 1882
Date: December 21, 1882
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00471
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), 3:320–321. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schoeberlein, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Eder Jaramillo, and Nicole Gray
Camden
Dec:
21 '82
My dear friends
Yes I will give you the autograph name & perhaps a sentiment1—but would like first to see the picture they would go under—Most of the pictures that have been put out of me, quite warrant the alarming estimation so many folks entertain—(If it is the drawing F Fowler took two years ago in Huntington L[ong] I[sland], I dont like it at all.) I send you some samples—& should be entirely satisfied with a good bold simple rendering of either of the three—If you do it at all why not try to do it well.
Walt Whitman
1. On January 13, 1883, The Critic printed Whitman's picture with four lines from Leaves of Grass in Whitman's hand. The issue also contained a review of Specimen Days (2–3). [back]