Title: Walt Whitman to William D. O'Connor, 9 December 1883
Date: December 9, 1883
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00508
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), 3:358. 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, Alicia Meyer, Stefan Schöberlein, Kirsten Clawson, and Nicole Gray
Camden N J
Dec 9 '83
A young workingman & engineer, Edward Doyle, (brother of my dear friend Peter D.)1 may call on you, before long, to see what chance if any for employment. He is healthy, strong, intelligent for a laboring man—no bad habits—single—hails from Washington. I am well as usual—Nothing new—I send you a paper—
W W
1. Doyle spent the afternoon of December 7 with Whitman (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). He visited the poet again on June 4, 1884. When Doyle's mother was dying, on May 23, 1885, Whitman sent $10, and he lent Doyle $15 when he came to Camden on June 4, 1885 (Whitman's Commonplace Book). In the 1870s Edward Doyle, like Peter, had been a streetcar conductor. [back]