The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Leonard M. Brown, 7 February 1890
Date: February 7, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: owu.00089
Source: The Bayley-Whitman Collection, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 5:25. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Ian Faith, Alex Ashland, and Stephanie Blalock
Camden New Jersey
Feb: 7 1890
Deepest thanks for the $25 the New Years present wh' is opportune1—has only to-day reached me as the letter (by not having a stamp accidentally) went to the dead letter office, & has now at last been sent here, & safely reach'd me.
Am still here, writing a little but physically almost utterly disabled & paralyzed—fair spirits however & buoyant—Again thanks & warmest best wishes—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Leonard M. Brown (c.
1857–1928), a young English schoolteacher and friend of Herbert Gilchrist,
came to America in May, 1887. On March 31, 1887
Gilchrist wrote to Whitman: "he is an uncommonly good fellow, quiet earnest
serious soul and very practical, full of solid worth, whose knowledge and
attainments are sure to be valued in America. His father is a clergyman, and
this son of his reads Leaves of Grass silently & unobserved by the sect of
his orthodox family." An entry in Whitman's Commonplace Book on August 29 reads:
"Leonard Morgan Brown goes back to Croton-on-Hudson—has been here ab't a
week" (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman,
1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). See also Whitman's
letter to Leonard Brown of November 19, 1887 and
his letter to Herbert Gilchrist of December 12,
1886, note 2.
Notes:
1. On February 10, 1890 Whitman noted the receipt of £5 from Brown (Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). See also Whitman's November 19, 1887, letter to Brown. [back]