Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Abby H. Price, 9 September [1873]

Date: September 9, 1873

Whitman Archive ID: pml.00040

Source: The Pierpont Morgan 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, 1961–1977), 2:241–242. 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, Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, Zachary King, and Eric Conrad




Camden,
Sept. 9.1

Abby,

your letter has come, & is welcome. Dear Abby, & dear friends all, the doctors say I will get well, & I say so too—but which ever way it goes, it will be all right—the little Philadelphia paper piece was about the right statement of my case from a favorable point of view—I shall remain here for the present—I get around middling well—the worst is bad spells in the head which persistently return—if I get a little better I may like to come on & pay you a visit—upstairs will do just as well for me, as I get up & down better than you would think. I will write to you beforehand should I come.

My brother Jeff has come on from St. Louis for a while—stopt here yesterday though only a few hours—has gone on to N.Y. to a good sailing excursion, a week on a yacht voyage—I told him to call on you, if possible—& he will if he can work it—My brother & sister here are well as usual—Eddy the same—

Helen, if you see Miss Hillard tell her I rec'd her letter & thank her for it—I have not felt to write to her, or any one but my sisters, about mother's death—the great dark cloud of my life—the only staggering, staying blow & trouble I have had—but unspeakable—my physical sickness, bad as it is, is nothing to it—


Notes:

1. This letter's envelope bears the address, "Abby H. Price | 331 East 55th street | New York City." It is postmarked: "Camden N.J. | Sep | 9." [back]


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