The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Anne Gilchrist, 30 October [1882]
Date: October 30, 1882
Whitman Archive ID: pml.00053
Source: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:312. 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:
30
Evn'g
Have been quite ill the last two weeks2—jaundice & mark'd bodily prostration & lassitude—But I am better, & have just been out a few steps—the doctor comes every day, (old school) & has certainly done me good. I suppose you rec'd "Specimen Days" I sent (two copies)—
W W
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Mrs Ann Gilchrist | Keats' Corner 12 Well Road | Hampstead | London England. It is postmarked: Camden | Oct | 30 | 5 PM | N.J.; Phila. Paid All | Oct | 30 | 1882 | Pa. [back]
2. Whitman wrote on the same day in his Commonplace Book: "Am slowly getting better." On November 6 he observed: "to-day, well as usual, before sickness." The Camden Daily Post on November 1 noted the poet's "reappearance on the street," and "Walt Whitman's Illness" appeared in the Progress on November 9 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]