Title: Walt Whitman to the Postmaster, Camden N.J. (?), [9 August, 1879]
Date: August 9, 1879
Whitman Archive ID: ucb.00060
Source: Miller's transcription is based on a draft held in the Walt Whitman Collection, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 5:306. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein, Kirsten Clawson, Nima Najafi Kianfar, and Nicole Gray
I have only just heard1 that a foreign P O order for £1-1s (one pound, one shilling) was sent to me from Mrs J Alexander, the Palace, Derry, Ireland, in June 1878—which P O order has never reached me. See if there is any acc't of it in your office—if not, send this on to New York, to see if any acc't there—with request that, if necessary they would further inquire of the London (or Derry) offices—
1. According to his Commonplace Book, Whitman learned from Thomas W. H. Rolleston that Mrs. Alexander had not received a copy of Two Rivulets, which she had ordered in 1878 (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). See the letter from Rolleston to Whitman of July 29, 1879. The poet sent the book on August 9, 1879, and so informed Rolleston on the same day, to whom he wrote again on August 14: "sent p. o. letters." Whitman received a postal order for $10 from Mrs. Alexander about November 1, 1879, while he was in St. Louis (St. Louis Diary). [back]