Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Anne Gilchrist, 12 December [1876]

Date: December 12, 1876

Whitman Archive ID: upa.00020

Source: Walt Whitman Collection, 1842–1957, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Notes for this letter were created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.

Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray, Elizabeth Lorang, Ashley Lawson, Zachary King, and Eric Conrad



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431 Stevens st
Camden NJ1

Thanks my dear friend for your hospitable & affectionate letter, & invitations. I too want to come & see you all, & be with you from time to time—hoping it may be good & a comfort to all of us—to me surely—

—As (though better this winter) decidedly sensitive to the cold—how would it do for me to have a little sheet-iron wood stove, & some wood sawed & cut, & carried up in the south room, immediately adjoining the one I before occupied?—Could it be done?—Is there a hole in the chimney in that room—or place for stove pipe?—

—I am getting along quite well—& shall be over very soon—possibly Thursday—


Walt Whitman

(A pretty good fire—& a wood fire—is to me I find the greatest physical comfort I can have this weather—I should want to select & purchase, & have put up myself, the stove, wood, &c.)

Dec 12


Notes:

1. Because this letter is among the other Gilchrist correspondence, formerly in the possession of Mrs. Frank J. Sprague, there can be no doubt that it was addressed to Anne Gilchrist. Since the Gilchrists were in Philadelphia in December 1876, and since Whitman accompanied Eldridge to the Gilchrists' on December 12, 1877 (see the letters from Whitman to Herbert Gilchrist of December 12, 1877 and to Beatrice Gilchrist of December 13, 1877), this letter was written in 1876. [back]


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