431 Stevens st
Camden New Jersey
U S
America
May 191
I have this day forwarded to you2 by mail—same address as this card—my new edition, Two Volumes (separate parcels)—Please notify me
(by postal card will do) when they arrive safely—
W.W.
Notes
- 1.
This letter's envelope bears the
address, "E W Gosse | Townsend House North Gate | Regent's Park | London
England." It is postmarked: "Camden | May | 19 | N.J.; London. N W | F 6 |
Paid | My 29 | 76."
Gosse (1849–1928) had written to Walt Whitman on December 12, 1873: "I can but thank you for all
that I have learned from you, all the beauty you have taught me to see in
the common life of healthy men and women, and all the pleasure there is in
the mere humanity of other people." He reviewed Two
Rivulets in The Academy, 9 (June 24, 1876),
602–603, and visited Whitman in 1885. In a letter to Richard Maurice
Bucke on October 31, 1889, Whitman characterized Gosse as "one of the
amiable conventional wall-flowers of literature" (Charles E. Feinberg
Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.).
[back]
- 2. Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849–1928), English
poet and author of Father and Son (a memoir published in
1907), had written to Whitman on December 12,
1873: "I can but thank you for all that I have learned from you, all the
beauty you have taught me to see in the common life of healthy men and women,
and all the pleasure there is in the mere humanity of other people" (see Horace
Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, June 1, 1888). Gosse reviewed Two
Rivulets in "Walt Whitman's New Book," The Academy, 9 (24
June 1876), 602–603, and visited Whitman in 1885 (see Whitman's letter
inviting Gosse to visit on December 31, 1884, Gosse's December 29, 1884 letter to Whitman, and
The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller [New
York: New York University Press, 1961–1977], 3:384 n80). In a letter to
Richard Maurice Bucke on October 31, 1889, Whitman
characterized Gosse as "one of the amiable conventional wall-flowers of
literature." For more about Gosse, see Jerry F.
King, "Gosse, Sir Edmund (1849–1928)," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]