I am sitting up & feeling pretty well—the weather is fine now (after coolish & cloudy) & I have not retrograded—Congratulate yr father & Alys2 after their safe & favorable arrival wh' I have heard, & sent to Dr Bucke3—As I sit early afternoon every thing is quiet & comfortable—I have not yet left my room—
Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe
(1864–1945) was a political activist, art historian, and critic, whom
Whitman once called his "staunchest living woman friend." A scholar of Italian
Renaissance art and a daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith, she would in 1885 marry
B. F. C. "Frank" Costelloe. She had been in contact with many of Whitman's
English friends and would travel to Britain in 1885 to visit many of them,
including Anne Gilchrist shortly before her death. For more, see Christina
Davey, "Costelloe, Mary Whitall Smith (1864–1945)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).