Title: Walt Whitman to Edwin Booth, 3 September 1884
Date: September 3, 1884
Whitman Archive ID: whm.00002
Source: The Walter Hampden Memorial Library, The Players, 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), 3:376. 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 and Kyle Barton
328 Mickle Street
Camden New Jersey
September 3 1884
Dear Mr Booth
Thank you for sending me the volume the Booths—It does not furnish me the picture I wanted—(I am very particular & shall not be satisfied till I get one that fills the bill)—But the volume is more helpful to me (in touches, corrections, guidance &c to my piece) than I can describe—& the reading of all about your father, of absorbing interest—He was a beautiful character.1
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Edwin Thomas Booth
(1833–1893) was an American actor, famous for performing Shakespeare in
the U.S. and Europe, the son of actor Junius Brutus Booth (1796–1852), and
the brother of Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865),
also an actor. He was the owner of Booth's Theatre in New York.
1. See Whitman's letter to Booth from August 21, 1884, asking for "a good characteristic portrait of your father either in citizen's costume, or, (if very good) in one of his dramatic characters." [back]