Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Whitelaw Reid to Walt Whitman, 17 July [1878]

Date: July 17, 1878

Whitman Archive ID: wwh.00025

Source: Walt Whitman House, Camden, N.J. 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.

Related items: Whitman cut this letter into pieces, pasted it together with several other letters, and used it as the foundation for a draft of "You tides with ceaseless swell," written on the back. See wwh.00027.

Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman, Nicole Gray, and Kenneth M. Price



page image
image 1
page image
image 2

[illegible] Tribune
New York,
July 17, 1 [illegible]

[illegible] [Whit]man:

I thought we ha [illegible] [cheque?] on last Sa [illegible] inquiry that it [illegible] I hasten to [end?] [illegible]

[illegible] nks for remembering [illegible] to see the poem [illegible] ln, and for sen [illegible] little volume [illegible] ully to day. [illegible] ing the poem [illegible] and still th [illegible] very best thoug [illegible] oid.

[illegible] best wishes
Very truly yours
Whitelaw Reid

[illegible] [Whitm]an, Esq

[Ste]vens St.
[C]amden, N. J.


Correspondent:
Whitelaw Reid (1837–1912) was the editor of the New York Tribune from 1872 to 1905 and also American ambassador to France (1889–1892) and England (1905–1912). He met Whitman in the hospitals during the Civil War. Of his relations with the poet, Reid later observed: "No one could fail then [during the War] to admire his zeal and devotion, and I am afraid that at first my regard was for his character rather than his poetry. It was not till long after 'The Leaves of Grass' period that his great verses on the death of Lincoln conquered me completely." See Charles N. Elliot, Walt Whitman as Man, Poet and Friend (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1915), 213, and Edwin Haviland Miller, "Walt Whitman's Correspondence with Whitelaw Reid, Editor of the New York Tribune," Studies in Bibliography 8 (1956): 242–249.


Comments?

Published Works | In Whitman's Hand | Life & Letters | Commentary | Resources | Pictures & Sound

Support the Archive | About the Archive

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, editors.