The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to John H. Johnston, 23 October [1878]
Date: October 23, 1878
Whitman Archive ID: yal.00427
Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library . The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3:138. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Grace Thomas, Anthony Dreesen, and Kevin McMullen
Camden New Jersey1
Oct 23
I am well, for me—Have been down at the old Jersey farm by the pond nearly all summer—start again to-morrow2—Am writing some—Shall come to N Y to lecture—Al: I got your letter down in the country four days after due—I return the Goethe Club ticket—
W W
H—l of a gale here this morning—great destruction—
Notes:
1. This letter bears the address: J H Johnston | Jeweler | 150 Bowery cor Broome St | New York City. It is postmarked: Philadelphia | Oct | 23 | 5 PM | Pa.; New York | (?) | 24 | 12(?)M | 78 | Recd. [back]
2. In 1878 Whitman was with the Staffords from October 5 to 7, 10 to 12, 16 to 21, and 24 to 28. He mentioned "the furious gale & storm" in his Commonplace Book (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Herbert Gilchrist was also with the Staffords; see the letter from Anne Gilchrist to him of October 10 (Feinberg), and the letter from Whitman to Anne Gilchrist of November 10, 1878. [back]