hun.00046.001_large.jpg
Brooklyn,
Saturday Afternoon,
July 20, 18571
Dear Friend,
Do not suppose, because I have delayed writing to you, that I have forgotten
you.—No, that will never be.—I often recall your visits to me, and your
goodness.—I think profoundly of my friends—though I cannot write to them
by the post office.—I write to them more to my satisfaction, through my
poems.—
Tell Hector2 I thank him heartily for his invitation and
letter—O it is not from any mind to slight him that I have not answered it, or
accepted the friendly call.—I am so non–polite—so habitually
wanting in my responses and ceremonies.—That is me—much that is bad, harsh, an undutiful person, a thriftless debtor, is
me.—
I spent an evening with Mr. Arnold3 and Mrs. Price4 lately.—Mrs. Price and Helen5
had been out all day with the sewing machine, at Mr. Beecher's6—either Henry Ward's, or his father's. hun.00046.002_large.jpg They had done a
great day's work—as much, one of the Beecher ladies said, as a sempstress
could have got through with in six months.—Mrs. P and Helen had engagements
for a fortnight ahead, to go out among families and take the sewing
machine.—What a revolution this little piece of furniture is
producing.—Isn't it quite an encouragement.—
I got into quite a talk with Mr. Arnold about Mrs. Hatch.7—He says the pervading thought of her speeches is that first exists the spirituality of any thing, and that gives existence to things, the earth, plants, animals, men,
women.—But that Andrew Jackson Davis8 puts matter as the subject of his homilies, and the primary
source of all results—I suppose the soul among the rest.—Both are quite
determined in their theories.—Perhaps when they know much more, both of them
will be much less determined.—
A minister, Rev. Mr. Porter,9 was introduced to me this
morning,—a Dutch Reformed minister, and editor of the "Christian
Intelligencer," N.Y.—Would you believe it—he had been reading "Leaves of
Grass," and wanted more?—He said he hoped I retained
the true Reformed faith which I must have inherited from my mother's Dutch
ancestry.—I hun.00046.003_large.jpg not only assured him of my retaining faith in that sect, but that I had perfect
faith in all sects, and was not inclined to reject one single one—but believed
each to be about as far advanced as it could be, considering what had preceded
it—and moreover that every one was the needed representative of its truth—or of something needed as much as
truth.—I had quite a good hour with Mr. Porter—we grew friends—and
I am to go dine with the head man of the head congregation of Dutch Presbyterians in
Brooklyn, Eastern District!
I have seen Mrs. Walton10 once or twice since you left
Brooklyn,—I dined there.—I feel great sympathy with her, on some
accounts.—Certainly, she is not happy.—
Fowler & Wells11 are bad persons for me.—They
retard my book very much.—It is worse than ever.—I wish now to bring out
a third edition—I have now a hundred poems ready
(the last edition had thirty–two.)—and shall endeavor to make an
arrangement with some publisher here to take the plates hun.00046.004_large.jpg from F. & W. and make the
additions needed, and so bring out the third edition.—F. & W. are very
willing to give up the plates—they want the thing off their hands.—In
the forthcoming vol. I shall have, as I said, a hundred poems, and no other matter
but poems—(no letters to or from Emerson—no notices, or any thing of
that sort.)—I know well enough, that that must be
the true Leaves of Grass—I think it (the new vol.)
has an aspect of completeness, and makes its case clearer.—The old poems are
all retained.—The difference is in the new character given to the mass, by the
additions.—
Dear friend, I do not feel like fixing a day on which I will come and make my
promised visit.—How it is I know not, but I hang back more and more from
making visits even to those I have much happiness in being with.—
Mother12 is well—all are well.—Mother often
speaks about you.—We shall all of us remember you always with more affection
than you perhaps suppose.—Before I come to Philadelphia, I shall send you or
Hector a line.—
Wishing Peace & Friendship
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Sarah Thorn
Tyndale (1792–1859) was an abolitionist from Philadelphia who met Walt
Whitman during Amos Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau's visit to the Whitman home in November 1856.
For more information on Tyndale, see "Tyndale, Sarah Thorn [1792–1859]," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. Whitman made
an error in dating this letter; he wrote "July" instead of "June." The
error, noted by Edward Haviland Miller, is evident from Tyndale's responses
to Whitman's letter on June 24 and on July 1 (See Edwin Haviland
Miller, ed., Walt Whitman: The Correspondence (New York:
New York University Press, 1961–77), 1:42n1. [back]
- 2. Hector Tyndale
(1821–1880), son of Sarah Tyndale and Robinson Tyndale, was a Philadelphia
merchant and importer like his father. During the Civil War, he played a significant role at
the Battle of Antietam and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Union
Army. Whitman described a meeting with him on February 25, 1857 (The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman [New York: G. P.
Putnam, 1902], 9:154–155). Louisa Van Velsor Whitman apparently made an
impression on Tyndale. Whitman wrote to his mother that Tyndale "has been to see me
again—always talks about you" (see Whitman's June 29,
1866, letter to Louisa). [back]
- 3. John Arnold lived with
his daughter's family in the same house as the Abby and Edmund Price family.
Helen Price, Abby's daughter, described Arnold as "a Swedenborgian," with whom
Whitman frequently argued without "the slightest irritation between them"
(Richard Maurice Bucke, Walt Whitman [Philadelphia: David
McKay, 1883], 26–27). [back]
- 4. Abby H. Price
(1814–1878) was active in various social-reform movements. Abby Price's
husband, Edmund, operated a pickle factory in Brooklyn, and the couple had four
children—Arthur, Helen, Emily, and Henry (who died in 1852, at 2 years of
age). During the 1860s, Price and her family, especially her daughter, Helen,
were friends with Whitman and with Whitman's mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman.
In 1860 the Price family began to save Walt's letters. Helen's reminiscences of
Whitman were included in Richard Maurice Bucke's biography, Walt Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and she printed for
the first time some of Whitman's letters to her mother in Putnam's Monthly 5 (1908): 163–169. In a letter to Ellen M.
O'Connor from November 15, 1863, Whitman declared
with emphasis, "they are all friends, to prize and love
deeply." [back]
- 5. Helen E. Price (1841–1927)
was the daughter of Whitman's close friend, women's rights activist Abby Price.
Helen wrote about Whitman's friendship with her mother in a chapter in Richard
Maurice Bucke's 1883 biography of the poet and in a 1919 newspaper article. For
more on Price, see Sherry Ceniza, "Price, Helen E. (b. 1841)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 6. Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887), Congregational
clergyman and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, accepted the pastorate of the
Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, in 1847. Whitman described him briefly in the
Brooklyn Daily Advertiser of May 25, 1850, reprinted in
The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, 2
vols., ed. Emory Holloway (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page, 1921),
1:234–235. See also Walt Whitman, Emory Holloway, and Vernolian Schwarz,
I Sit and Look Out: Editorials from the Brooklyn Daily
Times (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 84–85, and
Horace Traubel, ed., With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, May 11, 1888. Henry Beecher's father, Lyman Beecher
(1775–1863), was also a clergyman, who upon his retirement lived with his
son in Brooklyn. [back]
- 7. Cora Tappan (then Hatch)
(1840–1923) was a medium. At age ten, as she sat with slate and pencil in
hand, "she lost external consciousness, and on awaking she found her slate
covered with writing." At fourteen she was a public speaker, and at sixteen
married Dr. B. F. Hatch, who published and wrote an introduction to her Discourses on Religion, Morals, Philosophy, and
Metaphysics (1858). Whitman became acquainted with Tappan in
1857. In 1871, she self-published a collection of poems titled Hesperia; the
section "Laus Natura" was dedicated to "Walt Whitman, the Poet of Nature." See
also Emma Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism (New
York, 1870),
149. [back]
- 8. Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910) was
an American Spiritualist. He described himself as "the Poughkeepsie Seer" and
published approximately 30 books in his lifetime. [back]
- 9. Whitman is referring
to Reverend Elbert S. Porter, who was the editor of the Christian Intelligencer. [back]
- 10. As yet we have no information about
this person. [back]
- 11. Lorenzo Niles Fowler
(1811–1896) and Orson Squire Fowler (1809–1887) were brothers from
Cohocton, New York, and well-known phrenologists. They established a
Phrenological Cabinet in Clinton Hall in New York City in 1842, where Whitman
received a phrenological examination in 1849. The Fowlers' brother-in-law Samuel
R. Wells also joined the firm, which later came to be known as Fowler and Wells.
The firm published numerous books and magazines on phrenology, reform, and
self-help topics, and anonymously published Whitman's second edition of Leaves of Grass in 1856. For more information, see
Madeline B. Stern, "Fowler, Lorenzo Niles (1811–1896) and Orson Squire
(1809–1887)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 12. Louisa Van Velsor Whitman
(1795–1873) married Walter Whitman, Sr., in 1816; together they had nine
children, of whom Walt Whitman was the second. For more information on Louisa
and her letters, see Wesley Raabe, "'walter dear': The Letters from Louisa Van Velsor Whitman to Her Son
Walt" and Sherry Ceniza, "Whitman, Louisa Van Velsor (1795–1873)." [back]