Your postal card was duly received.—I got all your papers and very glad of them. Especially the Boston Transcripts, Critics, Liberty &c—I am glad to see the notices of William2 that appear occasionally, but they give a very faint idea of the man to those who knew him best—If I had power of literary expression I would try to write something—If you had your health and strength I know you could give just the right touches which would preserve the portrait of an uncommonly gifted mind—John Burroughs3 might do it but he lacks sympathy I think with certain fiery and vivid types of which Wm. was a bright exemplar.—But perhaps it is just as well. "The silent organ loudest chants the masters requiem"4—
I am going up and down this fair land and watching the vintage "from which streams of
brandy do flow. By which I only mean that they are gathering and pressing
loc.02029.002_large.jpggrapes in all the
vineyards—1000 acre vineyards not uncommon with five tons of grapes to the
acre—and from the new wine brandy is largely distilled, we are in the height
of brandy making season with which the internal revenue department is largely
concerned—
Saw your interview with Edwin Arnold5 and much touched by it.—The applause of other nations, if not your own, begins to be heard in your declining years. May every comfort and blessing gather around you as your steps grow slow brother beloved.—I hope to see you next year.
Yours affectionately Charles W. Eldridge.Correspondent:
Charles W. Eldridge (1837–1903) was one half
of the Boston-based abolitionist publishing firm Thayer and Eldridge, who issued
the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. In December 1862, on
his way to find his injured brother George in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Whitman
stopped in Washington and encountered Eldridge, who had become a clerk in the
office of the army paymaster, Major Lyman Hapgood. Eldridge helped Whitman gain employment in Hapgood's office.
For more on Whitman's relationship with
Thayer and Eldridge, see David Breckenridge Donlon, "Thayer, William Wilde (1829–1896) and Charles W. Eldridge
(1837–1903)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).