Your letters have been rec'd1 & Alys's2 also—& have given me
comfort—So full of living buoyancy & youth—I see those qualities—or the tally of them—are the
important matter, & then the circumstances & happenings may be whatever may
chance—The son [—] a friend of mine [—] of the proprietor of the paper here asked me
to "help him out" in yesterday's paper3—so I gave
him the letter to print—I enclose you the slip—how well & off-hand
it reads loc.01340.002_large.jpg—I
am living here in my den in Mickle Street the same as ever—A little
episode—the 9-month-old baby grandson of Mrs. Lay (my housekeeper) was
attacked with cholera infantum & brain trouble a week ago—the doctor
insisted on a change of locale—they lived in hot
close rooms—so the babe & mother & two other children are here the
past week—& the babe (an exceptionally fine one), is out of
danger—but it has been a close shave—the doctor comes twice a
day—says it has been this house & back yard, (very nice &
breezy—we have had a hammock swung there), that has done most of the
curing—Are you interested in the episode? I have been much.4
Correspondent:
Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe
(1864–1945) was a political activist, art historian, and critic, whom
Whitman once called his "staunchest living woman friend." A scholar of Italian
Renaissance art and a daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith, she would in 1885 marry
B. F. C. "Frank" Costelloe. She had been in contact with many of Whitman's
English friends and would travel to Britain in 1885 to visit many of them,
including Anne Gilchrist shortly before her death. For more, see Christina
Davey, "Costelloe, Mary Whitall Smith (1864–1945)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).