Henry Norman, of the Pall Mall Gazette has sent me £81 over, in a very kind & good letter—enclosing some printed slips from paper—one written by you ab't my Camden entourage—very satisfactory & right to me—In the Reminiscences stick as much as possible to personal descriptions, anecdotes, & sayings—& don't make me too good—I am no angel by a long shot2
Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
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).