I have lately been spending happy days with my dear friend, Rev Samuel
Longfellow,1 beneath the shadow of the Old Man of the
Mountain in the Franconia Notch. Returning home I found
on my table the papers and pamphlet, and photogravure photograph of yourself, which
you sent to me. The loc.02051.002_large.jpg
loc.02051.003_large.jpg portrait hangs
now on my wall in my little book-lined den at Waltham, where I may see it whenever I
raise my eyes from my work.
I wish to thank you in the warmest terms for your very considerable and much
appreciated gift. Never before, believe me, have I experienced anything that pleased
loc.02051.004_large.jpg
loc.02051.005_large.jpg me more. And the
picture especially and O'Connor's pamphlet I shall always cherish as most precious
expressions of regard from one whom I honor before all other writers of our land. To
have written anything that could please you is a satisfaction which I highly prize.
I had a letter a week ago from a Spaniard in Avila, Spain. This, which he said, you
will be glad to hear: "Kant, Lucretius, Swinburne2
loc.02051.006_large.jpg
loc.02051.007_large.jpg, Musset,3 Goethe, & Walt Whitman make up my library."
When is the new volume of poems to come to us?
With profound gratitude for your especial notice of my faulty work, and a deep sense of obligation for the intellectual stimulus that your poems have given to me, I am
Most faithfully yours, Wm Morton FullertonCorrespondent:
William Morton Fullerton
(1865–1952) was an American journalist and is perhaps remembered mostly
for his affair with author Edith Wharton (a fellow admirer of Whitman) in the
early 20th century.