I am sorry to have to send you word that I am not feeling in good trim at all to-day, & shall be unable to meet you & the other friends at dinner—I send you herewith a couple of pictures (I call it my Quaker picture)1—one is for your father2—also the books herewith—also my love to you—
Walt Whitman loc.02114.002_large.jpg Walt Whitman 26 Jany 1881Correspondent:
Horace Furness (1833–1912) was the
distinguished editor of the Variorum Shakespeare. Furness met Whitman in 1879, and
Furness was one of the honorary pallbearers at Whitman's funeral. In "Personal
Recollections of Walt Whitman," William R. Thayer, in discussing Whitman's slyness in money
matters, stated that for the last six or eight years of the poet's life George
W. Childs and Furness subscribed "an annual sum," and paid a young man to act as
his driver and valet (Scribner's Magazine 65
[1919], 685).