Its a long time now since I've written to you, & I owe you thanks for the many papers, &c. you have sent me, containing verse & other matter connected with you. I asked you the last time I wrote to let me have one small poem which I felt especially stirred by, in your own handwriting. I don't think I've heard from you since then.1 Will you remember this now, if it doesn't trouble you too much? I don't possess a single line of your verse in your own handwriting, & I should think it a very precious possession. The poem I meant is that on the Arctic snowbird.2
I send you herewith a magazine of which loc.03573.002_large.jpg I have been made Editor. The
article signed 'H. Rowlandson' is mine. It (i.e. the Review) emanates from
Trinity College Dublin and aims at introducing Nationalist thought among the
upper classes in Ireland.3 We have to go forward very
cautiously in this enterprise, political questions here are so fiercely debated,
& at present we can only reconcile the landed interest & conservative
element by opening our columns to both sides alike. To get Nationalists admitted
at all to an audience in Trinity College is a great step. We publish an article
by Michael Davitt in September.4 I have been getting
acquainted with him and other prominent members of the National party here since
I came back. The best man I have met in Ireland is John O'Leary,5 formerly editor of the 'Irish People', imprisoned in 1865
for Fenianism.6 He has been living in Paris ever since; let out after 5 years
loc.03573.003_large.jpg on
condition of remaining abroad till his sentence (20 years) was out. This
expired in Jan/1885 & he is to the fore again now. A grand looking old man—long
white beard, aquiline features, keen eyes—spare, sinewy frame, full of
restrained passion and energy.
What about Dr Knortz?7 I have heard nothing from him at all about that translation of the L. of G. which he should have had revised & ready long ago. I think of writing to him about it. I fully expected it would have appeared before May.8
We have gone into a house of our own now, at least one we have rented for
several years, & we are pretty well fixtures now. All of us well—especially
my two little boys, who enjoy the country life very much. We have a good garden
& a little land which I work myself. On the whole, like this sort of loc.03573.004_large.jpg life very
much. We are about ¾ of an hour by train from Dublin, so have easy access to libraries, fr. there.
I hope you are well & hearty. I am sorry to hear the sale of the L. of G. has not been so good lately. Wish we had fairly opened it in Germany. Will you send a line to Knortz? I was to give him 20 dollars for the work—am only waiting to hear that it is complete to send it, but don't like sending till I know that he is going in for the thing, as I havn't yet even heard that he had begun it.
Cover of our Review in old Celtic design.
Yours always T. W. Rolleston.Correspondent:
Thomas William Hazen Rolleston
(1857–1920) was an Irish poet and journalist. After attending college in
Dublin, he moved to Germany for a period of time. He wrote to Whitman
frequently, beginning in 1880, and later produced with Karl Knortz the first
book-length translation of Whitman's poetry into German. In 1889, the collection
Grashalme: Gedichte [Leaves of
Grass: Poems] was published by Verlags-Magazin in Zurich, Switzerland.
See Walter Grünzweig, Constructing the German Walt Whitman (Iowa
City: University of Iowa Press, 1995). For more information on Rolleston, see
Walter Grünzweig, "Rolleston, Thomas William Hazen (1857–1920)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).