loc_vm.00730_large.jpg
Ithaca, N.Y.—
July 5, 1886.
Dear Mr. Whitman:
Have you perhaps still any copies left of John Burroughs'1 book "Notes on Whitman"? If
so, will you send me one? I enclose $1, and postage. A fellow-worker of mine in the
Cornell University Library, Mr. E. H. Woodruff,2 visited you in the early spring, and
brought back a copy of the book I have been interested in for some months. I am glad
to say that my interest is not confined to the books written about you. I wish I
could tell you, without seeming to manufacture phrases, what a revelation your two
volumes, the prose collection and the poems, have been to me. My love for them is
growing constantly, and my gratitude to the friend who first made you known to me,
is very great.
loc_vm.00731_large.jpg
loc_vm.00732_large.jpg
Mr. Woodruff is away now, but I think he said the price of the little "Notes" was $1. If this
is not right, I will send the rest at once.
Very truly yours,
Gertrude Van Dusen.
Univ. Library.
loc_vm.02455_large.jpg
Wilkie Jas
Correspondent:
Gertrude Van Dusen was a
cataloguer at the Cornell University Library, as well as a musician and student
of the classics (see Glen W. Herrick, "The Proposed Research Library," Cornell Daily Sun [April 29, 1959], 4; and "Library
Notes," Library Bulletin of Cornell University 3
[November 1892], 1).
Notes
- 1. The naturalist John Burroughs
(1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After
returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long
correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman.
However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged,
curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or
devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting
the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs,
see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 2. Edwin H. Woodruff
(1863–1941), then a member of the staff of the Cornell University Library,
was introduced to the poet by Hiram Corson in a letter of March 26, 1886. Two days later he was in Camden
(Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of
Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Earlier,
on June 4, 1882, Woodruff had sent Whitman a poem
written under his influence and printed in the Cornell Era. Later Woodruff became a professor of law and was dean of the
Cornell Law School from 1916 to 1921. See Cornell University, Faculty. Necrology of the Faculty, 1941–1942, 5–7. [back]