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Baltimore
Friday
Dear Mr. Whitman,1
Though I had to leave my place of country sojourn yesterday2 before hearing from you. I shall take
my chance of finding you at home early on Sunday afternoon—say about 3
o'clock—unless I should hear from you to the contrary at the Lafayette Hotel. I only get to Philadelphia that Sunday
morning, & must leave it again for New York in the
evening. I stop during the day because I would like to see you & know too that our friend Mrs Gilchrist3 will
be disappointed—also—if I don't. And I am dreadfully hurried in New
York, and sail on the 19th.
Believe me yours truly
Frederick Wedmore
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Wedmore
Correspondent:
Frederick Wedmore
(1844–1921) was an art critic, short story writer, novelist, and scholar
from England. He was also a friend and neighbor of Whitman's admirer and close
friend Anne Gilchrist (1828–1885) in Hempstead, England.
Notes
- 1. This letter is crossed out
with two red lines. [back]
- 2. This letter is undated, but,
according to Anne Burrows Gilchrist's July 20,
1885, letter to Whitman, Wedmore planned to visit the United States in
the Fall of 1885. A letter Whitman received from Herbert Gilchrist the following
day, July 21, 1885, indicated that Wedmore was to
"call upon" Whitman in September. [back]
- 3. Anne Burrows Gilchrist
(1828–1885) was the author of one of the first significant pieces of
criticism on Leaves of Grass, titled "A Woman's Estimate
of Walt Whitman (From Late Letters by an English Lady to W. M. Rossetti)," The Radical 7 (May 1870), 345–59. Gilchrist's long
correspondence with Whitman indicates that she had fallen in love with the poet
after reading his work; when the pair met in 1876 when she moved to
Philadelphia, Whitman never fully returned her affection, although their
friendship deepened after that meeting. For more information on their
relationship, see Marion Walker Alcaro, "Gilchrist, Anne Burrows (1828–1885)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]