I am so charmed with the account, in to days Press, of Sir Edwin Arnolds1 interview with you, that I must obey the impulse to write about it, & to congratulate you, upon having, & so justly deserving, the high esteem of such news, & this after your early many conflicts—Indeed it is loc_vm.01297.jpg fascinating to me to study such a life as yours has been—The New York Herald & Recorder of Sunday last contain as I suppose you know, long articles about your life full of disappointments & mean treatment, now culminating in such honors & appreciation, as few of our authors or poets have reached—
Oh, what exquisite happiness it would have given me to be present yesterday & witnessed your interview—to see such a gush of affection loc_vm.01298.jpg between two congenial, noble men—
I myself feel honored to have known you & proudly regard you, as one of my childrens names & a member of the Whitman family, whom my noble, grand, old father-in-law would have dearly loved—I wish you could have known each other—
I am going to make another attempt very soon to see you—May you be "good for fifteen years more"2
With great respect & affection Lavinia F Whitman loc_vm.01299.jpg Lavinia WhitmanCorrespondent:
Lavinia Fanning Watson Whitman
(1818–1900) was the eldest daughter of John Fanning Watson—author of
Annals of Philadelphia (1830) and a well known
historian of Philadelphia and New York City—and his wife Phebe Barron
Crowell. In 1846, Lavinia became the first woman to sponsor a United States Navy
ship when she christened the sloop-of-war, the USS
Germantown, in Philadelphia. She married Harrison Gray Otis Whitman, a
son of Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ezekial Whitman.