Aug: '85.
Received from Allen Thorndike Rice1—by Mr. Ferris attorney and through James
Redpath2—Sixty Dollars for article Booth and the Old
Bowery—which article I reserve the right to include & print in
future collections of my writings.
Correspondent:
Charles Allen Thorndike Rice
(1851–1889) was a journalist and edited and published the North American Review in New York from 1876 until his
death. His Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished
Men of His Time (1888) was published by The North American Review
Publishing Company.
Notes
- 1. Draft letter. It can be
assumed that Whitman sent the receipt to Rice at the same time he wrote to Redpath. The transaction was recorded in
Whitman's Commonplace Book on August 15 (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the
Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C.). [back]
- 2. James Redpath (1833–1891),
an antislavery activist, journalist, and longtime friend of Whitman, was the
author of The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (Boston:
Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), a correspondent for the New York
Tribune during the war, and the originator of the "Lyceum" lectures. He
met Whitman in Boston in 1860, and he remained an enthusiastic admirer; see
Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, January 4, 1889. He concluded his first letter to Whitman on
June 25, 1860: "I love you, Walt! A conquering
Brigade will ere long march to the music of your barbaric jawp." Redpath became
managing editor of The North American Review in 1886. See
also Charles F. Horner, The Life of James Redpath and the
Development of the Modern Lyceum, (New York: Barse & Hopkins,
1926); John R. McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath
and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2008); and J.R. LeMaster, "Redpath, James [1833–1891]," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]