loc_es.01396_large.jpg
I beg to acknow[illegible] with thanks the safe receipt of your two
highly-prized volumes "Leaves of Grass"
& "The Two Rivulets"1 along with the portraits &
the other extracts from your writings2—
With respect & high esteem
Believe me
My dear Sir
Yours very faithfully
Ford Madox Brown
Walt Whitman
loc_es.01395_large.jpg
Correspondent:
Born in France, Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893)
was a British painter and designer. He was also the father-in-law of the English
editor William Michael Rossetti.
Notes
- 1. Published as a "companion volume"
to the 1876 Author's edition of Leaves of Grass, Two
Rivulets consisted of an "intertwining of the author's characteristic verse,
alternated throughout with prose," as one critic from the The New York Daily Tribune wrote on February 19, 1876 (4). For more information on Two
Rivulets, see Frances E. Keuling-Stout, "Two Rivulets, Author's Edition [1876]" and
"Preface to Two Rivulets [1876]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 2. Whitman sent
the books to Brown on October 24, 1876, and Brown would have likely received them
in November of 1876 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E.
Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]