I send you by this mail the "Dark Blue" containing the second
part of Noel's1 article.2 I think the illustration horrid.
It makes you look like a sick monkey. I wonder Hennessy3 could draw such a
charicature . From what Conway4
said I inferred he had seen it and approved of it. I shall tell him what I think about
it. I do not think the article amounts to shucks either. Rossetti5
said Noel was very much engrossed with politics, and it is evident he is engrossed with
something else than poetry to write such a mess!
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Of course the article helps, but after Dowdens 6
noble paper7 it seems ineffectual enough, though Conway seemed to think it the more feeling
of the two.—I have not seen Conway or Rossetti since I came back from Paris. I shall
see Rossetti again but I do not seem to care much about Conway. I doubt if I could ever
fraternize with him. He does not impress me as an eminently sincere and loveable person. It
may be very cruel for me to say so, but he seems to me like a kind of literary broker, ever
on his make, though I have no complaint to make of his treatment of me & it may be if
I knew him better I should like
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him more. Rossetti I am drawn toward, and though my first impression of him was that he was
a high flown literary cockney, yet I soon saw that it was of no moment
and that he was a genuine good fellow. He praises Prof. Dowden whom he has met and says I
will like him. I intend to go to Ireland if possible, though it looks doubtful now as
Assistant Secretary Richardson8 has impressed me into his service here &
proposes to retain me & my party a week or two later than we had contemplated staying. I
am at work in the office or Branch of the Treasury Dept here with 4 or 5 other clerks and the
beautiful October days are slipping by and I am not tramping about Stratford or up the mountains
of Wales or into Ireland
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as I had promised myself I should be. I have seen enough of cities, & streets & art
and pictures & museums to stand me all the rest of my days, and am in a hurry to set my
face westward.9 I spent about a week in Paris & got enough of it. I presume I was a little
surprised when I went from here, so that I did not relish Paris as I should have done had I
come to it fresh. It is certainly a very beautiful city and very clean & tasteful. The ruins
are in excellent taste & are the best behaved ruins I ever saw, and the Parisians are the
best mannered people I ever saw. I think the waiters in the Hotels could give lessons to princes.
They bring you fried eggs on a perfumed napkin, and the napkin on beautiful tissue paper &
the whole on a china plate (my paper has got mixed up)
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and one hardly knows whether to fall to & eat or to lift up his hands in admiration. Yet for
all that I was not deeply impressed with Paris. The aspect of the streets is very monotonous.
See one block & you have seen it all. It all seems to have been built the same day & planned
by the same architect & the stone were unmistakably all dug from the same quarry. Hence it is
not picturesque or quaint or homely like London or grand either: it is brilliant & correct. I
was much disappointed in the French soldiers; they are certainly a very inferior looking lot of men;
small & dirty & indifferent. I find this is the impression of all Americans I have talked
with who have seen them.
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I believe there are but two more parties coming over with bonds. I hope you & William10 will
be among them. I wrote quite a long letter to William which I hope he received. I have seen Carlyle11
as I told him, and liked him very much. I am sure you would like him & that he would like you.
But I must close, dear Walt, hoping to be in W.
ahead of the snow birds.
Correspondent:
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).