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Correspondence
Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 13 April 1863
Brooklyn, N. Y.
April 13th/63
Dear Walt,
We hardly know what to think of not hearing from you we certainly expected to have a letter from you this morning. Mother is quite anxious and of course fears that something has happened to you. Walt write to me at once wont you. I have written you two letters, one containing the $10 that Van Anden owed you, and another I mailed you last Sat. eve. 1 Mother gave me a letter to mail you on Monday but I forgot it till to-day. You must not tell mother about it. We are all well and as jolly as usual. Andrew does not seem to get much better. He was at our house to-day to dinner his voice is [still?] so that you can hardly here him speak. 2
We had a letter from George yesterday. He was at Mt Sterling Ken. 3 He seems to feel quite well and satisfied. Mother had a letter from Heyde. He says that she must fix up her third story room for Han an him and a lot of stuff. He says that Han must come home. He says that Han wants him to take a house and let her [take?] a man and wife to board. He wants to know what he shall do with his business. How should he get along. All of which I am sure I dont know how Mother can answer him. He is a case. I dont know what to think abt him. Walt I havnt time to write you a long letter, and indeed I havnt anything to write about. I hope to hear from you soon. All send their love, Hattie particularly.
affectionately, Jeff.
About the Text
The text presented here is derived from Dennis Berthold and Kenneth Price, eds., Dear Brother Walt: The Letters of Thomas Jefferson Whitman (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1984). For a detailed description of discrepancies between this electronic edition and the print source, see our statement of editorial policy .
The manuscript of this letter, dated April 13, 1863, is held in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839-1919, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
For more information on the letters of Thomas Jefferson Whitman, see Dennis Berthold and Kenneth Price's introduction to the print edition.
Notes
1. By the time Jeff's letter reached WW, the poet had already written to acknowledge Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 6 April 1863 and Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 11 April 1863 (Edwin Haviland Miller, ed., Walt Whitman: The Correspondence [New York: New York Univ. Press, 1961-77], Vol. I, p. 87). For Van Anden, see Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 6 April 1863. (Back)
2. See Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 3 April 1860. (Back)
3. On April 3 the Ninth Army marched from Paris, Kentucky, to Mount Sterling, Kentucky. For the next two weeks the army camped in this area, although on April 15 it did invade Sharpsburg, Kentucky, only to return to Mount Sterling the same day (Jerome M. Loving, ed., Civil War Letters of George Washington Whitman [Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1975], p. 91). (Back)
Whitman Archive ID
loc.00408