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The Walt Whitman Archive

Brooklyn March 11th 1864

The enclosed $5 is contributed for the wounded men by Moses Lane ¹  

I am at a stand to know whether to beg pardon for not writing you before or to scold you for not writing to me. ²   I have been away for nearly three weeks, down in Conn. making surveys for an "Iron Co." and only returned last Monday night. since then I have been very much engaged in getting my work up so that I have not, lately, really had an opportunity to write you  We have had, and are having, considerable excitement in relation to moving and the house. Just so soon as I had got away in the country, the next day, Mrs Brown ³   informed Mother that they had hired the house and that she could remain by paying $8 per month ($3 a month increase) but that our rooms they should rent to other parties, would not allow us to have them anyhow &c—This came rather hard on Mat and Mother, for we thought sure that things would go on as they had the last year, only with a slight increase of rent. On my return Mat told me all about it. On Tuesday, the next day some masons &c came with their tools to make repairs to the rooms and house. I told Mat, (she was going to take up her stair carpet oil cloths—clear out closets &c) to not touch a thing, informed the men that I paid rent for the rooms that they were abt fixing that I didn't want them fixed and should charge the landlord with all damage done. In the afternoon I went to New York to see Travis ⁴   (the new landlord) to give him legal notice about it. After talking with him awhile I found that the Browns had lied to us and lied to him.—that they had not hired it, but merely talked of it—that they had offered to get a tenant in our place that Travis had told them that the rent of the house would be $400 and that if it returned that to him they might have it if they wanted it and if I was not going to stay &c. In the mean time the Browns were trying to let our room to Jim Jourdan's wife. ⁵   Mr Travis said that he would just as soon have us stay as they. Travis sent them a note not to let the house till they saw him. They both went over in the evening to see Travis and lied again by telling him that they had rented it but as they had not passed any papers he would not let them have it.—The increase of rent is $52—$36 of this they were going to fasten on Mother—I offered Travis that I would pay $18 a month for the rooms that Mother and I had—that would leave them to pay 15 1/3 a month increasing our rent $3 and theirs $1 1/3 or if they would not agree to that, that I would take the whole of it at $400.—He is to decide this week which—if either—he will do  in the mean time they are moving everything to get Mat and I out.—I think the chances are about even whether they succeed or not. Rents are very high in Brooklyn  for that floor over Browers ⁶   (cor of Cumberland st. and Myrtle) they ask $350 for one floor and 275 for the third story.—There is a story around that Travis bought the house we live in for $3000, but I can hardly think of it. If so I wish I had known it  I would have tried to get it myself

Mr Crany's ⁷   address would be best "care of Moses Lane Box 192 Brooklyn P.O." I wish you would write me a letter to show Mr W. E. Worthen ⁸   of New York  I think I could raise you some $20 or $25 per month out of him  He is the man I went down to Springfield to work for.—he spoke of it himself—said that he thought he could do something out of his friends,—although poor himself

We suppose that George is at Camp Nelson ⁹   again but we have not heard from himself since he went away. Sims ¹⁰   is here yet, got a recruiting office.

Mother is not well. I think she has the worst cold that I ever knew of  I wish she could be made to think that she must not wash scrub and clean house.—I had quite a time with her this morning about it  after exhausting every excuse she said she "could not afford to hire it done"—She is foolishly worrying herself about George—thinking that he does not want her to use so much of his money  She says that when he went away he did not say as usual "Mammy dont want for anything"  If he didn't God knows he meant it. To me his whole life and actions home seemed to say so. But Mother seems to feel quite bad about it. Several days after he first went away she was either crying or planning how to take "boarders" and make her own living. Poor Mother, how foolish her dear old heart gets sometimes. Mat has been quite sick but is well again. the little one is quite well and Hattie too. Matters are going on about as usual. I wish you could find time to write me a good long letter. also one to Lane, and the Dr ¹¹   too you said you would write.

I will write again soon

Yours affectionately Jeff.

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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 March 11, 1864, 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.  See Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 13 January 1863.  (Back)

2.  On March 31, April 5, and April 26 WW promised to write Jeff a long letter. The poet remarked that "the devil is in it....I have laid out so many weeks to write you a good long letter, & something has shoved it off each time" (Edwin Haviland Miller, ed., Walt Whitman: The Correspondence [New York: New York Univ. Press, 1961-77], Vol. I, p. 213).  (Back)

3.  See Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 3 April 1860.  (Back)

4.  Unidentified.  (Back)

5.  Probably the wife of James Jordan, a laborer.  (Back)

6.  James C. Brower owned a hardware and house-furnishings store located at the corner of Cumberland and Myrtle.  (Back)

7.  Unidentified.  (Back)

8.  See Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 15 December 1863.  (Back)

9.  George had written a letter to Jeff from this encampment near Hickman's Bridge, Kentucky, on September 22, 1863. He had returned to Brooklyn for a thirty-day leave in January 1864, reenlisted, and rejoined his regiment on February 25. On March 6 he wrote LVVW that he was in Nashville and would soon be in Knoxville; apparently the family had not yet received this letter (Jerome M. Loving, ed., Civil War Letters of George Washington Whitman [Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1975], pp. 105, 111).  (Back)

10.  See Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 10 February 1863.  (Back)

11.  For Dr. Ruggles, see Letter from Thomas Jefferson Whitman to Walt Whitman, 2 April 1863.  (Back)

Whitman Archive ID

loc.00432