"NOTHING VERY DIFFERENT WITH ME—I AM PRETTY STRONG YET, & GO OUT—BUT HEAD, STOMACH & LIVER, ALL IN A BAD WAY, & SEEMS AS IF NOTHING COULD BRING THEM ROUND": WALT WHITMAN AUTOGRAPH LETTER TO JOHN BURROUGHS

WHITMAN, Walt. Autograph letter signed "Walt." Camden (431 Stevens St.), May 2, (1875). Octavo, two pages on single sheet, to John Burroughs, with original envelope in Whitman's hand. $15,000.

Fine autograph letter signed from Walt Whitman to naturalist John Burroughs, his close friend and protégé.

The letter reads in full: "Dear John Burroughs, I send you a letter that I rec'd from Dowden [the Irish literary critic], as you are alluded to. I have written to Dowden, to-day, & sent it off, & have given him your address— so I suppose he will send you the books alluded to. Mine have arived— Dowden advances, expands, or rather penetrates— the first two chapters of his Shakespeare, (which I have read thoroughly) are very fine— (I have underlined passages on every page)— the Victor Hugo I have not yet read— Nothing very different with me— I am pretty strong yet, & go out— but head, stomach & liver, all in a bad way, & seems as if nothing could bring them round. Have rec'd a long & good letter from Rossetti which I will show you when you come. How are you getting along?— How is `Sula? Love to both— bright here to-day, but cold, & every thing frightfully backward. Walt. You may return Dowden's letter to me, when you write— but no hurry." With an autograph envelope addressed to Burroughs in Whitman's hand. This letter is printed in The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, Miller, Volume 2, pp. 331-2. The young John Burroughs first met Whitman in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War and quickly became close to the poet, initially considering him something of a guru who could do no wrong; Burroughs' first book, in 1871, was the adoring Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person, the drafts of which Whitman read and commented on at every stage. In later years, Burroughs would build a cabin in the woods in West Park, New York, not far from Poughkeepsie, and took to referring to the land around it as "Whitman Land": "It was in these woods that he'd walked with Walt during the poet's frequent visits to West Park in the late 1870s," and Burroughs was in the habit of speaking "to his guests as much about Whitman as he did about birds and wildflowers… Burroughs would stand on the steps of the cabin, a worn copy of Leaves of Grass in his hands, and recite 'Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking'" (Renehan, John Burroughs: American Naturalist, 183). Burroughs was also a frequent visitor at Whitman's house in Camden, and they remained close until the end of Whitman's life. "Rossetti" was William Michael Rossetti, the influential English editor and brother of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti and poet Christina Rossetti. Rossetti—and his 1868 edition of Leaves of Grass, which Whitman considered "a horrible dismemberment of my book"—was an essential force in encouraging appreciation for Whitman in England.

Fine condition.