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| Whitman |
About the 10th of November, I first noticed long bunches of very small dark-purple or black grapes fallen on the dry leaves in the ravine east of Spring's house. Quite a large mass of clusters remained hanging on the leafless vine, thirty feet overhead there, till I left, on the 24th November.
These grapes were much shrivelled, but they had a very agreeably spicy acid taste, evidently not acquired till after the frosts. I thought them quite a discovery and ate many from day to day, swallowing the skins and stones, and recommended them to Spring. He said that they were very much like a certain French grape, which he had eaten in France.
It is a true frost grape, but apparently answers to Vitis aestivalis (?). Vide fruit and leaves. One I opened has only two seeds, while one of the early ones at Brattleboro has four, but one of the late ones of Brattleboro has only two, which also I have called V. aestipalis.
Visited the principal antique bookstore, in Fulton Street, upstairs, west of Broadway; also Tunison's antique bookstore, 138 Fulton Street.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 2, 1856 (sic)
A[lcott] and I heard Beecher preach; and what was more, we visited Whitman the next morning [the 10th of November] (A. had already seen him), and were much interested and provoked.
He is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen. Kings and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long deserved to.
A remarkably strong though coarse nature, of a sweet disposition, and much prized by his friends. Though peculiar and rough in his exterior, his skin (all over (?)) red, he is essentially a gentleman.
I am still somewhat in a quandary about him, — feel that he is essentially strange to me, at any rate; but I am surprised by the sight of him. He is very broad, but, as I have said, not fine.
He said that I misapprehended him. I am not quite sure that I do.
He told us that he loved to ride up and down Broadway all day on an omnibus, sitting beside the driver, listening to the roar of the carts, and sometimes gesticulating and declaiming Homer at the top of his voice.
He has long been an editor and writer for the newspapers, — was editor of the New Orleans Crescent once; but now has no employment but to read and write in the forenoon, and walk in the afternoon, like all the rest of the scribbling gentry.
H. D. Thoreau, Letter to Blake, November 18, 1856
The Library of Congress contains a second edition of Leaves of Grass inscribed "H.D. Thoreau from Walt Whitman" and a copy of Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers with the signature of Walt Whitman and, on the front flyleaf in Whitman's hand:
"Thoreau call'd upon me in Brooklyn 1856 and upon my giving him L of G first edition-gave me this volume – We had a two hours talk + walk. I liked him well-l think he told me he was busy at a surveying job down on Staten Island. He was full of animation-seemed in good health-looked very well. -W.W."
See A Tale of Two Books; and Thoreau's New Jersey Connection See also December 2, 1856 ("As for the sensuality in Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," I do not so much wish that it was not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read it without harm.")
" Three men , " said Emerson , in his funeral eulogy of Thoreau , " have of late years strongly impressed Mr. Thoreau , - John Brown , his Indian guide in Maine , Joe Polis , and a third person [Whitman]
https://tinyurl.com/hdtwhman
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