Default Metadata, or override by section

  Dear Whitman,

Wm​ Rossetti has shown me your letter indicating annoyance at some telegram which has reached America, concerning a statement of mine in the Daily News. There was no letter of mine in the paper or any paper, but a paragraph which I enclose to you written by the editor on the basis of a private letter from me. I wrote to him on receipt of a letter from you saying that you wished money to build on your Camden lot and paid board to your relatives. My motive was the necessity of saving you & your relatives from the degradation implied in Mr. Austin's letter to the same paper in which he said "While we talk, he starves"; to defend your American friends (such as Burroughs, O Connor, myself & others) from the outrageous insults heaped by that fellow Buchanan upon those of your countrymen who would share their last loaf with you; and to free you from the charge of getting aid on false pretences of which you were in danger, and myself from equal peril of abetting what I knew to be a lie by silence; and you are not the man I take you for if you would have had me act otherwise. I can only suppose you have seen some bungled & mutilated telegram embodying part of the statement of which I now send you the whole.

You may remember that I talked to you in my bedroom about your circumstances, after I had conversed with your sister-in-law, and gathered from   you just what you have been kind enough to write to me, except that you did not tell me that you wished to build.

In such matters as this the true thing is obviously the politic thing also. It is ludicrously false for Buchanan to say that you are in danger of starving, or that you have no appreciation in America (where books have been written about you, and where you have enthusiastic admirers!) Such absurd and false statements are sure to bring down contempt on those who make them, and sometimes imperil the good fame of those about whom they are made.

Your friends here are quite at one here on the subject, and Rossetti wrote to me that he knew Buchanans​ Buchanan's​ statements were "exaggerations", before I wrote to the News. The effort to circulate your books by a subscription will be successful. Rossetti has had printed for private circulation your letter to him which gives substantially the same account of your affairs which is contained in the paragraph of the Daily News enclosed.

I am much oppressed with work, & cannot write letters. I trust this will find you improving in health. Pray remember me kindly to Mr & Mrs Whitman

& believe me your faithful friend M D Conway   from M D Conway April '76 see notes June 17 1888