WITH A SIGNED ALBUMEN PHOTOGRAPH AND INSCRIBED BY WHITMAN TO THE WIDOW OF HIS CLOSE FRIEND AND PORTRAITIST

WHITMAN, Walt. Two Rivulets; Including Democratic Vistas, Centennial Songs, and Passage to India. Camden, New Jersey: Author's Edition, 1876. Octavo, period-style full blue straight-grain morocco gilt, raised bands, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers.

First and only edition, second printing, boldly inscribed by him on the original albumen photograph portrait that serves as a frontispiece: “Walt Whitman born May 31, 1819,” and additionally inscribed on a tipped-in leaf to the widow of Whitman’s portraitist and one of his close friends: “Mrs Charles Hine from her friend the author.”

"On 2 May 1875, Whitman announced: 'I shall… bring out a volume this summer, partly as my own contribution to our National Centennial. It is to be called Two Rivulets - (i.e. two flowing chains of prose and verse, emanating the real and ideal)[.] It will embody much that I had previously written & that you know, but about one-third, as I guess, that is fresh" (Myerson, 196). The book contains Two Rivulets, Democratic Vistas, Centennial Songs-1876, As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, Memoranda During the War and Passage to India. The first printing consisted of only 100 copies; this second printing, issued a few months later, with numerous revisions, consisted of only about 600 copies. Myerson A.9.1.b, binding A (no priority), with single leaf of advertisements for Whitman's books inserted between the back flyleaves, as called for. This copy of Two Rivulets is inscribed to Mrs. Charles Hine, the wife of the artist who painted Whitman's favorite portrait. According to Ruth Bohan, the author of Looking into Walt Whitman: American Art 1850-1920, Whitman most likely met Hine at Pfaff's, a tavern on Broadway. As Pfaff's was well-known as a meeting place for artists and the avante garde, both Hine and Whitman would have felt at home there. Almost immediately after meeting Whitman, Hine expressed a strong desire to paint him. What resulted was a painting that would come to be called the "Byronic portrait" by Whitman's friends. It showed Whitman handsome and rosy-cheeked at a relatively slim 210 pounds. "Whitman does look more like the conventional image of a poet—with coiffure and cravat—than he ever did before or after. This is the portrait of an artist who has devoted significant time to his image and one who has also clearly enjoyed his growing notoriety among the arty crowd at Pfaff's" (Folsom & Price). Whitman adored the painting and even used an engraving of it for the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. Hine died in 1871, but Whitman maintained contact with his widow.

Signatures exceptionally bold and fine, photographic portrait fine, tiny marginal tear to frontispiece leaf, not affecting photograph, one signature expertly reinforced. A near-fine inscribed and twice-signed copy, with a wonderful association.