Washington,
June 12, 1869
Charles W. Stoddard,
Dear Sir:1
Your letters have reached me.2 I cordially accept your appreciation, & reciprocate your friendship.
I do not write many letters, but like to meet people. Those tender & primitive personal relations
away off there in the Pacific Islands, as described by you, touched me deeply.3
In answer to your request,4 I send you my picture—it was taken three months since. I also send a newspaper.5
Farewell, my friend. I sincerely thank you, & hope some day to meet you.
Walt Whitman
Notes
- 1. Charles Warren Stoddard
(1843–1909) published Poems, edited by Bret Harte,
in 1867. His most famous book, South-Sea Idyls (1873), is
mentioned in Walt Whitman's April 23, 1870 letter
to Stoddard. He was a journalist, a lecturer at the Catholic University of
America from 1889 to 1902, and for a brief period Mark Twain's secretary. [back]
- 2. Stoddard's first letter
was written on February 8, 1867, when he was about
24; he requested (or beseeched) an autograph. When he wrote again on March 2, 1869, he was in Honolulu, and passionately
implored an answer. Fascinated with the "Calamus" theme, Stoddard began a
correspondence with Burroughs; see Clara Barrus, Whitman and
Burroughs—Comrades (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 48. See also
Whitman's April 23, 1870 letter to
Stoddard. [back]
- 3. In his letter of March 2, 1869, Stoddard described his entry into a
typical native village: "The native villagers gather about me, for strangers are
not common in these parts. I observe them closely. Superb looking, many of them.
Fine heads…Proud, defiant lips, a matchless physique, grace and freedom in
every motion. I mark one, a lad of eighteen or twenty years who is regarding me.
I call him to me, ask his name, giving mine in return. He speaks it over and
over, manipulating my body unconciously, as it were, with bountiful and unconstrained love. I go to his
grass-house, eat with him his simple food. Sleep with him upon his mats, and at
night sometimes waken to find him watching me with earnest, patient looks, his
arm over my breast and around me." After listening to Horace Traubel read this
letter, Walt Whitman commented: "Occidental people, for the most part, would not
only not understand but would likewise condemn the sort of thing about which
Stoddard centers his letter" (Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden [1906–1996],
4:269). [back]
- 4. This phrase did not
appear in the draft; otherwise there are no significant alterations. [back]
- 5. Whitman probably sent the
Washington Sunday Chronicle of May 9, 1869. [back]