loc_jc.00586_large.jpg
Camden
Tuesday Evn'g 19 Ap1
Harry2 has been here—is in good spirits & is surely
getting along very well—I am getting over my New York spree3—Count on
seeing you here to-morrow.
Walt Whitman
loc_jc.00585_large.jpg
Correspondent:
Susan M. Lamb Stafford
(1833–1910) was the mother of Harry Stafford (1858–1918), who, in
1876, became a close friend of Whitman while working at the printing office of
the Camden New Republic. Whitman regularly visited the
Staffords at their family farm near Kirkwood, New Jersey. Whitman enjoyed the
atmosphere and tranquility that the farm provided and would often stay for weeks
at a time (see David G. Miller, "Stafford, George and Susan M.," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings [New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998], 685).
Notes
- 1. This postal card is
addressed: Mrs: Susan Stafford | Kirkwood | (Glendale) | New Jersey. It is
postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Apr 19 | 8 PM | 87. [back]
- 2. Walt Whitman met the 18-year-old Harry Lamb Stafford
(1858–1918) in 1876, beginning a relationship which was almost entirely
overlooked by early Whitman scholarship, in part because Stafford's name appears
nowhere in the first six volumes of Horace Traubel's With Walt
Whitman in Camden—though it does appear frequently in the last
three volumes, which were published only in the 1990s. Whitman occasionally
referred to Stafford as "My (adopted) son" (as in a December 13, 1876, letter to John H. Johnston), but the relationship
between the two also had a romantic, erotic charge to it. In 1883, Harry married
Eva Westcott. For further discussion of Stafford, see Arnie Kantrowitz, "Stafford, Harry L. (b.1858)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. Whitman is referring to his
lecture entitled "The Death of Abraham Lincoln," which he delivered in New York
City on Thursday, April 14, 1887. He first delivered this lecture in New York in
1879 and would deliver it at least eight other times over the succeeding years,
delivering it for the last time on April 15, 1890. He had published a version of
the lecture as "Death of Abraham Lincoln" in Specimen
Days (1882–83). For more on the lecture, see Larry D. Griffin,
"'Death of Abraham Lincoln,'" Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, ed. (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998), 169–170. [back]