16 UP. Gloucester Place, Dorset Square, London
Jan. 8, 1877.
Dear Walt Whitman:
Pray forgive my long silence.1 I have been deep in troubles of my own. All the books have arrived and been safely transmitted. Many thanks.
You have doubtless heard about affairs in England. The tone adopted by certain of your friends here became so unpleasant that I requested all subscriptions etc. to be paid over to Rossetti,2 and received no more myself. During a certain lawsuit against the Examiner, your admirers—notably Mr. Swinburne3—pleaded against me that I had praised you, cited your words against me in court etc. I never was so shocked and astonished, for I would not have believed human beings capable of such iniquity.
As I think I told you before, I shall ever regret the insertion of certain passages in your books (Children of Adam4 etc). I do not believe them necessary or defensible. These passages are quoted as being the work of an immoral writer, and, altho' I tried to show they were part of a system of philosophy, it would not do. I know the purity and righteousness of your meaning, but that does not alter my regret.
I think your reputation is growing here, and I am sure it deserves to grow. But your fatal obstacle to general influence is the obnoxious passages. I wish you would make up your mind to excise them with your own hand.
God bless you!—May your trouble lift, and may happy days be in store for you!—Let me know about your affairs. I may soon be in a position to help you more definitely.
Yours ever,
ROBT. BUCHANAN.
Notes
- 1. Robert Buchanan
(1841–1901), a Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist, was an ardent
supporter of Walt Whitman's works in England (see Harold Blodgett, "Whitman and
Buchanan," American Literature, 2:2 [May 1930],
131–40). [back]
- 2. William Michael Rossetti (1829–1915), brother
of Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, was an English editor and a champion of
Whitman's work. In 1868, Rossetti edited Whitman's Poems,
selected from the 1867 Leaves of Grass. Whitman referred
to Rossetti's edition as a "horrible dismemberment of my book" in his August 12, 1871, letter to Frederick S. Ellis. Nonetheless,
the edition provided a major boost to Whitman's reputation, and Rossetti would
remain a staunch supporter for the rest of Whitman's life, drawing in
subscribers to the 1876 Leaves of Grass and fundraising
for Whitman in England. For more on Whitman's relationship with Rossetti, see
Sherwood Smith, "Rossetti, William Michael (1829–1915)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. The British poet, critic, playwright, and novelist
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) was one of Whitman's
earliest English admirers. At the conclusion of William Blake:
A Critical Essay (1868), Swinburne pointed out similarities between
Whitman and Blake, and praised "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" and "When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," which he termed "the most sweet and
sonorous nocturn ever chanted in the church of the world" (300–303). His
famous lyric "To Walt Whitman in America" is included in Songs
before Sunrise (1871). For the story of Swinburne's veneration of
Whitman and his later recantation, see two essays by Terry L. Meyers, "Swinburne and Whitman: Further Evidence," Walt
Whitman Quarterly Review 14 (Summer 1996), 1–11 and "A
Note on Swinburne and Whitman," Walt Whitman Quarterly
Review 21 (Summer 2003), 38–39. [back]
- 4. Originally entitled "Enfans
d'Adam" in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, this
cluster of poems celebrating sexuality was called "Children of Adam" in 1867 and
thereafter. The poems, openly "singing the phallus" and the "mystic deliria,"
were too bold for their time and often led to trouble for Whitman. His
relationship with esteemed writer Ralph Waldo Emerson cooled after he refused
Emerson's advice in 1860 to drop the poems; in 1865, he lost his job in the
Department of the Interior in Washington D.C., for writing "indecent" poems; and
he had to withdraw the 1881 edition of Leaves from
publication in Boston when the Society for the Suppression of Vice found it
immoral. For more on "Children of Adam" and its reception, see James E. Miller,
Jr., " 'Children of Adam' [1860]," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings [New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998]). [back]