Camden N J1
Feb: 21 '83—p. m.
Have just been looking over the "Transfer" pamphlet you sent—pages 46, '7, to
which you call'd my attention are (I allow myself to think) a latent flattering
unction to me & the ways I suggest of looking at questions in America.2 Indeed such things do me more good than you think
for—I am just going over to Germantown to spend to-night, to-morrow & till
Thursday noon in the big family & big house, wife, son, two splendid daughters
of a Quaker friend, whose carriage comes for me presently.3 The eldest daughter, age 20, an admirer of L. of G. who comes up even to you.4 Thanks for the MS.—(as I write, has not yet
arrived but will be here soon no doubt)—You shall see the proof—all your
wishes shall be followed.
I am curious to see the Carlyle-Emerson letters—(had not heard before about my
being in them)5—You hit long ago on the reason-why
of the Emerson (apparent) change, or defection or cloud—whatever it is to be
call'd—it was the interference, doubtless hard lying,
of others—there was & is a little knot of my most malignant enemies, deadly haters, in & around Boston—some in high
quarters—& they plied the man incessantly—Then above all that appears
or he appears to say—you may be sure that E loved
me—I believe more than he did any one—he showed it at first, &
stronger still at last—that Saturday evn'g & Sunday
afternoon he & I were (mostly silently) together in September, 1881, at Concord,
told it—told better than ever can be put in words6—
Notes
- 1. This letter is addressed:
Wm D O'Connor | Life Saving Service | Treasury | Washington | D C. It is
postmarked: Camden | Feb | 21 | 5 PM | N.J.; Washington, Recd. | Feb | 22 | 430
AM | 1883 | 2. [back]
- 2. On February 20 O'Connor wrote: "The paper on
Life-Saving Transfer is mine—some touches in the others. I was thinking of
you when I wrote the first and third of my three reasons against transfer" (see
Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, June 18, 1888, 351). [back]
- 3. The family of Robert
Pearsall Smith. [back]
- 4. Mary Whitall Smith, who
was at the time a student at Smith College and who married B. F. W. Costelloe
and later Bernard Berenson. [back]
- 5. According to his letter
of February 20, O'Connor had read in the New York
Tribune excerpts from The
Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson,
1834–1872 (1883). He particularly objected to Emerson's reference to
Whitman in one of the letters (Horace Traubel, With Walt
Whitman in Camden, Monday, September 3, 1888, 251): "The letter, as printed, is very
characteristic of Emerson—his reserve, his shrinking, like a woman's,
because of rebuff; his deceptive concessions to the enemy, in a vein of
pleasantry, almost like irony, almost like a sneer, when he says the book
'wanted good morals so much' that he did not send it" (Monday, June 18, 1888, 352). In 1888 Whitman agreed with O'Connor:
"Emerson should have said yes or no—not yes-no" (Monday, June 18, 1888, 353). [back]
- 6. See the letter from Walt
Whitman to Louisa Orr Whitman of September 18,
1881, and Whitman's letter to John Burroughs of September 19, 1881. [back]