328 Mickle St—Camden New Jersey
U S America May 3 '871
Yours of Ap: 20 just rec'd & welcomed.2 Write
oftener—The Staffords3 & I remember you with
greatest affection & esteem—I also with deepest gratitude—I am still
here in the same little old house—of course gradually sinking &
dissolving—Harry S[tafford]4 had a surgical operation on
his throat—it seems to have been properly done, & the cut is
healing—He is at Marlton, New Jersey, married, has a child—I send you
some papers—always best love—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) was an English
writer and Whitman disciple. Like many other young disillusioned Englishmen, he
deemed Whitman a prophetic spokesman of an ideal state cemented in the bonds of
brotherhood. Carpenter—a socialist philosopher who in his book Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure posited civilization as
a "disease" with a lifespan of approximately one thousand years before human
society cured itself—became an advocate for same-sex love and a
contributing early founder of Britain's Labour Party. On July 12, 1874, he wrote for the first time to Whitman: "Because you
have, as it were, given me a ground for the love of men I thank you continually
in my heart . . . . For you have made men to be not ashamed of the noblest
instinct of their nature." For further discussion of Carpenter, see Arnie
Kantrowitz, "Carpenter, Edward [1844–1929]," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. This letter is addressed:
Edward Carpenter | Commonwealth Café | Scotland Street | Sheffield England.
It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | May 3 | 12 M | 87. [back]
- 2. Carpenter's letter of
April 20 had the awe-stricken and confessional
tone characteristic of Whitman's youthful admirers: "Dear old Walt—I was
right glad to get your card and find you hadn't forgotten me; and that you still
keep going along, fairly cheerful." Carpenter went on to relate: "I have had a
baddish time the last few days, and feel tired out & sick. A very dear
friend of mine—we have been companions day & night for many months
now—has taken to girl whom I can't say I much care for. . . . Just now I
feel as if I had lost him, and am rather dumpy—tho' I don't know that it
will be altogether bad in the end." Whitman received £25 from Carpenter on May
23 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of
Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]
- 3. Whitman often visited the
family at their farm at Timber Creek in Laurel Springs, New Jersey; in the
1880s, the Staffords sold the farm and moved to nearby Glendale. [back]
- 4. 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]