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Edward Carpenter to Walt Whitman, 20 November 1891

About This Item

  • Title: Edward Carpenter to Walt Whitman, 20 November 1891
  • Date: November 20, 1891
  • Creator(s): Edward Carpenter
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.01248
  • Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Cristin Noonan Amanda J. Axley Stephanie Blalock Paige Wilkinson
  • Cite this page: Carpenter, Edward. "Edward Carpenter to Walt Whitman, 20 November 1891." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 19 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.01248.xml (TEI)
 loc.01248.003_large.jpg London 20 Nov '911 Dear Walt

Just a few lines of greeting and rememberance. Was glad to get yr card a few weeks ago.2 This is one of those warm spring like days wh. we not unfrequently have in winter time when the buds & the birds seem almost ready to make a start again—

I am in London for a week or two, partly to arrange about a third & enlarged edition of Toward Democracy,3 wh. I expect to get  loc.01248.004_large.jpg out by next March. That will about finish the book, and there will not be much added to it I believe afterwards.

I had some good talks with Bucke4 when he was over, and he told me a bit about you, and about his book5 wh. he is bringing out. I guess, dear Walt, you have a tedious time of it on the whole—all those infirmities nagging don't leave the mind free for long. I got your Goodbye book6—and like the poem from wh. it takes its name about the best of any in  loc.01248.005_large.jpg it. "Goodbye—and hail!" After all the mind, the special local conciousness, is only a smallish part of oneself. It with all its troubles & pains one may decently fold up in due time and put away in its appointed locker!

I am glad you have such good friends with you—Mrs. Davis7 and Warry.8 Kind greetings also to them. I am still living at Millthorpe (near Sheffield) and having good times, with many dear friends. We all read yr. Leaves of Grass loc.01248.006_large.jpg—or most of us—and it keeps just the same as ever or improves, like good wine.

Give my love to Harry Stafford9 if you ever write or see him. I don't hear from Herbert Gilchrist10—tho' I sometimes get tidings of him. Should like to come over to U.S.A, but no prospect at present. With much love to you as ever

Ed: Carpenter  loc.01248.001_large.jpg see notes Dec 5 1891

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 to: Walt Whitman | 328 Mickle St. | Camden | N.J. | U.S. America. It is postmarked: LIMPSFIELD | 22 NOV; RED-HILL | A | NO22 | P6 | STATION-OFFICE; PAID | F | ALL; NEW YORK | DEC; CAMDEN, N.J. | 91 | REC'D. [back]
  • 2. Whitman had written to Carpenter on October 20, 1891, and Carpenter may be referring to this letter. [back]
  • 3. Edward Carpenter first published his poetry collection Towards Democracy in 1883. Both Towards Democracy and Leaves of Grass were similarly invoked within discussions of the democratic ideal in the weekly British socialist newspaper Labour Leader (1888–1986). (See Kirsten Harris, "The 'Labour Prophet'?: Representations of Walt Whitman in the British Nineteenth-Century Socialist Press." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 30 (2013), 115–137). [back]
  • 4. Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany. Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 5. Horace Traubel and Canadian physician Richard Maurice Bucke were beginning to make plans for a collected volume of writings by and about Whitman. Bucke, Traubel, and Thomas Harned—Whitman's three literary executors—edited In Re Walt Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1893), which included the three unsigned reviews of the first edition of Leaves of Grass that were written by Whitman himself, William Sloane Kennedy's article, "Dutch Traits of Walt Whitman," and Robert Ingersoll's lecture Liberty in Literature (delivered in honor of Whitman at Philadelphia's Horticultural Hall on October 21, 1890), as well as writings by the naturalist John Burroughs and by James W. Wallace, a co-founder of the Bolton Whitman Fellowship in Bolton, England. [back]
  • 6. Whitman's book Good-Bye My Fancy (1891) was his last miscellany, and it included both poetry and short prose works commenting on poetry, aging, and death, among other topics. Thirty-one poems from the book were later printed as "Good-Bye my Fancy" in Leaves of Grass (1891–1892), the last edition of Leaves of Grass published before Whitman's death in March 1892. For more information see, Donald Barlow Stauffer, "'Good-Bye my Fancy' (Second Annex) (1891)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 7. Mary Oakes Davis (1837 or 1838–1908) was Whitman's housekeeper. For more, see Carol J. Singley, "Davis, Mary Oakes (1837 or 1838–1908)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 8. Frank Warren Fritzinger (1867–1899), known as "Warry," took Edward Wilkins's place as Whitman's nurse, beginning in October 1889. Fritzinger and his brother Harry were the sons of Henry Whireman Fritzinger (about 1828–1881), a former sea captain who went blind, and Almira E. Fritzinger. Following Henry Sr.'s death, Warren and his brother—having lost both parents—became wards of Mary O. Davis, Whitman's housekeeper, who had also taken care of the sea captain and who inherited part of his estate. A picture of Warry is displayed in the May 1891 New England Magazine (278). See Joann P. Krieg, "Fritzinger, Frederick Warren (1866–1899)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 240. [back]
  • 9. 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]
  • 10. Herbert Gilchrist (1857–1914) was a painter and the son of Anne Gilchrist. For more on him, see Marion Walker Alcaro, "Gilchrist, Herbert Harlakenden (1857–1914)". Gilchrist often visited the Staffords when in New York. [back]
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