Dr. John Johnston to Walt Whitman, 26 March 1892

 loc.02550.001_large.jpg 54 Manchester Road, Bolton. England1 Mar 26th 18922 My Dear good old Friend

Just a line to you by tonights mail to send you my love once more—always that, always that—& the best I possess, along with my warmest sympathy.3

I hope you have had a good day & that your sleep tonight  loc.02550.002_large.jpg will be better than you have had of late. Horace4 continues to write to us every day & we send the letters on to Forman,5 Symonds,6 Carpenter7 & others

We have just seen Harper's8 for April9with your new poem, Alexander's10 two new portraits of you & Inness's11 picture.

Though I do not write much—for I fear to trouble you—my Love knows no  loc.02550.003_large.jpg lessening.

Good night to you dearest & best of friends & God bless you!

Yours affectionately J Johnston

P.S. I have got my dear good old father12 staying here with me & am very happy to have him too.

 loc.02550.004_large.jpg  loc.02550.005_large.jpg Written the day of W.'s death—Contains a prophetic passage  loc.02550.006_large.jpg

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Notes

• 1. This letter is addressed: Walt Whitman | 328 Mickle Street | Camden N.J | US America. It is postmarked: Bolton 56 | Mr 26 | 92; New York | Apr 2 | 92 | Paid | M | All; Camden N.J. | Apr 3 | 130PM | 92 | Rec'd. [back]
• 2. Johnston wrote this letter to Whitman on the day of the poet's death, March 26, 1892. The letter arrived in Camden, several days later, on April 3, 1892. [back]
• 3. On December 17, 1891, Whitman had come down with a chill and was suffering from congestion in his right lung. Although the poet's condition did improve in January 1892, he would never recover. He was confined to his bed, and his physicians, Dr. Daniel Longaker of Philadelphia and Dr. Alexander McAlister of Camden, provided care during his final illness. Whitman died on March 26, 1892. [back]
• 4. Horace L. Traubel (1858–1919) was an American essayist, poet, and magazine publisher. He is best remembered as the literary executor, biographer, and self-fashioned "spirit child" of Walt Whitman. During the late 1880s and until Whitman's death in 1892, Traubel visited the poet virtually every day and took thorough notes of their conversations, which he later transcribed and published in three large volumes entitled With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906, 1908, & 1914). After his death, Traubel left behind enough manuscripts for six more volumes of the series, the final two of which were published in 1996. For more on Traubel, see Ed Folsom, "Traubel, Horace L. [1858–1919]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 5. Henry Buxton Forman (1842–1917), also known as Harry Buxton Forman, was most notably the biographer and editor of Percy Shelley and John Keats. On February 21, 1872, Buxton sent a copy of R. H. Horne's The Great Peace-Maker: A Sub-marine Dialogue (London, 1872) to Whitman. This poetic account of the laying of the Atlantic cable has a foreword written by Forman. After his death, Forman's reputation declined primarily because, in 1934, booksellers Graham Pollard and John Carter published An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets, which exposed Forman as a forger of many first "private" editions of poetry. [back]
• 6. John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), a prominent biographer, literary critic, and poet in Victorian England, was author of the seven-volume history Renaissance in Italy, as well as Walt Whitman—A Study (1893), and a translator of Michelangelo's sonnets. But in the smaller circles of the emerging upper-class English homosexual community, he was also well known as a writer of homoerotic poetry and a pioneer in the study of homosexuality, or sexual inversion as it was then known. See Andrew C. Higgins, "Symonds, John Addington [1840–1893]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 7. 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). [back]
• 8. Harper's Monthly Magazine (sometimes Harper's New Monthly Magazine or simply Harper's) was established in 1850 by Henry J. Raymond and Fletcher Harper. The magazine became successful by reprinting British novels before eventually publishing American authors. Six of Whitman's poems were published there between 1874 and 1892. For more information on Whitman's relationship with Harper's, see Susan Belasco's Harper's Monthly Magazine. [back]
• 9. On August 25, 1889, Henry Alden, the editor of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, requested a poem. Whitman sent "Death's Valley," and was paid $25 on September 1, 1889 ((Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). When the poem was published in the April 1892 issue of the magazine, it accompanied an engraving of George Inness' "The Valley of the Shadow of Death" (1867); see LeRoy Ireland, The Works of George Inness (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965), 98–99. The frontispiece of the magazine that month was an engraving by William Kurtz (1833–1904) based on a photograph of John W. Alexander's portrait of Whitman, and above the poem appeared a more recent sketch of the poet by Alexander. A partial facsimile of the manuscript of this poem is published in Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Thursday, May 30, 1889. See also "Death's Valley" (loc.00189) in the Integrated Catalog of Walt Whitman's Literary manuscripts. [back]
• 10. John White Alexander (1856–1915) was an American painter and illustrator, well known for his portraits of famous Americans including Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Burroughs, as well as Whitman, whose portrait he worked on from 1886 to 1889. [back]
• 11. George Inness (1825–1894) was a well-known American landscape painter, considered by many nineteenth-century art critics to be one of America’s greatest artists. [back]
• 12. Little is known about Dr. John Johnston's father William Johnston (1824–1898), who was a builder in Annan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. In 1847 William married Helen (sometimes listed as Ellen) Roxburgh (1821–1898). The couple had three children. [back]