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Ellen M. O'Connor to Walt Whitman, 21 December 1889

About This Item

  • Title: Ellen M. O'Connor to Walt Whitman, 21 December 1889
  • Date: December 21, 1889
  • Creator(s): Ellen M. O'Connor
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.02985
  • Source: . 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: Kirby Little Ashlyn Stewart Breanna Himschoot Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: O'Connor, Ellen M.. "Ellen M. O'Connor to Walt Whitman, 21 December 1889." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 26 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.02985.xml (TEI)
 loc.02985.001.jpg 1015 O St. Sat. Dec. 21st 1889. Dear Walt,

I have just come from Oak Hill. My first visit to William's1 grave since last July when I went away. The ivy that we planted is growing well, & I plucked a few leaves loc.02985.002.jpg for you. By & by I can send you a root. Can you think that his body lies there? I can not realize it, yet I laid him away. How very strange it all is. It is a perfect day, & the dandelions are in bloom. Where do you think loc.02985.003.jpg William is, for that is only the worn out machine in which he manifested himself while here. I wonder & wonder, & think of it all so much, sometimes I almost feel him here.

I was glad of your letter. How I envy you your boy Horace!2 if loc.02985.004.jpg I had some one to give me a lift in my work, it would be a boon, but I guess my lesson in life is to learn to stand alone. I shall get to a place by & by where I shall have some report to make perhaps, but now there is nothing to show for it all. I, too, got a similar loc.02985.005.jpg announcement from Charles Eldridge,3 of his marriage. I hope that he will be very happy. I trust that all is as well as usual with you.

Love always— from yours as ever— Ellen M. O'Connor.

Some day I hope to get time to write to Dr. Bucke.4

 loc.02985.006.jpg

Correspondent:
Ellen M. "Nelly" O'Connor (1830–1913) was the wife of William D. O'Connor (1832–1889), one of Whitman's staunchest defenders. Before marrying William, Ellen Tarr was active in the antislavery and women's rights movements as a contributor to the Liberator and to a women's rights newspaper Una. Whitman dined with the O'Connors frequently during his Washington years. Though Whitman and William O'Connor would temporarily break off their friendship in late 1872 over Reconstruction policies with regard to emancipated African Americans, Ellen would remain friendly with Whitman. The correspondence between Whitman and Ellen is almost as voluminous as the poet's correspondence with William. Three years after William O'Connor's death, Ellen married the Providence businessman Albert Calder. For more on Whitman's relationship with the O'Connors, see Dashae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas [1832–1889]" and Lott's "O'Connor (Calder), Ellen ('Nelly') M. Tarr (1830–1913)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).

Notes

  • 1. William Douglas O'Connor (1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866. For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 2. 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]
  • 3. Charles W. Eldridge (1837–1903) was one half of the Boston-based abolitionist publishing firm Thayer and Eldridge, who issued the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. In December 1862, on his way to find his injured brother George in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Whitman stopped in Washington and encountered Eldridge, who had become a clerk in the office of the army paymaster, Major Lyman Hapgood. Eldridge helped Whitman gain employment in Hapgood's office. For more on Whitman's relationship with Thayer and Eldridge, see David Breckenridge Donlon, "Thayer, William Wilde (1829–1896) and Charles W. Eldridge (1837–1903)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [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]
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