Logan Pearsall Smith to Walt Whitman, 8 August 1891

 loc_jc.00171_large.jpg TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS, FERNHURST,1 SUSSEX. Aug. 8th 91 FRIDAY'S HILL HOUSE, HASLEMERE. Dear Mr. Whitman

We have just had a visit from Dr. Bucke,2 and we were so glad to hear from him all about you. In furnishing our house here we have got three of those N.Y. photographs of you framed together, hanging in our  loc_jc.00172_large.jpg dining room, and it almost feels as if you were with us sometimes. It is delightful to see Dr. Bucke again, he is so fresh and original and individual in everything he says and does. I am taking this summer as a rest, I have finished my work at Oxford, and in the autumn I shall begin  loc_jc.00173_large.jpg writing—I feel that there is a great deal to be said about America, about England and Oxford and many things.

The Costelloes3 are abroad now—Mrs. Costelloe has got tremendously interested in art—especially Italian art, and means to make  loc_jc.00174_large.jpg art criticsm her life work. There is a new school of art critics, who follow an Italian, Morelli,4 and judge pictures, not so much by the documents about them, as by the technique of the painter. It is most interesting, and there is a great deal of work to be done in it.

We are all well, and send much love

your affectionate friend Logan Pearsall Smith  loc_jc.00169_large.jpg see notes sept 21 1891  loc_jc.00170_large.jpg

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Notes

• 1. This letter is addressed: Walt Whitman | 328 Mickle St. | Camden N.J. | U. S. America. It is postmarked: HALSEMERE | AU 8 | 91; NEW YORK | Aug | 19 | [illegible] | All | 91; CAMDEN, N.J. | AUG | 20 | 6AM | 1891 | REC'D. [back]
• 2. 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]
• 3. The Costelloes were Benjamin Francis ("Frank") Conn Costelloe (1854–1899) and Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe (1864–1945). Frank was Mary's first husband, an English barrister and Liberal Party politician. Mary was a political activist, art historian, and critic, whom Whitman once called his "staunchest living woman friend." For more information about her, see Christina Davey, "Costelloe, Mary Whitall Smith (1864–1945)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 4. Giovanni Morelli (1816–1891) was an Italian art critic, art historian, and politician from Verona. He is known for having developed the "Morellian technique" in art scholarship, which involved identifying painters not on the basis of the subject matter of their paintings but rather by analyzing details of the idiosyncratic ways they portrayed certain physical features. [back]