The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Susan Stafford, 7 April 1889
Date: April 7, 1889
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03871
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: Alex Ashland, Breanna Himschoot, and Stephanie Blalock
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Camden1
April 7 '89
Quite a while now since I have seen or heard of any of you—How are you all—George2 & Ed3 & Harry4 & all?—I am here coop:d up just as closely & helpless as ever—don't get my health or strength an atom more—Sit up most of the time days here in the great arm chair with the old wolf-skin spread back—trying to pass away the time (& succeeding after a fashion) but some days very low indeed.
—Love to you all—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Susan M. Stafford was the mother of
Harry Stafford, who, in 1876, became a close friend of Whitman while working at
the printing office of the Camden New Republic. Whitman
regularly visited the Staffords at their family farm near Kirkwood, New Jersey.
Whitman enjoyed the atmosphere and tranquility that the farm provided and would
often stay for weeks at a time (see David G. Miller, "Stafford, George and Susan M.," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings [New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998], 685).
Notes:
1. This postal card is addressed: Mrs: Susan Stafford | Kirkwood | (Glendale) | New Jersey. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Apr 7 | 5 PM | 89. [back]
2. George Stafford was Susan's husband. [back]
3. Edwin Stafford (1856–1906) was one of Susan Stafford's sons. [back]
4. Whitman met the 18-year-old Harry Lamb Stafford (b. 1858) 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. 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]