The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Susan Stafford, 22 August 1889
Date: August 22, 1889
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03873
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.
Notes for this letter were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Contributors to digital file: Braden Krien, Ryan Furlong, Breanna Himschoot, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |
Camden
PM Aug: 22 '891
Y'rs came this afternoon.2 Herbert3 was here last evn'g very good visit—Hot weather here—Am pretty ill—one of my worst spells—now a week—half the time stretch'd out on the bed—half the time in my big chair as now—Love to you all—glad to hear f'm Harry4—
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 letter is addressed: Mrs: Susan Stafford | Kirkwood (Glendale) New Jersey. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Aug 22 | 8 PM | 89. [back]
2. Whitman is referring to Stafford's letter of August 21, 1889. [back]
3. Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist (1857–1914), son of Alexander and Anne Gilchrist, was an English painter and editor of Anne Gilchrist: Her Life and Writings (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887). For more information, see Marion Walker Alcaro, "Gilchrist, Herbert Harlakenden (1857–1914)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
4. Walt 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. In 1884, 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]