The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Susan Stafford, 29 March 1887
Date: March 29, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03936
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 created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Ashland, Stefan Schöberlein, Kevin McMullen, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |
Camden1
March 29 Evn'g
Harry2 was here with me to-day3—He went to the hosp. to have his throat drest, & then to the RR station, to see J and D4 off.—He is doing very well indeed.
—I shall not be down next Sunday, but may the next, April 10, if it is pleasant—I am only middling.
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Susan M. Lamb Stafford
(1833–1910) was the mother of Harry Stafford (1858–1918), 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. | Mar 29 | 6 PM | 87. [back]
2. Walt Whitman met the 18-year-old Harry Lamb Stafford (1858–1918) 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 1883, 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]
3. In his Commonplace Book (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.) on March 25 Whitman mentioned his visit to the hospital where Harry's "throat trouble" was being treated by a Dr. Westcott. On March 28 and 29 the young man stayed with the poet. [back]
4. Joseph Browning (d. 1931) was married to Harry Stafford's sister Deborah. [back]