The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Horace Traubel, 12 November 1890
Date: November 12, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: loc.04290
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: Ryan Furlong, Amanda J. Axley, Marie Ernster, and Stephanie Blalock
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To precede the Ingersoll1 Lecture2
Camden New Jersey
Nov: 12 1890
My dear friend Horace Traubel:
I can only congratulate you—& as far as may be endorse (the authenticity of) the bold & eloquent address a copy of wh' R G I. has himself given you.
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
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 mid-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).
Notes:
1. Robert "Bob" Green Ingersoll (1833–1899) was a Civil War veteran and an orator of the post-Civil War era, known for his support of agnosticism. Ingersoll was a friend of Whitman, who considered Ingersoll the greatest orator of his time. Whitman said to Traubel, "It should not be surprising that I am drawn to Ingersoll, for he is Leaves of Grass. He lives, embodies, the individuality I preach. I see in Bob the noblest specimen—American-flavored—pure out of the soil, spreading, giving, demanding light" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Wednesday, March 25, 1891). The feeling was mutual. Upon Whitman's death in 1892, Ingersoll delivered the eulogy at the poet's funeral. The eulogy was published to great acclaim and is considered a classic panegyric (see Phyllis Theroux, The Book of Eulogies [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997], 30). [back]
2. On October 21, 1890, at Horticultural Hall in Philadelphia, Robert Ingersoll delivered a lecture in honor of Walt Whitman titled Liberty in Literature. Testimonial to Walt Whitman. Whitman recorded in his Commonplace Book that the lecture was "a noble, (very eulogistic to WW & L of G) eloquent speech, well responded to by the audience," and the speech itself was published in New York by the Truth Seeker Company in 1890 (Whitman's Commonplace Book [Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.]). [back]