James W. Wallace to Walt Whitman, 24 September 1891

 loc_vm.00959_large.jpg London, Ontario Canada.1 24. Sept 18912 Dear Walt,

A line or two—if only to pierce the distance between us, & to convey my constant love & good wishes.

Another day of midsummer warmth & beauty—Never in my life do I remember to have known such weather so long continued. Every day perfect & like its predecessors. I seem to be living an enchanted life in a new earth.

And I rejoice on your account. Surely you must be  loc_vm.00960_large.jpg gaining health from it, consciously or not.

I spent good part of this morning in writing letters home. My friends,3 of course, are interested in all my doings here, & I shall have to report pretty fully on my return. Perhaps my main hope, in connection with my trip, is that I may be able to make a better return for all their affection when I go back. I have reason to be devoutly thankful for my friends, & it is a sacred privilege to me to convey their love to you—the "poet of comrades"4 & our own dearest friend. If only I may acquire more of your spirit!

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This afternoon I read Symonds'5 poem "Love & Death,"6 & copied most of it for further absorption at leisure. It seems so characteristic of his cultured, sweet & delicate spirit. God be with him & bless him.

Tomorrow I shall be away, so shall not be able to write to you. I go to Forest7 (near Sarnia8) for the day to visit Dr J's9 aunt.10

Dr11 has some visitors12 tonight, so I write this (& me to H.T.13) in my room—your room.14 Through the open window I see a few stars out—Jupiter lustrous & dominating—chorus of frogs &c sounding.—

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I sometimes wish my friends could see you personally & come into direct contact with you. How their hearts would go out to you! And I am sure you would love them—plain, unaffected, manly fellows that they are.—I am a poor representative of them in anything but love to you.

I think it a blessed Providence that led the Dr to shew me the letters he has that you wrote to Pete Doyle.15 How our friends will respond to the warm affection & kindness they manifest! Deeper & warmer love to you than ever in their name!

Good night & God bless you. Love to Mrs Davis16 & Warry17 & to you above all.

J.W. Wallace  loc_vm.00957_large.jpg  loc_vm.00958_large.jpg

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Notes

• 1. This letter is addressed: Walt Whitman, | 328, Mickle St | Camden | New Jersey | U.S. America. It is postmarked: London | AM | SP 25 | 91 | CANADA; CAMDEN, N.J. | SEP 28 | 6PM | 91 | REC'D. [back]
• 2. When Wallace wrote this letter, he was visiting the Canadian physician Richard Maurice Bucke at Bucke's home in London, Ontario, Canada. Wallace had traveled to the United States from Bolton, England, landing at Philadelphia on September 8, 1891 (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Tuesday, September 8, 1891). After spending a few days with Whitman, Wallace traveled with Bucke to Canada, where he met Bucke's family and friends. Wallace's accounts of his travels were later published with the Bolton physcian John Johnston's account of his own visit with the poet in the summer of 1890 in their book Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–91 (London, England: G. Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1917). [back]
• 3. The "Bolton College" was a group of Whitman admirers located in Bolton, England. Founded by Dr. John Johnston (1852–1927) and James William Wallace (1853–1926), the group corresponded with Whitman and Horace Traubel throughout the final years of the poet's life. For more information on Johnston, see Larry D. Griffin, "Johnston, Dr. John (1852–1927)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). For more information on Wallace, see Larry D. Griffin, "Wallace, James William (1853–1926)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 4. Wallace is referencing Whitman's "Calamus" cluster of poems. Whitman writes, "These I singing in spring collect for lovers, / (For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy? / And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)." [back]
• 5. John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), a prominent biographer, literary critic, and poet in Victorian England, was author of the seven-volume history Renaissance in Italy, as well as Walt Whitman—A Study (1893), and a translator of Michelangelo's sonnets. But in the smaller circles of the emerging upper-class English homosexual community, he was also well known as a writer of homoerotic poetry and a pioneer in the study of homosexuality, or sexual inversion as it was then known. See Andrew C. Higgins, "Symonds, John Addington [1840–1893]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 6. This is the poem that Symonds sent to Whitman in an 1871 letter that introduced himself to the poet, noting that "you may perchance detect some echo, faint and feeble, of your Calamus." See Symonds' letter to Whitman of October 7, 1871, and Whitman’s response of January 27, 1872. [back]
• 7. Forest is a community in Lambton Shores, Ontario, near Sarnia. [back]
• 8. Sarnia is a city in Ontario, a hundred miles west of London. [back]
• 9. Dr. John Johnston (1852–1927) of Annan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, was a physician, photographer, and avid cyclist. Johnston was trained in Edinburgh and served as a hospital surgeon in West Bromwich for two years before moving to Bolton, England, in 1876. Johnston worked as a general practitioner in Bolton and as an instructor of ambulance classes for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways. He served at Whalley Military Hospital during World War I and became Medical Superintendent of Townley's Hospital in 1917 (John Anson, "Bolton's Illustrious Doctor Johnston—a man of many talents," Bolton News [March 28, 2021]; Paul Salveson, Moorlands, Memories, and Reflections: A Centenary Celebration of Allen Clarke's Moorlands and Memories [Lancashire Loominary, 2020]). Johnston, along with the architect James W. Wallace, founded the "Bolton College" of English admirers of the poet. Johnston and Wallace corresponded with Whitman and with Horace Traubel and other members of the Whitman circle in the United States, and they separately visited the poet and published memoirs of their trips in John Johnston and James William Wallace, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 by Two Lancashire Friends (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917). For more information on Johnston, see Larry D. Griffin, "Johnston, Dr. John (1852–1927)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 10. As yet we have no information about this person. [back]
• 11. 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]
• 12. As yet we have no information about these visitors. [back]
• 13. 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 late 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). [back]
• 14. Wallace means that he is staying in the same room as Whitman did when the poet was a guest at Bucke's home in 1880. From June 3 to September 29, 1880, Bucke traveled with Whitman from the poet's home in Camden to Bucke's residence near London, Ontario, Canada. After spending the summer on the grounds of the Asylum for the Insane, the two went on an extended trip that included journeying by railroad to Toronto and taking a steamship on Lake Ontario before going to Chicoutimi, Quebec, on the Saguenay River. On the return journey, Bucke traveled with Whitman as far as Niagara, at which point the poet retuned to New Jersey on his own. [back]
• 15. Peter Doyle (1843–1907) was one of Walt Whitman's closest comrades and lovers, and their friendship spanned nearly thirty years. The two met in 1865 when the twenty-one-year-old Doyle was a conductor in the horsecar where the forty-five-year-old Whitman was a passenger. Despite his status as a veteran of the Confederate Army, Doyle's uneducated, youthful nature appealed to Whitman. Although Whitman's stroke in 1873 and subsequent move from Washington to Camden limited the time the two could spend together, their relationship rekindled in the mid-1880s after Doyle moved to Philadelphia and visited nearby Camden frequently. After Whitman's death, Doyle permitted Richard Maurice Bucke to publish the letters Whitman had sent him. For more on Doyle and his relationship with Whitman, see Martin G. Murray, "Doyle, Peter," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 16. Mary Oakes Davis (1837 or 1838–1908) was Whitman's housekeeper. For more, see Carol J. Singley, "Davis, Mary Oakes (1837 or 1838–1908)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 17. Frank Warren Fritzinger (1867–1899), known as "Warry," took Edward Wilkins's place as Whitman's nurse, beginning in October 1889. Fritzinger and his brother Harry were the sons of Henry Whireman Fritzinger (about 1828–1881), a former sea captain who went blind, and Almira E. Fritzinger. Following Henry Sr.'s death, Warren and his brother—having lost both parents—became wards of Mary O. Davis, Whitman's housekeeper, who had also taken care of the sea captain and who inherited part of his estate. A picture of Warry is displayed in the May 1891 New England Magazine (278). See Joann P. Krieg, "Fritzinger, Frederick Warren (1866–1899)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 240. [back]