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Copied: see notes May 22, 1890
137 West 78th. Street, New York,1
May 21st. 1890.
My Dear Walt Whitman—
I have got up very early this morning, expressly to write you, knowing I should have
no other chance to-day; but the getting-up, of itself, is unusually remunerative—for,
if the sun of America & righteousness streams into your window at this moment, as
it does into mine, you will feel glad that you have lived to see another May. The
papers tell me more or less about you, and I often think of you—be sure—&
most certainly about lilac- and Lincoln-time. However, you have not been
off my perturbed mind for many months; nor has the treasured book
of "Camden's compliments"2 been off my table. Traubel3
sent it to me; I know I have not thanked him—you must do it for me, most
heartily. Moreover, the Brinton-Davidson "Bruno"4 came, and
nothing is ever more grateful to me than to receive a bit of your strong handwriting, like that
on its wrapper,—a "personally remembered," as it were. The truth, at last, is that I had
purposed to go down to Camden (for the first time) & see you this
last winter, & so have not written you. ('Tis a trip I shall yet make, D. V.5—to use the
protestant adjuration). But I have had a bad time, with much trouble about money—owing to
neglect to earn it while engrossed with driving through the "Lib. Amer. Literature," and then with
my beautiful mother's6 death, my reckless
son's7 divorce, and other Orestean cumulations of trouble.
At last the clouds are lifting, & I am trying to get into routine & self-poise.
Everything is all right in the world, of course, for both you and me. What particularly draws me to
you, as we grow older and more general, is that your optimism strengthens
my own. Your later poems on life, death, immortality, are of the highest worth to me. I read them
often, and intend to refer considerably to them in my Johns Hopkins lectures on poetry8—which
I am now beginning to prepare. In tone, rhythm, feeling, breadth & depth of thought, they seem
to me at the apex of your life-works—they reach in the Empyrean.
You know I am one of those who have the privilege of sharing my scrip with you, my dear elder
bard, when there is anything in it, and now, for the first time in months I have paid up my borrowed
money, & have something that is my own to share. I wish the little enclosure9 were more—and
I want to say that, the very next time you find your own scrip empty, Traubel must again
give me a chance with the rest of your devoted friends.
Pray don't feel moved to acknolwedge this tardy letter. I should
feel miserable to add the grasshopper that is a burden to one's afternoon of life.
My table is covered with letters I can't
get time & strength to answer. When telepathy can take the place of manual writing, we
shall be blessed indeed.—I miss O'Connor.10 Was fortunate in having
an evening with him, in Washington, before he passed away. His widow11 is
thinking of a memoir, or memorial volume. Forgive this long, yet hasty, letter.
Vol. XI (& last!) of the "Library" will soon be out12; & I
am, with increased honor & affection
Your Devoted Friend,
Edmund C. Stedman.
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Correspondent:
Edmund Clarence Stedman
(1833–1908) was a man of diverse talents. He edited for a year the Mountain County Herald at Winsted, Connecticut, wrote
"Honest Abe of the West," presumably Lincoln's first campaign song, and served
as correspondent of the New York World from 1860 to 1862.
In 1862 and 1863 he was a private secretary in the Attorney General's office
until he entered the firm of Samuel Hallett and Company in September, 1863. The
next year he opened his own brokerage office. He published many volumes of poems
and was an indefatigable compiler of anthologies, among which were Poets of America, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1885) and A Library of American Literature from the Earliest
Settlement to the Present Time, 11 vols. (New York: C. L. Webster,
1889–90). For more, see Donald Yannella, "Stedman, Edmund Clarence (1833–1908)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. Stedman wrote this letter
with an early typewriter, which only typed in capital letters. The transcription
provided here does not reproduce this feature of the original typescript. [back]
- 2. The notes and addresses that
were delivered at Whitman's seventieth birthday celebration in Camden, on May
31, 1889, were collected and edited by Horace Traubel. The volume was titled Camden's Compliment to Walt Whitman, and it included a
photo of Sidney Morse's 1887 clay bust of Whitman as the frontispiece. The book
was published in 1889 by Philadelphia publisher David McKay. [back]
- 3. 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]
- 4. Giordano Bruno: Philosopher and Martyr (1890) consisted of two
speeches before the Philadelphia Contemporary Club by Daniel G. Brinton
(1837–1899), a pioneer in the study of anthropology and a professor of
linguistics and archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, and by Thomas
Davidson (1840–1900), a Scottish philosopher and author. It included a
prefatory note by Whitman dated February 24, 1890 (see The
Collected Writings of Walt Whitman: Prose Works 1892, ed. by Floyd
Stovall, 2 vols. [1963–1964], 2:676–677). In his essay Brinton links
the poet with Bruno in his rejection of the "Christian notion of sin as a
positive entity" (34). On April 4, 1890, Whitman sent copies of the book to John
Addington Symonds, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Gabriel Sarrazin, T. H. Rolleston, and
W. M. Rossetti (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of
the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C.). See also Whitman's April 11, 1890, letter
to Bucke. After the poet presented him with a copy of Complete
Poems & Prose, Brinton expressed his thanks effusively on April 12, 1890. [back]
- 5. The Latin phrase, "Deo
volente," meaning "God willing." [back]
- 6. Elizabeth Clementine Dodge
Stedman (1810–1889) was a writer and a contributor to magazines including
the Knickerbocker and to Blackwood's. She was the daughter of David Low Dodge
(1774–1852), one of the founders of the New York Bible Society and the New
York Peace Society, and Sara Cleveland Dodge. Stedman spent fourteen years
abroad publishing in Europe, where she became a friend of the English poets
Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Stedman authored such works as Felicita (1855) and Bianco Capello, A
Tragedy (1873). [back]
- 7. Arthur Stedman was Edmund's
son. In 1892, he brought out his own editions of Whitman's Selected Poems and a selection of Whitman's prose writings entitled
Autobiographia. [back]
- 8. Edmund Clarence Stedman
lectured on "The Nature and Elements of Poetry" as part of his Percy Trumbull
Memorial Lectureship of Poetry at Johns Hopkins University in 1891; Whitman is
mentioned in the lectures several times. The lectures were later published by
Houghton, Mifflin. [back]
- 9. With this letter, Steadman
sent a check for twenty-five dollars to be put towards the fund that covered
Whitman's expenses. For more information, see Traubel's notes in With Walt Whitman in Camden, Thursday, May 22, 1890. [back]
- 10. William Douglas O'Connor
(1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet
The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866.
For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 11. Ellen M. "Nelly" O'Connor was the
wife of William D. O'Connor (1832–1889), one of Whitman's staunchest
defenders. Whitman dined with the O'Connors frequently during his Washington
years, and he speaks often in his letters of their daughter Jean, by nickname
"Jenny" or "Jeannie." Though Whitman and William O'Connor would break in late
1872 over Reconstruction policies with regard to emancipated black citizens,
Ellen would remain friendly with Whitman. The correspondence between Whitman and
Ellen is almost as voluminous as the poet's correspondence with William. For
more on Whitman's relationship with the O'Connors, see also Dashae E. Lott, "William Douglas O'Connor,"
Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, J.R. LeMaster and Donald
D. Kummings, ed., (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 12. The eleventh and final
volume of Stedman's Library of American
Literatureappeared later in 1890. [back]