loc_vm.01380_large.jpg
see note April 5 1891
April 4. 91
1833 Spruce Street
Philadelphia.
My dear Mr. Whitman:
Can you see for a few moments this afternoon at 3 PM
or a day next week
Miss Belghannie,1 a devoted English admirer of yours who feels she owes encouragement,
inspiration and direction from "Democratic Vistas"2—You
will confer much if you grant an interview—Miss
Graeff3 of this city
will go over with Miss Belghannie.
As ever devotedly yours
Talcott Williams
Please send answer in this envelope.
loc_vm.01381_large.jpg
Correspondent:
Talcott Williams (1849–1928),
a journalist, worked for the New York Sun and World, and became an editorial writer on the Springfield Republican in 1879. He joined the staff of
the Philadelphia Press in 1881. In 1912 he became
director of the School of Journalism at Columbia University. See also Elizabeth
Dunbar's Talcott Williams: Gentleman of the Fourth Estate
(1936).
Notes
- 1. This letter of introduction
for Miss Belghannie, describing her as a devoted English admirer of Whitman's,
preceded her Thursday, May 14, 1891, visit to Whitman's home on Mickle Street.
According to Horace Traubel's account, Miss Belghannie was familiar with several
of Whitman's friends in England, including the family of political activist Mary
Whitall Costelloe Smith, the feminist writer Isabella Ford and her sister
Elizabeth, and Edward Carpenter, a writer and Whitman disciple. Whitman "asked
[Miss Belghannie] what she was to speak about down at the church? And she told
him—the forming of wage-women in union. He did not appear to be greatly
struck with the idea, yet would say, 'It is well to go fishing—to
fish—to see if anything is to be caught.' This led to some considerable
talk—she of 'the good time coming' and admonishing him not to go back on
'Leaves of Grass'—and he saying or asking, 'Don't you think all this
inevitable?—that it is because it must be—that in the swinging
orbital movement of planets, all that is becomes the right and the just,' etc."
(Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Thursday, May 14, 1891). [back]
- 2. Whitman's prose work Democratic Vistas was published in an eighty-four-page
pamphlet in 1871. It is comprised of three essays Whitman had planned to
publish in the Galaxy magazine. Two of these essays
appeared in the Galaxy: "Democracy" was published in the
December 1867 issue and "Personalism" in the May 1868 issue. Whitman submitted
the third essay, "Orbic Literature," to the Galaxy, but
it was not published in the magazine. For more information on this work, see
Arthur Wrobel, "Democratic Vistas [1871]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. As yet we have no information about
this person. [back]