Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: William D. O'Connor to Walt Whitman, 22 September 1883

Date: September 22, 1883

Whitman Archive ID: loc.05149

Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953), 4:191–192. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schoeberlein, Kirsten Clawson, Nima Najafi Kianfar, and Nicole Gray




Life Saving Service,
September 22, 1883.

Dear Walt:

I got your last, enclosing MS, on the 20th, and at once, as you suggested, sent the document to the Sun, copying your draft of note to the editor, &c. Let us see if tomorrow's Sun will have it.

I infer from your suggestion that you think the article not so bad. Bad or good, its publication by the Sun will make Fra Diavolo Godkin howl.

I return your Salt Lake City letter about Bacon and Shakespeare, having carefully read it thrice. It seems quite crazy—though maybe only crude—yet has some good points in it, which I took in.

I am in great mourning that I can't get my reply to Richard Grant White on the Bacon-Shakespeare matter, printed. It was certainly brilliant, though I say it as shouldn't. The North American man called it "so very valuable a manuscript," apologizing for declining it on the ground that too much MS has already been accepted—which is all gammon. Fanatical prejudice in favor of Shakespeare, unwilling to allow discussion, is at the bottom of the matter.

I was in hope that Charley Eldridge would get to publishing, so that we might start a magazine, and make it pleasant for the bats and owls and literary carrion generally, but he appears to have abandoned the idea, and gone into law and claims in Boston.

Good bye. Faithfully
W. D. O'Connor.


Comments?

Published Works | In Whitman's Hand | Life & Letters | Commentary | Resources | Pictures & Sound

Support the Archive | About the Archive

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, editors.