loc_jm.00157.jpg
Century Club
7. W. 43rd St. New York.1
May 6, 1891
My Dear Sir
I hope you will allow me to come & have a chat with you2 for the Pall Mall Gazette,3
for which paper I am one of the chief writers. I could come to you about the beginning of June.4 I go to see
Dr O. W. Holmes,5 & Mr Russell Lowell6
by invitation next week.
Faithfully Yours
Raymond Blathwayt
loc_jm.00158.jpg
loc_jm.00155.jpg
loc_jm.00156.jpg
Correspondent:
Raymond Blathwayt
(1855–1936) was born in London and began his career as a clergyman while
also gaining experience in literary work and engaging in philanthropic efforts
among the urban poor. He went on to become a journalist and an actor on the
silent screen. He often wrote celebrity interviews, many of which were collected
in Interviews (1893), including his talks with authors
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), and
Mark Twain (1835–1910). Later, he had parts in such films as The Great Moment (1921) and Beyond the
Rocks (1922).
Notes
- 1. This letter is addressed Mr
Walt Whitman | Camden | New Jersey. It is postmarked: Baltimore, [M. D.] | May 6
| 430PM | 91; Camden, N.J. | May | 7 | 6AM | 1891 | Rec'd. The printed return
address reading "University Club. | 1005 North Charles Street." has been crossed
out both on the stationery and on the envelope. [back]
- 2. Blathwayt is reiterating a
prior request for an interview with Whitman. See Blathwayt's letter to Whitman
of April 17, 1891. [back]
- 3. The Pall
Mall Gazette was a daily evening newspaper in London that was founded
by British publisher George Murray Smith (1824–1901) in 1865. Frederick
Greenwood (1830–1909), an English journalist, was the paper's first
editor. One of the paper's most well-known editors and innovator in
investigative journalism was William T. Stead (1849–1912), who edited the
paper until 1889. In the early 1890s, the paper was edited by the journalist and
biographer Sir Edward Tyas Cook (1857–1919). The paper published works by
and about Whitman during its run. The Pall Mall Gazette
was merged into The Evening Standard in 1923. [back]
- 4. Horace Traubel notes in his
With Walt Whitman in Camden that, after reading this
letter, Whitman said: "Now as I grow old—useless, helpless—I seem to
come in great demand." Traubel writes that Whitman "was in doubt what to
respond" to Blathwayt (With Walt Whitman in Camden, Thursday, May 7, 1891). [back]
- 5. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
(1809–1894) was a Bostonian author, physician, and lecturer. One of the
Fireside Poets, he was a good friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as John
Burroughs. Holmes remained ambivalent about Whitman's poetry. He married Amelia
Lee Jackson in 1840 and they had three children, including the later Supreme
Court judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. For more information, see Julie A.
Rechel-White, "Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809–1894)," (Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, eds. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings
[New York: Garland Publishing, 1998], 280). [back]
- 6. James Russell Lowell
(1819–1891) was an American critic, poet and editor of The Atlantic. One of Whitman's famous poetic contemporaries, Lowell
was committed to conventional poetic form, which was clearly at odds with
Whitman's more experimental form. Still, as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, he published Whitman's "Bardic Symbols," probably at
Ralph Waldo Emerson's suggestion. Lowell later wrote a tribute to Abraham
Lincoln titled "Commemoration Ode," which has often, since its publication, been
contrasted with Whitman's own tribute, "O Captain! My Captain!" For further
information on Whitman's views of Lowell, see William A. Pannapacker, "Lowell, James Russell (1819–1891)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998) [back]