Camden
Friday night
Oct: 26 '881
Am a little concern'd—not hearing from you for quite a while—hope that
eye trouble has had a turn for the good2—Rec'd a
friendly & cheering letter f'm E C Stedman3 this
forenoon—As for me I get on ab't the same as of late—Keep my sick room
yet, but mainly comfortable—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
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).
Notes
- 1. This letter is endorsed:
"Answ'd Oct. 27/88." It is addressed: Wm D O'Connor | 1015 O Street | Washington
D C. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Oct 26 | 8 PM | 88. [back]
- 2. O'Connor replied at
length on the following day, October 27, 1888:
"The pleasing little malady of the eyelid which has inspired me to much
eloquent, though silent, profanity, is called ptosis, . . . and consists in a
paralysis of the first nerve of the eyelid." [back]
- 3. 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). [back]