The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Harry Buxton Forman, 16 June 1890
Date: June 16, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00731
Source: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library. The transcription presented here is derived from The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 6:52. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Ian Faith, and Stephanie Blalock
328 Mickle Street
— June 16 '90
Camden New Jersey—U S America1
Yours of June 42 rec'd & welcomed—There is no other ed'n of Specimen Days3 (that I know) but the one I believe you have—the "Celebrities" pamphlet rec'd safely with thanks—
I am keeping on fairly—have been out in wheel chair4 to the river side (Delaware) to-day—pleasant weather here—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Henry "Harry" Buxton
Forman (1842–1917) was a British man-of-letters, an editor of and
authority on the works of Keats and Shelley, and, starting in 1887, a
conspirator in literary forgeries that were exposed after his death. The
correspondence at this time between Bucke and Forman makes it clear that Bucke
was also building up Forman's collection of Whitman materials (D. B. Weldon
Library, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario).
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: H Buxton Forman | 46 Marlborough Hill | St John's Wood | London England. It is postmarked: Camden | Ju 17 | 6 PM | 90. [back]
2. See Forman's June 4, 1890, letter to Whitman, where Forman asks about the edition of Specimen Days mentioned in this letter and with which he encloses the "Celebrities of the Century" pamphlet. [back]
3. The first issue of Whitman's Specimen Days and Collect was published by the Philadelphia firm of Rees Welsh and Company in 1882. The second issue was published by David McKay. Many of the autobiographical notes, sketches, and essays that focus on the poet's life during and beyond the Civil War had been previously published in periodicals or in Memoranda During the War (1875–1876). For more information on Specimen Days, see George Hutchinson and David Drews "Specimen Days [1882]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
4. Horace Traubel and Ed Wilkins, Whitman's nurse, went to Philadelphia to purchase a wheeled chair for the poet that would allow him to be "pull'd or push'd" outdoors. See Whitman's letter to William Sloane Kennedy of May 8, 1889. [back]