The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Edward Carpenter, 22 March 1887
Date: March 22, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: sta.00006
Source: Edwin Haviland Miller's transcription is based on a typescript of the letter, held by Stanford University. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 4:77. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Ryan Furlong, Stefan Schöberlein, Kevin McMullen, and Stephanie Blalock
328 Mickle Street,
Camden,
New Jersey,
U.S.A.
March 22nd, 1887.
Dear E.C.,
I thought I would write you a line once more, but no particular news to send. Everything goes on much in the old way (and always has, and always will, I reckon, in this old world).
I am alive, and here, in the same locality, but pretty feeble. Wanted to thank you again, and more specifically, dear E.C., for the help you have so kindly sent me—you and my dear friends the two Misses Ford,1 to whom I send thanks and love.
I have just had my dinner, (buckwheat cakes, and tea, good). I am sitting here in the little front room downstairs writing this. Always love. Write.
Walt Whitman.
Correspondent:
Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) was an English
writer and Whitman disciple. Like many other young disillusioned Englishmen, he
deemed Whitman a prophetic spokesman of an ideal state cemented in the bonds of
brotherhood. Carpenter—a socialist philosopher who in his book Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure posited civilization as
a "disease" with a lifespan of approximately one thousand years before human
society cured itself—became an advocate for same-sex love and a
contributing early founder of Britain's Labour Party. On July 12, 1874, he wrote for the first time to Whitman: "Because you
have, as it were, given me a ground for the love of men I thank you continually
in my heart . . . . For you have made men to be not ashamed of the noblest
instinct of their nature." For further discussion of Carpenter, see Arnie
Kantrowitz, "Carpenter, Edward [1844–1929]," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes:
1. Isabella Ford (1855–1924) was an English feminist, socialist, and writer. Elizabeth (Bessie) Ford was her sister. Both were introduced to Whitman's writings by Edward Carpenter and they quickly became admirers of Whitman. [back]