syr_kc.00084.jpg
see notes March 5 1889
Washington, D.C.1
Life Saving Service.
May 25, 1886.
Dear Walt:
I got your letter of April 12, and since, your postal cards of April 19 and 26
respectively.2 Also the envelope containing
Kennedy's3 admirable review of the Longfellow memoir. I have
been proposing to write to you every day, but it is not easy, I am so poorly. My
lameness is very bad, and I am very exhausted before many hours pass each day. I
have piles of unanswered letters. My special trouble now is what they call schlerosis—an induration of the lower part of the
spinal syr_kc.00085.jpg cord, a bequest
of the inflammation caused by the nervous prostration. This it is which makes me so
lame and strengthless, and unless the doctor can break it up (he is using
electricity) the result, he tells me, will be paralysis. However, this is some way
off, and I'm not dead yet!
John Burroughs4 has been here, and gives me an account of your
health, which makes me feel very badly.5 He told me
especially of the trouble I share with you—constipation; and this you must not, Walt, allow to continue. The very worst aperient
you could use will do you syr_kc.00086.jpg less harm than constipation. But there are aperients which are harmless, or
almost nearly so, and I send you a packet of one which answers this description. It
is known as Liquorice Powder, and is excellent. The dose is one teaspoonful in, say,
a half goblet of water, when going to bed, to be taken when necessary. You will find it
easy and excellent. It is composed only of powdered liquorice and sulpher, and is
really without bad effect. Please try it. I have never been troubled with
costiveness in all my life, but now, like yourself, I have a syr_kc.00087.jpg partial paralysis of the bowels, and
must, under medical orders, resort to artificial means, and this is my remedy.
Anything is better than constipation. The physical feelings it induces are dreadful,
to say nothing of the constant danger to life.
I was delighted beyond measure at the success of your lecture. I wish I could have
been there. The account in the Press was splendid. Great are Talcott Williams6 and Thomas Donaldson,7 and
blessed be their names.
I had a letter from Dr. Bucke at London. He seems to be having a good time.
syr_kc.00088.jpg
I am glad you liked the little book. If I could only have written it over, I would
have made it fuller and better. But when the time came for publishing, I was too ill
to write.—I am obliged to you for the notice in the North
American (G.E.M.). It lets out the delicious fact that White had seen the
article—probably some magazine that had it, broke faith, and showed it to
him—and so he got a full excoriation before crossing Styx, for after he died, I
took out the severest parts from the MS. Big rascal! He
well syr_kc.00089.jpg knew the baseness
of his attack on the Promus book8. I have the best of reasons for believing that he
was secretly a Baconian, but with his editions of Shakespeare, etc., at stake, the
balance was on the other side of the ledger for him.
I am much grieved to learn that Mrs. Pott9 is seriously ill. Nervous prostration.
Between her tremendous labors on the Bacon subject, her large household duties, and
her ministrations among the London poor, she has broken down. I feel very anxious
about her.
syr_kc.00090.jpg
Donnelly's10 boom increases. There is an article in the 19th Century Magazine on his
cipher, which will make an excitement and greatly raise his credit. He writes me
that he expects to be ready to publish by June.
We have had strange weather here. Cold and hot by turns, and rain without stint. Did
you see the electric storm on Saturday night? I never witnessed such magnificent
lightning.
I hope this will find you in good time.
Always Affectionately
WDO'Connor.
Walt Whitman.
syr_kc.00091.jpg
see note Mar 5 1889
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 addressed:
Mr. Walt Whitman | 328 Mickle Street, | Camden, | New Jersey. It is postmarked:
Washington | [illegible] | 8PM | D. C. [back]
- 2. See Whitman's letters to
O'Connor of April 16, 1886 and April 18, 1886. The card from April 26 appears to
be lost. [back]
- 3. William Sloane Kennedy
(1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and the Boston Transcript; he also
published biographies of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier (Dictionary of American Biography [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933], 336–337). Apparently Kennedy called on
the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [London: Alexander
Gardener, 1896], 1). Though Kennedy was to become a fierce defender of Whitman,
in his first published article he admitted reservations about the "coarse
indecencies of language" and protested that Whitman's ideal of democracy was
"too coarse and crude"; see The Californian, 3 (February
1881), 149–158. For more about Kennedy, see Katherine Reagan, "Kennedy, William Sloane (1850–1929)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 4. The naturalist John Burroughs
(1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After
returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long
correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman.
However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged,
curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or
devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting
the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs,
see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 5. Burroughs describes the
visit in his letter to Whitman of June 28,
1886. [back]
- 6. Talcott Williams
(1849–1928), a journalist, worked for the New York Sun and World, and became an editorial writer
on the Springfield Republican in 1879. He joined the
staff of the Philadelphia Press in 1881. In 1912 he
became director of the School of Journalism at Columbia University. See also
Elizabeth Dunbar's Talcott Williams: Gentleman of the Fourth
Estate (1936) and Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman
in Camden (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1906), 1:202. The Philadelphia Press vigorously supported the poet against the Boston
censorship both in its news columns and in its editorials. A front-page story on
July 15 quoted at length the defense of Leaves of Grass
offered by the Reverend James Morrow, "a prominent Methodist."For more
information on Talcott Williams, see Philip W. Leon, "Williams, Talcott (1849–1928)," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 7. Thomas Donaldson
(1843–1898) was a lawyer from Philadelphia and a friend of Whitman. He
introduced Whitman to Bram Stoker and later accompanied Stoker when he visited
the poet; he also organized a fund-raising drive to buy Whitman a horse and
carriage. He authored a biography of Whitman titled Walt
Whitman, the Man (1896). For more information about Donaldson, see
Steven Schroeder, "Donaldson, Thomas (1843–1898)," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 8. Francis Bacon's notebook, the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, was the text that
was often cited by Baconians as evidence that Bacon was the author of the plays
attributed to Shakespeare. [back]
- 9. Constance Mary Fearon Pott
(1833–1914) started the Francis Bacon Society and, after comparing figures
of speech in Bacon to Shakespeare, argued for Bacon as the author behind
Shakespeare's famous plays. William D. O'Connor would later publish Hamlet's Note-Book, subtitled "A defense of Mrs. Henry
Pott" (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin [1886]). [back]
- 10. Ignatius Loyola Donnelly
(1831–1901) was a politician and writer, well known for his notions of
Atlantis as an antediluvian civilization and for his belief that Shakespeare's
plays had been written by Francis Bacon, an idea he argued in his book The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in Shakespeare's
Plays, published in 1888. [back]