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328 Mickle Street
Camden New Jersey U S America1
Sept 14 '87
Dear friend
I am pretty fair in health &c of late & now—pleasant weather here for
several weeks—rainy of late—Y'r nice letter from Switzerland came
yesterday—one from your father also just rec'd, enclosing the J A Symonds'2 note in answer to Swinburne's3
article—(the article was not worth answering at all—I have not given it
a thought)—
Dr Bucke4 has been here for five or six days—leaves
to-night—he is well—hearty as ever & much the same—he has (in
London Canada) one of the plaster heads5, & is quite enthusiastic ab't it—I
suppose the one I sent to y'r father has been rec'd before this—I think it had
better be donated to the Kensington Museum, if they will accept it & give it a
fair place—Morse6 is still here (in Phila)—is at work on his statuette
of President Cleveland—H Gilchrist7 is here—he is
at this moment giving some final touches on his oil painting of me—I like
it—Some think it too tame—you will doubtless
see it, as G. leaves here (NY) on the 21st on the Germania—
Phila is all agog now & for three days to come with the centennial of the
Constitution (the idea is good, perhaps sublime, but the carrying out of it more or
less tawdry & vulgar)—I am sitting here in the great chair, down
stairs—window open—big bunches of flowers on the sill—every thing
all right—had toast & a great mug of Whitman's chocolate & hot milk
(excellent) for my breakfast—Love to Alys8, to the
baby,9 & to all—
Walt Whitman
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Sept. 14, 1887
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Correspondent:
Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe
(1864–1945) was a political activist, art historian, and critic, whom
Whitman once called his "staunchest living woman friend." A scholar of Italian
Renaissance art and a daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith, she would in 1885 marry
B. F. C. "Frank" Costelloe. She had been in contact with many of Whitman's
English friends and would travel to Britain in 1885 to visit many of them,
including Anne Gilchrist shortly before her death. For more, see Christina
Davey, "Costelloe, Mary Whitall Smith (1864–1945)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. This letter is addressed:
Mrs. Mary Whitall Costelloe | 40 Grosvenor Road | the Embankment | London s w |
England. This postal card is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Sep 14 | 1:30 PM | 87.
The envelope contains print text in the lower left-hand corner of Walt Whitman's
address: Walt Whitman, | Camden, | New Jersey, | U.S. America. [back]
- 2. John Addington Symonds
(1840–1893), a prominent biographer, literary critic, and poet in
Victorian England, was author of the seven-volume history Renaissance in Italy, as well as Walt
Whitman—A Study (1893), and a translator of Michelangelo's
sonnets. But in the smaller circles of the emerging upper-class English
homosexual community, he was also well known as a writer of homoerotic poetry
and a pioneer in the study of homosexuality, or sexual inversion as it was then
known. See Andrew C. Higgins, "Symonds, John Addington [1840–1893]," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. The British poet, critic, playwright, and novelist
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) was one of Whitman's
earliest English admirers. At the conclusion of William Blake:
A Critical Essay (1868), Swinburne pointed out similarities between
Whitman and Blake, and praised "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" and "When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," which he termed "the most sweet and
sonorous nocturn ever chanted in the church of the world" (300–303). His
famous lyric "To Walt Whitman in America" is included in Songs
before Sunrise (1871). For the story of Swinburne's veneration of
Whitman and his later recantation, see two essays by Terry L. Meyers, "Swinburne and Whitman: Further Evidence," Walt
Whitman Quarterly Review 14 (Summer 1996), 1–11 and "A
Note on Swinburne and Whitman," Walt Whitman Quarterly
Review 21 (Summer 2003), 38–39. [back]
- 4. Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a
Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and
meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke
claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him
to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany.
Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt
Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one
of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of
Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 5. Whitman is referring to one
of the busts of him made by sculptor Sidney H. Morse. See Whitman's letter to
Robert Pearsall Smith of September 12,
[1887] [back]
- 6. Sidney H. Morse (1832–1903)
was a self-taught sculptor as well as a Unitarian minister and, from 1866 to
1872, editor of The Radical. He visited Whitman in Camden
many times and made various busts of him. Whitman had commented on an earlier
bust by Morse that it was "wretchedly bad." For more on this, see Ruth L. Bohan,
Looking into Walt Whitman: American Art,
1850–1920 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2006), 105–109. [back]
- 7. Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist
(1857–1914), son of Alexander and Anne Gilchrist, was an English painter
and editor of Anne Gilchrist: Her Life and Writings
(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887). For more information, see Marion Walker Alcaro,
"Gilchrist, Herbert Harlakenden (1857–1914)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 8. Alys Smith
(1867–1951) was a daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith and the sister of Mary
Whitall Smith Costelloe. She eventually married the philosopher Bertrand
Russell. [back]
- 9. Rachel Pearsall Conn Costelloe
(1887–1940), known as Ray Strachey, was the first daughter of Mary Whitall
Smith Costelloe. She would later become a feminist writer and politician. [back]