Not a word from Balestier2 since I wrote to you3 a week or two since, dear Walt Whitman. So last night I wrote to stir him up, having got instructions from the Postmaster General to start at once, on business, to Paris & Rome. I shall be away two or three weeks. I hoped to have seen him before I went; but you will see how matters stand from the reply of his Secretary overleaf. I don't think it's of much use to see either Heinemann4 or Waugh;5 so I conclude to put it off till I return, in hopes that Balestier may be all right again by then. I have fair news of you from Traubel.6 Excuse brevity & haste.7
With affectionate respect H. Buxton Forman loc.02106.002_large.jpg loc.02106.003_large.jpgI have8 no instructions for this; but expect to get useful information, at last, from B.—tho not from H. or W.
HBF loc.02106.004_large.jpg loc.02106.005_large.jpg loc.02106.006_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Henry Buxton Forman (1842–1917), also known as
Harry Buxton Forman, was most notably the biographer and editor of Percy Shelley
and John Keats. On February 21, 1872, Buxton sent
a copy of R. H. Horne's The Great Peace-Maker: A Sub-marine
Dialogue (London, 1872) to Whitman. This poetic account of the laying
of the Atlantic cable has a foreword written by Forman. After his death,
Forman's reputation declined primarily because, in 1934, booksellers Graham
Pollard and John Carter published An Enquiry into the Nature
of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets, which exposed Forman as a
forger of many first "private" editions of poetry.