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Washington, D.C.1
August 31, 1888
My dear Walt:
I got your letter of the 6th, a postal card of the 11th,2 divers newspapers, and day
before yesterday the handsome magazine with the pen-an-ink portrait—a
beautiful piece of work, but a bad likeness—in fact, a caricature, which I
hope, as Voltaire3 said of the "Letter to Posterity," is a
letter that will never reach its address. He has given you a wad for a mouth and
made you squint like one of George Borrow's4 gipsies. Drat loc.03347.004.jpg his
imperence!
I have had it on my mind for a month to write, but have had a bad time. I thought of
you anxiously during the abominable swelter of August, and felt rejoiced when the
cool spell came, hoping it would do you good, though I got a cold out of it, by ill
luck, which pulled me back considerably.
Your letter was very comforting. I shall hope to hear good news of you. I sent your
messages to Dr. Channing,5
loc.03347.005.jpg Grace6 and
Stedman.7 No news has reached me about the calendar, but I
hope it is all right. Grace is expected here in a few days.
Who is it writes of you so friendlily in the editorial notes of Lippincott?
I shall hope all good things for November Boughs.8 I wish it
were further along.
I have been using the spare hours when I have felt less weak and woe-begone than I
usually do, and less weighted down with office work, to scratch loc.03347.006.jpg off in pencil a
defence of Donnelly's9 book for the N. A. Review, if I can only
get it in. It has been a bad task, but a duty, for the reviewers have been
outrageous.
My hope and heart are high for you. If the weather will only let up!
Good bye. I find that I can't write much, as I hoped to when I began. As the Indian
said to Roger Williams10 when they landed at Seekonk, "What
cheer, brother, what cheer!"—meaning, all cheer!11
Affectionately,
W.D.O'C
Walt Whitman.
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See notes Sept 1 1888
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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:
Walt Whitman | 328 Mickle Street, | Camden, | New Jersey. It is postmarked: Aug
31. [back]
- 2. O'Connor may be referring to
Whitman's letter of August 6, 1888. Whitman's
letter of August 11, 1888 may not be extant. [back]
- 3. François-Marie Arouet
(1694–1778), primarily known by his pen name Voltaire, was a French
Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Voltaire often used satire to
criticize the Catholic Church and governmental censorship. [back]
- 4. George Henry Borrow
(1803–1881) was an English author, best known for The
Zincali (1841), Lavengro: The scholar, the gypsy, the
priest (1851), and The Romany Rye (1857), all of
which are novels based on his experiences traveling across Europe. Borrow's
writing is particularly fascinated with Romani life and culture. [back]
- 5. William F. Channing
(1820–1901), son of William Ellery Channing, and also Ellen O'Connor's
brother-in-law, was by training a doctor, but devoted most of his life to
scientific experiments. With Moses G. Farmer, he perfected the first fire-alarm
system. He was the author of Notes on the Medical Applications
of Electricity (Boston: Daniel Davis, Jr., and Joseph M. Wightman,
1849). Ellen O'Connor visited him frequently in Providence, Rhode Island, and
Whitman stayed at his home in October, 1868. [back]
- 6. Grace Ellery Channing
(1862–1937) was a writer and editor. She was the niece of William D.
O'Connor. In 1894 she married artist Charles Walter Stetson, soon after his
divorce from Channing's lifelong friend, writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. After
her initial refusal to ever read Whitman's work, Channing became enthralled by
the poet's words and, in 1887, had the idea of creating an illustrated calendar
with excerpts from Leaves of Grass. The illustrations
would be made by Walter Stetson. The project was never realized. For more on the
calendar project, see see Joann Krieg, "Grace Ellery
Channing and the Whitman Calendar," Walt Whitman
Quarterly Review 12:4 (1995), 252–256. Channing published her own
volume of Whitman-inspired poetry titled Sea-Drift in
1899. [back]
- 7. Edmund Clarence Stedman
(1833–1908) was a man of diverse talents. He edited for a year the Mountain County Herald at Winsted, Connecticut, wrote
"Honest Abe of the West," presumably Lincoln's first campaign song, and served
as correspondent of the New York World from 1860 to 1862.
In 1862 and 1863 he was a private secretary in the Attorney General's office
until he entered the firm of Samuel Hallett and Company in September, 1863. The
next year he opened his own brokerage office. He published many volumes of poems
and was an indefatigable compiler of anthologies, among which were Poets of America, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1885) and A Library of American Literature from the Earliest
Settlement to the Present Time, 11 vols. (New York: C. L. Webster,
1889–90). For more, see Donald Yannella, "Stedman, Edmund Clarence (1833–1908)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 8. Whitman was working on his
book November Boughs at this time, and it was published
in October 1888 by Philadelphia publisher David McKay. For more information on
the book, see James E. Barcus Jr., "November Boughs [1888]," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 9. 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]
- 10. Roger Williams (c.1603–1683)
was an English Reformed theologian and founder of the colony of Providence
Plantation in 1636. Williams was also an early abolitionist, and advocated for
fair treatment of foreign and indigenous peoples in the British colonies. For
more on Williams, see James P. Byrd Jr., The Challenges of
Roger Williams: Religious Liberty, Violent Persecution, and the Bible
(Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002). [back]
- 11. When Roger Williams was
exiled by the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his unorthodox views, he began to
build a settlement on the Seekonk River in the winter of 1635–1636, but
was told by Colony authorities that he needed to cross the Seekonk to be outside
Colony jurisdiction. When he and his followers arrived on the south side of the
river, so the story goes, he was greeted by a group of Narragansett natives, who
shouted "What Cheer Netop!" "Netop" meant "friend," and "What Cheer" was a
common English greeting of the time, asking "what good tidings do you bring?"
Williams would soon found the settlement of Providence. [back]