loc.03754.001_large.jpg
323 N 6.1
Tuesday
Dear Walt
I have been long wanting (longing) to write, just such an article as Horace L. Traubel's2
about you in Mch Lippincott3:
It is sound and perfect as a star—the best brochure anent Whitman ever produced—
Yours
JMS.
loc.03754.002_large.jpg
see notes Mar 9 1891
Correspondent:
James Matlack Scovel
(1833–1904) began to practice law in Camden in 1856. During the Civil War,
he was in the New Jersey legislature and became a colonel in 1863. He campaigned
actively for Horace Greeley in 1872, and was a special agent for the U.S.
Treasury during Chester Arthur's administration. In the 1870s, Whitman
frequently went to Scovel's home for Sunday breakfast (Whitman's Commonplace
Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman,
1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). For a description of
these breakfasts, see Walt Whitman's Diary in Canada, ed.
William Sloane Kennedy (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1904), 59–60. For Scovel,
see George R. Prowell's The History of Camden County, New
Jersey (Philadelphia: L. J. Richards, 1886).
Notes
- 1. This postal card is
addressed: Walt Whitman | 328 Mickle St. | Camden NJ.
It is postmarked: CAMDEN, N.J. | MAR 3 | 10AM | 91. [back]
- 2. Horace L. Traubel (1858–1919)
was an American essayist, poet, and magazine publisher. He is best remembered as
the literary executor, biographer, and self-fashioned "spirit child" of Walt
Whitman. During the late 1880s and until Whitman's death in 1892, Traubel visited
the poet virtually every day and took thorough notes of their conversations,
which he later transcribed and published in three large volumes entitled With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906, 1908, & 1914).
After his death, Traubel left behind enough manuscripts for six more volumes of
the series, the final two of which were published in 1996. For more on Traubel,
see Ed Folsom, "Traubel, Horace L. [1858–1919]," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. In March 1891, Lippincott's Magazine published "Old Age Echoes," a cycle of four poems including "Sounds of the
Winter," "The Unexpress'd," "Sail Out for Good, Eidólon Yacht," and "After
the Argument," accompanied by an extensive autobiographical note called "Some
Personal and Old-Age Memoranda." Also appearing in that issue was a piece on
Whitman entitled, "Walt Whitman: Poet and Philosopher and Man" by Horace
Traubel. [back]