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Anderton, near Chorley.
Lancashire, England1
2 Jan 92.
Dear Walt,
Just a few lines to express my constant thought of you and my dearest love.
After the suspense of the last two weeks I am heartily glad that the beginning
of the New Year finds you rallying from your sickness & spared to us once more.2
God bless you & our best love to you.
Horace3 kindly sent us a cable message each day during the worst period, &
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we at once communicated the news to your chief English friends.
I have had letters in return from most of them including Symonds.4
We are all pleased to know your improved condition.
I have just received a post card from Carpenter5 who is
spending a few days in Kent & London. I have heard from him several times lately.
All going on much as usual here. Yesterday, (New Year's Day) was a perfect day—the
finest I have seen since my return.
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I write this rather hurriedly. But with love to you & best wishes from
my inmost heart.
I remain always
Yours affectionately
JW Wallace
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Correspondent:
James William Wallace
(1853–1926), of Bolton, England, was an architect and great admirer of
Whitman. Wallace, along with Dr. John Johnston (1852–1927), a physician in
Bolton, founded the "Bolton College" of English admirers of the poet. Johnston
and Wallace corresponded with Whitman and with Horace Traubel and other members
of the Whitman circle in the United States, and they separately visited the poet
and published memoirs of their trips in John Johnston and James William Wallace,
Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 by Two
Lancashire Friends (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917). For more
information on Wallace, see Larry D. Griffin, "Wallace, James William (1853–1926)," 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 St | Camden | New Jersey | U.S.
America. It is postmarked: Chorley | [illegible] | Washington | B | Jan 2 | 92; New York | Jan | 9; D | 92; Paid | H
| All; Camden, N.J. | Jan 11 | 6 AM | 92 | Rec'd. [back]
- 2. On December 17, 1891,
Whitman had come down with a chill and was suffering from congestion in his
right lung. Although the poet's condition did improve in January 1892, he would
never recover. He was confined to his bed, and his physicians, Dr. Daniel
Longaker of Philadelphia and Dr. Alexander McAlister of Camden, provided care
during his final illness. Whitman died on March 26, 1892. [back]
- 3. 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]
- 4. 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]
- 5. Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) was an English
writer and Whitman disciple. Like many other young disillusioned Englishmen, he
deemed Whitman a prophetic spokesman of an ideal state cemented in the bonds of
brotherhood. Carpenter—a socialist philosopher who in his book Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure posited civilization as
a "disease" with a lifespan of approximately one thousand years before human
society cured itself—became an advocate for same-sex love and a
contributing early founder of Britain's Labour Party. On July 12, 1874, he wrote for the first time to Whitman: "Because you
have, as it were, given me a ground for the love of men I thank you continually
in my heart . . . . For you have made men to be not ashamed of the noblest
instinct of their nature." For further discussion of Carpenter, see Arnie
Kantrowitz, "Carpenter, Edward [1844–1929]," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]