328 Mickle Street—Camden1
Thursday—we have just had dinner & I have come in the front room by the
fire—A deep snow everywhere outside, but comfortable here—the little
canary bird singing blythely & I feeling pretty well for me though indeed as the
hymn says—"Old age is creeping on with its great load of sin."2
I havn't heard from you or seen any of you in some weeks—hope everything goes
on right—Hope you or George3 or both of you will come here
soon & spend some hours & stay to dinner—Mrs. Davis4 spoke of it Thanksgiving Day—& we both would be glad to have you both
come yet—Everything goes now with me about as usual—have not been as
well as usual the last month—send one of Herbert's5 last
letters enclosed—Dr. B[ucke]6 speaks of Harry7 in his last and wants to know if anything has been
done—Love to you and George & Ed8 & all—
The roads and going are dreadful at present—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Susan M. Lamb Stafford
(1833–1910) was the mother of Harry Stafford (1858–1918), who, in
1876, became a close friend of Whitman while working at the printing office of
the Camden New Republic. Whitman regularly visited the
Staffords at their family farm near Kirkwood, New Jersey. Whitman enjoyed the
atmosphere and tranquility that the farm provided and would often stay for weeks
at a time (see David G. Miller, "Stafford, George and Susan M.," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings [New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998], 685).
Notes
- 1. Miller derives his
transcription from a transcript held in The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of
the Papers of Walt Whitman at the Library of Congress. This letter appears to
have been written in December 1887. Harry Stafford was having throat trouble at
the time. Based upon Whitman's letters and the entries in Whitman's Commonplace
Book (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman,
1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), Whitman's income in
1887 amounted to at least $2,575.98, which includes: royalties, $131.91;
lectures, $620.00; sales of books, $95.75; payments for articles and
poems, $233.00; gifts, $1,421.32; and sale of photographs, $74.00.
(As noted in the letter from Whitman to the Editor of The
Critic, December (?), 1886, the figures
for book sales are conjectural, since it is assumed he charged a uniform
price.) [back]
- 2. Whitman is thinking here of
the hymn sometimes called "Calvary," beginning "Come, O my heart," with the
lines "There is no time so good as youth, / To travel this mountain you must
see, / For when old ages comes on, with its great load of sin, / How then canst
thou climb up Calvary." [back]
- 3. George Stafford was the
father of Harry Stafford. [back]
- 4. Mary Oakes Davis (1837 or
1838–1908) was Whitman's housekeeper. For more, see Carol J. Singley,
"Davis, Mary Oakes (1837 or 1838–1908)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 5. 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]
- 6. 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]
- 7. Walt Whitman met the 18-year-old Harry Lamb Stafford
(1858–1918) in 1876, beginning a relationship which was almost entirely
overlooked by early Whitman scholarship, in part because Stafford's name appears
nowhere in the first six volumes of Horace Traubel's With Walt
Whitman in Camden—though it does appear frequently in the last
three volumes, which were published only in the 1990s. Whitman occasionally
referred to Stafford as "My (adopted) son" (as in a December 13, 1876, letter to John H. Johnston), but the relationship
between the two also had a romantic, erotic charge to it. In 1883, Harry married
Eva Westcott. For further discussion of Stafford, see Arnie Kantrowitz, "Stafford, Harry L. (b.1858)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 8. Edwin Stafford (1856–1906) was the brother of
Harry Stafford, a close acquaintance of Whitman. [back]