Camden1
March 19 '89
Have rec'd the Saturday Review with notice (bad enough yet
essentially taking back their old insults & charges) in wh' y'r name & Dr
B[ucke]'s2 are flung about3—will
probably send it to you to-morrow—(Horace T4 has taken it
away temporarily)—Nothing new with me—if anything different it is I am
feeling easier—a dark half raining warmish day here—with me sitting the
same alone in big chair—sleep & eat fairly yet—Best love—
Walt Whitman
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:
Wm D O'Connor | 1015 O Street N W | Washington D
C. It is postmarked: (Cam(?)) | Mar (?) | 8 PM | 89. [back]
- 2. 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]
- 3. The Saturday Review of Poetics, Literature, Science, and Art on March 2,
1889, was not nearly so intemperate as Whitman alleged; it would have none of
the excesses of O'Connor and Bucke, but the final paragraph was not without
point: "No; let us, if it be ours to lecture on poetry, hold up Walt Whitman as
much as any one pleases for an awful example of the fate that waits, and justly
waits, on those who think (idle souls!) that there is such a thing as progress
in poetry, and that because you have steam-engines and other things which
Solomon and Sappho had not, you may, nay must, neglect the lessons of Sappho and
Solomon. But let us none the less confess that this strayed reveller, this
dubiously well-bred truant in poetry, is a poet still, and one of the remarkably
few poets that his own country has produced." An earlier notice of Whitman
appeared in the journal on May 2, 1868 (see footnote 6 to Whitman's letter to
John Camden Hotten of April 24–25,
1868. [back]
- 4. 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]