If you are the man I take you to be you will like to get this letter.
if you are not I don't care whether you like it or not, and only ask you to put it
into the fire without reading any farther. But
I believe you will like it. I dont think there is a man living, even you who are above the prejudices of the
class of small-minded men—who wouldn't like to get a letter from a younger
man, a stranger from across the world—a man living in an atmosphere prejudiced
to the truths you sing and your manner of singing them. The idea that arises in my
mind is whether there is a man living who would have the pluck to burn a letter in
which he felt the smallest atom of interest without reading it. I believe you would
and that you believe you would
yourself—You
can burn this now if you like and test yourself and all I will ask for my trouble of
writing this letter, which for all I can tell you may light your pipe with or apply
to some more ignoble purpose—is that you will in some manner let me know that
my words have tested your impatience. Put it in the fire if you like—but if
you do you will miss the pleasure of this next sentence which ought to be that you
have conquered an unworthy impulse. A man who is uncertain of his own strength might try to encourage himself by a piece of bravo, but a
man who can write, as you have written, the most candid words that ever fell from
the lips of mortal man can have no fear for his own strength.—a man to whose
candour Rousseau's Confessions1 is
reticence—can have no fear for his own strength. If you have gone this far you
may read the letter and I feel in writing now that I am talking to you. If I were
before your face I would like to shake hands with you for I feel that I would like
you—I would like to call you Comrade and to talk syr.00005.002_large.jpg to you as men who are not poets do
not often talk.2 I think that at first I would be ashamed for a man cannot in a moment break the
habit of comparative reticence that has become a second nature to him; but I know I
would not be long ashamed to be natural before
you. You are a true man and I would
like to be one myself and so I would feel towards you as a brother and as a pupil to
his master. In this age no man becomes worthy of
the name without an effort. You have shaken off the shackles and your wings are
free. I have the shackles on my shoulders still.—but I have no wings. If you are going
to read this letter any further I should tell you that I am not prepared to "give up
all else" so far as words go. The only thing I am prepared to give up is
prejudice—and before I knew you I had begun to throw overboard my
cargo—but it is not all gone yet. I do not know how you will take this letter.
I have not adressed you in any form as I have heard that you dislike to a certain degree the
conventional forms in
letters. I am writing to you because you are different from other men. if you were the same
as the mass I would not write at all as it is I must either call you Walt Whitman or
not call you at all—and I have chosen the latter course.
I do not know if it is usual for you to get letters from utter strangers who have
not even the claim of literary brotherhood to write to you—if it is you must
be frightfully tormented with letters and I am sorry to have written this. I have
however the claim of liking you—for your words are your own soul and even if
you do not read my letter it is no less a pleasure to me to write it. Shelley3 wrote to William Godwin4 and
they became friends. I am not Shelley and you are not Godwin & so I will only
hope that some time
syr.00005.003_large.jpg I may meet you face to face and perhaps shake hands with
you—If I ever do it will be one of the greatest pleasures of my life. If you
care to know who it is that writes this my name is Abraham Stoker (Junior). My friends call me Bram. I live at no 43 Harcourt St
Dublin. I am a clerk in the service of the Crown on a small salary. I am twenty
four years old. Have been champion at our athletic sports (Trinity College Dublin)
and have won about a dozen cups. I have also been President of the College
Philosophical Society and an art and theatrical critic of a daily paper. I am six
feet two inches high and 12 stone weight naked and used to be 41 or 42 inches round
the chest. I am ugly but strong and determined and have a large bump over my
eyebrows. I have a heavy jaw and a big mouth with thick lips—sensitive
nostrils—a snub nose and straight hair. I am equal in temper and cool in
disposition and have a large amount of self control, and am naturally secretive to
the world. I take a delight in letting people I don't like—people of mean or
cruel or sneaking or cowardly disposition—see the worst side of me. I have a
large number of acquaintances and some five or six friends—all of which latter
body care much for me. Now I have told you all I know about myself. I know you from your works and your photograph; and if I know anything about you I
think you would like to know of the personal appearance of your correspondents. You
are I know a keen physiognomist. I am a believer of the science myself and am in an
humble way a practicer of it. I was not disappointed when I saw your
photograph—your late one in especial. The way I came to
syr.00005.004_large.jpg like you was this. A notice of your poems appeared some two years ago or more in the "Temple Bar"
magazine.5 I glanced at it and took its dictum as final, and
laughed at you among my friends. I say it to my own shame but not to my regret for
it has taught me a lesson to last my life out—without ever having seen your
poems. More than a year after I heard two men in College talking of you, one of them
had your book (Rossetti's Edition)6 and was reading aloud some
passages at which both laughed. They chose only those passages which are most
foreign to British ears and made fun of them. Something struck me that I had judged
you hastily. I took home the volume and read it far into the night. Since then I
have to thank you for many happy hours, for I have read your poems with my door
locked late at night, and I have read them on the sea shore where I could look all
round me and see no more sign of human life than the ships out at sea: and here I
often found myself waking up from a reverie with the book lying open before me. I
love all poetry and high generous thoughts make the tears rush to my eyes—but
sometimes a word or a phrase of yours takes me away from the world around me and
places me in an ideal land surrounded by realities more than any poem I ever read.
Last year I was sitting on the beach on a summer's day reading your preface to the
Leaves of Grass as printed in Rossetti's Edt., for Rossetti is all I have got till I
get the complete set of your works which I have ordered
syr.00005.005_large.jpg from America). One thought struck
me and I pondered over it for several hours—"the weather-beaten vessels old
ships entering new ports"7 you who wrote the words know them better than I do: and to
you who sing of your own land of Progress the words have a meaning that I can only
imagine. But be assured of this Walt Whitman that a man of less than half your own
age reared a conservative in a conservative country and who has always heard your
name cried down by the great mass of people who mention it here felt his heart leap
towards you across the Atlantic, and his soul swelling at the words or rather the
thoughts. It is vain for me to try to quote any instances of what
thoughts of yours I like best, for I like them all and you must feel that you are
reading the true words of one who feels with you. You see I have called you by your
name I have been more candid with you—have said more about myself to you than
I have ever said to any one before—You will not be angry with me now if you
have read so far you will not laugh at me for writing thus to you. It was with no
small effort that I began to write and I feel reluctant to stop, but I must not tire
you any more. If you ever would care to have more you can imagine, for you have a great heart, how
much pleasure it would be to me to write more to you, how sweet a thing it is for a
strong healthy man with a woman's eyes and a child's wishes to feel that he can
speak so to a man who can be if he wishes father and brother and wife to his soul.
I don't think you will laugh Walt Whitman, nor despise me, but at all events I thank you for all
the love and sympathy you have given me in common with my kind.
Correspondent:
Abraham ("Bram") Stoker (1847–1912) was the
author of Dracula, secretary to Sir Henry Irving, and
editor of Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906).
As a young man, on February 18, 1872, Stoker wrote a personal, eccentric letter
to Walt Whitman, which he did not send until February
14, 1876 (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in
Camden, Tuesday, February 19, 1889). In the earlier letter he had written:
"How sweet a thing it is for a strong healthy man with a woman's eyes and a
child's wishes to feel that he can speak so to a man [Walt Whitman] who can be
if he wishes, father, and brother and wife to his soul" (Charles E. Feinberg
Collection; Horace Traubel, ed., With Walt Whitman in
Camden, Wednesday, May 15, 1889). Stoker visited Whitman in 1884 (Gay Wilson
Allen, The Solitary Singer (1955), 516).