I got your letter of April 12, and since, your postal cards of April 19 and 26
respectively.2 Also the envelope containing
Kennedy's3 admirable review of the Longfellow memoir. I have
been proposing to write to you every day, but it is not easy, I am so poorly. My
lameness is very bad, and I am very exhausted before many hours pass each day. I
have piles of unanswered letters. My special trouble now is what they call schlerosis—an induration of the lower part of the
spinal syr_kc.00085.jpg cord, a bequest
of the inflammation caused by the nervous prostration. This it is which makes me so
lame and strengthless, and unless the doctor can break it up (he is using
electricity) the result, he tells me, will be paralysis. However, this is some way
off, and I'm not dead yet!
John Burroughs4 has been here, and gives me an account of your
health, which makes me feel very badly.5 He told me
especially of the trouble I share with you—constipation; and this you must not, Walt, allow to continue. The very worst aperient
you could use will do you syr_kc.00086.jpg less harm than constipation. But there are aperients which are harmless, or
almost nearly so, and I send you a packet of one which answers this description. It
is known as Liquorice Powder, and is excellent. The dose is one teaspoonful in, say,
a half goblet of water, when going to bed, to be taken when necessary. You will find it
easy and excellent. It is composed only of powdered liquorice and sulpher, and is
really without bad effect. Please try it. I have never been troubled with
costiveness in all my life, but now, like yourself, I have a
syr_kc.00087.jpg partial paralysis of the bowels, and
must, under medical orders, resort to artificial means, and this is my remedy.
Anything is better than constipation. The physical feelings it induces are dreadful,
to say nothing of the constant danger to life.
I was delighted beyond measure at the success of your lecture. I wish I could have been there. The account in the Press was splendid. Great are Talcott Williams6 and Thomas Donaldson,7 and blessed be their names.
I had a letter from Dr. Bucke at London. He seems to be having a good time.
I am glad you liked the little book. If I could only have written it over, I would
have made it fuller and better. But when the time came for publishing, I was too ill
to write.—I am obliged to you for the notice in the North
American (G.E.M.). It lets out the delicious fact that White had seen the
article—probably some magazine that had it, broke faith, and showed it to
him—and so he got a full excoriation before crossing Styx, for after he died, I
took out the severest parts from the MS. Big rascal! He
well syr_kc.00089.jpg knew the baseness
of his attack on the Promus book8. I have the best of reasons for believing that he
was secretly a Baconian, but with his editions of Shakespeare, etc., at stake, the
balance was on the other side of the ledger for him.
I am much grieved to learn that Mrs. Pott9 is seriously ill. Nervous prostration. Between her tremendous labors on the Bacon subject, her large household duties, and her ministrations among the London poor, she has broken down. I feel very anxious about her.
Donnelly's10 boom increases. There is an article in the 19th Century Magazine on his cipher, which will make an excitement and greatly raise his credit. He writes me that he expects to be ready to publish by June.
We have had strange weather here. Cold and hot by turns, and rain without stint. Did you see the electric storm on Saturday night? I never witnessed such magnificent lightning.
I hope this will find you in good time.
Always Affectionately WDO'Connor.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).