Camden
P M Jan: 8 '91
Personal | My dear J M S
If we are going into this thing1 my notion is to do it as thoroughly as consistent
& tempered by publishing a monthly mag: for popular reading. My suggestion w'd
be (if you feel to give space enough) to print after that "personal memoranda" of
mine, the three pieces as follows:
- the Quaker bit
- the piece ab't L of G. in science
- & then
Traubel's2 piece, (pretty high handed & eulogistic as it
is)3
each of these three pieces signed by its author's name (now that O'Connor4 and Mrs: Gilchrist5 are dead those three
are perhaps my best representative adherents, illustrators & longest knowers,
personal & literary)—H T has been & is faithful & invaluable to
me—I have cull'd out some parts of his MS too eulogistic & transcendental
& if you note any more, do so further—I have been clear to supervise all
this matter not only f'm the self-description & self-love points, but also of
the point of view of an article for a monthly mag: for miscellaneous readers.
H T's MS will probably come to you forthwith—Let me see good proofs in good
time.6
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Joseph Marshall Stoddart
(1845–1921) published Stoddart's Encyclopaedia
America, established Stoddart's Review in 1880,
which was merged with The American in 1882, and became
the editor of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1886. On
January 11, 1882, Whitman received an
invitation from Stoddart through J. E. Wainer, one of his associates, to dine
with Oscar Wilde on January 14 (Clara Barrus, Whitman and
Burroughs—Comrades [Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931],
235n).
Notes
- 1. See Stoddart's January 5, 1891 letter to Whitman for more
information about Stoddart's intent to publish works by and about Whitman in the
March 1891 issues of Lippincott's. This is the poet's
response to Stoddart's plan for publication. [back]
- 2. 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]
- 3. Whitman is referring to
William Sloane Kennedy's "Walt Whitman's Quaker Traits" (but he probably meant
the unprinted "Walt Whitman's Dutch Traits"), Richard Maurice Bucke's "Leaves of Grass and Modern Science," and Horace Traubel's
biographical piece. As usual, Whitman was carefully supervising
publication. [back]
- 4. 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). [back]
- 5. Anne Burrows Gilchrist
(1828–1885) was the author of one of the first significant pieces of
criticism on Leaves of Grass, titled "A Woman's Estimate
of Walt Whitman (From Late Letters by an English Lady to W. M. Rossetti)," The Radical 7 (May 1870), 345–59. Gilchrist's long
correspondence with Whitman indicates that she had fallen in love with the poet
after reading his work; when the pair met in 1876 when she moved to
Philadelphia, Whitman never fully returned her affection, although their
friendship deepened after that meeting. For more information on their
relationship, see Marion Walker Alcaro, "Gilchrist, Anne Burrows (1828–1885)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 6. In March 1891, Lippincott's Magazine published "Old Age Echoes," a cycle of four poems including "Sounds of the
Winter," "The Unexpress'd," "Sail Out for Good, Eidólon Yacht," and "After
the Argument," accompanied by an extensive autobiographical note called "Some
Personal and Old-Age Memoranda." Also appearing in that issue was a piece on
Whitman entitled, "Walt Whitman: Poet and Philosopher and Man" by Horace
Traubel. [back]