Walt Whitman by Dr. William Reeder, 1891

Dr. William Reeder was a Philadelphia physician and admirer of Whitman. On May 24, 1891, Horace Traubel recorded Reeder’s visit the previous night, when he took “flash pictures in front and back bedrooms” (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, May 24, 1891). Of Reeder himself, Whitman remarked: "I liked him—felt that he attracted me—he has a clear, transparent nature—that subtle best thing in a young man, dear to me beyond speech" (Monday, April 27, 1891). In 1891, Reeder took photos of the poet's tomb at Camden's Harleigh Cemetery. Whitman appreciated the photographer's talent, telling Traubel that Reeder was "quite an artist," and that he possessed "taste" and a "good eye!" (Wednesday, July 8, 1891).

In the smaller, more faded of the surviving photographs, the legendary chaos that surrounded Whitman in his last years is visible in the confusion of manuscripts and crumpled newspapers piled under and around his rocking chair (see also Jeannette Gilder's 1891 photograph of the poet). Whitman likened the mass of paper to a sea and resisted efforts of his housekeeper and friends to sort it out. Whenever pressed, he always insisted that whatever he needed surfaced eventually.

In his Complete Prose Works , Whitman describes his room as an "old ship's cabin," writing that the floor is "cover'd by a deep litter of books, papers, magazines, thrown-down letters and circulars, rejected manuscripts, memoranda, bits of light or strong twine, a bundle to be 'express'd,' and two or three venerable scrap books" (517). Something in the disorder of his papers seemed almost to mirror Whitman’s aesthetic of pastiche and all-inclusiveness. Dr. John Johnston, founder of the "Bolton College" of Whitman admirers, described the "literary chaos" as a "kosmos" (loc.02463).

For more information on Dr. William Reeder, see "Notes on Whitman's Photographers." For a detailed description of Whitman's room, see John C. Broderick, "The Greatest Whitman Collector and the Greatest Whitman Collection," The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 109–128.

This and another photograph from the sitting have been wrongly attributed to Thomas Eakins in previous scholarship.