Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

Eiselein, Gregory

Belasco, Susan, Ed Folsom, and Kenneth M. Price, eds. Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays [review]

Folsom, Ed

Whitman's Manuscript Draft of "Small Memoranda"

Fills in biographical background on Whitman’s older brother Jesse, with new information on the possible causes of his violent temper and with new evidence that Jesse was on the crew of two ships in 1839 and 1841

Roper, Robert

English

Jesse Whitman, Seafarer

Miller, Jon

Whitman, Walt. Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times., Ed. Christopher Castiglia and Glenn Hendler [review]

Notes several previously unrecorded newspaper accounts of Oscar Wilde's 1882 visit to Whitman in Camden, including an extended account in the Cincinnati Gazette a month after the visit

Scharnhorst, Gary

116
NOTES
WalT WhiTmaN aNd OScar WildE: a BiOgraphical 
NOTE
Oscar Wilde’s esteem for Whitman and his poetry is well-known. as Wilde told 
Whitman when they met in camden on January 18, 1882, his mother had 
purchased a copy of Leaves of Grass around 1866 and “read passages from it 
to him,” so he had been acquainted with the poet “almost from the cradle.”1 
Virtually everything that is known about this meeting was reported by Whitman 
in an interview with the philadelphia Press published the next day. Whitman 
was so pleased with this article that he sent copies of it to several friends.2  To 
date, Wilde was known to speak publicly about their meeting only once, in an 
interview with the Boston Herald some ten days later. “i spent the most charm-
ing day i have spent in america” with Whitman, he said. “he is the grandest 
man i have ever seen. The simplest, most natural, and strongest character i have 
ever met in my life. i regard him as one of those wonderful, large, entire men 
who might have lived in any age, and is not peculiar to any one people. Strong, 
true, and perfectly sane: the closest approach to the greek we have yet had in 
modern times. probably he is dreadfully misunderstood.”3 
in fact, Wilde mentioned Whitman often during his North american lecture 
tour in 1882. in St. louis on February 25, for example, he declared that Whit-
man was “a great writer. . . . There is more of the greek residing in him than in 
any modern poet. his poetry is homeric in its large pure delight of men and 
woman, and in the joy the writer has and shows through it all in the sunshine 
and breeze of outdoor life.”4  in San Jose on april 3 and in Salt lake city on 
april 11, he defended Whitman as the finest american poet,5 and in halifax 
in mid-October he made a similar point: “Walt Whitman if not a poet is a man 
who sounds a strong note. he writes neither prose nor poetry but something 
of his own that is unique. he is one of your greatest men.”6 Wilde apparently 
reminisced about his visit to Whitman in camden at greater length only once, 
however—while in cincinnati on February 20. “The room which has most im-
pressed me” in america, he said, “[is] a little bare whitewashed room” upstairs 
at 431 Stevens Street “in camden town, where i met Walt Whitman, whom i 
admire intensely.”  he then added:
There was a big chair for him and a little stool for me, a pine table on which was a copy 
of Shakespeare, a translation of dante, and a cruse of water. Sunlight filled the room, and 
over the roofs of the houses opposite were the masts of the ships that lay in the river. But 
then the poet needs no rose to blossom on his walls for him, because he carries nature 
always in his heart. This room contains all the simple conditions for art—sunlight, good 
air, pure water, a sight of ships, and the poet’s works.7 
117
These comments—which echo his advocacy of the æsthetic movement in his lec-
ture “The decoration of houses”—have been lost to scholarship until now.
Because so little has been known about Wilde’s visits to Whitman, including 
their second meeting in early may,8 some of their biographers speculate that 
the poets were later estranged.9 On the contrary: Whitman apparently sent an 
inscribed copy of November Boughs to Wilde in 1888—a presentation copy sold 
a decade later when Wilde’s library was liquidated for debts while he was in 
prison.10  Wilde favorably reviewed the book in the January 25, 1889, issue of 
the Pall Mall Gazette.11  On his part, Whitman always defended Wilde against 
the slings and arrows of his detractors. as he told horace Traubel a few weeks 
after the appearance of Wilde’s review, “Wilde was very friendly to me—was and 
is, i think—both Oscar and his mother—lady Wilde—and thanks be most to 
the mother, that greater, more important individual.12 Oscar was here—came 
to see me—and he impressed me a strong, able fellow, too.”13  if only all poets 
were so friendly. 
University of New Mexico Gary ScharnhorSt
NOTES
1 “Oscar Wilde and Whitman,” philadelphia Press (January 19, 1882), 8; rpt. in 
Oscar Wilde: Interviews and Recollections, ed. E. h. mikhail (New York: macmillan, 
1979), 46-48.
2 Daybooks and Notebooks, ed. William White (New York: New York University press, 
1977), 2:278. 
3 “Oscar Wilde,” Boston Herald (January 29, 1882), 7. a reporter for the Boston Globe 
also present for the interview was more succinct. he quoted Wilde to this effect: “Of 
all your authors, i consider Walt Whitman far the grandest and noblest. many of his 
lines are like a blast fresh from Olympus. i have met him and enjoyed his society more 
than words can express” (“The Æsthetic apostle” [January 29, 1882], 5).
4 “Oscar as he is,” St. Louis Republican (February 26, 1882), 13. 
5 “Oscar Wilde,” San Jose Herald (april 4, 1882), 3.
6 “The apostle of Beauty in Nova Scotia,” halifax Morning Herald (October 10, 
1882), 2.
7 “With mr. Oscar Wilde,” Cincinnati Gazette (February 21, 1882), 10; rpt. in “Walt 
Whitman’s Æsthetic den,” Macon Weekly Telegraph (march 2, 1882), 2.
8 Jerome loving, Walt Whitman: Song of Himself (Berkeley: University of california 
press, 1999),  412-413.  
9 See, for example, richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (New York: Knopf, 1988), 164, 
and david S. reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America (New York: Knopf, 1995), 539. 
118
10 The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. merlin holland and rupert hart-davis 
(New York: henry holt, 2000), 713.
11 Oscar Wilde, “The gospel according to Walt Whitman,” Pall Mall Gazette (Janu-
ary 25, 1889), 3. 
12 lady Jane Francesca Wilde (1826-1895), aka “Speranza,” was a prominent irish 
nationalist poet.
13 With Walt Whitman in Camden, ed. gertrude Traubel (carbondale: Southern il-
linois University press, 1964), 5:284.
AN UNPUBLISHED WHITMAN MANUSCRIPT ON 
EMERSON
Kendall reed has recently added an unpublished Whitman manuscript to his 
collection of Whitman materials.  it is a short note about the poet’s reading 
of Emerson’s later work.  here is a transcription of the manuscript, which is 
reprinted on the back cover of this issue of WWQR: “it is very plain ^after^ 
reading Emerson’s early forenoon essays, and then those of his elder age that 
the latter are not the ^consecutive^ fruits or crowning results of the former”.   
The manuscript is undated and is mounted in a frame with a copy of an 
1871 photo of the poet taken by gurney and Son, along with a note in an un-
known hand that reads: “a bit of Walt Whitman mS. / From / J. h. Johnston 
New York / To his grace, the archbishop / of canterbury / 1904.”  Johnston 
(1837-1919) was a New York jeweler and a loyal friend and supporter of the 
poet; Whitman visited Johnston’s home frequently in the 1870s and 1880s.  The 
archbishop of canterbury in 1904 was randall Thomas davidson, 1st Baron 
davidson of lambeth (1848-1930); he served as archbishop from 1903 to 1928. 
Johnston’s relationship to the archbishop is unknown, but the archbishop did 
visit the United States in 1904 to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of 
the Episcopal cathedral in Quebec and to attend the triennial general convention 
of the protestant Episcopal church, held in Boston that October.  he arrived 
in New York in late august, where he was met by a distinguished group of New 
Yorkers and taken by train, in J. pierpont morgan’s private car, to Quebec. 
While in North america, the archbishop toured canada and the United States, 
visiting montreal, Toronto, Niagara Falls, albany, and Washington, d.c., where 
he met with president Theodore roosevelt.  during his stay, the archbishop 
came to New York and attended several banquets with prominent churchgoers, 
receiving many gifts.  it is likely that this Whitman memento from Johnston 
was one of them.
The manuscript is illuminating because it is one of a number of prose 
fragments in which Whitman expresses some deep reservations about Emerson. 
One of those manuscripts was printed in WWQR in the Summer/Fall 2000 
issue; in that fragment, Whitman questions Emerson’s “sense of deity” and 


Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde: A Biographical Note

Examines the significance of the cemetery for Whitman, seeking to "locate the roots of Whitman's idyllic poetic space in the real space of the rural cemetery" by examining nineteenth-century "cemetery literature" and by analyzing how rural cemeteries--particularly Brooklyn's Mount Auburn and Green-wood cemeteries--were covered in periodicals of the era, including in Whitman's own journalism; argues that Whitman made "innovative use of the rural cemetery" in his poetry

Henderson, Desirée

"What is the grass?": The Roots of Walt Whitman's Cemetery Meditation

Back Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 26, no. 2

Front Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 26, no. 2

Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Spring 2008

Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Fall 2008

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