![]() We are deeply indebted to Robert Burton, director of the Fellowship of Friends to William Bentley, the publisher to Charles Feinberg, whose splendid collection of Whitman materials, now in the Library of Congress, includes Traubel's manuscript and to Professor Ed Folsom, who wrote the foreword to this volume. The completion of this series has been a collaborative effort on the part of many people over the course of many years. In a few cases, a word or phrase has been inserted in brackets to complete an otherwise unintelligible sentence, and the punctuation has sometimes been adjusted to assist readability. Like the editors of the previous volumes-Anne Traubel, Gertrude Traubel, Sculley Bradley, and William White-we have presented Traubel's manuscript as it was written. I have never lost sight of his command of commands: "Whatever you do do not prettify me." He was afraid of the man who would make too much of him. Whitman was not afraid of the man who would make too little of him. I have had no disposition since to do what I had no time to do then. It occurs here in the rude dress natural to the incidents that produced it. That is why I have not fooled with its text. ![]() I have let him remain the chief figure in his own story. The worst truth no less than the best truth. "You do the thing just as I should wish it to be done." He always imposed it upon me to tell the truth about him. He would say: "I want you to speak for me when I am dead." On several occasions I read him my reports. Now and then he charged me with immortal commissions. Yet he knew I would write of our experiences together. In his foreword to Volume 1, he wrote:ĭid Whitman know I was keeping such a record? No. ![]() Traubel began his records of daily conversations with the poet in 1888, and continued until Whitman's death four years later. The publication of this book completes the series, With Walt Whitman in Camden, ninety years after its author, Horace Traubel, published the first volume. Courtesy Library of Congress, Feinberg Collection. ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF THE POEM "A THOUGHT OF COLUMBUS", 1892. Courtesy Whitman House, Camden, New Jersey. WALT WHITMAN'S TOMB, HARLEIGH CEMETERY, CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY. Four photographs by Thomas Eakins, Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. JOHN JOHNSTON, BOLTON, ENGLAND, FEBRUARY 6 AND 7, 1892. Traubel Collection.įACSIMILE OF LETTER - WALT WHITMAN TO DR. W L Bentley - PO Box 887 - Oregon House, CA 95962 Ĭopyright 1996 by the Fellowship of Friends, Inc.
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