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Harry Stafford to Walt Whitman, 4 October 1877

About This Item

  • Title: Harry Stafford to Walt Whitman, 4 October 1877
  • Date: October 4, 1877
  • Creator(s): Harry Stafford
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.03957
  • Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Vince Moran Alicia Bones Eder Jaramillo Nicole Gray Elizabeth Lorang
  • Cite this page: Stafford, Harry. "Harry Stafford to Walt Whitman, 4 October 1877." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 15 February 2026. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.03957.xml (TEI)
 loc_vm.00105.jpg Kirkwood N.J.​ October 4 1877 Dear Walt

I don't think I will get to come to Camden this week but will be down on Saturday week if nothing happens more than I know of at present.1 Ed2 has gon​ to the City to day​ and I have to tend for him and Ben wishes to go to the City on Saturday so I will have to be at the station and will not get off until the  loc_vm.00108.jpg  loc_vm.00106.jpg train will be gon​ so I will have to stay home. I want to come bad dont know how I will stay away. I want you to have some place to go when I come down some place where there is plenty of girls. I want to have some fun when I come down this time.

All well at home father went away with Ed today. Debbie is away to her Aunts.

Ever yours H. Stafford  loc_vm.00107.jpg  loc_vm.00219.jpg  loc_vm.00220.jpg

Notes

  • 1. Walt Whitman met the 18-year-old Harry Lamb Stafford (1858–1918) in 1876, beginning a relationship which was almost entirely overlooked by early Whitman scholarship, in part because Stafford's name appears nowhere in the first six volumes of Horace Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden—though it does appear frequently in the last three volumes, which were published only in the 1990s. Whitman occasionally referred to Stafford as "My (adopted) son" (as in a December 13, 1876, letter to John H. Johnston), but the relationship between the two also had a romantic, erotic charge to it. In 1883, Harry married Eva Westcott. For further discussion of Stafford, see Arnie Kantrowitz, "Stafford, Harry L. (b.1858)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 2. Edwin Stafford (1856–1906) was Harry Stafford's brother. [back]
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