Feinberg/Whitman Box 14 Folder 4 General Correspondence O'Dowd, Bernard Mar 1890 - Aug 1891 (DCN219) Includes verso letter from Richard M. Burke, Dec. 2, 1890. Also includes note on Sorrazin.CLAPHAM. S. W. 3 MY20 89 POSTAGE & REVENUE ONE HALF PENNY POSTAGE AND INLAND REVENUE ONE PENNY POSTAGE AND INLAND REVENUE ONE PENNY Walt Whitman Camden New Jersey AmericaA NEW YORK JUN 1 PAID K ALL 89 CAMDEN [?] PM 1889 REC'DSupreme Court Library Melbourne, Victoria 12/3/90 Dear Walt, my beloved master, my friend, my bard my prophet and apostle I must write something to you now. I have tried during four years, but [am] was not satisfied with my effort. Let my earnest will compensate for the imperfect manner & matter. I am only a poor clerk in a law library, I know, & it would be presumption on my part to write to any stranger in this way, but you are not a stranger to me, you are my dearest companion: and, if you feel displeased, you have brought it on yourself for none who understandingly read you can help [but] loving you. I am not going to praise your poetry to you (we don't usually tell the sun that he does well to shine & shines well nor the grass do we praise for being green) & in regard to your other writings will only say that your hint re sunbaths has saved me many a day's illness & your essay on Carlyle has sold me once a wanderer in the desert scorched by a material sun, that there is a night too glowing with star-life (in a word it caused me to study Hegel). Sometimes I take myself out of myself & gaze at what is going on in my mind. I often notice that I am defending you even when this unbiased apart-Ego know or believe that you are a little wrong We have great fights over yousometimes. My mates & I myself try to spread you everywhere & we find that every reverent student gets to love you while those who merely glance at you are sometimes nearly as virulent against you as those of your maligners who have never read you at all. I think we have profited morally also from your indirections you have driven away a good deal of pessimism from us & we can now work lightheartedly in our small spheres. I was a Roman Catholic once, & had been thus, for generations under pessimistic influences that the revelations of science could not drive away. My personal mates are Fred Woods, a draper, Jim Hardipan a plasterer, an adorer of you, Ada Fryer a book-shop assistant (my sister-in-law) Ted Machefer (a scapegrace, a swagman only, but a true mate of 11 years standing) & my wife. I am 24, red hair, plain features, a little too backward for my own good, fond of poetry, philosophy, science & going long walks. I have got together a philosophy class of workmen & workwomen mainly & the avidity with which [it is] the revelations are seized is a pure pleasure to witness. My mates all send their love & I do so, enclasped by my own. We have a picture of you that appeared in a late Illustrated London News. It is over the mantelpiece & you seem quite at home with us. The other night several of us had the thought that you were listening as we were reading "Piers the Plowman" & that you were sympathising with him in his despair, although pleased [to find a] at hearing a poet of the "average man" of that day. It was the WaltWhitman of our souls that listened of course but the picture was suggestive of the other thought. I wish you hadn't quie confined (in words) your "Come, I will make the continent indissoluble" to America. Most of us make America mean the world, or sometimes we put "Australia" in its place. But I mustn't criticise, I mean most to tell you that I love you, that my mates love you & that ere so very long, the whole world shall love you &, what is moer, all prove their love by actions such as you would approve. Poetically & philosophically you have solved the great equation - Spiritualism = materialism, the little Camelot volume of your words sells well in Melbourne, a bookseller tells me.I don't want to give you trouble, & so, as your correspondence must be extensive, will not expect an answer, honored as I would feel by one. I sincerely hope that your physical life is happy now & that pain does not alloy your spiritual glory. With a "handful out of my heart" Good bye Walt, So Long! Bernard O'Dowd P.S. "Your Touchstone" (Mr Bury) a journalist in Ballarah, & like you in many respects, first [brought or] introduced you to meSupreme Court ibrary Melbourne 9/6/90 My dear master If the thought of having illuminated dull lives with a burst of heaven can give you pleasure, you cannot regret having replied to my letter. I cannot reply properly, we have been treading air since the occasion is so great that we must have a long space of time between us & it to see, to appreciate it truly. Heartfelt thanks, Walt, from me for your letter newspapers, proof-slips and portraits. They shall be treasured by those who love you dearly, until they become too valuable for any private person to hold them. I wish I could waft to you the looks of Fred Woods, Jim Hartipain and Ada as they heard you sending them greetings (I had concealed it till I got them together). My wife knew it was you when I came to the words "& others unnamed, if any." Jim, (a most devoted admirer of you, and one who seems to have an intuitive perception of your meaning. An idea strikes him now & then as we read & although he can't get words to clothe it I see what he means after a little, and can see that he had sounded deeper than we.) seemed thunderstruck at first and then his vivacity became thrilling. Fred, in grand spirits previously, became silent, almost sad, all evening. "His overladen heart" almost uttered itself in tears". Ada's intellectual face glowed as I have never seen it before. The sight of it would have done you good. But when we heard how sadly shattered you were physically, our joy was damped. I could not help reechoing in my heart the wish of Mrs Fryer as she heard" O the poordear old gentleman! How I wish I was near him to nurse him!" We are all a little envious of your "nurse-man" in fact, I think. Poor Ted was not here to get your greeting to him. He has gone to the stations of the inferior shearing. A strange life, station-life, a strange almost unique race, the station race. Wild and hot as the North wind that scorches their plains, their lives are like those plains in their humdrum monotony & barrenness of result. A bush fire is the plain's only gala day and a yearly "burst" the stockrider's. Would that a fresh manhood rose from the blasted wrecks and "lambed down" cheques of the one as the young green blades hide the black of the other! They have a favourite poet, Gordon, whose strange melancholy fits in with the weirdness of Australian scenery and the vacuums (I was going to say 'raging vacuums') of their solitary world-weary hearts. Gordon had been a stockrider himself, a gold digger, bush policeman, member of Parliament, steeplechaser and - suicide. I generally visit his grave on my birthday. Sad minor key! Excuse me, Walt, thinking of Ted has led me into it. I don't want to tire you or I would try to tell you the story of my own life as to my "confessor". I shall only give a few fragments. Parents, Irish, Catholics, father policeman. In youth, in moderate circumstances, but a rather lonely child. Studious never knew how to play "alleys" &c, was always "down" at "fly the garter", enjoyed reading & questioning re origin of ancient Irish &c, read Paradise Lost at 8 Hume at nine, Virgil at 10, passed exam for a teacher at 11. Wasted time at school for a couple of years but read omnivorously. Shadows darkened meanwhile [of] over family happiness. Do not remember a period of three [moths] months of home happiness since I was 9. Shifted from country into a mining city. Got on well at school, not so at home. Passed matric [g?] exhibition for 6 years, held it for 2 or 3, passed 1 at exam. for degree. Father died (9 15) Thought I knew what was best to do, taught Catholic school for 3 months & then thrown on my own resources. Hadn't any, suppose. Loafed about thinking I was trying to get something to do for 3 or 4 months. Could only teach. no one else would have me because I was a Catholic, they wouldn't have me because I was a Free thinker & so I fared badly.blot it out. I am again in the midst of my friends conveying their good wishes and greetings to you. My word, we did keep up your birthday jollily here! It shall be a yearly affair now here, perhaps for ever. Fred & Jim & others "unnamed" before, as you guessed, the dear family whose tenderness and companionship has made my life a heaven, Mr & Mrs Freyer and Ada & Louie and me my wife all greet you, would, if we could pray for you! "Tom Touchstone" (Mr Bury) is on his way to England and America, and will, I am certain, try to see you. I am forwarding him your greeting. I owe him much, for I owe him you. I believe [you] the "Canterbury" edition of Leaves of Grass sells well here. The large edition is hard to get. I managed to get one (McThay, Philadelphia, 1/84) after great trouble. Jim has a later one. I have also "November Boughs" & the two small "Specimen days" & "Democratic Vistas". We have been trying to get Dr. Bucke's work, but haven't as yet. Whenever there is an essay on your works we go & by rousing up a little enthusiasm manage to get many to send & a few to like you. Occasional letters & articles to the press we don't forget, although our power is small in that way. I compiled a kind of service book for the Secularists & took the liberty of taking a verse of your "Pioneers"for a motto & a quotation here & there throughout the book. I have a book "Champ of Labour" with two of your pieces to music in it. We have tried them occasionally from it. We have great difficulty with your Adam pieces, but since our purest and holiest friends can see nothing but what is pure in them, we grow more sanguine, although these pieces will retard you longer than any others. Never mind, Walt, we will fight tooth & nail for you as long as we live & shall try to shape our lives so as to be worthy of being your soldiers.3 Love episode of a strange nature; as usual, with bad luck to me Shouldered bluey with Ted & went through 5 months strange experiences in Australian wilds. Hard times starvation, annihilation of soul almost, degradation everywhere, I touched with it as much as any I suppose. [?] mates almost to death. I wrote a book as we wandered about. I thought it good at 18. I wrote it under the gum trees in early morning as my mates lay asleep. The somnolent [?] from the wattle seemed to inspire me at times. I sent it afterwords to a school mistress whom I loved wildly to have her opinion of it. But as she thought fit to [?] all about it when she set her school on fire to get a paltry insurance and it perished so, I haven't tried that kind of thing since, nor am I likely to. Wild joy & woes of 19-21, I would need the pen of Sappho, Rousseau & Goethe (in [?]) to describe. What I thought a marble statue became very clay + woful were its last days, blasted was my life by it I fear, but O Walt, I clung to it, in duty's binds to the last. I am now married to a dear, loving, pure, good girl, descended from French Huguenots, Dutch Van Tromps and Saxon Fryers and am pretty happy. I look over the past & see a desert with a soul wandering aimlessly. I fear I have lost the soul for ever. Your words at times make me pulse responsive but I know it is the human "I" not the fitful, aerial marsh-fire-like "I" of the past. I am optimistic now, before, I was the reverse. I had a good school in a country town once & gave a lecture on Spiritualism & Freethought, trod honestly on the [?] of the orthodox & lost all my pupils. Now, I can be more diplomatic, and gain the orthodox to my views with [?]. I was foolish enough to start a movement for the separation of Australia from England. We held two meetings & I am not altogether sorry now that very few heard of it. Now I can get disciples for Marx at my will. Look over the rubbish of this letter, I give you a few shreds of a failure. I believe [?] once intended to give birth to a child. Some accident happened & I was the abortion. Dear Walt, I love you "with all my heart and all my mind" and must unburden myself a little. Much that I have said, not even my wife knows. Read it & thenJim & I like the full length portraits best (the [last one] latest one especially. [?da] likes the head with the hat on and Mrs Fryer the one where you look so very old. If it is a good likeness, my favourite is the frontispiece to "November Boughs" I think your influence will be powerful in Australia. One of our most characteristic, perhaps our most powerful poets, is Francis Adams, and he has been called "Whitman- and-water." There are some fine things in his "Songs of the Army of the Night". Others show your influence too. Your word or two about our country was especially welcome, the external Federation] &c movement being, I hope, that counterpart of our internal brotherhood movement. There are mighty problems awaiting solution here, in fact Democracy herself anxiously awaits our verdict as well as yours. I would wish to say more on this subject but have been too verbose already. With best love to you, Walt, and thanks for your kindness to us poor unknowns I remain your Bernard O'Dowd address - Supreme Court Library, Melbourne Victoria5 There is a sublimity in your personal character that affects me as none other has ever done, not even Christs. Had Carlyle added another chapter to his "Hero Worship" the "Hero as Nurse", with Walt Whitman as subject- would have worthily capped his dome. The seeker does not always find, you it is, not Gawaine who have found the San Graal: May the holy chalice of comradeship ever flow with blessings to man and commemorate thy nobleness! Dear Walt, I hope I haven't tired you too much, I wish I could describe myself to you, but I find that I don't know what I am. I say materialist & my spiritual thirst drives me to wells of the soul, I say spiritualist and logics chop me into almost molecules and forces. I am retiring, yet vanity makes me proclaim myself: foolish yet I hold myself wise: wise yet I know how foolish. I am an enigma to myself. Your "To you" has roused me a little & I can put my foot down solid sometimes [will?] MELBOURNE 2 A JE 10 90 June 9 '90 Walt Whitman 328 Mickle Street Camden New Jersey US America via Sydney & San FranciscoNEW YORK B PAID JUL J 10 ALL 90 CAMDEN, N. J. JUL 11 6AM 1890 REC'D.via Sydney & San Francisco 1st Sept: '90 MELBOURNE 0 SE 2 90 VICTORIA STAMP DUTY SIX PENCE VICTORIA WALT WHITMAN 328 Mickle Street CAMDEN NEW JERSEY UNITED STATES AMERICA E NEW YORK PAID OCT B 2 ALL 90 CAMDEN,N.J. OCT 2 1890 REC'D.Supreme Court Library Melbourne 1/9/90 My dear master Your letter has made more vivid still the thrills of gratitude your former one gave us, and if personal attachment is part of the true poet's meed, you assuredly have reward. I thank you sincerely for your kindness in forwarding the papers and criticisms, they help so much to give us clearer ideas of you and to see our Walt from other points of view. How we would have liked to have been present at that birthday "party" when Ingersoll ([an] [old] hero [t] to all of us once, to some of us still. It would do [even] his heart good, much praised as he is {+ much reviled too admires} to hear some of his Australian admirers "sticking up" for him, their paladin of sham-slayers.) eulogised you as the papers say. We are anxiously watching the papers to see the drift of his speech. While out in the cathedral-like gloom of an Australian "bush", the sameness of the green of the gum leaves only broken at [t??ies] with the gold of the wattle bloom, the silence only varied by the eloquent warbling of our mocking bird (the lyre bird) or the faint, unbodied, tinkle of the shy bell-bird, or the screech, as of lost souls, of the white cockatoos, I have often, with or without my mates, thought some of Ingersoll's sculptured sentences worthy of being uttered in those sacred glades, and if so on other. subjects, how much more so would we think so when [sin] treating of you who have made those great gum trees array themselves in such new meanings for us. Our [Amyd] amygdaline (Eucalyptus Amygdalina) once was your redwood's rival, now each, towering over its native forest wafts comrade- greetings to the other, joining in the tree-fashion "hands across the sea." Those who have felt the awful meaning of our "bush", + our desert with its mirages and its rivers swallowed up in sand, and have been self-conscious of that "forming, intestinal agitation" in our town-life, have whirred with flywheels, and mingled with miners in drives + on mullock heaps, have been "driving" sheep to the Plains of Promise or the weird "Never Never" land, and have wandered from stationto station with "sundowner" or hawker, have given a hand to the wharf-labourer lumping and helped him + or resisted him in his "strikes" for justice or his violence (we have a great 'strike' on here now, the greatest that has ever taken place here: the whole community are involved. In spite of logic and political economy, my whole sympathies are with the workmen. It shows what fellowship can do, when it wishes the "rouseabout" on the Tropic of Capricorn with the "sails" on an Invercargill trader, and stimulates the London "docker" to send his subscriptions + his sympathy), have been among children at school, among business people and professional, and scholars, those who have experienced such, are those who are alone competent here, to pronounce against you, and I have never met one such, who has been able to do so: most such, who read at all, find in you their natural poet. Jim agrees with me in this, + says furthermore that every action he does and every set of circumstances he finds himself in, call up some line of yours. Certainly, to me at least, you are a commentary on and a unifier of the disjointed (to me previously) history of the world. I can best illustrate Ada's experience of you by saying that to her you appeared as a vast mist, which however gradually developed a nucleus, and that again a nucleolus, which last contained all worth containing in the world. Pred's opinion is best symbolised by the rush of the iron to the magnet without knowing why, exactly. You would like his way of liking you, I think. Sue is an uncompromising enemy of shams, and if I may use the expression a slave to Liberty, and as she finds the same in you (as indeed everyone finds everything he wants in you), you are her inspired Book. To all of us indeed you are "guide, philosopher + friend." I hope you won't think I am trying to flatter, I can't keep telling you what we think of you, to anyone else it might be flattery, but it is no high-fashion, nothing but the honest downright truth when I say that you are the greatest who has ever lived, to us all. The tension of an ecstasy, such as a Mohammedan would feel, if privileged to write to + to receive letters from his Prophet, is on me while I write and therefore I can't write as I would wish to. I can hardly think it is not a dream that I am writing to Walt Whitman. Take our love, we have little more to give you, we can only try to spread to others the same great boon you have given to us.We have great difficulty in following the movement of "Your Touchstone," but I think you will see him before he will get your greetings to him here. He was busy with John Burns and others in London, the last I heard of him. I am very sorry that Dr Bucke's book has gone astray: we are prosecuting every enquiry we can in Australia, + so I hope we shall get it all right. After a long "try", we have managed to get "Leaves of Grass" into our Public Library (a magnificent institution) [an] ("November Boughs" is already there): this will do it good I think, for the reviewers + critics (your midwives) will be able to get it, and the general reader too. We will do our best to try + get an order or two for you and think we can do it. It seems a pity that you should [not] be getting [the] no benefit of the numerous copies sold here. I am trying to get an essay read before the Australian Church Library Society, I spoke for you there two or three years ago and managed to rouse a good deal of interest at the time in "Leaves of Grass". We are rather a quick lot and haven't a great deal of influence, but as it spreads, you shall spread too, I warrant you.4/ I have a whole lot of questions to ask you about your poems but deem it better not to, [the] you must be grown up to[o] and are all the better appreciated when that is the case. We had an important event at our place on the 13th ult our first little one. We are going to call him Eric Whitman. His mother and he are quite well and she looks so happy. We all send our love and sincerely hope that you are as comfortable as your sad misfortunes will allow you. It is so sad to think that your services to human beings and to nature should [be affected by] have brought such return from both as yours have. The joy with which we receive your letters [are] is flecked with great pangs for your sufferings. And you bear it all like the hero you are. Again, with love I remain, my dear, dear master he whom you have called "comrade" Bernard O'Dowd[*29 Sept: '90*] Supreme Court Library Melbourne 29/9/90 My dear Master Your kind letter of the 22nd & 23rd of July, trebly welcome for its being a surprise, has come, and with it, I am glad to say, Dr Bucke's book (delayed, apparently, by the American P. O. authorities) We [have] had been worrying the P.O. here for the previous month. It is 12 p.m. Adad and I have been arguing about your indication that the "whole theory of the universe points unerringly" to each individual in it, for the last two hours : before, we [ha] were saying good bye to a member of our little literary circle, a nice young chap, a blacksmith thrown out of work here ver the strike, and now going to a wild spot in [???] Ocean to help build a lighthouse. The will be away many months, and we feel now how we have liked him, I can tell you. (We didn't do much "Datu of Ethics" tonight, I fear) Before sea, I met a young Welshman, named Davis, who told me he knew Ernest Rhys & then we talked of you. He says the Welsh like you, can't help liking you. He was delighted at your letter and then told me he was on the staff of the "Age" our principal peoples newpaper & that he would see me again & have a yarn about you. I sent several extracts about you to the papers, but somehow can't get them in. I fear you are a little "taboo" yet. I send you an Ayus of last week with a sample of the only kind of notice you get in the "feudal" circles. I wish I had something more cheering, but as they are constantly referring to you in a similar strain, your influence is clearly being felt. Ibsen is similarly treated by this paper. From my knowledge of the 'caste' that this paper pleads for, I take its remarks as favorable indications. Your complaints re the great journals repising you a hearing pain all who know you but we console ourselves by the knowledge that the "demons of our sires are the gods that we adore". I read a paper on your attitude towards Democracy "the Gospel of Democracy as promulgated by Walt Whitman", before the Australian Church Literary Society in last Tuesday week. The reverend chairman was decidedly unsympathetic, but the tone of the debate was [de] altogether in your favour. Level-headed[,] old men, and fiery young ones fought like paladins for you, and Walt carried the day. A reverend opponent was disarmed by being driven to own that he didn't believe in the brotherhood of man. The refreshing power with which one young man urged the audience to read and absorb the Song of the Open Road and the vigour with which another insisted on your being the "great poet", did our hears good. & made us wish you had heard them. I was sorry the head of the church (Dr Strory) was not there, for he really preaches your Gospel, although perhaps he would not say so. I treated your "Democracy" analytically I Physically (a) Physiological aspect (b) Biological aspect (as a growing organism) (c) Sociologically II Intellectually [(a) With reference to (a) Science 9b) Art (c) Poetry III Spiritually. No attitude towards (a) Morality (Its ethical aspect) (b) Soul (c) God Pervading, and intertwining with these, your great tones of Comradeship, Personality and Nationality. In accordance with your wish I [su] give over the leaf a list of the papers &c that I have received from youReceived from you, at Supreme Court Library Melbourne May 29th 1890 1 Letter 2. Camden Daily Courier 2/6/83 "About Walt Whitman" 3. A Backward Glance on my own Road 4. Remembrance copy (2) 5. 2 Portraits full length (hat in hand). "Lundowner" we call it. 1 " with hat on 1 " side face, hat off 1 " W. W. 1855 (6) Camden Post 22/4/90 "W.W's Last Public" 6. [Boston Evening Transcript 19/4/90 "W.W. Tuesday night"] August 23rd 1890 1. Letter 2 Camden Post 2/6/90 Ingersoll's speech 3 Boston Transcript 19/4/90 "W.W. Tuesday night" (two copies) 4 What Lurks behind Shakespeare's Historical Plays 5. John Burrough's criticism on Drum Taps. "Galaxy" 1866 6. "Conservator" July / 90. "Quaker Trails of W.W." 7. "Today" June / 85. A Confession of Faith". Anne Gilchrist (High-souled woman!) 8. Price list of books. September 23rd 1890 . 1. Letter I. 3 "Sturm" portraits (hat on) 4 "Lundowner" portraits. Fred has one & Jim another (you would like them to have them) 2. re Democratic Art 3. Camden Morning News 15/8/90. Boyle O'Reilly 4. " Post 12/8/90. Paragraph re Emerson. 5. Dr Bucke's Book Will such ammunition and provision in the shape of sundry editions of L of G. we out to be fit to meet all opponents. If I can ever manage to get my hand in at literary work, I shall make sturdy attempts to do you yeoman service, at any rate. People don't take much notice of a poor clerk in an obscure library, I fear. I can only try to seek out those who can fight effectively. my canvassing for pecuniary powder & shot for you is not very successful as yet, partly owing to the canvasser & partly to the strike. The shearers and rouseabouts are striking now (Ted will be among them" and a commercial and industrial deadlock of ominous character is on. You will get a 'glint' of it from the "Ayus" (a little prejudiced perhaps). I can see your influence in many of our anshalian singers. One especially, Francis Adams, (whom a poet-chum of mine, Sydney Jephcott, holds greater than Shakespere) wrote several years ago a great number of love poems of sickly sweetness: since then he has published a book called "Songs of the Army of the Night", simple, terse, sledge-hammer-like in which your influence is very apparent. They call him "Whitman & water" jokingly. He is in England now, making towards "Fame". Mr Bury was "up to the neck" in labour matters, conferences with "dockers" &c, in England the last we heard of him. I do hope he will see you. You would be regular chums. He has been through so much here in Australia, has absorbed our Australian life so much more than anyone I know, and has withal so excellent a heart, so eclectic (in the broader sense) a nature, that he will be a good type to you of what our democracy can flower to. This frequent & apt quoting of obscure authors first showed me that respectability's or conventional hall marks were not essential to great merit. I hope my 'ramblers' don't tire you. With many thanks for your kindness in sending the portraits, papers and Dr Buckes "live" Life (Fred & Jim are at it now, I go for a week's holiday to the wildest parts of our 'ranges' tomorrow, and will try to get a suitable setting for fully enjoying it. W. O'Connor hasn't lost the Celtic blood over there, it is evident. One feels in an ancestral fair-scrimmage while reading.) Fred & Jim and Kate his sister, Ada, Eve, Mr & Mrs Fryer all join in this our love-message to our benefactor, our comrade and our bard. Blessings on you and heartily do we pray that your afflictions, may be lightened, and all your remaining days bright & happy. So Long. Bernard O'Dowd [*Eric Whitman O'Dowd sends his love too, for he smiles as we ask him & surely a parent's interpretation can be held the correct one.*]Supreme Court Library Melbourne 24/11/90 My dear Master and (may I say?) Comrade I received your letter of the 3rd ult enclosing "Osceola", "A Twilight Song" and "To the Sunset Breeze", and also a copy of a September Philadelphia Press with a poem you, all right, and feel that I cannot express my thanks (on behalf of us all) sufficiently to you for your noble kindness to us. I fear I detected a tone of weariness and affliction between the lines and can only say we are sorry from our hearts that your winter days should be so. I am sorry that Tom Touchstone (Mr. Bury] had to [leave] return from England before crossing to you. He was detained long over the strike & business connected with it. I wrote to him & told him of all your expressions of good will and greetings of love to him & us all. I enclose his letter to me. There is much misery & pinching among us in Australia over the strike. The men lost, as was inevitable this time, but I do not think it is really a loss after all.[*books (four complete works) sent by Express Dec 27 90 rec’d safely by BOD*] Fred & Jim and Ada & Ted & Mr & Mrs Fryer & my wife all send their love to you, bound with every good wish for you. We are anxiously waiting to hear the result of Ingersoll's goodness. I believe they have a secret good word for you, for this reason. I used to bother them a lot with a series of serrated word groups that I called poetry, but since your influence came, they have been spared & I have no doubt, are thankful accordingly.) I thank you again for "To the Sunset Breeze". Somehow I feel your spirit at its best through that: it is a kind of commentary (among other things) in the unexplainable (to me) feeling of kinship with, at times, the hot wind on the Central plains, at others, the gale from the ice-teeth of the Southern Pole. Your breeze isn't like them, but you know the language of which they are a (perhaps harsh) dialect. I thank you too for the precious gift of a poem signed by yourself with your own name. I must finish now. With warmest Love, my dear, dear master I remain Bernard O'Dowd. P.O order for £5 enclosed [in ? ?] P.S. Will you please, send me for Jim Hartigan, Fred Woods & myself three (3) "Complete Poems & Prose" to same address as this (£5 enclosed)Dec 23rd 1890 Supreme Court Library Melbourne My Dear Master Your letter of Nov. 3rd, enclosing two "Sunset Breeze" & Shakespeare from Poet Lore, slip of reply at Ingersoll's lecture, "Old Poets", two Philadelphia newspapers, with reports of lecture & two "Truthseekers", have all arrived safely and increased our debt of gratitude to our bard and our friend (We have the hope that your influence will tend to make all bards and all friends. When every pick stroke is the beat of a labour-meter & every through-train an epic, in the eyes of the workers, and when the old spirit of camaraderie, fitfully shown now & then by the way men stick together & starve for each other in strike &c, finds men's lives like the Javan volcano smiled our Australian afterglow during the last few years, that will be "the good time coming." In mathematical formula, If man = friend = bard, then happiness = ∞. That lecture of Ingersoll's must have been a rare one, as it comes to us, its mere shadow, is grand. Ingersoll has an illustration in his lecture on Humboldt which fits himself here. He refers Chimborazo with Humboldt at its feet. There was another intrepid explorer and lover of truth, clearing away prejudice from another America, and here in his lecture, sitting nobly and ennobled at the feet of literature's Chimborazo. If this should sound high-falutin' kindly remember an Irish enthusiasm pens it, and an Irish earnestness warms it. Jim & Fred & "Your Touchstone", and all of us at home, send you our love and a hearty Australian new Year's greeting, and wish we could personally thank Ingersoll for his kindness to you. (You seemed so much better this letter than last, that we kind o' feel inclined to give Ingersoll a bit of the credit and the thanks heartfelt, I can tell you.) I am busy studying philosophy for aUniversity exam and the result is that I haven't a decent thought to tell you. My word, the general run of it does want your best of the "open air" consideration, and a pruning accordingly. That same "open air" would blow [it] most of it to oblivion, like a hot wind a leaf of pea -chaff. The stuff gives you an intellectual dry-rot & how you sift for days when you can say [like] as our poet Gordon said "I was merry in the glowing morn away the gleaming grass To wander as we've wandered many a mile To blow the coolt tobacco clouds & watch the [wil] white wreaths Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while. 'Twas merry 'mid the blackwoods, to spy the stations roofs, & wheel the wild scrub-cattle at the yard, With a running fire of stockwhips & a fiery run of hoofs - O the hardest day was never then too hard!" We're going to have a grand day on Christmas, about 80 children are coming to our place & we are gong to do all kinds of wonderful comical & enjoyable things to please them. I tried to get some of Ingersoll's lecture in the leading papers here, but they are a little too bijoled & so no result as yet. You did interest us by referring to your Japanese correspondent. We have been studying that country its literature & national character, and are pleased generally that your "Leaves" have a prospect of being able to wreathe the brows of the "Daughter of the Sun". By the way, how do you think "Leaves of Grass" will translate into other languages?" We have discussed the question and vary much. Thanks again for your great kindness to us and our need of thanks for that greater kindness to Man your publication of Leaves of Grass has been. Our master: our prophet: our Elder "Brother" Au revoir! Solong! Bernard O'DowdMedical Superintendent's Office. INSANE ASYLUM LONDON ONTARIO 2 Dec 1890 [Entire page has a one-line strikethrough] Yours of 28th enclosing a letter from Mr Smith came to hand yesterday afternoon, and your postal of 29th reached me this morning. The Inspector of Asylums, Mr R. Christie, came here about noon yesterday and stayed untill noon today so that I have not had a minute to write until now. I do not hear any more from Horace about what D. Mitchell thinks of your case and so am still anxious about you especially as the pain in the stomach and bowels continues. I am afraid Mitchell has not made such an examination as would make his opinion very valuable butBernard O'Dowd Eve _______is the wife Mrs. O'D Mr & Mrs: Fryer Fred Woods Jim Hardigan great admirer L of G intuitive, perhaps a little queer Ada Ted __ (was absent Theoring at "station") Louie (the mates life in the bush (Shearing (gum trees Tom Touchstone Mr Bury the poet Francis Adams ("Whitman-and-water") one of L of G's best running criticisms & comments is by a Frenchman named Sarrarin its tone & points will deeply ingterest - (perhaps please) you - & I will send it you if ever translated & printed here - If you have a foreign book store in Melbourne, it is named Mention Ingersoll's address book did you get the full report in Truth-Seeker newspaper? the last photo:[?]JUNCT. & BOS. JUN 20 1890 UNITED STATES POSTAGE TWO 2 CENTS Walt Whitman, Camden, N. J. 328 Mickle St. CAMDEN N.J. JUN 21 6AM 1890 REC'D.Fred Woods Jim Hartigan & Kate his sister Ada Eve (the wife) Mr and Mrs Fryer Eric (the baby) Tom Touchstone (Mr Bury) Ted (a "shearer") LouieMELBOURNE 18 V AU 31 91 VICTORIA VICTORIA STAMP DUTY SIX PENCE Walt Whitman 328 Mickle Street Camden New Jersey U. S. A. via Sydney & San FranciscoCAMDEN, N.J. OCT 8 6AM 91 REC'D. PAID G ALL NEW YORK OCT 7 91August 31st /91 Supreme Court Library Melbourne My dear master I have received and heartily thank you for the papers you have sent and the welcome copy of "good bye! my Fancy.". I have not wanted to bother you during your severe illness, hence my silence. But we have followed with interest any information about you especially the facsimile letter which Dr Johnston of Bolton was kind enough to send me and the article in a late "Review of Reviews" with a sketch of your house and a little chit chat on your political opinions (I have much the same opinions myself of late years, but that is not surprising for they are simple deductions from the spiritual principle or the spirit of "Leaves of Grass".) I gave a lecture on "Walt Whitman, the Poet of Democracy" to an audience of 3 or 4 oo people at a Sunday night meeting of the Australasian Secular Association and was very well received. The subject was evidently unfamiliar but its reception gave me great hopes that it will not be so long in that quarter anyway. I made the acquaintance of another Whitman enthusiast at that meeting, Mr John Lutherland M.A., and I can assure you we have had some glorious evenings together since talking of you and with you. He tells me that he has only read L. of G. once, but wants to read it no more. He doesn't remember the words particularly, but the new mental attitude to things he believes he has thoroughly absorbed. and the world is different and life different to him. since. "Tom Touchstone" sent another disciple, "Mr Carr, to me and he is quite devoted. He was greatly pleased at a portrait I was able to give him. Mr Sutherland + Jim Hartigan want a copy of "Good bye my Fancy. Could you send price, please. Fred Woods would like one of those portraits where you appear with (as it were) storm tossed bear[e]d, your hat on, and a hearty, sea-captain-like look on you. And, if it would not be too much trouble, with your name on it. He's a grand fellow Fred, and tossed as he was on seas of doubt + deserts of the barrenest materialism, you have become a virtual religion to him as you have to more than him. Mr Sutherland has translated Freiligrath's article on you (from Dr Bucke's book). It is wonderful what misunderstandings are about concerning your poems of sex. I do not fear, as you seem to do, that we shall separate from Britain. I advocated it once, nay started a society to bring it about, which I am glad to say soon died. For this change as for many others, I must thank you. I like to hear your ideas on Australians and would say much myself but that I don't want to bother you too much. We want a Walt Whitman here: ours is a democracy too with even more hopeful prospects than yours but with great dangers ahead (especially social) And here too the song of material interests drowns the other pieces in the chorus. We love you all, and greet you with sympathy in your illnesses and with growing hopes for your speedy recognition by all men, as being as much their Walt as you are ours. B O'Dowd Bernard O Dowd