Charles W. Chesnutt to Horace Traubel, 24 October 1907
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CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
1105 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND, O.
October 24, 1907
My dear friend Traubel—
Yours of Oct. 10th is before me. I ought to have sent you that book—meant to have sent it—thought I had sent it.1 I gladly enclose the autograph for it.
I can only thank you for the kind things you have said, in your letter & from time to time in the Conservator,2 about my books.3 They are an inspiration such as comes only from one who reads with sympathy & the inner visions.
I have been following your Whitman writings. You are a loyal friend, a sound critic, and entirely able to sustain your end of any controversy about Whitman—a great poet, touching deep chords of thought & feeling—whose fame will continue to grow greater with the years.4
Fraternally, Chas. W. Chesnutt.Correspondent: Horace Traubel (1858–1919) was an American poet, essayist, and editor of The Conservator, a journal designed to promote Walt Whitman's works and reputation. Traubel was also a dedicated Socialist and one of the founders of the socialist weekly newspaper The Worker. He is best known for being Walt Whitman's literary executor and author of a nine-volume biography of Whitman's final four years (1888–1892), entitled With Walt Whitman in Camden.
1. The Colonel's Dream (New York: Doubleday, Page, & Company, 1905) was Chesnutt's last published novel. [back]
2. The Conservator (1890–1919) was a monthly magazine, founded and edited by Horace M. Traubel (1858–1919). [back]
3. Between 1901 and 1907, Horace Traubel discussed Chesnutt's writing several times in The Conservator, a monthly magazine he founded and edited for nearly 30 years (1890–1919). See "The Emancipation of a Race" (12, no. 10 [December 1901]: 154–155) and reviews of The Wife of His Youth (12, no. 12 [February 1902]: 188), The Marrow of Tradition (13, no. 3 [May 1902]: 41–42), The Conjure Woman (13, no. 9 [November 1902]: 138–139), The House Behind the Cedars (14, no. 4 [June 1903]: 60), and The Colonel's Dream (18, no. 9 [November 1907]: 141). [back]
4. Several articles regarding Horace Traubel and Walt Whitman were published in 1907, but it is possible that Chesnutt is referring to the public feud between Traubel and Bliss Perry. Traubel questioned the sources that Perry used for his 1907 biography, Walt Whitman, and the tone that Perry used in describing the poet. Others felt Perry had been the most objective of Whitman's biographers. Articles regarding the dissenting opinions of both men were featured in the New York Times, North American Review, Outlook, and Traubel's Conservator. [back]
