Horace Traubel to Charles W. Chesnutt, August 1915

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  Chas W. Chesnutt To the Conservator1 subs June 1914–16 2002 Dear Comrade

I'm compelled to ask subscribers[?] to pay up. I hate to have to do it. I'd rather do anything Else. But having urgent debts to pay I'm required to ask those[?] who owe me to settle —

Love to you always, Horace Traubel


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. Between 1901 and 1907, Horace Traubel discussed Chesnutt's writing several times in The Conservator, a monthly magazine he founded and edited for nearly thirty 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]

2. Chesnutt subscribed to Traubel's Conservator, which cost $1.00 per year. [back]