Columbia Library columns (v.10(1960Nov-1961May))

(New York :  Friends of the Columbia Libraries.  )

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  v.10,no.1(1960:Nov): Page 15  



I
 

Whitman, Emerson and Friend

J. V. RIDGELY

^^ TT CELEBRATE myself," Walt Whitman announced in the
first edition of Leaves of Grass, and he was not only to
continue the celebration himself but also to draft apostles
to help beat the drums. The notable (if sometimes unwitting)
press agentry of two of these admirers — Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Moncure D. Conway — is recalled by a volume now owned
by Columbia LTniversity which was shown in the Libraries' recent
"Highlights" exhibit. The gift of Mr. and Mrs. Solton Engel, the
book is a fine copy of the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass
which was presented by the author to Conway; included in it are
two interesting association items: a holograph note from Whit¬
man to Conway dated July 21, 1870, and a transcript in Whit¬
man's hand of Emerson's famous letter ofjuly 21, 1855, greeting
Whitman "at the beginning of a great career."*

How did Whitman come to send this tianscript to Conway?
The answer is to be found in the association of the three men
which began almost as soon as Whitman first published his book
of verse. Conway, former student at the Harvard Divinity School
and an enthusiastic Emersonian, had gone to see the master in
Concord in the summer of 1855, not long after Emerson had re¬
ceived his gift copy of Leaves of Grass from Whitman. Emerson,
as enthusiastic in ccmversation as he was in his letter of "greeting"
to Whitman, urged the young Conway to pay a visit to the new
poet in Brooklyn. Conway dutifully obeyed, buying a copv of
the book to take with him on the steamer to New York. "I read
the poem with joy," he later recalled in his Autobiography. "De¬
mocracy had at length its epic." He was equally taken with the
man himself, whom he finally located at work in a printing office

* The letter is reprinted at the end of this article.

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  v.10,no.1(1960:Nov): Page 15