ON JANUARY 18, 1882, in a home in Camden, New Jersey, a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde met his American literary idol, the 62-year-old Walt Whitman. At first the two were joined by J. M. Stoddart, a Philadelphia publisher, but eventually Whitman desired more privacy and invited Wilde up to his “den” on the third floor, where they talked for more than two hours. Word got around that the two had engaged in such a riveting literary conversation that the press reached out to both writers to ask about their meeting.
The next day Whitman was interviewed by The Philadelphia Press and revealed that he led Wilde to his den so they could be on “thee and thou terms.” Wilde provided more clarity when he was interviewed by The Boston Herald on January 29th, saying that meeting Whitman was the closest he would get to meeting an ancient Greek figure. The meeting left such an indelible impression that even after 1892, when Whitman died, Wilde was gossiping that he could still feel “the kiss of Walt Whitman” on his lips. Why was their literary meeting such a hot topic, and why did both describe their encounter in such sensual ways? To attempt an answer to these questions, we need to explore why Wilde was so drawn to Whitman’s poetry.
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In 1868, an Irish woman named Lady Jane Wilde had gotten her hands on the first British edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Victorian writer and critic William Michael Rossetti had made it his mission to publish Whitman’s American 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass, but issuing his British edition, Poems by Walt Whitman, came with difficulties. Rossetti turned to John Camden Hotten, a British publisher who specialized in Americana, erotic, and avant-garde poetry, and the two realized that Whitman’s complete edition couldn’t be published in Britain due to recent anti-pornography laws. Rossetti had to decide which erotically themed poems to cut out.
The result didn’t land well with Whitman, who called Rossetti’s edition a “horrible dismemberment of my book,” as half of the poems from the 1867 edition had been excised, including “Song of Myself” and the “Children of Adam” cluster. Both the “Children of Adam” and “Calamus” clusters contained erotic language, but “Rossetti included 11 of 40 of those poems [‘Calamus’] that appeared in the 1867 Leaves.” Why was Rossetti comfortable including a selection of “Calamus” poems while removing “Children of Adam”?
Unlike the “Children of Adam” poems, which contained mentions of male-female sexual pleasure and reproduction, the “Calamus” poems celebrated the beauty of male-male friendship and comradeship. Rossetti kept one of the more homoerotically charged “Calamus” poems from Whitman’s 1867 edition, “A Song.” Instead of retaining the poem’s original title, Rossetti changed it to “Love of Comrades.” In the first stanza, the male speaker reveals his mission to “make the most splendid race the sun ever/ shone upon!” and says: “I will make divine magnetic lands,/ With the love of comrades,/ With the life-long love of comrades.”
This model of comradeship can only happen through male-male love. The speaker desires to figuratively procreate with his comrades. While erotic love between men and women had to be erased because of Britain’s new anti-pornography laws, homoerotic desire, even a vision of the male speaker figuratively procreating with men, was not removed. When Wilde met Whitman, he revealed that his mother had read all the 1868 poems to him, so Wilde would have been familiar with Whitman’s vision of comradeship and its homoerotic implications.
During Wilde’s meeting with the American poet, he told Whitman that when he left Ireland in 1874 to attend Magdalen College, Oxford, he brought Whitman’s poetry and “he and his friends carried Leaves to read on their walks.” Before Wilde knew that he would have the opportunity to meet with Whitman (twice) while in America, he was living and breathing Whitman’s verse. After Wilde graduated in 1878 with a bachelor’s degree in Classical Moderations and Literae Humaniores (nicknamed the Classics/Greats), he was at a crossroads, torn between becoming a Classics professor at Oxford or Cambridge or earning his income as a professional writer. After much contemplation, Wilde pursued a career as a poet, and in 1881 published his first volume of poetry. The British magazines, notably the satirical Punch, responded to Wilde’s poems by mocking him as the “Æsthete of Æsthetes!”
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Wilde was quickly gaining recognition in London’s literary scene as an Æsthetic poet who “sought to propagate a new gospel of Beauty.” Soon after his poetry was published, theater promoter Richard D’Oyly Carte was in desperate need of a proponent of the Æsthetic movement, which mixed “art, idealism and politics,” to give lectures throughout America to promote Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Patience (1881). Wilde’s Poems was not as lucrative as he’d hoped, so he jumped at the opportunity to both receive a stable source of income and embrace his new identity. “On Christmas Eve 1881, a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde wrapped himself in a fur cloak, boarded the SS Arizona at Liverpool, and set off to the U.S. for his 50-date lecture tour across the country.” When the Arizona finally docked in New York City on January 2, 1882, the press was waiting for Wilde to disembark so they could “catch their first glimpse of the rare and wonderful English Æsthete.” Wilde didn’t disappoint. The New York World reported that he was wearing “patent-leather shoes, a smoking-cap or turban … [an]ultra- Byronic [shirt]… a sky-blue cravat of the sailor style [and]… his hair flowed over his shoulders in dark-brown waves, curling slightly upwards at the end.”
On January 9th, Wilde delivered his first lecture on “The English Renaissance” at New York’s Chickering Hall. Afterward The New York Times critiqued his lecture and appearance as having a certain “affected effeminacy,” and The Brooklyn Daily Eagle commented that one would not be surprised if New York’s sexual underground groups, the Charlotte Anns and the Miss Nancys, quickly embraced Wilde’s “peculiar tenets.” These two groups were made up of young men who enjoyed the sexual company of other men, and The New-York Tribune reported that “pallid and æsthetic young men in dress suits and banged hair” could be seen in attendance at Wilde’s Chickering Hall lecture. Wilde and these young men shared similar fashion and a banged hairstyle that “consisted of a deep fringe, with longer ringlets, waves or plaits on either side.” Wilde was already attracting a queer young male fanbase who desired to learn about the secrets of Æstheticism. However, the press was already questioning Wilde’s queer Æsthetic sensibility, long before he was convicted of gross indecency in 1895.
On January 16, 1882, Wilde left New York to journey to Philadelphia’s Horticultural Hall for another lecture. As he traveled by train from Jersey City, a reporter from The Philadelphia Press interviewed him and published an article titled “A Talk with Wilde.” In it, Wilde was asked: “What poet do you most admire in American literature?” He told the reporter: “I think that Walt Whitman and Emerson have given the world more than anyone else. I do so hope to meet Mr. Whitman. Perhaps he is not widely read in England, but England never appreciates a poet until he is dead.”
He stressed the intensity of his admiration for Whitman, saying that he discussed the poet with his friends “Dante Rossetti, [Algernon Charles] Swinburne, [and]William Morris.” He added: “There is something so Greek … about his poetry.” Wilde’s identification of Greek themes in Whitman’s poetry dovetails with what he told The Boston Herald about thinking he was in the presence of an ancient Greek when they spent intimate time together. Wilde had already reached out to his friend J. M. Stoddart, who knew Whitman, to arrange a personal meeting.
It was Stoddart who had informed Whitman of Wilde’s desire to meet with him in person several days earlier. Word quickly circulated about the prospect of the authors meeting, and a newspaper story came out titled “Walt Whitman on Æsthetic Poetry,” in which a reporter asked what he thought of Wilde’s verse. Whitman responded that he read “very little nowadays … and almost never read poetry,” but he was willing to give Wilde and “the poetry of Æstheticism a fair chance,” given that “the æsthetes are young and the field is wide.” However, he could not travel to see Wilde in Philadelphia due to a stroke and limited mobility.
Whitman sent a note to Mrs. George W. Childs (the wife of the Philadelphia publisher at whose house the meeting was to occur) and expressed his regret that he could not join Wilde for dinner, but he asked for her to give Wilde his “hearty salutation & American welcome.” After hearing this news, Wilde made it clear to Whitman that he would eagerly travel to Camden to meet his idol. Whitman responded in a note on January 18th, the day after Wilde’s Philadelphia lecture, that if Wilde would like to see him, he could be found at 431 Stevens St., Camden, “between 2 till 3 ½ this afternoon [and]will be most happy to see Mr. Wilde & Mr. Stoddart.” Wilde left the Aldine Hotel with Stoddart, boarded a ferry, and made a quick journey across the river to Camden. Then the two walked about twenty minutes to 431 Stevens St., and Wilde’s wish became a reality.
Whitman was living with his brother George and sister-in-law Louisa, who were taking care of him after his stroke. As Wilde and Stoddart sat down with Whitman, Louisa’s homemade elderberry wine was soon produced, and the three indulged in it as they engaged in a literary discussion. Wilde divulged that his mother read Leaves of Grass to him as a child. Whitman was flattered and desired to get to know Wilde on a more intimate level. Whitman soon excused himself from Stoddart and the others gathered in the living room and invited Wilde up to the third floor.
This environment was later characterized by Whitman as a place where the two indulged in “a jolly good time” and Wilde could get away from “fashionable society, and spend … time with an ‘old rough.’” Wilde explained that while in the den, he experienced “the greatest and strongest man who … ever lived.” After their meeting, Whitman wrote to his friend Harry Stafford that he was very impressed with this “fine large handsome youngster.” Whitman called Wilde a “‘splendid boy [who]… is so frank and outspoken, and manly.’” Both men emphasized that their intimate time in Whitman’s den led to a meaningful and pleasurable bonding experience.
Although Wilde had only published a selection of poetry, Whitman commented on how Wilde was already becoming a literary face of Victorian Æstheticism. Wilde knew that he was in the presence of an important literary mentor, announcing: “I have come to you as to one with whom I have been acquainted almost from the cradle.” In his letter to Stafford, Whitman responded that he was pleased that Wilde had “the good sense to take a great fancy to me.” It’s fair to say that the meeting took on a queer sensual tone, since both men later commented that physical touch and a possible kiss were exchanged. This erotic intellectual connection was not lost on poet and professor Helen Gray Cone, who latched onto this theme in her fictional poem “Narcissus in Camden,” written in 1892, the year Whitman died.
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After Whitman’s Death, Wilde’s friends George Cecil Ives and John Addington Symonds asked for his thoughts on Whitman’s legacy. Wilde recalled their first meeting in Camden and said that he could still feel the “kiss of Walt Whitman … on my lips.” Because of the age difference, it’s possible to see Whitman and Wilde’s intellectual and suggestively erotic relationship as the 19th-century version of ancient Greek pederasty. Wilde’s comments about the Greekness of Whitman’s poetry and physical appearance seem to carry a hidden message. Their first meeting was so intense that Wilde wrote to Whitman on March 1, 1882: “Before I leave America I must see you again—there is no one in this wide great world of America whom I love and honour so much.”
Not much is known about what happened when Whitman and Wilde reunited on May 10, 1882. A Philadelphia humorist of the time, Charles Godfrey Leland, wrote that before Wilde came to visit with him, he had come back “fresh from Camden” and had spent “an hour at the feet of Walt Whitman” (imagining Wilde at Whitman’s feet is quite a queer image indeed). The article accurately captures the reverence that Wilde displayed when in Whitman’s presence and emphasizes Wilde’s desire to learn and gain private knowledge from him. Since Wilde had been reading about Whitman’s male comrades from boyhood, perhaps he desired to learn more from Whitman about the beauty of manly love, a theme that the older poet expressed in Leaves of Grass. Although neither man explicitly discussed this with the press, Wilde provided a clue when he noticed the ancient Greek aspects of Whitman’s poetry. Wilde had not yet published his most homoerotically charged novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), but Whitman recognized a similarity in their literary themes and personalities.
The influence of the Narcissus myth and ancient Greek male homoerotic culture and literature on Whitman’s 1855 and 1860 editions of Leaves of Grass provides a new way of exploring male homoerotic themes in his poetry. Queer male writers who followed in Whitman’s footsteps, like Wilde and Symonds, were influenced by the Narcissus myth’s male homoerotic implications and also by Whitman’s representation of same-sex desire and his vision of comradeship. In my forthcoming book on Whitman, I argue that he creates a procreative poetics that allows for both contemporary and future queer male readers and writers to continue Whitman’s homoerotic legacy.
Andrew Rimby, host of The Ivory Tower Boiler Room podcast, is author of The Pool of Narcissus: Walt Whitman’s Male Homoerotic Poetics.
