A hopeful beginning in the wake of war
Camden Courier-Post —
By STEPHEN M. O’KEEFE
Former Courier-Post City Editor
One hundred years ago the first edition of the Courier-Post Newspapers was published. It was dedicated to informing the people of Camden abouts [sic] news events and contained a vow to promote the best interest of the city.
A glimpse into the bygones in that century offers a vista of change — in the community, the people and the newspaper. The long span from Oct. 2, 1875, has been packed with pathos and pleasures which attend the daily panorama of news — an abundance far beyond the dreams of Camden’s early journalists.
Birth and death are neighbors in newspaper columns. Right and wrong rest there with all the sins and virtues. The disasters of man and nature mingle with the defeats, the triumphs, the tragedies of life, and each day’s paper bears testimony that rich and poor, high and low, all stand within range of the pressman’s ink.
THE LAST HALF of the Courier-Post centennial has brought astonishing change. Modern tools and techniques have banished into oblivion methods that were regarded as wonders 100 years ago. Printers who retired only a few years ago cannot believe it possible to produce newspaper without type and the onetime marvels that were typesetting machines.
The home of the Courier-Post, sandwiched by Cuthbert Boulevard and Hampton Road in Cherry Hill entombs the spirits of many who labored to make it possible. While countless numbers have made anonymous contributions others left legacies that have enriched the hostory [sic] of Camden — even beyond its borders in the once-dense wilderness.
Journalists a century ago were a hardy and optimistic breed. They consigned to the past the horrors of the Civil War and a national panic in 1873.
Camden at that time was a town of ferries, a source of prosperity. Then and for years afterward, the city’s culture reflected on the river. There in season boats by the hundreds were gliding or riding at anchor in a steam that was adequate for commerce and unspoiled.
THAT WAS the way it was when Henry L. Bonsall, at the age of 12, went to work in the printing shop of the West Jersey Mail, at Front and Federal Streets. A biographer of later years wrote that Bonsall was educated in that printing shop. He was destined to become superintent [sic] of Camden schools, to serve four years in the New Jersey Legislature, become a whiskey-drinking companion of poet Walt Whitman, and founder of the Courier-Post.
Whitman was the foremost writer in Courier-Post annals. The penciled manuscripts he brought to the Camden Daily Post shop probably were discarded after they were set in type. Those scribblings would command huge sums today.
Bonsall departed from the West Jersey Mail a short time after completing his apprenticeship and left Camden in 1858. He worked in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, New York, served as a war correspondent and was a clerk in the House of Representatives before returning to Camden in 1867.
A CLUE AS to why he left and returned to Camden may rest in a fragmentary record in the Camden County Historical Society library. Typed on a card there is the notation that Lydia C. Bonsall, his wife, died in Washington, on Oct. 8, 1866, in her 24th year. Other records list Bonsall as 32 then.
Bonsall launched a weekly, the New Republic, on Nov. 30, 1867, at the southeast corner of 2nd and Plum (now Arch) Streets. Eight years later after an interlude in politics, he launched the Camden Daily Post.
Camden was on the move as a city. It was called a beautiful and prosperous town by visitors. New industries were springing up and Pennsylvanians were impressed by the increasing number of fine homes being built here. The city’s churches, its schools, hotels, clubs and stores were augmented by the Camden Opera House at West and Mickle Streets.
From a village of 1,143 souls in 1828, when it was incorporated, the population rose to almost 30,000 in 1875.
BONSALL PRODUCED the first issue of the Camden Daily Post on Oct. 2, 1875. Soon afterward his son, Bartram L., then about 20, was listed as his partner, and the firm was identified as H.L. Bonsall & Son, located at 205 Market St. Type for the paper was set at that address but the paper was printed by its rival, the Camden Democrat, in a frame building at Front and Federal Streets. This seemingly strange situation was part of newspaper tradition.
Soon after the first issue of the Post, things began to happen. Business throughout the city was lively, and popular reaction to the new paper pleased both Bonsall and the advertisers. The first edition set forth Bonsall’s vow:
“REALIZING the necessity for a departure from the traditional policy of partisan journalism, THE DAILY POST will be entirely independent and untrammeled. Having no other ‘backing’ than the clear heads and strong hands of its projectors, it will be under the domination of no party, clique or corporation and be influenced by no considerations save those which conduce to the best interests of a community from which alone it will endeavor to deserve and derive support. Alive to the advanced thought of the day, it will strive to keep abreast with it, ever lending a generous support to liberal and humanizing efforts, and avoiding the miserable, if not mercenary, personal detraction which blurs the pages of many journals.
“Camden is rapidly growing and destined to become a great city. It will be the effort of the POST to present the evidence of this fact and assist in its further development.
“A newspaper is the best reflex of a community, conveying to the casual observer an idea of its business enterprise and intelligence. Philadelphia dailies, which have met with a liberal support in the absence of a home medium, constantly detract from our merits instead of doing justice to a city which already contributes far too much to the material interests of a neighbor it may, at no distant day, rival in production, if not population, should our immense and unrivaled advantages be properly availed of by a liberal policy of encouraging home industry.
“To achieve this end will be the aim of the POST and to enable to do its work thoroughly and acceptably, it confidently claims the support and cooperation of citizens, irrespective of party or other preferences, pledging itself in return to furnish a paper that will meet the just expectations and reasonable demands of an intelligent reading public.”
THE RESPONSE indicated Bonsall’s move was timely and profit was apparent in the flow of advertising.
In short order about a dozen names were listed in the paper as authorized to accent [sic] subscriptions, at 10 cents per week, for a minimum of six months.
Advertising rates were quite low and not rigidly set. The payroll was augmented in kind. One editor-writer, Dickinson of the Democrat, reputedly was paid $7 a week, with washing thrown in. Sinnickson Chew, of the West Jersey Press, is said to have been receiving $8.25 per week. Bartram Bonsall augmented his 50 cents per week by selling newspapers from other cities mailed to the Post. He also was given a pass to the Opera House.
Most papers of that period were dull, compared to today’s papers, packed with space-filling junk and items copied from other journals, some of which were two to three months old.
The Post managed to print more local news, particularly court cases. Readers today would be astonished at the number of drunks and wife-beaters that appeared in mayor’s court in those good old days. Also surprising was the number of women tipplers arrested, some hauled to jail in pushcarts or wheelbarrows. All were identified in court and in the newspapers.
DURING THE winter of 1875-76, the Post circulation exceeded 1,000 and in about a year the figure topped 3,000, then hailed as the largest in South Jersey.
Before joining his father on the Post, young Bonsall was publisher of The Spy, which he called “a paper run by a boy.” He was 17 when The Spy first appeared. It sold for 25 cents a year. In its first two years, The Spy took over four other journals put out by amateur editors. At one time there were seven such publications in Camden, all in the 1870s. Several professional developed [sic] from these journals.
The Post continued to play up politics, and it was evident that Bonsall was straining to give both parties coverage. His columns of commentary, however, generally espoused the Republican Party.
IN THE FIRST half of the 1870s, Camden was showing signs of progress but it still was contained in a compact area, mainly from the Market Street ferry to about 6th Street or Broadway, the old turnpike to Woodbury. The north-south sideses [sic] of the sector were Cooper and Federal Streets. Present-day North 7th Street, where the Friends’ Meeting House faced Cooper Street, was looked upon as the outskirts.
It took about four years for city officials to accept 4.5 acres of land donated as a site for a new municipal building on Haddon Avenue, between Washington and Benson Streets. They felt the location was too far out.
It was accepted formally in 1974 [sic], and the second City Hall was built at a cost of $125,000. Its recorded opening date has been listed as Jan. 1, 1876, but an old newspaper file reported the City Council first met there in December, 1875.
That building, with a large clock in a high steeple, was to remain a landmark for more than a half century.
HENRY L. BONSALL Post Publisher and Editor
BARTRAM BONSALL
Poet Walt Whitman portrait
Camden Courier-Post —
[Photo caption] Poet Walt Whitman lived in Camden from 1873 to 1892. Courier-Post file.
WALT WHITMAN, Camden’s “Good Grey Poet,” the life of whom a subject that has been written on at length by many people far wiser than I. Rather than rehash much that is to be read elsewhere, I will present things of interest concerning Whitman, his life and times in and around Camden, and comments by those who knew him and other contemporaries.
One aspect of Whitman that is far off the literary track is the use of his name and image for commercial purposes after his death. The Hotel Walt Whitman, the Walt Whitman Stores grocery chain and the assorted canned and packaged food items distributed under the “Walt Whitman” and “Poet” brand by Camden Grocer Exchange are probably the best remembered examples. Not to be forgotten is the Walt Whitman Bridge over the Delaware River. One has to wonder how many of those who cross the bridge daily know who Whitman was, and of that number, how many have read any of his poetry.
Walt Whitman Surprised
New York Times —
Presented by Many Friends With a Handsome Horse and Phaeton.
PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 15.—Toward sundown this evening, as Walt Whitman was half dozing over a pile of manuscript near a window in his little frame house in Camden, the jarring rattle of wheels startled the old man, and a smart chestnut horse drew a natty phaeton up to the door. The poet glanced over his flowers at the turnout and nodded kindly to the little chap who held the reins, for he was a favorite, the son of his old friend, Tom Donaldson. The boy carefully tied the animal and handed up with a mysterious air a portentous envelope, big and fat, and started to walk away, but was called back and induced to enter the cozy workshop.
“What’s all this about, my boy?” inquired Walt Whitman, turning over the missive, and handling it very much as if he feared it might contain dynamite.
“Them’s the documents,” piped the little fellow, in a childish treble.
“What documents? A commission from some foreign Court?” returned the old gentleman playfully, as he held the envelope up to the light and fruitlessly attempted to peer through the cover into the contents. “Is it a patent of nobility, or is it an address from a lot of my young friends?”
“Why don’t you open it?” suggested the somewhat matter-of-fact emissary, who was on pins and needles through the consciousness of the possession of a huge secret many sizes too big for so small a custodian.
It seemed a long time that the poet consumed in adjusting his glasses and scanning the chirography of the superscription, and whole eras winged their way into eternity while he deliberately and nicely cut open the end and extracted the contents. Several large sheets of paper were folded up within. On them were scrawled the names of a number of prominent men in the various walks of life, but not a line to explain their significance save “Walt Whitman, with compliments of——“ which was written at the top of the first page.
The old poet turned the sheets upside down and looked on the backs of them, while his forehead wrinkled with perplexity. He took off his glasses and polished them with his silk handkerchief, but their increased translucence did not augment their power of unraveling the mystery. In utter astonishment he turned to the boy, whom he began to suspect of joking with him, but that young man, who had been writhing under the effects of volcanic emotions, sprang to his feet, dashed out of the door, yelling wildly:
“Its [sic] yours—all yours—yours for keeps !” and disappeared.
“God bless us, Mary,” gasped the old gentleman, as his good housekeeper appeared, with consternation written all over her features. “There’s something the matter with the boy.”
At this moment Mr. Donaldson walked in and grasped his old friend by the hand.
“What does it mean ?” the poet demanded.
“The horse and phaeton are a present from your friends, whose names are on the paper,” was the laughing reply.
But Walt Whitman could not grasp the idea that he was the recipient of so valuable a present. “Don’t joke me,” he pleaded; “I never owned such a thing in my life.”
It took some time to convince him that the present was for him, and then he put on his wide-brimmed sombrero and insisted upon getting into the phaeton and dashing out into the green lanes. Mr. Donaldson accompanied him, and after a three-mile drive the poet let him out and drove to his old friend, Henry S. Scovel, and insisted that Mrs. Scovel ride out behind the wonderful animal.
It was long after dark before the poet consented to return to his home, and when a reporter called at 9 o’clock, the old gentleman was fagged. He was sitting in his great armchair beside the window, with the lights turned down. The floor and table were still littered with books and papers, and the evening mail was still unopened.
“You don’t know how many good friends I have,” said the bard, as he half rose to extend his hand. Then running his fingers through his silver locks, and rolling back his wide collar still further from his throat, he continued:
“I have before now been made to feel in many touching ways how kind and thoughtful my loving friends are, but this present is so handsome and valuable, came so opportunely, and was so thorough a surprise, that I can hardly realize it. My paralysis has made me so lame lately that I had to give up even my walks for health let alone my rambles in the country, and my constitution has suffered for exercise. It was all done so unostentatiously and delicately that I was greatly affected. Tom Donaldson knew that I was getting more feeble, and he wrote to a number of friends and admirers of mine in different parts of the country, proposing presenting me with a carriage and horse to ease my declining years. Some of them I do not know. Some are very dear friends. Here are their names: John G. Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain,) Charles Dudley Warner, John Boyle O’Reilly, William J. Florence, Edwin Booth, and Lawrence Barrett, Mrs. S. A. Bigelow, of Boston; Horace Howard Furness, L. N. Fairchild, E. A. Buck, of the Spirit of the Times; R. W. Gilder, of the Century; Edward T. Steel, A. K. McClure, Stephen B. Elkins, Charles Emory Smith, Talcott Williams, William D. O’Connor, of Washington; J. H. Bartlett, George H. Boker, Edwin S. Stuart, William W. Justice, John Harker, of Exina, Canada, and R. M. Buck, M. D., and Dr. Beeman, of London, Canada.”
“It is an interesting list, isn’t it?” the poet continued. “It seems that this phaeton was made for me in Columbus, Ohio, and is as easy and convenient as it can be. It is very low in the bed, has gig lamps, and deep cushions. Oh, I shall have a famous time this Fall ! They tell me there are lovely drives south and east of Camden, and there are sleepy old villages that I am informed are very like old English hamlets. I shall take long drives into the country each day, and once more enjoy nature, if not as I used to, at least as deeply and thankfully.”
It is not generally known that the poet was recently in receipt of a considerable sum raised among his English admirers by subscription and without his knowledge. The gift is said to be about $500 in value, and it was very welcome, coming as it did, when Walt Whitman was in financial embarrassment.
Whitman’s Will Filed
Philadelphia Inquirer —
Walt Whitman’s will, the substance of which was published two weeks ago, was filed yesterday in the Camden County Surrogate’s office. The entire estate is valued at about $3500.
Walt Whitman’s Home in Camden
New York Herald —
Editorial in The New York Herald, Monday, May 15
The City Council of Camden, New Jersey, has voted that the home in which Walt Whitman passed the later years of his life and in which on March 26, 1892, he died shall not be destroyed but shall be preserved intact on the site where it stands. There had been a suggestion that it be removed to one of the city’s parks. This did not meet the Council’s approval. The house will stand where it is and where it stood when Walt Whitman lived and died in it.
Camden is a thriving and exceedingly busy city of upward of 116,000 inhabitants. With the completion of the great bridge linking it with Philadelphia across the Delaware its rapid growth is among the certainties. Business and not sentiment is its specialty. But evidently Camden is not so completely absorbed in business that sentiment is totally excluded. It does not forget that in the Whitman home it possesses what to many thousands of persons here and abroad is something in the nature of a literary shrine, and that such a possession entails responsibility on the city.
This responsibility the City Council is preparing to meet in a manner worthy of commendation. The Whitman home will be purchased by the city, the old house will be properly restored, and in it will be assembled all Whitman relics available, there to be preserved for all time. It is fortunate that the good taste of those in authority in Camden forbids the removal of the poet’s home from its original environment and its graceless injection into the scenery of a public park.
It will be 103 years May 31 next since Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Suffolk county, Long Island, and Camden could not more fittingly commemorate that birthday anniversary than by thus preserving the house in which the poet long lived and finally died.
Whitman Verse Lovers Visit Poet’s Old Haunts To Mark 113th Birthday
Camden Courier-Post —
Pilgrimage to Timber Creek at Laurel Springs and Planting of Memorial Tree Feature Observance; Bard Praised for Universal Appeal
The elemental vigor of Walt Whitman, the “Good Gray Poet” of Camden, was recalled yesterday on the banks of Timber creek at Laurel Springs where more than 50 lovers of his poetry met to celebrate his 113th birthday anniversary.
The celebration, in the form of a picnic and ramble along the creeks after the fashion of Whitman, was preceded by the planting of a memorial tree, a dogwood, in the yard of the old Stafford home where Whitman spent many days while recovering from his illness.
The tree was set in place by Dr. Alexander Macalister, of Camden, who was Whitman’s physician, and the spade was wielded by Harrison S. Morris, of Philadelphia, an intimate friend of Whitman.
More than 50 lovers of the poetry of Walt Whitman gathered at the old Stafford Home in Laurel Springs yesterday to celebrate the 113th birthday anniversary of the “Good Gray Poet,” by planting a memorial dogwood tree. Dr. Alexander Macalister, who was personal physician and who is president of the Walt Whitman Foundation, is seen holding the tree while the spade is wielded by Harrison S. Morris, of Philadelphia, who was an intimate friend of the poet. In the lower picture is Alexander Coomb Tennant, of London, England, who came to Laurel Springs to honor Whitman’s memory.
Whitman Honored On 113th Birthday
(Continued from Page One)
Dr. Macalister, delivering the anniversary address, praised Whitman as the “universal poet.”
Birthday Ideal
“Of all days for the advent of such a man as Walt Whitman, May 31 is peculiarly his day,” Dr. Macalister said. “If Nature had deliberately designed, and timed, his coming she could not have found a better day. For Whitman, in his verse, typified Spring, with its overflowing and joyous manifestations of life. Nothing in Nature escaped him. It seemed as if the kindly old mother of us all had made a favorite of him, had taken him by the hand, and pointed out to him things that the rest of us fail to see, and had whispered to him some of the secrets of the universe. For Whitman is pre-eminently a universal poet. No one language can hold his thought, which laughs at translators, and knocks at the door of every man’s heart. Like music, an instrument for conveying feeling, regardless of language, Whitman’s thought instantly appeals, and carries the mind to levels far above the mists and fogs of this muddled old world of ours. No one can read, and study, Whitman, and remain a willing victim of circumstances.”
Poet Not Aimless
“Here, right around us, on these very grounds, and close by, Whitman found opportunity to take in and assimilate the impressions we find embodied in his lines. Let some critics rave about him being ‘formless,’ we know he is not aimless. We know that, despite the years—despite any number of years—any one who touches his book, ‘touches a man.’”
“A man because he is natural, or truthful; because he faces the world and life as they are. He never seeks to darken counsel to please Mrs. Grundy, or any other ‘cribbed, cabinned and confined’ influence. No one can read Whitman without getting rid of a lot of goblins of the mind, and finding life fuller and sweeter when it is honest and unafraid.”
Readings From Works
Miss Dora Adele Shoemaker of Philadelphia, president of the National School of Elocution and Oratory, presented readings from “Specimen Days,” an autobiographical work of Whitman, most of which was written at the Stafford home. The house is owned now by Mr. and Mrs. E. Buist Reilly, who acted as host and hostess during the tree-planting exercises.
The reading included “An Interregnum Paragraph,” “To a Spring and Brook,” “Birds Migrating at Midnight,” “Summer Nights and Indolencies,” “Bumble Bees,” and “The Lesson of a Tree.”
A rare edition dear to collectors of Whitmania, “Visits with Walt Whitman,” was presented to the Walt Whitman Foundation by Alexander Coomb Tennant of London, England, who came to America at this time to honor Whitman’s memory. Tennant’s father was a friend of Whitman.
The annual birthday anniversary of Whitman is observed under auspices of the Walt Whitman Foundation. Arrangements were in charge of Mrs. Martha Davis, curator of the Walt Whitman Home, 330 Mickle street; Margaret Van Nest Storer of Chestnut Hill and Maguire Ball of West Collingswood.
Spaeth Unable to Attend
Dr. J. Duncan Spaeth, professor of English literature at Princeton University, who was to be a guest of honor, was unable to attend. Among those who knew Whitman and attended were Dr. Macalister, Mr. Morris, Mrs. Hedwig Haslam Alexander of 2208 Wallace avenue, Philadelphia, and Mrs. Margaret Wiley of 2533 Aspen street, Philadelphia, sisters of Mrs. George Whitman, executor for the famous poet.
Others present were: Mr. and Mrs. Donald N. Koster, of Philadelphia; Mrs. Juliet Lit Stern, of Haddonfield; James L. Pennypacker, of Haddonfield; Mrs. Helen D. Cooney, of Brookline, Mass.; Mr. and Mrs. E. Buist Reilly, of Laurel Springs; Helen E. Sherk, of Camden; Mrs. George W. Frick, Mrs. Robert Baird, Mrs. John Hinkle, Mrs. Aaron Heppard, Mrs. Harry Krantz, Mrs. A. M. Plummer, Mrs. Joseph H. Williams and Miss Delma Gardiner, all of Westville; Maguire Ball, of West Collingswood; William R. North, Sara S. North and Billy North, of Bordentown.
W. Lee Davis, of Philadelphia; M. Grace Fenstermaker, of Beach Haven, Pa.; Louise G. Harbauer, of Philadelphia; Mabel Whiting Hooper, of Boston; Hedwig Wiley, of Philadelphia; Arian H. Grimsley of Philadelphia; Marjorie Alexander, of Philadelphia; Margaret Van Nest Storer, of Chestnut Hill; Doris Adele Shoemaker, of Philadelphia; Mrs. Helen B. Ingram, of Haddon Heights; Coulter Davey, of Laurel Springs; Mrs. Helen Lippincott, of Riverton; Mrs. Roy Helton, of Philadelphia, and Mrs. Edwin C. Grice, of Philadelphia.
Camden Honors Whitman on 120th Anniversary
Left: Thomas B. Donaldson, who knew Whitman; Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Conover; and Ralph W. Wescott, member of the foundation. All three were speakers at the exercises held at headquarters of the Camden County Historical Society.
Walt Whitman Acclaimed as ‘International Prophet’
Camden Courier-Post —
Wescott Recalls Friendship with Poet at Ceremonies Here Marking 120th Anniversary of his birth; Donaldson Tells of Buggy Gift
By Walter B. Batezel
Acknowledged by the world as the poet of democracy, Camden’s own Walt Whitman was acclaimed here yesterday on the 120th anniversary of his birth as the “prophet of a new internationalism.”
This interpretation of Whitman and his famous “Leaves of Grass,” which introduced free verse to the world and the rugged liberty loving character of America so lustily praised in his songs, was offered by Ralph W. Wescott, of Haddonfield.
Wescott was one of three speakers for the Walt Whitman Foundation which is charged with maintenance of the Whitman home at 330 Mickle Street as a literary shrine. Also speaking on Whitman were Thomas B. Donaldson, Philadelphia insurance man, who as a boy knew Whitman, and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Conover, also of Philadelphia.
The meeting was held at the headquarters of the Camden County Historical Society, Euclid Avenue and Park Boulevard. Wescott, former comptroller of customs of the Port of Philadelphia and son of the late Judge John W. Wescott, who was an intimate friend of Whitman in Camden and who twice nominated Woodrow Wilson for the presidency, based his lauding of Whitman as an “international prophet” upon excerpts from Whitman’s books.
Urged Universal Freedom
“It is the very catholicity of the man which causes us to celebrate his birthday anniversary,” said Wescott. “He has been seen as the precursor of socialism and the completely going anti-socialist.”
“We almost shrink from news abroad, and we are bound to consider what Whitman’s response would have been. In his poem ‘Salutation,’ I think we find in Whitman the prophecy of a new internationalism, a poem in which he asked for universal freedom against slavery, and called for an international brotherhood.”
“It is unique and significant that on this 120th anniversary of Whitman the New York World’s Fair acclaims him by statue and adulation, and in 1876 during the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia Whitman indited a poem addressed to foreign readers in which he directed their attention to ‘the peculiar glory of the United States’ as something ‘vaster, saner, more splendid in comradeship, knitting closer all nations and humanity.’”
“Whitman himself wrote poets were necessary to fulfillment of a world brotherhood because their work was needed to vitalize the message of statesmen.”
Preached Good Will
“In the British-written preface to Whitman’s ‘Specimen Days in America,’ which he wrote in Camden and Laurel Springs, there occurred the sentence ‘Whitman preached goodwill between common people of all nations.’ In all the things written of him, Whitman said he liked that description best.”
“So, in Whitman’s own words we find the real message, and as expressed in one of his poems, and so which was an obsession with him in his declining days—we instinctively seek a ‘universal, comprehensive solidarity of man.’ There was no braver or more humanistic American writer than Whitman, nor more humanistic statement for the world than his ‘Leaves of Grass.’”
“Boyhood Recollections of Whitman,” by Donaldson, whose father Blaine Donaldson, of Philadelphia, was a benefactor and fast friend of Whitman, regaled the little literary group of 40 which appeared to honor the birthday of the “Good Gray Poet.”
It was Donaldson’s father who, anxious to aid the paralytic poet in reaching the outdoors, wrote to all of America’s most famous writers and asked they subscribe to a fund to purchase a pony and buggy for Whitman.
Great Writers Gave
The contributors to the fund, Donaldson said, included Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whittier, John Burroughs, Robert W. Ingersoll, Rutherford B. Hayes, General Phil Sheridan and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
“Hayes and Sheridan were frequent visitors to our home,” said Donaldson, “as was Henry Irving, the actor. Sheridan came often to sniff brandy and Whitman met these men there, but Walt came chiefly for mental regalement and food, because my mother was a good cook.”
“I was a lad of eight to eleven years when Whitman made his visits, and no matter who was there Whitman always dominated the room. In fact, he loved my father so much that he requested that my father be a pallbearer for him.”
“My sister and I sat in his lap often, and we liked that because he looked like Santa Claus, and most children were drawn naturally toward him. He was different and comradely. I can pay tribute to Walt’s whiskers because he didn’t chew tobacco, not then anyway, if later.”
“Walt had the eyes of a stage manager and nothing escaped and no matter how distinguished the audience, Whitman was the boss. His favorite pastime at our home was dipping bananas into sherry wine and eating them as though they were lollypops.”
“It was in 1885 that my father decided to get Walt a pony and buggy, and when the outfit was purchased as a gift from America’s greatest writers to Walt. I was commissioned with a guardian to drive it to Camden.”
Pony Was Groggy
“When I got the pony there in the afternoon Whitman came out and said: ‘Bless me,’ and got in right away. Walt then took to the open in later days, but he soon began to complain the pony was ‘groggy and too slow.’ A few days later Walt turned up at home with a three-gaited horse.”
“The horse obviously was too spirited for Whitman’s crippled condition, and when this was drawn to his attention he said, ‘There is no sense in giving me a crippled horse. What does a helpless hulk like me want with another cripple? This horse is lithesome.’”
“I have some mementos from Whitman which I cherish, but most interesting of all was his personality. To know him was better than any souvenir of him, and in the language of today he had ‘umph!’”
“Mrs. Davis, who took him and who loved him as a mother would, caring for his every wish, was a kind, genial soul, and she in fact, supported Whitman while he saved his money for a monument to himself.”
Full of People
“I recall Whitman’s last days, when my father visited him. Father came home and said the house in Camden was full of people hovering over him with pencil and paper to catch his last words, and that few of them had gone down into their jeans to give him a cent.”
“But over all, I think our attitude toward Whitman must be an offering of our mentality, and our tribute is one of admiration and affection.”
Mrs. Conover paid memorial tribute to Dr. Alexander Macalister, former physician to Whitman, who died last November, and who was president of the Walt Whitman Foundation; Mrs. Sarah D. Wolverton, also a member of the foundation, who died last year; Mrs. Alice Walker Griffiths who lived in Camden at the George Whitman home while Walt lived there, and Mrs. Ruth Stafford Goldy, both of whom died last year. It was at the Stafford home in Laurel Springs that Whitman recuperated from his paralytic stroke.
Mrs. Conover said she was not “impressed by recent documents on Whitman” which she generally described as “insolent,” and said “nearness of approach and intimacy are necessary to get to a cosmic soul.”
“The most direct way to Whitman is through ‘Leaves of Grass,’” she said.
She then told of a recent incident on the finding of a first edition of “Leaves of Grass,” owned by “an unappreciative New York bootlegger,” and in which was found a manuscript of one of Whitman’s poems, “A Backward Glane O’re Traveled Road,” and the title of which had been written and changed three times by the poet on the manuscript.
Cites Honors to Poet
Mrs. Conover also called attention to the Sprague collection of Whitmania on exhibit this year in the Library of Congress, dedication of the Whitman statue at the World’s Fair yesterday, and issuance of a postage stamp in his honor.
“Whitman sailed his ship in deep waters,” she said, “and paid no attention to the shallows. He was the world’s greatest optimist, and under these tremulous, troubled and fear-filled times we should follow as Americans his words, ‘My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite.’”
Mrs. Conover lauded Mrs. Martha Davis, curator of the Whitman house, as “a stout-hearted disciple of Walt Whitman.”
Wescott, in behalf of the Whitman foundation, presented to the Camden County Historical Society a picture of the Walt Whitman home for its archives. The picture was received for the society by Mrs. A. Haines Lippincott.
The Walt Whitman House
The Walt Whitman House at 328 Mickle Street. This postcard was published within 15 years of his passing, and is the most contemporary picture of the house as it would have looked during the poet’s lifetime.
Walt Whitman’s House, 328 Mickle Street, Camden, NJ
Commercial Products
Ogden’s Guinea Gold Cigarettes
Hotel Walt Whitman Menu
Hotel Walt Whitman Matchbooks
Walt Whitman Coffee distributed by Camden Grocer Exchange
Walt Whitman Brand Chili Sauce distributed by Camden Grocer Exchange
Poet Brand Cut Wax Beans distributed by Camden Grocer Exchange
Walt Whitman Unfiltered Belgian-Style Ale
Thanks to Ed Centeno for images from his Whitman collections.
Coffee Shop Dinner Menu, Hotel Walt Whitman
Welcome Legionnaires
[emblem of the American Legion]
[drawing of soldiers with a field kitchen]
COFFEE SHOP DINNER MENU
HOTEL WALT WHITMAN
Camden, New Jersey
Joseph E. Mears, Manager
Hotel Walt Whitman Matchbook Covers
First strip
[cream cover, front] THE Walt Whitman MOTOR HOTEL. 200 ROOMS, DINING ROOM, COCKTAIL LOUNGE, COFFEE SHOP. AIR CONDITIONED. WO 4-5700. [a monogram of the letters W and M]
[cream cover, back] WALT WHITMAN MOTOR HOTEL, CAMDEN 2, NEW JERSEY. Please Close Cover Before Striking. Universal Match Corp., Philadelphia
[blue cover, front] The Hub of Activity. MODERN, 200 ROOMS. AT THE CAMDEN ENTRANCE OF THE DELAWARE RIVER BRIDGE. WALT WHITMAN HOTEL, CAMDEN, N. J. The Good Grey Poet. [drawing of the hotel; drawing of a bearded man in a hat]
[blue cover, back] CLOSE COVER BEFORE STRIKING MATCH. The DIAMOND MATCH CO., Springfield, Mass.
[green cover, front] Hotel Walt Whitman Coffee Shop, —Bar— —Cocktail Lounge— —Dining Room—. STRIKE ON BACK COVER. WOodlawn 4-5700. In CAMDEN, N. J. it’s the Hotel Walt Whitman. [drawing of the hotel]
[green cover, back] FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY PLEASE DON’T SMOKE IN BED! LION MATCH CO., INC. PHILADELPHIA, PA.
Second strip
The second strip shows the same three covers with the panels in a different order and orientation; its wording is the same as above.
Matchbook Inside Cover: Enjoy the Comfort of This Hotel
“Enjoy the Comfort of This Hotel - - -
ROOMS $2.00 UPWARD
LUNCHEONS 35¢ 50¢
DINNERS 75¢ $1.00
Also A’la Carte Service
Broadway & Cooper Sts.
CAMDEN, N. J.