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124 WHITMAN, Walt. Song of Myself. East Aurora, New York: The Roycrofters, 1904 from the Roycrofters to Edward Carpenter, Whitman’s rumoured lover First Roycroft edition, number 37 of 100 copies printed on Japanese vellum and signed by the publisher Elbert Hubbard on the limitation page, presentation copy, additionally inscribed by Hubbard and six others on a tipped-in presentation leaf to Whitman’s friend and rumoured lover, Edward Carpenter. This is an evocative association copy of Whitman’s poem, commemorating the transatlantic relationship of two of the most influential figures in the early history of sexual liberation. The illuminated presentation inscription reads “This little book is a token of regard to Edward Carpenter”, and several other social reformers signed their names to present the volume to Carpenter, including publisher Charles H. Kerr; Clarence S. Darrow, lawyer and leader of the American Civil Liberties Union; professor and author on Whitman’s poetry Oscar L. Triggs; and Jane Addams, author and leader of the movement for women’s suffrage in the US. The diversity of the signatories stands as testament to the breadth of Carpenter’s influence. A philosopher, poet, and early advocate for gay rights, Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) was an ordained Anglican priest before renouncing his religion and becoming a utopian socialist. Through both his published work and private friendships, he became in the early 20th century an important figure in emancipatory politics, teaching many to better understand and express their sexuality. He edited Iolaus: An Anthology of Friendship (1902), the first literary collection celebrating homosexuality, and served as the inspiration for E. M. Forster’s novel Maurice . Towards Democracy (1883–1902), Carpenter’s long, unrhymed poem on social and spiritual reform, reveals the considerable impression Whitman made on his thinking and writing; Carpenter would later describe him as “the poet who was destined so deeply to influence my life” ( My Days and Dreams , p. 64). Carpenter’s first encounter with Whitman’s writing was in 1868, aged 24, when he received a “blue-covered” copy of Whitman’s collected poems while a student at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
Although he had known for some time that he was gay, his experience of reading Whitman for the first time completely shifted his self-perception: “I remember lying down then and there on the floor poring, pausing, wondering . . . From that time forward a profound change set in within me” (ibid., p. 64). It was Whitman’s description of love between men that caused Carpenter’s epiphany: “What made me cling to the little blue book from the beginning was largely the poems which celebrated comradeship. That thought, so near and personal to me, I had never before seen or heard fairly expressed” (p. 65). Carpenter wrote as much in a letter to Whitman himself, in July 1874: “Because you have, as it were, given me a ground for the love of men I thank you continually in my heart. (And others thank you though they do not say so.) For you have made men to be not ashamed of the noblest instinct of their nature. Women are beautiful; but, to some, there is that which passes the love of women” (printed in With Walt Whitman in Camden , vol. I, p. 160). When Whitman later shared this first letter with Horace Traubel, he described it as “beautiful, like a confession . . . I seem to get very near to his heart and he to mine” ( With Walt Whitman in Camden , vol. I, p. 158). The two corresponded, and in 1877 Carpenter crossed the Atlantic to meet the poet for the first time. At his home in Camden, New Jersey, Whitman greeted Carpenter as an old friend, and Carpenter was drawn to the poet’s “infinite tenderness, wistful love, and studied tolerance” ( Days with Walt Whitman , p. 38). While their friendship is well documented, not least by Carpenter himself, a romantic and sexual involvement has also been rumoured. Notable advocates include Allen Ginsberg, who believed a line of “gay succession” connected him to Whitman through their sexual partners: Ginsberg had slept with Neal Cassady, “who slept with Gavin Arthur, who slept with Edward Carpenter, who slept with Whitman” ( Gay Sunshine Interviews , vol. I, p. 106). Ginsberg asked Arthur to write up the story of his encounter with Carpenter, in which Carpenter revealed his affair with Whitman. Ginsberg was convinced that Arthur’s testament, which was later printed as an appendix to Gay Sunshine Interviews (pp. 126–128), was “the only legitimate documentation of Whitman’s sex life that exists, first- or second-hand . . . you won’t find it in any of the books about Whitman” (quoted in the transcript to his class on Whitman at Naropa University, Summer 1981).
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