On February 18, 1872, Irish writer Bram Stoker, then in his early twenties, wrote a letter to American poet Walt Whitman. (While initially critical of Whitman’s works, Stoker had become an ardent fan upon reading Leaves of Grass, which was published in England in 1868.)
Almost two thousand words long, Stoker’s missive to Whitman has many of the hallmarks of a passionate love letter. The letter, first published in David J. Skal’s book Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula, includes the following passages:
If you are the man I take you to be you will like to get this letter. If you are not I don’t care whether you like it or not and only ask that you put it into the fire without reading any farther. But I believe you will like it. I don’t think there is a man living, even you who are above the prejudices of the class of small-minded men, who wouldn’t like to get a letter from a younger man, a stranger, across the world — a man living in an atmosphere prejudiced to the truths you sing and your manner of singing them…
You have shaken off the shackles and your wings are free. I have the shackles on my shoulders still — but I have no wings. If you are going to read this letter any further I should tell you that I am not prepared to “give up all else” so far as words go. The only thing I am prepared to give up is prejudice, and before I knew you I had begun to throw overboard my cargo, but it is not all gone yet…
I have been more candid with you — have said more about myself to you than I have said to anyone before. … How sweet a thing it is for a strong healthy man with a woman’s eye and a child’s wishes to feel that he can speak to a man who can be if he wishes father, and brother and wife to his soul. … I thank you for all the love and sympathy you have given me in common with my kind.
(It isn’t quite as direct as Marcel Proust describing himself as the “pony” of his lover, composer Reynaldo Hahn, but it comes close.)
Four years passed before Stoker finally mailed his letter – on Valentine’s Day, 1876. Stoker, then twenty-eight years old and a published theatre critic and short story writer, had been in a debate earlier that day in which he had defended Whitman’s work. Stoker came home, wrote an accompanying letter (also included in Skal’s book), in which he noted that the original letter “speaks for itself and needs no comment,” and sent the letters off together.
Stoker received a reply from Whitman dated March 6, 1876, not long after the original letter. Whitman thanked Stoker for his letters, writing:
You did well to write me so unconventionally, so fresh, so manly, and so affectionately, too. I too hope (though it is not probable) that we shall one day meet each other. Meantime I send you my friendship and thanks.
Whitman later elaborated upon his response to Stoker’s letter in conversations with his friend, American essayist Horace Traubel, recorded in Traubel’s book With Walt Whitman in Camden:
He was a sassy youngster …[A]s to burning the epistle up or not—it never occurred to me to do anything at all: what the hell did I care whether he was pertinent or impertinent? he was fresh, breezy, Irish: that was the price paid for admission—and enough: he was welcome!”
The exact motivation behind Stoker’s initial letter can be regarded as a mere fan writing to his “literary hero”, or, perhaps more persuasively, as a reflection of Stoker’s own innermost thoughts and feelings.
Whitman was not the only man who inspired passion from Stoker; Stoker subsequently became a fervent admirer of English actor Henry Irving, whose performance in the 1871 play The Bells had made him a rising star. Stoker had previously seen Irving on stage in Dublin in 1867, at the age of nineteen, and again in 1871, but did not meet Irving in person until 1876. Stoker attended Irving’s December 1876 production of Hamlet three times, writing a glowing review; dined with Irving in his hotel suite at the actor’s invitation; and, in November 1878, accepted the role of Irving’s stage manager.
The next month, Stoker married nineteen-year-old Florence Balcombe, which, according to Michael Kilgarriff of The Irving Society, took place “a full year earlier than planned.” The marriage led to a brief falling-out between Stoker and his friend Oscar Wilde, who had a crush on Balcombe. (The details of how Stoker and Balcombe met and courted are reportedly unknown. One can speculate that a man like Stoker, in his late twenties with an established career but without a spouse, might have been the subject of discussion or concern.)
Stoker’s deep admiration of Irving may have ultimately been one-sided, as Irving’s letters to Stoker were more and more businesslike as years went by. Kilgarriff suggests that Irving might have even seen Stoker at the time of their first meetings as “easy prey.” While Stoker increasingly took a less influential role in Irving’s life, the duo’s professional relationship continued up until Irving’s passing in 1905, in the lobby of a hotel shortly after a performance. Stoker later noted that “in those last seven years of his life I was not able to see so much of him as I had been on the habit of doing throughout the previous twenty.”
Despite Stoker’s longtime devotion, Irving reportedly did not leave anything to him in his will. The year after Irving died, Stoker published a two-volume Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, in which Stoker describes himself as “in certain ways the most intimate friend of [Irving’s] life.” When Stoker passed away in 1912, his friend Hall Caine remarked that “[I]t was not only his time and his services that he gave to Irving – it was his heart… [N]ever have I seen such absorption of one man’s life in the life of another.”
Stoker’s relationship with Irving can perhaps be contrasted with his friendship with Whitman. Stoker and Whitman first met on March 20, 1884, when Irving’s tour was in the United States. The two met at the home of Whitman’s friend Thomas Donaldson. Stoker described Whitman as “all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him,” and Whitman told Donaldson (as recounted in Donaldson’s memoir Walt Whitman: The Man) that Stoker was “a breath of good, healthy, breezy sea air.” The two met twice more, the last time in December 1887, which ended with Whitman providing Stoker with an autographed copy of Leaves of Grass; Stoker later noted, “That was the last time that I ever saw the man who for nearly twenty years had held my heart as a dear friend.”
The influence of Whitman’s writing on Stoker’s most famous work, the 1897 novel Dracula, is a subject of some debate, including whether the title character was himself modelled after Whitman; it seems more likely that Count Dracula was inspired by Irving. The relationship between Stoker and Whitman remains of interest, not only for its historical and literary aspects, but for what it might have indicated about Stoker himself: certainly someone who admired other men deeply, even passionately, even if it was not always reciprocated.
(Avocado contributor Christopher Saunders wrote an excellent article in 2020 that goes more in-depth into Stoker’s American connections, which you can read here. My header was written independently and prior to realizing the subject had previously been covered on the site.)