Scope and Content Note
The papers of Horace Traubel (1858-1919) and Anne Montgomerie Traubel (1864-1954) span the years 1824-1979, with most of the material dated from 1883 to 1947. The collection contains separate correspondence series for Horace Traubel and Anne Montgomerie Traubel as well as an exchange of letters between them which chronicles their shared political and intellectual commitments and personal relationship. A diary kept by Horace Traubel describing his visits with Walt Whitman from 1888 until the latter's death in 1892 provides a detailed record of Whitman's daily conversations with Traubel. Published in nine volumes as With Walt Whitman in Camden, the manuscript diary is located in the Literary File along with material relating to its publication. The Literary File also contains manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs of Traubel's poetry, prose, and literary criticism. The papers further include production material and correspondence from the files of the Conservator , a monthly magazine published and edited by Traubel from 1890 to 1919, as well as documents and records of the cultural and literary societies which Traubel served as a founding member or an officer.
Although his poetry was styled after Whitman's, Horace Traubel, unlike his mentor, fused literature with politics in support of personal liberation and collective political action, and, though he took no active part in politics himself, he became a spokesman for American socialism. Traubel was associated with a loosely defined group who hoped to utilize literature and the arts to free society from what they perceived to be middle-class restraints. The papers contain letters written to Horace Traubel from Eugene V. Debs as well as by other radicals and reformers of the time, including Ella R. Bloor, Leigh Danenberg, Theodore Debs, James Waldo Fawcett, Rosalie Goodyear, George Davis and Carrie Rand Herron, Samuel M. Jones, David and Rose Karsner, Robert R. LaMonte, Courtenay Lemon, John Spargo, James Graham Phelps and Rose Pastor Stokes, Benjamin R. Tucker, William English and Anna Strunsky Walling, and Arthur Young. Their letters, located in the Horace Traubel Correspondence series, reflect the common concerns that both united and divided the American socialist movement.
The Traubels cultivated many personal associations among the artistic and cultural avant-garde. They were enthusiastic supporters of the theater and the performing arts and fostered friendships there and among a diverse group of artists, publishers, and writers. Prominent correspondents from literary and artistic circles represented in the Horace Traubel Correspondence series are Albert and Charles Boni, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Edward Gordon Craig, Homer Davenport, Edward Dowden, Edgar Fawcett, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Benjamin Orange Flower, Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Hamlin Garland, Jeannette L. Gilder, Richard Watson Gilder, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ellen Glasgow, Arthur Clifton Goodwin, John Hare, Frank Harris, Edmund Marsden Hartley, Herne family members, Arthur Holitscher, B. W. Huebsch, Robert Underwood Johnson, Mitchell Kennerley, John Lane, Gerald Stanley Lee, Jack London, Charles Edwin Markham, Julia Marlowe, Laurens Maynard, David McKay, Lloyd Mifflin, Sidney H. Morse, Thomas Bird Mosher, Charles A. and George G. Needham, Louis and Olga Nethersole, Curtis Hidden Page, William Ordway Partridge, Ernest Rhys, Upton Sinclair, John Sloan, Herbert Small, William Hawley Smith, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Constantin von Sternberg, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Ryan Walker.
Anne Montgomerie Traubel shared her husband's intellectual and political commitments throughout their marriage and continued to support them after his death. Many of the correspondents listed in the Horace Traubel Correspondence series also appear in Anne Montgomerie Traubel's correspondence.
While not himself a member of the Socialist party, Traubel, in his writings for the Conservator , supported its goals. Files documenting the publication of the Conservator include manuscripts submitted for publication, galley proofs, editorial correspondence, and fund-raising appeals. Although not a financial success, the Conservator continued to be published during Traubel's lifetime through the financial support of William F. Gable and Frank Bain, both of whom were frequent correspondents along with James Hebron, printer of the magazine.
Manuscripts of Traubel's writings, most of which were published in the Conservator, along with corrected proofs and printed copies, are located in the Literary File. This series includes similar material for a group of Traubel's prose poems, collectively titled “Collects,” and for other published volumes of his poetry and prose. From 1903 to 1907, Traubel, M. Hawley McLanahan, and Will Price published the Artsman, a monthly journal documenting and promoting Rose Valley, an experimental Arts and Crafts community established in Moylan, Pennsylvania. The Literary File contains a small group of records concerning this publication. Although the Arts and Crafts movement is best known as a school of design that promoted the production of handcrafted objects for domestic and decorative use, the movement's leaders were inspired by the vision that design and production reform would ultimately lead to social reform. Traubel shared this belief, and his correspondence includes letters from important figures in the movement, such as Alexis Jean and Paul Fournier, Elbert Hubbard, founder of the Roycroft Shops in East Aurora, New York, and William T. Innes.
The Miscellany series contains material relating to the Society for Ethical Culture in Philadelphia which Horace Traubel helped found. Society members and other supporters represented in the Correspondence series include Felix Adler, Stanton Coit, Joseph and Mary Fels, Daniel Longaker, Cyrus Newlin Pierce, Charlotte Porter, William Mackintire Salter, Marshall E. Smith, Wayland H. Smith, and S. Burns Weston.
Walt Whitman named Horace Traubel as one of his three literary executors, along with Richard Maurice Bucke, whose correspondence can be found in the Horace Traubel Correspondence series, and Thomas Biggs Harned, Traubel's brother-in-law, whose correspondence is filed among the Family Papers. A separate collection of Harned's papers is also located in the Manuscript Division. The Traubel Papers contain letters exchanged with other Whitman scholars, and the Miscellany series contains a collection of records of the Walt Whitman Fellowship, a literary society dedicated to perpetuating the memory of “the Good Gray Poet.” The Horace Traubel Correspondence series contains letters of Fellowship officers and other Whitman associates as well as a number of foreign writers and scholars including Léon Bazalgette, Henry B. Binns, Daniel G. Brinton, John Burroughs, Ellen M. O'Connor Calder, Edward Carpenter, H. Buxton Forman, Herbert H. Gilchrist, John Johnston, John H. Johnston, William Sloane Kennedy, Otto Edward Lessing, Shigetaka Naganuma, Isaac Hull Platt, Gabriel Sarrazin, J. W. Wallace, George W. Whitman, Gustave Percival Wiksell, Frederick Wild, and Talcott Williams.
Selected correspondents from the Traubels' correspondence not mentioned above include Leonard Dalton Abbott, Joseph H. Allen, Truman H. Bartlett, Helen Campbell, John H. Clifford, James C. Craven, David Cummings, Clarence S. Darrow, William E. Davenport, Archie and Elsie Edington, Peter Eglinton, Amelia von Ende, Charles E. Feinberg, Clifton Joseph Furness, Charles G. Garrison, William N. Guthrie, Frederick and Marion Coates Hansen, John Haynes Holmes, Robert Green Ingersoll, Harold and Bertha Johnston, William H. Ketler, George Judson King, Oscar Lion, Leland Mason, Henry L. Mencken, Nathan and Lilian Mendelssohn, John Miley, Alberta Victoria Montgomery, Harrison S. Morris, William E. Mountain, Yone Noguchi, Carleton Eldredge Noyes, John Ormrod, Bliss Perry, William Lyon Phelps, Frank Putnam, John Quinn, Stephen M. Reynolds, Henry S. and Georgina Helen Saunders, Frank Shay, Frederic J. Shollar, Charles Sixsmith, Charles W. Slack, Thomas L. Snow, Harriet C. Sprague, Oscar L. Triggs, B. F. Underwood, Franklin H. Wentworth, Minnie Whiteside, and Charles Zueblin.
The 2003 Addition contains material arranged subsequent to the initial organization of the Traubel Papers. The series includes family papers, correspondence, literary material, and printed matter spanning the dates 1850-1979 which complement similar items in the original portion of the collection as well as separate collections of papers of Walt Whitman and Gertrude Traubel (1892- 1983).
The Walt Whitman material in the collection includes correspondence, manuscript drafts, and hand-drawn sketches of his memorial tomb. A lengthy prose manuscript in support of better working conditions for streetcar conductors employed by the Washington City Railroad is especially noteworthy.
Gertrude Traubel material comprising the largest section in the addition includes family papers, correspondence, speeches and writings, notes and notebooks, and printed matter. Gertrude Traubel shared her parents' commitment to Walt Whitman's memory and maintained an active correspondence with like-minded colleagues, documenting the evolution of Whitman scholarship.
Gertrude Traubel nurtured a continuing correspondence with many of her parents' friends and associates including Frank and Mildred Bain, Léon Bazalgette, Maurice Becker, Albert Boni, Eugene V. Debs, Theodore Debs, Charles E. Feinberg, George H. Hallett, Jr., John Haynes Holmes, William T. Innes, Bertha Johnston, John Johnston, Calder Johnstone, David Karsner, Rose Karsner, Oscar Lion, Ruth May, Laurens Maynard, Henry L. Mencken, Nathan and Lilian Mendelssohn, Harrison S. and Anna W. Morris, Stanley and Myrtis Muschamp, Shigetaka Naganuma, John and Elsie Ormrod, Jennie Patrick, Emma Haviland Platt, Isaac Hull Platt, Phillips Russell, Henry S. Saunders, Frank Shay, Alice and Amy Smith, Constantin von Sternberg, James Graham Phelps and Rose Pastor Stokes, J. W. Wallace, William English and Anna Strunsky Walling, Ralph W. and Marion Wescott, Minnie Whiteside, Frederick Wild, and Gustave Percival Wiksell. Other correspondents include Arthur Bullard, Ernestine Caliandro, Rockwell and Kathleen Kent, Marian MacDowell, Scott and Nellie Nearing, Joseph Niver, and Rose Strunsky.
Gertrude Traubel was a classically-trained singer and teacher who performed and taught locally in the Philadelphia area, and her papers include items pertinent to her professional and artistic career. A short memoir written by Anne Montgomerie Traubel recalls her first meeting with Walt Whitman.
The 2020 Addition contains contains the papers of Canadian Whitmanites Frank Bain (1875-1959) and Mildred Bain (1876-1972), friends and financial supporters of Horace Traubel. Materials in the addition span the dates 1904-1959 and comprise mostly correspondence between members of the Bain and Traubel families. The letters and postcards between Horace Traubel and Frank and Mildred Bain reflect the personal and intimate relationship between the three, while correspondence between Gertrude Traubel and the Bains document Gertrude's commitment to preserving her father's legacy during the 1950s. Other correspondence includes letters between the Bains and other scholars, reformers, and supporters of Horace Traubel. This includes correspondence between Frank Bain and potential subscribers and contributers to his "Traubel Fund," an annual subscription he created to raise money to support Horace Traubel's literary work. Finally, the addition contains five letters sent to Horace Traubel from Shigetaka Naganuma, Max Lapat (recalling his recent visit with Helen Keller), and subscribers to the Conservator.
The 2020 Addition also contains printed matter, ephemera, and photographs related to Walt Whitman and Horace Traubel. Some of this material includes items Horace Traubel gifted to the Bains, such as a facsimile of a letter Whitman wrote about his 73rd birthday (which Whitman had originally given to Traubel) and eight color plate images, possibly removed from a 1913 edition of Leaves of Grass. Other items document the Bains' participation in Whitman-related events and clubs.