Ok, I went to look this up, and it is amazing. Bram Stoker actually wrote this long-ass stream of consciousness letter that spanned about 2000 words and which–judging by most sites–had 0 paragraph breaks and just went on and on about his Feelings. He then proceeded to keep that letter in his desk for four years because he was too shy to send it. He finally sent it, along with a slightly less rambly letter, on fuckin Valentine’s day in 1876. In it are such wonders as:
If I were before your face I would like to shake hands with you, for I feel that I would like you. I would like to call you Comrade and to talk to you as men who are not poets do not often talk. I think that at first a man would be ashamed, for a man cannot in a moment break the habit of comparative reticence that has become a second nature to him; but I know I would not long be ashamed to be natural before you. You are a true man, and I would like to be one myself, and so I would be towards you as a brother and as a pupil to his master. In this age no man becomes worthy of the name without an effort. 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 care to know who it is that writes this, my name is Abraham Stoker (Junior). My friends call me Bram. I live at 43 Harcourt St., Dublin. I am a clerk in the service of the Crown on a small salary. I am twenty-four years old. Have been champion at our athletic sports (Trinity College, Dublin) and have won about a dozen cups. I have also been President of the College Philosophical Society and an art and theatrical critic of a daily paper. I am six feet two inches high and twelve stone weight naked and used to be forty-one or forty-two inches round the chest. I am ugly but strong and determined and have a large bump over my eyebrows. I have a heavy jaw and a big mouth and thick lips—sensitive nostrils—a snubnose and straight hair. I am equal in temper and cool in disposition and have a large amount of self control and am naturally secretive to the world. I take a delight in letting people I don’t like—people of mean or cruel or sneaking or cowardly disposition—see the worst side of me. I have a large number of acquaintances and some five or six friends—all of which latter body care much for me.
It is vain for me to try to quote any instances of what thoughts of yours I like best—for I like them all and you must feel that you are reading the true words of one who feels with you. You see, I have called you by your name. I have been more candid with you—have said more about myself to you than I have ever said to any one before. You will not be angry with me if you have read so far. You will not laugh at me for writing this to you. It was with no small effort that I began to write and I feel reluctant to stop, but I must not tire you any more. If you ever would care to have more you can imagine, for you have a great heart, how much pleasure it would be to me to write more to you. How sweet a thing it is for a strong healthy man with a woman’s eyes and a child’s wishes to feel that he can speak so to a man who can be if he wishes father, and brother and wife to his soul.
I don’t think you will laugh, Walt Whitman, nor despise me, but at all events I thank you for all the love and sympathy you have given me in common with my kind.
Three weeks later–which, considering the speed of transatlantic mail at the time, pretty much means immediately–Walt Whitman wrote back. He had, at the time, been recovering from a paralytic stroke three years earlier that had left him, in his own words, “entirely shattered—doubtless permanently, from paralysis and other ailments,” but he still found the time to respond with a much briefer but still very affectionate letter, the opening paragraph of which read as follows:
My dear young man,
Your letters have been most welcome to me—welcome to me as Person and as Author—I don’t know which most—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.
Despite Whitman’s parenthetical remark about the improbability of meeting, Stoker did eventually manage to call on Whitman a couple of times some years later, and expressed that
I found him all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him: large-minded, broad-viewed, tolerant to the last degree; incarnate sympathy; understanding with an insight that seemed more than human.
Whitman, meanwhile, found Stoker “an adroit lad,” and “like a breath of good, healthy, breezy sea air.” Adorable.
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