WHITMAN, Walt.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea! A scarce broadside poem, signed by Whitman at the foot in purple ink and inscribed at the head in pencil, "Harper's Monthly, March '84". Whitman received the broadside four month before, in November 1883; Myerson locates only four copies.The broadside is here offered together with an 1895 reproduction of Whitman's 1854 portrait photograph by Gabriel Harrison. Whitman's friend Richard Maurice Bucke called this image "the 'Christ' likeness", capturing the "moment this carpenter too became seer... and he saw and knew the Spirit of God" (Bucke). Whitman himself remembered the more profane circumstances under which the portrait was taken: "I was sauntering along the street: the day was hot: I was dressed just as you see me there. A friend of mine - Gabriel Harrison - stood at the door of his place looking at the passers-by. He cried out to me at once: 'Old man! - old man! - come here: come right up stairs with me this minute' - and when he noticed that I hesitated cried still more emphatically: 'Do come: come: I'm dying for something to do.' This picture was the result" (quoted in Traubel). The portrait may have been used to create the frontispiece of the first edition of Leaves of Grass.Both items are from the personal collection of the physician and academic Frank Baker (1841-1918), who befriended Whitman during the Civil War, when they were both working as government clerks in Washington. Their intimacy is hinted at in one of Whitman's letters to

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