Stop in on Wednesday, May 10th, between 1:00 and 4:00PM, for the opening of our new Mother’s Day Exhibit.
There is no doubt among biographers of Walt Whitman that his mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, had a great influence on him. In fact, about a quarter of the letters he wrote throughout his lifetime were addressed to her. Walt had this to say about his mother:
“How much I owe her! It could not be put on a scale – weighed: it could not even be measured – be even put in the best words: It can only be apprehended through the intuitions. Leaves of Grass is her temperament active in me.”
There were other women, often ignored by past biographers, who nurtured and supported Walt in material or intellectual ways and those who helped to perpetuate his writing after his death. One woman crossed the Atlantic Ocean to offer marriage! The exhibit on Mother’s Day will provide brief introductions to the lives of some of these women and their relationships with the poet.
