An unsigned obituary in the New York World for March 27, 1871 refers to Moncure Conway’s description of “  . . .a picture of Bacchus which hung up in the poet’s humble study. That study was a curious nook; it contained no books except a Bible and Homer, and but two pictures, line engravings-Silenus and Bacchus.”

 

          Todd Richardson, Walt Whitman’s ‘Lively Corpse’ in 1871: The American Press on the Rumor of Whitman’s Death,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 15:1 (Summer 1997), [1-22] 6.