Walt Whitman

From Philosopedia

Whitman, Walt (31 May 1819 - 26 March 1892)

Whitman is a, if not the, major American poet.

Born at West Hills, Huntington Township, on Long Island, New York, New York, Whitman was the second child of Walter Whitman, a house builder, and Louisa Van Velsor, both descendants of early settlers on Long Island. Seven other Whitman children survived infancy. In 1823, the Whitmans moved to Brooklyn.

In 1825, according to Whitman, he was embraced when the Marquis de Lafayette visited Brooklyn. In 1831 and 1832, he learned the printing trade as an apprentive for the Long Island Patriot., and he then worked as compositor on Long Island Star. In 1836 he began teaching school. In 1840 he campaigned for Martin Van Buren while teaching school on Long Island at Trimming Square, Woodbury Dix Hills, and Whitestone. By 1846 he was editing Brooklyn's Daily Eagle and attending opera regularly.

In 1855, he wrote the first edition of his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, pioneering free verse poetry in a humanistic celebration of humanity. Emerson, whom Whitman revered, said of the work that it held "incomparable things incomparably said." Thereafter, he revised editions of the work, the third edition being in 1860. There eventually were nine editions.

As a youth Whitman met his father’s friend, Elias Hicks of Hicksville, New York, leader of a liberal branch of Friends somewhat similar to the Unitarians in their non-trinitarianism.

During the Civil War, Whitman worked as an army nurse, later writing Drum Taps (1865) and Memoranda During the War (1867). His health compromised by the experience, he was given work at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.

Contents 1 Whitman's Freethinking 2 Whitman's Loves 3 The Friend 4 His Final Days

Whitman's Freethinking

“Although by no means free of supernaturalist illusions,” Corliss Lamont has written, "Whitman sang of the robust pleasures of the whole man, body and soul, and heartily disbelieved in all asceticisms.”

In “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”, he wrote:

Piety and conformity to them that like,

Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like . . .

I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue,

questioning every one I meet,

Who are you that wanted only to be told

what you knew before?

Who are you that wanted only a book to join you

in the nonsense?

His free verse, use of “barbaric yawp,” baring his soul (saying he was bisexual, although there is little evidence of his feminine interest), his poetic belief in democracy, and his belief in fairness for all have inspired many, repelled others. “But for opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass,” he once remarked.

Whitman read Paine, Homer, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Dickens, Scott, and the Bible.

He worked for Martin van Buren’s presidential campaign in 1840 and from 1846 to 1848 edited the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, from which he was fired because, according to the management, “He is too indolent to kick a musketo.”

His interests were universal, his dynamism great, his advocacy of abolitionism and the “free-soil” movement vehement. Whitman’s love of peace and his distaste of war - he served as an unofficial nurse for Northern as well as Southern soldiers in army hospitals -is evidenced in “Reconciliation”:

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again,

and ever again, this soil’d world;

For my enemy is dead, a man as divine as myself is dead,

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin - I draw near,

Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

From the 1872 edition of Leaves of Grass:

“And I say to mankind,

Be not curious about God.

For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

From the 1891 edition of Leaves of Grass:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they're so placid and self contain'd,. . . .

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.

From Salut au Monde!:

Each of us inevitable;

Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth;

Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth;

Each of us here as divinely as any is here.

From "To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire" in Leaves of Grass:

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,

And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth,

Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth,

And the infidel come into full possession.

Whitman's Loves

When the English poet and sexologist, John Addington Symonds, inquired in a letter if Whitman was a homosexual, Whitman hotly denied any such tendencies. But Whitman’s verses leave little doubt. In the “Calamus” section of Leaves of Grass (1847 was the earliest edition, and revisions were made until 1892), he deals with the “institution of the dear love of comrades.” (In 1841 when he was in his early 20s, Whitman suffered the disgrace of being tarred and feathered and ridden out of Southold, Long Island, on a rail for an alleged act of sodomy.)

In “When I Heard At the Close of Day,” he describes his truly happiest moment as being when

the one I loved most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night. . . .

And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that night I was happy.

Also, a revealing selection about sexual ecstasy exists in which Whitman uses the word “God,” later replacing it with “hugging and loving bedfellow:

I am satisfied . . . . I see, dance, laugh, sing;

As God comes a loving bedfellow and sleeps at my side all night

and close on the peep of the day,

And leaves for me baskets covered with white towels bulging the house

with their plenty,

Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,

That they turn from gazing after and down the road,

And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,

Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is ahead?

Whitman’s most intimate friend was a trolley-car conductor, Peter Doyle, son of an Irish Catholic blacksmith who worked for Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond.

As for opposites attracting each other, Whitman was 6' tall, a heavy-set, middle-aged man who towered over the young 5' 8" Doyle. Intellectually, Whitman was highly literate, a published author, but Doyle had only a rudimentary education (a Jesuit-style education at St. Mary's Sunday School). A native-born Easterner, Whitman identified with the Union. Doyle, born in Ireland and raised in the South, fought briefly against the Union. The two were constant companions for eight years until Whitman's stroke in 1873.

Doyle worked as a horsecar conductor from 1865 to 1872. Whitman, who worked at the Treasury Building, was a regular passenger. They hung out at a bar in Georgetown's Union Hotel, took hikes together out of the city, would cross over the Potomac River's Eastern Branch via the Navy Yard Bridge, wander south along the Maryland side of the river, and ferry across to Virginia. Crossing the Long Bridge into the District's Island neighborhood, Whitman would see "Pete," as he called him, to his home.

In their correspondence Whitman expressed intense feelings for Doyle, closing with such phrases as “Many, many loving kisses to you.” The two could not move in together, for Doyle's mother relied upon her son for financial support.

Doyle, interestingly, had been in the audience the night President Lincoln, about whom Whitman wrote “O Captain, My Captain,” was assassinated. He wrote about it to Whitman:

I heard that the President and his wife would be present and made up my mind to go. There was a great crowd in the building. I got into the second gallery. There was nothing extraordinary in the performance. I saw everything on the stage and was in a good position to see the President's box. I heard the pistol shot. I had no idea what it was, what it meant--it was sort of muffled. I really knew nothing of what had occurred until Mrs. Lincoln leaned out of the box and cried, "The President is shot!" I needn't tell you what I felt then, or saw. It is all put down in Walt's piece--that piece is exactly right. I saw Booth on the cushion of the box, saw him jump over, saw him catch his foot, which turned, saw him fall on the stage. He got up on his feet, cried out something which I could not hear for the hub-hub and disappeared. I suppose I lingered almost the last person. A soldier came into the gallery, saw me still there, called to me: "Get out of here! we're going to burn this damned building down!" I said: "If that is so I'll get out!"

Martin G. Murray, author of "Pete the Great": A Biography of Peter Doyle, documented that Doyle visited Whitman in Camden. In a letter, Doyle wrote,

I know he wondered why I saw so little of him the three or four years before he died, but when I explained it to him he understood...It was only this: In the old days I had always open doors to Walt--going, coming, staying, as I chose. Now, I had to run the gauntlet of Mrs. Davis and a nurse and what not. Somehow, I could not do it. It seemed as if things were not as they should have been. Then I had a mad impulse to go over and nurse him. I was his proper nurse--he understood me--I understood him. We loved each other deeply. But there were things preventing that, too. I saw them. I should have gone to see him, at least, in spite of everything. I know it now. I did not know it then, but it is all right. Walt realized I never swerved from him--he knows it now--that is enough.

Murray commented further:

Modern-day readers of the Calamus book of Whitman's letters to Doyle and Pete's account of their times together find the book remarkable for its frank acknowledgement of the romantic nature of the attraction between Whitman and Doyle. At the same time, such readers are often cautioned about projecting modern sensibilities onto 19th Century correspondence. It is interesting, then, to find that reviews of the Calamus book, written shortly after its initial publication, endorse the late-20th Century view that this is indeed a book of love letters. For example, the following review appeared in The Critic, on January 1, 1898:

The publishing of the letters addressed by Whitman to Peter Doyle is justified by the fact that they throw all the light that is needed upon the poet's friendships with younger men, and upon that section of "Leaves of Grass" called "Calamus" in which he celebrates "the manly love of comrades." The sentiment in question, depending on a semi-physical attraction, is common among boys, young men of the working class, who can be considered as grown-up boys, and, as we are told by travellers, among savages. These letters show Whitman to have been one of the few in whom this feeling lives on into mature years; he seems to have been always attracted by, and attractive to, young men. The recipient of these letters was a young Confederate soldier, who, being paroled in Washington, became a car-conductor, and in that capacity first encountered Whitman, whose habit of conversing at every opportunity with men of that class is well known.

The Calamus book of letters was forbidden reading in the household of Peter's sister, Margaret, according to her granddaughter, Mary. Thereafter, Pete was "the Black Sheep" of the family. Considering the prejudices of the day, Pete Doyle deserves considerable credit for the courage he showed in agreeing to the publication of this revealing correspondence.

Murray found that the finest testament of the two Calamus lovers was written by Doyle himself:

I have Walt's raglan here [goes to closet - puts it on]. I now and then put it on, lay down, think I am in the old times. Then he is with me again. It's the only thing I kept amongst many old things. When I get it on and stretch out on the old sofa I am very well contented. It is like Aladdin's lamp. I do not ever for a minute lose the old man. He is always near by. When I am in trouble - in a crisis - I ask myself, "What would Walt have done under these circumstances?" and whatever I decide Walt would have done that I do.

Doyle at the age of 63 died 19 April 1907 of uremia, a disease of the kidneys. His sister Margaret arranged for a Requiem High Mass at St. John's Catholic Church in Philadelphia, and he was buried at Washington's Congressional Cemetery.

When fifty-seven, Whitman gave eighteen-year-old Harry Stafford a ring, then posed with him in a formal photographic portrait (which is in the collection of Jonathan Ned Katz).

In Walt Whitman’s America (1995), David S. Reynolds points out how acceptable up to the 1890s was the “eroticized language of same-sex affection,” at which time in 1890 the word “homosexual” came to be used.

“But who cares?” about Whitman’s homosexuality, Alfred Kazin has written. “The important thing about Whitman’s sexuality was his affirmation of sex as the basic life force and the effect this had on his living, breathing, propulsive style.”

That style Whitman continued, even though Emerson suggested that the sexual poems be removed from later editions of Leaves of Grass.

“Whoever degrades another degrades me,” he wrote, “and whatever is done or said returns at last to me.”

The Friend

Whitman's early acquaintance with Elias Hicks led him to accept the Society of Friends' pacifism, but like his father he was an independent Quaker, once refusing to remove his hat during a church service.

During the Civil War, according to the Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., he and Clara Barton sometimes attended there.

Sometimes mystical, sometimes transcendental, the Good G(r)ay Poet liked Robert Ingersoll so much he requested that Ingersoll speak at his funeral.

His Final Days

Photo by Frank P. Harned, brother of Thomas Harned, Camden 1886 or 1887

Whitman in 1873 had a paralytic stroke and lingered for twenty years in poverty. Stricken with paralysis, he moved in with his brother for a time.

On Christmas Eve, 1891, Whitman prepared his last will and testament. In it, he reiterated the desire expressed in his 1873, will, that Peter Doyle be given his silver watch. Unlike that earlier will, however, Doyle was only one of a host of friends and family members to whom Whitman bequeathed some remembrance, including Harry Stafford, who was given Walt's gold watch. On New Year's Day, 1892, Whitman had a change of mind about the bequests. He summoned Traubel to his bedside, and told him, "Horace, my will is not yet right: it does too much in some directions, too little or nothing in some others." Traubel brought Thomas B. Harned, Whitman's attorney, over to draw up a codicil to the will. Among other changes, he bequeathed his gold watch to Traubel and gave the silver watch to Stafford. Peter Doyle, who had been so absent from Walt's life during these last few years that the old man believed him to be dead, was removed from the will.

Preparing for his death, in New Jersey he had a large mausoleum built in Camden's Harleigh Cemetery on a plot given him in 1885, shortly after the cemetery was opened. According to Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price,

• The large tomb was paid for in part by Whitman with money donated to him so that he could buy a house in the country and in part by Thomas Harned, one of his literary executors. (Eventually, several family members–Hannah, George, Louisa, Edward, and his parents—were reinterred in the same tomb, on which the inscription reads simply "Walt Whitman.") On December 24, 1891, the poet composed his last will and testament. In an earlier will of 1873 he had bequeathed his silver watch to Peter Doyle, but now, with Doyle largely absent from his life, he made changes, giving his gold watch to Traubel and a silver one to Harry Stafford.

• Whitman was nursed in his final illness by Frederick Warren Fritzinger ("Warry"), a former sailor. Whitman liked Warry’s touch, which blended masculine strength and feminine tenderness. The poet’s last words–a request to be moved in bed, "Shift, Warry"–were addressed to Fritzinger. The poet died on March 26, 1892, his hand resting in that of Traubel. The cause of death was miliary tuberculosis, with other contributing factors. The autopsy revealed that one lung had completely collapsed and the other was working only at one-eighth capacity; his heart was "surrounded by a large number of small abscesses and about two and half quarts of water." Daniel Longaker, Whitman’s physician in the final year, noted that the autopsy showed Whitman to be free of alcoholism or syphilis. He emphatically rejected the "slanderous accusations that debauchery and excesses of various kinds caused or contributed to his break-down."

In Camden he had lived with a family of Unitarians, the Thomas Harneds, and as noted in his "Sister Death," Whitman did not believe in immortality. Upon catching pneumonia, he died at Mickle Street and is buried in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey.

As requested, Robert Ingersoll spoke at Whitman's funeral.

At Columbia University in mid-century, Lionel Trilling commented that of the nation's two greatest poets - Whitman and Emily Dickinson - Whitman was influencing far more writers, citing Allen Ginsberg and the Beats.

Whitman's Tomb, Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey

(Paul Berman in The New Yorker [12 June 1995] delineates Whitman’s link to Brooklyn.)

(Lehigh University has a website for Pfaff's. "Pfaffian" was a synonym for drunkenness, named in honor of Whitman’s friend named Pfaff. Pfaff ran a kind of Stonewall-before-its-time, and an earlier version of the Mattachine Society, called the “Fred Gray Association.”

• The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse.

Walt Whitman

Charles Pfaff's beer cellar in lower Manhattan was a magnet for some of the most unconventional and creative individuals of nineteenth-century New York City, including Walt Whitman, poet and actress Adah Isaacs Menken, journalist and social critic Henry Clapp, playwright John Brougham, and artist Elihu Vedder.)

{BDF; CE; CL; EU, William F. Ryan; FFRF; GL; HNS2; JM; JMR; RAT; RE; TRI; TYD}