In Search of Walt Whitman, Part Two: The Civil War and Beyond (1861-1892)

on the beach at night alone as the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song as I watched the bright star shining I think a thought of the CLEF of the universes and of the future all identities that had existed or may exist on this globe or any globe all lives and deaths all of the past present future this vast similitude spans them and always has spanned and shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them on the night the Civil War began Walt Whitman wrote in his autobiography I had been to the Opera in 14th Street that night and after the performance was walking down Broadway toward 12 o'clock on my way to Brooklyn when I heard in the distance the loud cries of the Newsboys who came presently tearing and yelling up the street I bought an extra and with a small crowd of others who gathered impromptu read the news which was evidently authentic one of us read the telegram aloud while all listened silently and attentively no remark was made by any of the crowd which had increased to 30 or 40 but all stood a minute or two I remember before they dispersed [Music] following the bombardment at Fort Sumter when Confederate forces opened fire and the federal military installation in Charleston South Carolina's Harbor war fever gripped the country in the spring of 1861 President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 new soldiers to put down the rebellion nearly everyone thought the war would be brief new recruits came from towns and cities across the country crowds gathered to cheer the soldiers going off to war the wave of patriotism also swept up whitman who wrote a poem about wars ruthless force that seizes people from their peacetime activities [Music] beat beat drums blow bugles blow through the windows through doors burst like a ruthless force into the sound church and scatter the congregation into the school where the scholar is studying with leave not the bridegroom quiet no happiness must he have now with his bride nor the peaceful farmer any peace plowing his field or gathering his grain so fierce you were and pound you drums so shrill you bugles blow beat beat drums blow bugles blow over the traffic of cities over the rumble of wheels in the streets our beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses no sleepers must sleep in those beds no bargainers bargains by day no brokers or speculators would they continue with the talkers be talking with the singers attempt to sing with the lawyers rise in the court to state his case before the judge then rattle quicker heavier drums you bugles wilder below walks brother George enlisted in the 51st New York regiment originally signing on for a hundred days he would end up serving four years fighting and some of the most important and bloody battles of the war even spending months as a malnourished prisoner of war but the family was not about to have another son go off to war to procure a substitute for Jeff the Whitman family came up with the needed $300 for a substitute before the Civil War Whitman volunteered at a New York Hospital tending to sick and injured stagecoach drivers he was friends with many who had nicknames like Broadway Jack balky Bill and yellow Joe but by the spring of 1862 he was also nursing injured soldiers as the months wore on it became clear that this would not be a brief war with an easy victory one morning in December 1862 Whitman sat down to read the newspaper at his home in Brooklyn what he was about to read would alter the course of his life the New York Herald listed the names of wounded Union soldiers in the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia Walt saw his brothers named George on the list the battle had been a calamitous loss for the Union Army he knew he had to visit his brother and help in any way he could within hours he boarded a train to Washington DC but when changing trains in Philadelphia he was robbed and arrived in Washington penniless in a city he had never been to before he wrote his mother dear mother as to me I know I put in about three days of the greatest suffering I ever experienced in my life I wrote to Jeff how I had my pocket picked in a jam in hurry changing cars at Philadelphia so that I landed here without a time the next two days I spent hunting through the hospital's walking all day and night unable to ride trying to get information trying to get access to big people I could not get the least clue to anything by Thursday afternoon I laid on a way to get down on the government boat that runs to Aki Creek when I found dear brother George and found that he was alive and well oh you may imagine how trifling all my little cares and difficulties seemed they vanished into nothing for over a week Walt shared George's tent and saw firsthand the carnage of battle it is pretty cold the ground is frozen hard and there is occasional snow I go around from one case to another I do not see that I do much good but I cannot leave them once in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively and I do what I can for him at any rate stop with him and sit near him for hours if he wishes it witnessing the destruction of war he wrote the poem a site in camp in the daybreak grey and dim a site in camp in the daybreak grey and dim as from my tent I emerged so early sleepless as slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path nearby the hospital tent three forms I see on stretchers lying brought out their untended lying over each of the blanket spread ample brownish woolen blanket gray and heavy blanket folding covering all curious I halt and silent stand then with the light fingers high from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim with well great hair and flesh or something about the eyes who are you my dear comrade then to the second I step and who are you my child and darling who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming then to the third a face nor child nor all there he come as of beautiful yellow white ivory young man I think I know you I think this face is the face of the Christ himself dead and divine and brother of all and here again he lies but Walt also discovered a camaraderie among the men that he wanted to celebrate in his poetry after eight days while left George and the military camp to return to Washington he intended to stay for just a brief time before heading back to New York but when he arrived in DC and witnessed the plate of so many other sick and injured soldiers he could not leave them he knew he had to stay in Washington and do what he could to help [Music] you Whitman's good friend William Douglas O'Connor who Walt met in the publishing office in Boston found a room for a while on the second floor of a house that once stood here O'Connor and his family lived on the third floor and Walt would often visit them some days Walt would see Abraham Lincoln writing here on Vermont Avenue with his military entourage going to or from the soldiers home where he spent about one quarter of his presidency Walt wrote in his autobiography that he and Lincoln would sometimes exchanged cordial vows and that he perceived in Lincoln's eyes a deep sadness with help from a friend Walt secured part-time work at the Army paymaster's office most days after finishing work Walt returned home to bathe and change clothes he then visited one of the hospitals to tend to the sick and injured soldiers the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum one of the most popular tourist attractions in the nation but what many of these tourists may not know is that this was once the site of armory square hospital the largest of a war hospital in Washington over three years this hospital served more than 13,000 sick and injured soldiers it even had its own weekly newspaper the armory square hospital Gazette which Walt wrote for Whitman made more visits to this hospital than to any other he wrote to his mother I devote myself much to armory square hospital because it contains by far the worst cases most repulsive wounds has the most suffering and most need of consolation I go every day without fail and often at night sometimes stay very late no one interferes with me doctors nurses no anyone I am left to take my own course when Walt visited the hospitals he would often jot down notes in a small book these notes became the basis for his later book memoranda during the war [Music] Thursday January 21st 1863 devoted the main part of the day to armory square hospital went pretty thoroughly through wards F G H and I some 50 cases in each ward in Ward F supplied the men throughout with writing paper and stamped envelope each distributed in small portions to proper subjects a large jar of first-rate preserved berries which has been donated to me by a lady her own cooking found several cases I thought could subjects for small sums of money which I furnished Wednesday February 4th 1863 in one case the wife stays by the side of her husband his sickness typhoid fever pretty bad in another by the side of her son a mother she told me she had seven children and this was the youngest he called the injured soldiers my own children were younger brothers after the war one ex soldier asked Walt to send him his poems for I always enjoyed them so much when you read them to me an old war day what was a deeply deeply compassionate and empathetic person and I think he was so moved by that and it comes out in his poetry absolutely you see him just connecting with people and this is by the way he's an introvert and yet to sit down and listen to a person or to understand the suffering that they're going through he immediately would dis empathize with people and I think he was he really picked out a good role for himself and it really certainly gave him a direction for a person who for much of his life had been fairly directionless so suddenly doing these these for the next 3 years hospital visits really gave him a purpose that he would not have found otherwise there were times when if Walt saw an amputation was not needed he intervened a newspaper after the war quoted a grateful Union Army veteran saying about Walt this is the leg that man saved for me Walt described caring for the soldiers in his poem the wound dresser [Music] pairing the bandages water and sponge straight and swift to my wounded I go where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in where their priceless blood read into the grass the ground or to the rows of the hospital tent or under the roof hospital to the long rows of cots up and down each side I return to each and all one after another Hydra near not one do I miss an attendant follows holding a tray he carries a refuse bail soon to be filled with clotted rags and blood emptied and filled again I onward go I stop with hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds I am firm with each the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable one turns to me his appealing eyes poor boy I never knew you yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you if that would save you he was afraid as he says it early in the poem people would forget what happened to the war after the worst so the war ended in April so he's still tending soldiers through December because there are still hospitals there with wounded but meanwhile reconstructions going on and people are happy and he complains about their cheer and money making and that they're gonna lose the lessons of the war so he uses the children as the future apparently the young ones in order to say here's what you should remember about the war America but he writes about the horror of what the soldiers went through and describing them and that was not considered proper poetic material as some of the realists like young Henry James slammed the poem for writing material that was not poetic material wasn't language it was also experiences that you didn't you did or didn't about that were or not poetry we're not art at the time some Whitman opened all that up to art as well it's another of his achievements the since silence in dreams projections returning resuming I thread my way through the hospitals the hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand I sit by the restless all the dark night some are so young some suffer so much I recall the experience sweet and sad won't raise funds to distribute gifts to the soldiers in a letter to a donor he wrote I always carry a haversack with some articles most wanted I distribute nice large biscuits sweet crackers peaches with sugar give preserves of all kinds boy stirs wine brandy pickles letter stamps envelopes and note paper the morning papers socks and 50 other things I have lots of special little requests frequently I give small sums of money shall do so with your brother's contribution the wounded are very frequently brought and lay here a long while without a cent lads of 15 or 16 more frequent than you have any idea in a letter to his sister-in-law Mattie Walt described one young soldier who was very sick yet received no medical attention he seemed to have entirely given up in lost heart he had not a cent of money not a friend or acquaintance Walt gave him some money to buy milk trifling as this was he was overcome and began to cry the effect ultimately was was a morale booster everyone needs a friend especially you know considered these young men most of them are farm boys they this is the biggest adventure of their life the first time I've ever left home and considering okay now you're wounded you've been sent off to some strange Army Hospital and you don't know anyone at all you know you're impressionable and it's a little scary and so in comes this this kindly deeply empathetic man who immediately wants to be your friend and that has a big morale impact on people people want to know that someone cares about them and well really really demonstrated that on all them and you see that in the letters I mean how many letters he wrote for soldiers most of soldiers were illiterate however those who were getting to the point where they were gonna be dying and they just got too weak where they couldn't that's when Walt would step in and write a letter for them and those are some of some of the some of those tear-jerking letters that you can read about that that wall Whitman has written and that made a big impact on the soldiers and on their families as well so and many of the soldiers of course stayed friends with him I mean people wrote him for decades afterwards remembering that he was their friend in the hospitals at the time when they really really needed a friend while provided that in the hospital's injured Union soldiers lay side by side with injured Confederate soldiers men who had been enemies just days before now recovered together Walt visited them all I stayed tonight a long time by the bedside of a new patient about 19 years evidently very intelligent and well-bred very affectionate held on to my hand and put it by his face not willing to let me leave as I was lingering soothing him in his pain he says to me suddenly I hardly think you know who I am I don't wish to impose upon you I am a rebel soldier I said I did not know that but it made no difference visiting him daily for about two weeks after that while he lived death had marked him and he was quite alone I loved him much always kissed him and he did me in an adjoining ward I found his brother an officer of rank a Union soldier a brave and a religious man it was in the same battle both were head one was a strong unionist the other secesh both fought on their respective sides both badly wounded and both brought together here after absence of four years each died for his cause throughout the war by his own account Walt made more than 600 hospital visits some lasting several days and nights and ministered to over 80,000 sick and wounded soldiers on both sides of the war the suffering he witnessed was unprecedented in American history the poet visited soldiers in makeshift hospitals throughout Washington including the Patent Office Building in what is today the Smithsonian Museum of American Art he began his visits in the beginning of 1863 continuing into 1866 when the last Civil War hospital in Washington shut down in my visits to the hospital I found it was in the simple matter of personal presence and emanating ordinary cheer and magnetism that I succeeded and helped more than by medical nursing or delicacies or gifts of money or anything else in camp and everywhere I was in the habit of reading to the men they were very fond of it and liked declamatory poetical pieces we would gather in a large group by ourselves after supper and spend the time in such readings or in talking and occasionally by an amusing game called the game of 20 questions at a time when the medical service of the day and of the Orthodox religious people representing the Christian Commission and the sanitary commission were rather formal and standoffish and bureaucratic and their approach to things he was coming in and he was listening to the soldiers and treating them as individuals and if one of them wanted to pray he would you know read the Bible with the person but if the next person wanted a cigar he would get that person at some tobacco or you get the next person some brandy or get the next person some peach ice cream or you know candy or write a letter home for the person or write a letter to the person's wife or he would stay up all night and help somebody get through an amputation sometimes he would write letters home to the parents of a soldier Washington August 10th 1863 mr. and mrs. Haskel I thought it would be soothing to you to have a few lines about the last days of your son Erastus Haskell of Company K 140 first New York volunteers I am only a friend visiting the wounded and sick soldiers in my limited talks with him he told me about his brothers and sisters by name and his parents wished me to ride his parents and send them all his love he was in the band as a fighter I believe while he lay sick here he had his Fife laying on the little stand by his side he once told me that if he got well he would play me a tune on it but he says I am not much of a player yet many nights I sat in the hospital by his bedside till far in the night the lights would be put out yet I would sit there silently hours late perhaps Fanning him he always liked to have me sit there I shall never forget those nights it was a curious solemn scene the sick and wounded lying around in their cots just visible in the darkness and this dear young man close at hand lying on what proved to be his deathbed I do not know his past life but what I saw of him he was a noble I think you have reason to be proud of such a son I write you this letter because I would do something at least in his memory his fate was a hard one to die so he is one of the thousands of our unknown American young men in the ranks about whom there is no record of fame no fuss made about their dying so unknown but I find them the real precious and royal ones of this land giving themselves up even their young in precious lives in their country's cause poor dear son though you were not my son I fell to love you as a son what short time I saw you sick and dying here mr. and mrs. Haskel though we are strangers and shall probably never see each other I send you and all Erastus 'as brothers and sisters my love Walt Whitman one of Walt's best friends in Washington was William O'Connor who Walt befriended years before in Boston and his wife Nellie they were neighbors and Walt would frequently visit although he and O'Connor were quite fond of each other their conversation often turned to heated arguments on politics and the war William Douglas O'Connor was probably what's best friend especially here in Washington DC and he was sort of the captain of their social circle he was the one especially after the Civil War ended and they were they were all by the way he and all their other friends they were all federal workers they were all clerks and many of them were fellow authors and so every night they had meet up and they would have tea together and have these incredible conversations another good friend was John Burroughs who would later become famous as a naturalist and writer their friendship would last for the rest of Walt's life Burroughs and Whitman got along very well often taking long walks in nature together with the younger man teaching the poet about the natural world Burroughs once remarked the more I see and talk with him the greater he becomes to me he loves everything and everybody [Music] even from Washington Walt acted as the head of the family sometimes returning to Brooklyn to visit and help his siblings and mother they had many troubles his brother Andrew was dying of tuberculosis aggravated by alcoholism he would die at age 36 their older brother Jesse was growing increasingly violent and was showing serious signs of mental illness in time Walt was compelled to commit him to what was then known as Kings County lunatic asylum all these troubles weighed on him it is awful to see so much and not be able to relieve it the horror and sadness of and people suffering was so graphic to him for the and it was so difficult how does one do that for two and a half years that he did you have to be affected by it back in Washington won't enjoyed seeing President Abraham Lincoln someone he was very fond of on the eve before the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 which proved to be the turning point of the war Walt wrote his mother mr. Lincoln passes here 14th Street every evening on his way out I had a good view of the president last evening he looks more care worn even than usual his face with deep cut lines and his complexion gray through very dark skin a curious looking man very sad I said to a lady who was looking with me who can see that man without losing all wish to be sharp upon him personally who can say he has not a good soul he was a huge admirer of Abraham Lincoln and which is kind of amazing given that he was a New York Democrat and New York Democrats tended not to like Republicans but their values were really really aligned really closely and once Walt gets down here certainly by the summer of 1863 he has a huge admiration for the president of they both believed that the war had to be fought that slavery needed to be it to be ended and so they were really aligned right right quickly on this issue and also that the war was a tragedy and but at the same time it there was no really getting around the war it had to be fought and won by the Union in January 1865 Whitman finally found a full-time government position at the Patent Office building the very place where he visited the wounded and sick soldiers two years before working in the office of Indian Affairs his main responsibility was to copy reports and documents for which he was paid $1200 per year although he could not have known it it was at this time that Walt was about to meet the love of his life and it would happen in the most unexpected way [Music] one frigid evening in the middle of winter near Capitol Hill in DC Walt entered a horse car to return home the conductor was a 21 year old ex Confederate soldier named Peter Doyle you asked me when I first met it is a curious story we fell to each other at once I was a conductor the knot was very stormy he'd been over to see John Burroughs for he came down and take the car storms off Walt had this blanket wrapped around a chauffeur's he he seemed like an old sea captain he was the only passenger it was lonely not so I thought I'd go in and talk with him something in me made me do it something in him drew me to him anyway I went into the car we're familiar once I put my hand on his knee we understood he didn't get out the trip in fact he went all the way back with me from that time on we were the biggest sore friends Walt and Pete spent a lot of time together sometimes Walt would join Pete on his horse car shift Walton Pete had a number different activities that I liked to do together they love to go hiking and in fact he was Walt was the one who was sort of the one with the whip on this one so he would take these long long hikes where they would cross over from from DC they would cross the long bridge and then hike down alleys down through Alexandria take the ferry across and hike all the way back up the this this must have been a 20 mile round trip it was it was pretty incredible that's a long day we took great walks together off towards or to Alexandria often we went plodding along the road while always whistling or singing we talked of ordinary matters and he recite poetry especially Shakespeare he would hum airs or shout in the woods he was always active happy cheerful good nature men of all walks were taking the night he never seem to tire he loved to show Pete and Nate sky won't knew all about the Stars he was eloquent when he talked about him Pete and Walt were together for a long time and Pete had a big influence on Walt's poetry which is kind of amazing again he is a kid with a third-grade education people didn't really talk about homosexuality back then but certainly his family knew they knew who's different partners were and whatnot so I think you know the scales have fallen away from people's eyes over over this issue that you know okay Walt was for his time an openly gay man at a time when people didn't talk about these kind of things and all those friends knew who he was and they understood their relationship wasn't just a friendship March 4th 1865 the day of Abraham Lincoln's second presidential inauguration Walt was on hand to witness one of the most important political speeches in American history with malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are to bind up the nation's wounds to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan two days later the inaugural ball was held of all places in the patent office building the very place where women worked hours before the festivities commenced Walt walked upstairs to view the preparations for that night writing for the New York Times he observed I have this moment enough to look at the gorgeously arrayed ball and supper rooms where the music will sound and the dancers feet presently tread what a different scene they presented to my view a while since filled with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war brought in from second Bull Antietam and Fredericksburg tonight beautiful women perfumes the violence sweetness the polka and the walls but then the amputation the blue face the groan the glassy eye of the dying and many a mother's son amid strangers passing away untended there on April 9th the day finally came when Confederate General Robert E Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses s grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia contrary to popular belief this did not end the Civil War as fighting continued for several more weeks in the deep south and the West Jefferson Davis president of the Confederacy and his administration continued to flee southward yet Lee's surrender certainly was the beginning of the end and marked the moment when the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to the Army of the Potomac five days later while Walt was visiting his family in Brooklyn Pete learned that President Lincoln was to attend a performance of our American cousin at Ford's Theater I heard that the president has Wafaa be present made up a man to go there's great crowd in the building I got into the second gallery there was nothing extraordinary about the performance I saw everything on stage and was in 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 occurred into mrs. Lincoln leaned out of the box and cried the president's been shot I saw booth on the cushion of the box saw him jump over some catch his foot which turned and saw him following the stage he got up on his feet and cried out something which I couldn't make out over the hubbub and he disappeared meanwhile a co-conspirator attempted to kill Secretary of State William Seward stabbing him five times although badly hurt Seward survived his wounds the planned attack on Vice President Andrew Johnson was never carried out when Walt heard the news of Lincoln's assassination he was devastated Lincoln was more than just a president to him the poet saw him as a hero and captain of a ship who led the ship of state through a very treacherous storm to safe harbor according to a widely circulated newspaper report the night before his assassination Lincoln had a dream about a ship entering Harbor under full sail Whitman later said this dream was how his poem Oh captain my captain came into being Oh captain my captain our fearful trip is done the ship has weathered every rack the prize we sought is won the port is near the battles are here the people all exulting while follow eyes the steady keel the vessel grim and daring but o heart heart heart o the bleeding drops of red where on the deck my captain lies fallen cold and dead o captain my captain rise up and hear the band's rise up for you the flag is front for you the bugle trills for you bouquets and ribbon wreaths for you the shores a-crowding for you they call the swaying mass their eager faces turning here captain dear father this arm beneath your head it is some dream that on the deck you've fallen cold and dead my captain does not answer his lips are pale and still my father does not feel my arm he has no pulse nor will the ship is anchor'd safe and sound its voyage closed and done from fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object one exult o shores and ring o bells but I with mournful tread walk the deck my captain lies fallen cold and dead this proved to be Whitman's most popular poem and was the only poem to be anthologized during his lifetime but Whitman also wanted to write a more personal elegy that invoked images that reminded him of Lincoln's final days and depicted his coffin traveling through cities across America experiencing its first presidential assassination a poem that also paid tribute to the fallen soldiers of the war when lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed and the great star early truth in the western sky in the night I mourned and yet shall mourn with ever returning spring ever returning spring Trinity Shore to me you bring light not blooming perennial and drooping star in the West and thought of him I loved the poem was called a first call President Lincoln's burial him it was a hymn and it's very musical one of the most musical of all the poems with the rhythms in speech rhythms but made into very lilting music night and day journeys a coffin coffin that passes through lanes and streets through day and night with a great cloud darkening the land with a pump of the in loop flats with the cities draped in black with the show of the state's themselves as of crepe Bell two women standing with processions long and winding and the flambo's of the night with that countless torches lit with the silent sea of faces and the unpaired heads with awaiting Depot the arriving coffin and the somber faces with dirges through the night with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn with all the mournful voices of the dirges poet around the coffin the dim lit churches and the shattering organs where amid these you journey with the tolling tolling bells perpetual clang hear coffin that slowly passes I give you my sprig of I lock when lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed as in elegy and like many ologies it's trying to enable the reader or the auditor to come to terms with death in this case it's coming to terms with the death of the unnamed Abraham Lincoln president United States but it's also as a later section of the poem indicates it's coming to terms with the death of everyone who's died in the Civil War so there's a famous passage at the end where he talks about the debris and the debris of all the slain soldiers of the war and he has a vision of what all those soldiers were like nobody experienced the death of all soldiers in the Civil War but but very few people could match Whitman's awareness and direct involvement with suffering death anguish amputations he he as it were had experienced the war very very directly through the Civil War and so I think this poem does a marvelous job of registering that and registering it's it's significance for the country well almost everyone is familiar with Lincoln's assassination you know that about a year earlier the president's oldest child Robert Todd Lincoln was riding the train one evening from New York to Washington when the train stopped in Jersey City he exited onto an extremely crowded platform as Lincoln waited to buy a ticket for a sleeping car the crowd pressed him against the train when suddenly it began to move Lincoln was caught off balance and quickly fell into the very dangerous space between the train and platform he later wrote that he was personally helpless and could easily have been killed were it not for the heroics of a fellow passenger who immediately reached down to the tracks seized Lincoln's coat collar and lifted him to safety on to the platform when a grateful Lincoln turned to thank his rescuer he saw that it was none other than the renowned actor Edwin Booth Walt's friend from New York an older brother to the president's assassin in a twist of feat one brother would take the life of the father while the other brother saved the life of the son in the aftermath of the assassination Washington slowly returned to normal and Walt returned here to work at the Bureau of Indian Affairs located on the basement level of this building but at the end of June that was about to change one evening after office hours Secretary of Interior James Harlan walked through the empty offices for whatever reason he decided to search Whitman's desk and found a copy of leaves of grass he flipped through it and was scandalized by its contents he decided to fire Whitman on the spot the next day Walt received his termination notice when Walt's friend William O'Connor found out about the firing he was outraged what kind of a way was this to treat someone who had so tirelessly served his country visiting wounded soldiers he created a pamphlet entitled the good grey poet that strongly defended Whitman's character and poetry the phrase stock and the polemic did much to establish Whitman's reputation O'Connor also used his connections to secure Walt a position in the attorney general's office where he worked as a clerk in the pardon office dear al I am working now in the attorney general's office this is the place where the big southerners now come up to get pardoned all the rich men and big officers of the Reb Army have to get special pardons before they can buy or sell or do anything that will stand law sometimes there is a steady stream of them coming in here old and young in women I talk with him often and find it very interesting to listen to their descriptions of things that have happened down south and how things are there now there are between four and five thousand pardons issued from this office he would spend the rest of his years in Washington working in the attorney general's office when it became the Department of Justice in 1870 Whitman was one of its first employees [Music] as the post-war years went by Whitman sensed that the country was changing the unity and sense of purpose and nation experience during the war was giving way to corruption and greed what Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner dubbed the Gilded Age in their eponymous novel grants administration was notoriously corrupt and the moneyed interests of the country seemed to be taking over there were virtually no antitrust laws and monopolies exerted a stranglehold on businesses and consumers in 1871 Whitman published Democratic Vista's a booklet that called out the rampant corruption and materialism that gripped the governing class I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face like a physician diagnosing some deep disease never was there perhaps more hollowness at heart than at present and here in the United States genuine belief seems to have left us the underlying principles of the states are not honestly believed in nor is humanity itself believed in and I think that's at the heart of virtually every truly American writer is struggling with this idea of as Fitzgerald put it you know we beat on boats against the current orange ceaselessly into the past you know what what are the ideals the country was founded on what is the relationship of those ideals to our present and maybe more importantly to our future [Music] the depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed but infinitely greater the official services of America national state and municipal in all their branches and departments except the judiciary are saturated in corruption bribery falsehood and administration and the judiciary is tainted working at the Treasury building next to the White House Walt would sometimes spot President Grant in one letter to his mother he casually mentioned I saw Grant today on the Avenue walking by himself I always salute him and he does the same to me future President James Garfield was actually a friend as Pete explained Garfield and Walt were very good friends Garfield had a large manly voice we would be going along the Avenue together Walton me and we'd hear Garfield salutation at the rear he always signaled Walt with the cry after all not to create only when we heard that we always knew who was coming Garfield would catch up and they would enter into a talk I would fall back sometimes they spoke of books mainly but of every other earthly thing also often they would not get through the first run and would go up and down the Avenue several times together I was out of it Garfield became president in 1881 but within months succumbed to an assassin's bullet he was the second president in US history to be assassinated although Walt worked for the Justice Department his actual office was here in the solicitor's office in the US Treasury Building and he lived across the street on the top floor of a boardinghouse in a very modest room that was poorly heated during the cold winters to keep warm Walt spent many evenings here in his office one cold evening in January 1873 Walt was in his office when he suddenly felt something very painful come over him he could barely move the left side of his body he tried to walk home the night watchman saw him struggle and offered to help but Walt waved him off with great difficulty he managed across the street climb upstairs to his room and go to bed when he woke hours later he had lost feeling on the left side of his body he had suffered a massive stroke and could no longer walk the man who had helped so many thousands to recover now needed healing himself dearest mother I have been not well for 2 or 3 days but I'm better today I have had a slight stroke of paralysis on my left side and especially the leg occurred Thursday night last and I have been laid up since I am writing this in my room as I am NOT able to get out at present but the doctor gives me good hopes of being out and had my work in a few days when they learned what happened Peter Doyle and other friends came to help they picked up medications and did what they could but there was little the doctor could do at age 53 Walt had to relearn how to walk in the beginning he couldn't take more than a few steps by the middle of February he could take short walks in the street with the help of his friends by May he was able to get around again with a cane and could work a few hours per day but things were about to get far worse [Music] in May 1873 Walt received news about his mother she had fallen gravely ill he must hurry to Camden to see her although still in a frail state himself Whitman found his way to Camden New Jersey a May 20th to visit her just three days later she passed away Whitman called the loss of his mother the great dark cloud of my life my physical sickness he wrote bad as it is is nothing to it his time in Washington now over Walt soon moved in permanently with his brother George and his family in Camden New Jersey this was a very dark time in Walt's life and he felt very depressed he wrote a letter to Pete July 7th 1873 I am only able to write the same old story since I last wrote I have had some pretty bad spells suffered at intervals all last week and yesterday with a strange and painful distress in the head now I am here crippled laid up for god knows how long unable to help myself but your visits if I could only have a daily visit here such as I had there Walt wrote a poem called prayer of Columbus ostensibly about the anguish that Christopher Columbus must have felt when he and his crew were shipwrecked in Jamaica for a year during their fourth and final voyage to the New World but the work really describes the poet's own struggle he told his friend I shouldn't wonder if I have unconsciously put a sort of autobiographical dash in it a battered wrecked old man thrown on this savage Shore far far from home penned by the sea and dark rebellious brows twelve dreary months sore stiff with many toils sickened and nigh to death I take my way along the islands edge venting a heavy heart I am too full of woe haply I may not live another day I cannot rest Oh God I cannot eat or drink or sleep till I put forth my self my prayer once more to thee all my M prizes have been filled with thee my speculations plans begun and carried on in thoughts of thee selling the deep or journeying the land for thei intentions reports aspirations mine leavin results to thee the poem was published in Harper's Magazine in 1874 the following year Walt suffered another stroke this one affecting the right side of his body for hours he would sit alone in his room feeling down but even in his darkest hours Whitman always believed that life had a purpose as expressed in his poem o me o life o me o life of the questions of these recurring of the endless trains of the faithless of cities filled with the foolish of the empty and useless years of the rest with arrest me intertwined the question o me so sad recurring what good amid these o me o life answer that you are here that life exists and identity that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse yet just as things were at their gloomiest he was about to find relief in the most unlikely of places in 1876 Walt was able to walk outside again although his left foot would remain lame for the rest of his life he visited the elaborate Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia that attracted nearly 10 million visitors from around the world to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence it was here that the telephone was first introduced to the public he met a young man named Harry Stafford who introduced Walt to his parents George and Susan Stafford who were tenant farmers in New Jersey they all clicked right away Walt began to spend a lot of time at the Stafford farm writing in his notebook and with folks I love and that loved me Susan Stafford said I think he is the best man I ever knew near the farm was a wooded stream that largely went unnoticed but it was this simple stream that nourished and rejuvenated him it was called Timber Creek in his autobiography specimen days Whitman recalls his experiences at Timber Creek and how they helped nurse him back to life in February 73 I was stricken down by paralysis gave up my desk and migrated to Camden New Jersey where I lived during 74 and 75 quite unwell but after that began to grow better commenced going for weeks at a time even four months down in the country to a charmingly recluse and rural spot along Timber Creek as I write I am seated under a big wild cherry tree the warm day tempered by partial clouds and a fresh breeze and here I sit long and long enveloped in the deep musical drone of these bees how it all nourishes loves me in the way most needed he revealed to his young friend Harry Stafford if I had not known you if it hadn't been for you and our friendship and my going down those summers to the creek with you I believe I should not be a living man today June 10th 1876 as I write 5:30 p.m. here by the creek nothing can exceed the quiet splendor and freshness around me we had a heavy shower with breat thunder and lightning in the middle of the day and since overhead one of those not uncommon yet indescribable skies of limpid blue with the rolling silver fringed clouds and a pure dazzling Sun September 1st in the revisions of such light such exceptional hour such mood one does not wonder at the old story fables of people falling into love sickness with trees seized ecstatic with the mystic realism of the resistless silent strength in them August 27th 1877 another day quite free from marked prostration and pain every day seclusion every day at least two or three hours of freedom bathing no talk no bonds no dress no books no manners September 5th 1877 how it is I know not but I often realize the presence here in clear moods I am certain of it and neither chemistry nor reasoning nor aesthetics will give the least explanation all the past two summers it has been strengthening and nourishing my sick body and soul as never before thanks invisible physician for thy silent delicious medicine by day and night thy waters and I as the banks the grass the trees and even the weeds [Music] throughout Walt's life many women were drawn to him but one woman stands out and Gilchrist in English widow with four grown children when Ann first read Whitman's poetry she experienced what she called a new birth of the soul she was moved to pen an article called a woman's estimate of Walt Whitman that established her as one of the first great critics of Leaves of Grass a year later they became pen pals and soon declared her love in a passionate letter if God were to say to me see he that you love you shall not be given to in this life he is going to set sail on the unknown sea will you go with him never yet his bride sprung into her husband's arms with the joy I would take thy hand and spring from the shore she desperately hoped Walt would visit her in England she later wrote love the day and night last thoughts first thoughts my soul has staked all upon it but woe tried to tamper her expectations dear friend you must not construct such an unauthorised and imaginary ideal figure and call it Walt Whitman and so devotedly invests your loving nature in it the actual WW is a very plain personage and entirely unworthy of such devotion and always held fast to the idea of marrying him in 1876 she announced that she was moving to Philadelphia do not think me too willful or headstrong but I have taken out tickets and we shall sail August 30 for Philadelphia oh I passionately believe there are years in store for us years of tranquil tender happiness me making your outward life serene and sweet making my inward life so rich hold on but a little longer for me my Walt well did his best to discourage her but it was no use coming to America has been my settled steady purpose resting on a deep strong faith ever since 1869 do not dissuade me from coming this autumn my dearest friend I have waited patiently seven years patiently yet often especially since your illness with such painful yearning your heart would yearn towards me if you realized it I cannot wait any longer true to her word in late August 1876 and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with three of her children furniture china and books she planned to make a new life but what would happen when they actually met after being pen pals for six years the day finally came to meet it would be in the lobby of the Montgomery House Hotel in Philadelphia where the Gilchrist's were staying when they saw each other for the first time and immediately sensed Walt was genuinely happy to see her but it would not be a passionate romance however Walt did feel a true kinship with Ann and her children he began seeing an almost every day in her new home in Philadelphia he even had his own bedroom there Ann's children thought of him as in uncle Walt delighted in conversing with Anne about literature philosophy politics and especially science [Music] but in time she realized that she would never be more than a dear friend to Walt she decided to return to England in the summer of 1879 but the two would remain lifelong friends back in England she wrote him I think of you continually and know that somewhere and somehow we are to meet again and that there is a tie of love between us that time and change and death itself cannot touch six years after returning to England and Gilchrist passed away Whitman wrote the poem going somewhere for an it's opening lions read my science friend my noblest woman friend now buried in an English grave and this a memory leaf for her dear sake you Timber Creek had helped nourish the poet back to life and his friends noticed how much healthier he looked never saw Walt look so handsome so new and fresh Walt was well enough to take his only trip out west in the fall of 1879 he traveled by train through Ohio Illinois Missouri Kansas and Colorado he especially loved the new city of Denver in due time we reached Denver which city I fall in love with from the first and have that feeling confirmed the longer I stay there and he admired the majesty of the Rocky Mountains talk as you like a typical Rocky Mountain Canyon under favoring circumstances perhaps expresses certainly awakes those grandest and subtlest element emotions in the human soul that all paintings poems reminiscences or even music probably never can the following summer Walt took his only trip outside the United States to visit his friend dr. Maurice buck and his family for several months in Canada buck was the medical superintendent at the London asylum for the insane in Ontario where he tried to make asylums more humane places for patients buck was also a great admirer of leaves of grass even committing much of it to memory he always believed that Whitman had a profound spiritual experience in his mid-30s that influenced his poetry he was a very loyal friend to Walt until the end you tene 81 after 21 years Whitman finally finds another publisher four leaves of grass James Osgood and company in Boston but just a few weeks after printing the book the Boston district attorney wrote the publisher our attention has been officially directed to a certain book entitled leaves of grass Walt Whitman published by you we are of the opinion that this book is such a book as brings it within the provisions of the public statutes respecting obscene literature and suggests the propriety of withdrawing the same from circulation and suppressing the editions thereof otherwise the complaints which are proposed to be made will have to be entertained yours truly Oliver Stephens District Attorney the Boston publishers sent Whitman a list of passages that the district attorney insisted be removed from leaves of grass Walt wrote his publishers dear Sirs received the curious list I suppose of course from the district attorney's office of suggestions lines and pages and pieces to be expunged the lists whole and several is rejected by me and will not be thought of under any circumstances Walt was willing to make a few alterations but nothing like what the district attorney was seeking the Boston publisher decided to cease publishing the book yet when news of the censorship spread it only fueled interest in the work a philadelphia publisher offered to publish the book and printed 3,000 copies they sold out in one day with sales from the book and occasional lectures Walt bought a small house for himself on three thirty mikkel Street in Camden New Jersey a modest house in a noisy part of town Whitman referred to it as his shanty in 1884 he moved in but knowing it would not be beneficial for him to live alone in his condition he invited Mary Davis a ship captains widow who lived a few blocks away to be his housekeeper in exchange for living there rent-free she agreed and moved in with her dog cat several birds and furniture in spite of his declining health in later years while still continued to write poems yet his poetry changed I think those late poems they are shorter he's writing in shorter bursts but he continues right to the end not only to write here and there a a poem but to write an amazing amount of stuff his manuscripts at the end of his life are like they were at the beginning of his life he's just always writing his sitting in that big chair and his camden little camden home and his jotting things all day long and when he writes one of these little poems for so long i think we've we've we've just overlooked them we've just decided they're not worth our time they're not worthy the effort to even think about but I think in very recent years led again by poets responses to Whitman they are being looked at as something that needs to be taken quite seriously simple and fresh and fair from winters close emerging as if no artifice of fashion business politics had ever been forth from its sunny nook of sheltered grass innocent golden calm as the dawn the Springs first dandelion shows its trustful face up until his final days he continued to write and revise poetry he wanted to publish a final edition of Leaves of Grass that would truly be his life's work a fair number of people have praised the later poems but they're neglected relative to the experimental early poetry you know the emphasis of critics has been on the first three editions for a number of decades now but I think that the later poetry is going to be increasingly studied it's a you know there's there's a lot of thought on aging and death there and as the baby boomer generation gets older I think there's going to be people that are going to look to Whitman for inspiration insight solace certainly people like Robert Creeley and and as repend saw the greatness and the and the poetic talent that manifested itself in the late poetry the soft voluptuous opiate shades the Sun just gone the eager light dispelled I too will soon be gone dispelled a haze nirvana rest and night oblivion people made the trip to Camden to visit the good great poet as he was known the writer Oscar Wilde the painter Thomas Eakins and bram stoker the future author of Dracula and whatever became of Peter Doyle Walt's partner from Washington Pete himself he does not have another relationship after Walt this is his one big relationship that he has in his life he relocates eventually up to Philadelphia so it can be closer to Walt but by that point Walt who had had a stroke has has a fairly crowded house having a nurse around there's another young man who's interviewing him all the time and then on top of there's other young men who were coming in and visiting him and whatnot and I think Pete feels a little squeezed out and they don't see each other for a number of years even though they live right across the river from each other and he stays there in Philadelphia and in fact he dies there in the early 1900's but he's not married in Philadelphia it's kind of an amazing little backstory he is buried in DC at Congressional Cemetery because there's there is a Boyle family plot a young man named Horace trouble was Walt companion in his last years visiting him almost daily as they delved into deep conversations about literature and Walt's life much of it written down for posterity Whitman spent much of his time in an upstairs room that appeared somewhat chaotic with paper strewn everywhere he would tell guests this is not so much of a mess as it looks you notice I find most of the things I look for and without much trouble the disorder is more suspected than real just before Whitman 70th birthday a letter arrived Hartford May 24th 1889 to Walt Whitman you have lived just the 70 years which are greatest in the world's history and richest and benefit and advancement to its people's what great births you have witnessed the steam press the steamship the steel ship the railroad the perfected cotton gin the Telegraph the phonograph the photograph the electric-type The Gaslight the Electric Light the sewing machine and you have seen even greater birth the knees for you I've seen the application of anesthesia to surgery practice whereby the ancient dominion of pain which began with the first created life came to an end in this earth forever you have seen the slave set free you have seen the monarchy banished from France and reduced in England to a machine which makes an imposing show of diligence and attention to business but isn't connected with the works yes you have indeed seen much but tarry at a while for the greatest is yet to come Mark Twain around 1890 Thomas Edison recorded Whitman reading his poem America and a cylinder wax recording this is the only recording of Walt Whitman known to have been one of his final poems was entitled goodbye my fancy in which knowing he is declining the poet bids farewell to his imagination or a fancy that served him so well over the decades goodbye my fancy farewell dear maid dear love I'm going away I know not where or to what fortune or whether I may ever see you again so could by my fancy now for my last let me look back a moment the slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me exit nightfall and soon the heart thuds stopping long have we lived joy caressed together delightful now separation goodbye my fancy wall lived to see his life's work completed the final edition of Leaves of Grass published in Philadelphia his first edition in 1855 had 12 poems the final one 389 just two months before his death he sent this announcement to the New York Herald Walt Whitman wishes respectfully to notify the public that the book Leaves of Grass which he has been working on at great intervals and partially issued for the past 35 or 40 years is now completed and he would like this new 1892 edition to absolutely supersede all previous ones faulty as it is he decides it as by far his special and entire self chosen poetic utterance on March 26 1892 Walt Whitman died at age 72 he was buried at Harley cemetery in Camden New Jersey in a tomb that he designed and supervised the construction for the remains of his parents and several other family members were laid beside him although the good grey poet is buried here his legacy lives on in the generations of poets who came after him and all those who cherish his poems I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot soles you will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nevertheless and filter and fiber your blood failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged missing me one place search another I stopped somewhere waiting for you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: East Rock Films

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Keywords: walt whitman, leaves of grass, civil war, poetry

Id: QOHL8NEQCyM

Length: 89min 21sec (5361 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020