220

p Meanwhile, with Eldridge’s assistance Whitman found work as a copyist of documents in Washington. Emerson sent the requested recommendations. One of them was addressed to 221 the Secretary of Treasury, Salmon Chase, but Whitman could not muster the courage to go to him. Another writer had arrived in Washington, one to whom Whitman had been introduced during his memorable stay in Boston before the war. He was John Trowbridge, and he had been brought to the capital and commissioned to write Chase’s official biography for the next elections, since this rich Republican from New England dreamed of taking over the post of president after Lincoln. This provided a good opportunity to deliver Emerson’s letter to Chase. Trowbridge willingly undertook the errand. It is to him, too, that we owe a description of the poet’s daily life in Washington.

p The houses in which Chase and Whitman lived were on the same street, not far from each other. Chase’s residence, as Trowbridge relates, was a large and beautiful mansion, luxuriously appointed. He was waited on by skilful, silent Negro servants. Whitman lived alone in an old lodging house, in a gloomy, empty room in the garret, with a dark staircase as the only means of access. The furniture consisted of a bed, a pinewood table and a small iron stove.

p Trowbridge visited the poet in December, but the stove in the room was not burning. Whitman’s household property consisted of a bowl, a teapot, a tin mug and a spoon. The poet’s circumstances were now even more difficult than before. He not only had to provide for himself and help his mother and brother Eddy, but also felt obliged to take at least some small gift to the soldiers in the hospitals every day.

p In several letters to Louisa Whitman he spoke again of becoming a travelling orator. "Mother, I think something of commencing a series of lectures & readings & c. through different cities of the north, to supply myself with funds for my Hospital and Soldiers visits.”  [221•1  Once again these plans came to nothing.

p In his letter to Chase, Emerson described Whitman as "a man of strong original genius”. True, he continued, the poet had "marked eccentricities”, but he was a "large hearted man, much beloved by his friends; entirely patriotic & benevolent in his theory, tastes, & practice. If his writings are in certain points open to criticism, they yet show extraordinary power, & 222 are more deeply American, democratic, & in the interest of political liberty, than those of any other poet.”   [222•1 

p All these kind words produced no impression on Secretary Chase. Trowbridge handed him Emerson’s letter, the latter read it through carefully, and refused to help Whitman in any way whatsoever. The poet had a bad reputation, and Chase was not affected by assurances that Whitman was a gentleman, and not at all the New York vagabond many imagined him to be.

p Despairing of making any progress, Trowbridge asked Chase to return the letter. Chase replied: "I have nothing of Emerson’s in his handwriting, and I shall be glad to keep this.”  [222•2  When Trowbridge told Whitman about the conversation, the latter laughed and said, "I don’t blame him; it’s about what I expected.”  [222•3 

p From his minute income the poet managed to set aside money to buy sweets, writing paper and tobacco for the sick and wounded soldiers. Several friends and acquaintances began to send Whitman sums of money to buy presents for the soldiers.

p The hospitals in Washington served the front lines. Almost every day distant gunfire could be heard in the capital. Many of the soldiers whom Whitman visited had only just left the firing line, and some of them would have to return there directly.

p In one of his newspaper articles Whitman wrote that after any large battle, hundreds of youths were left lying without any help, mutilated, almost unconscious, alone, some bleeding profusely or dying of exhaustion. When the sick and wounded found themselves in the hospital, mental suffering compounded the physical. Few people bothered to say a gentle word to these country youths who had left their families for the first time in their lives (among the soldiers there were a large number of simple farm lads). Few people bothered to comfort and calm them during those terrible minutes, hours, and days when they were struggling with death.

p The pages of Whitman’s numerous wartime letters are alive with heart-rending sympathy, whether written to his mother, his relatives, his friends or to strangers. "O, my dear sister," 223 wrote the poet to his brother’s wife, "how your heart would ache to go through the rows of wounded young men, as I did.... One young man was very much prostrated, and groaning with pain. I stopt and tried to comfort him. He was very sick. I found he had not had any medical attention since he was brought there—among so many he had been overlooked.”   [223•1 

p “I never before had my feelings so thoroughly ... absorbed, to the very roots, as by these huge swarms of dear, wounded, sick, dying boys—I get very much attached to some of them, and many of them have come to depend on seeing me, and having me sit by them a few minutes, as if for their lives,"   [223•2  wrote the poet to his brother Jeff. "Mother, if you or Mat (Whitman’s sister-in-law.—M. M.) was here a couple of days, you would cry your eyes out. I find I have to restrain myself and keep my composure....”  [223•3 

p Here is a passage from another letter to his mother—about the soldier John Elliott who had no kin or friends in Washington (he died on the operating table): "... Mother, such things are awful—not a soul here he knew or cared about, except me.... Mother, how contemptible all the usual little wordly prides & vanities & striving after appearances, seems in the midst of such scenes as these—such tragedies of soul & body".  [223•4 

p To the bed-ridden soldiers he brought sugar, tea and fruit, and provided them with books and paper. Religious philanthropical societies refused to give the wounded tobacco (since smoking was a “sin”). But Whitman unfailingly brought the smokers tobacco and cigarettes. Before supper he would often go round the wards with a jar of jam or some other sweet and leave each of them a spoon or two.

p The most important thing which the maimed young men needed was to have someone take an interest in them and to feel some human warmth. The poet radiated sympathy, tenderness and friendship every hour of the day.

p A well-known correspondent, according to J. Burroughs (most likely he had John Swinton in mind), thus described a 224 visit with Walt Whitman to one of the Washington hospitals: "Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds through a hospital.... When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of affection and welcome on every face ... and his presence seemed to light up the place.... From cot to cot they called him ... they embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him.... He did the things for them no nurse or doctor could do ... and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of many a stricken hero calling ’Walt, Walt, Walt! come again! come again!’~"  [224•1 

p Those of the sick and wounded who survived remembered him for a very long time. Almost ten years after the war ended Whitman received a warmly written letter from William Stansberry, one of the young men whom he had helped in the Washington hospitals. The poet was greatly moved. He replied to Stansberry: "To think that the little gift & word of kindness, should be remembered by you so long.... Dear Comrade—you do me good, by your loving wishes & feelings to me in your letters.”  [224•2 

p Perhaps the most moving of Whitman’s wartime letters are those in which he tells the families of the last hours of their sons and brothers. The poet began a letter to a Mr. and Mrs. Haskell with these words: "Dear friends, I thought it would be soothing to you to have a few lines about the last days of your son Erastus.... I write in haste, & nothing of importance—only I thought any thing about Erastus would be welcome.”  [224•3 

p There follows a fairly long, detailed story of the young soldier’s death. He was not talkative, and he had difficulty in breathing, but sometimes he would wake from a heavy sleep and stretch out his arm to the stranger sitting next to him. "... 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...—he always liked to have me sit there, but never cared to talk....”  [224•4 

p During his life in the hospitals (Whitman practically did live there, spending every evening and many hours of the night within the hospital walls), the poet made a lot of friends, with 225 whom he later maintained correspondence for many years. They were simple people, farmers more often than not, and occasionally workers. Whitman treated them like a comrade, like a father or elder brother. He himself accurately defined his relationship with these youths (most of them were mere boys) when he remarked that he often felt very close to them, as if they were his own children or younger brothers..

p Usually the soldiers did not have the slightest idea that the man sitting beside them was a writer, a poet. He knew how to share their feelings and interests and how to efface himself.

p “Dear comrade,” we read in Whitman’s letter to Lewis Brown, a soldier who had returned to his farm, "I was highly pleased at your telling me in your letter about your folks’ place, the house & land & all the items—you say I must excuse you for writing so much foolishness—nothing of the kind—My darling boy, when you write to me, you must write without ceremony, I like to hear every little thing about yourself & your affairs....”   [225•1 

p Whitman’s own letters were also written "without ceremony”, simply and straightforwardly. There are few admonitions in them, but they contain a sea of tenderness and an amazing feeling of “adhesiveness” with other people.

p The poet’s love for his “sons” in the hospitals (like the love expressed in his poetry for “you”, "whoever you are”) was devoid of the slightest tinge of the jealousy which is so often an integral part of love, not only between man and woman, but also between close relatives, comrades and friends.

p Tom Sawyer and Lewis (Lew) Brown, with whom Whitman kept up a fairly long correspondence, were bosom friends. But this did not prevent the poet from being very friendly with each of them. In a letter to Tom, who had returned to the front, Whitman spoke of Brown, who had remained in the hospital (they finally amputated his leg): "Lew is so good, so affectionate—when I came away, he reached up his face, I put my arm around him, and we gave each other a long kiss....”  [225•2 

p In another letter the poet said of Lew, "He is the same good young man as ever, & always will be.”  [225•3  Sawyer, for his part, asked his friend Brown to give his love to Walter Whitman.

226

p A letter to Brown from Brooklyn, where Whitman spent several days at the end of 1863, is filled with thoughtful questions about dozens of other soldiers in the hospital and with expressions of love for them: "Lew, I wish you to go in Ward B and tell a young cavalry man, his first name is Edwin, he is wounded in the right arm, that I sent him my love, & on the opposite side a young man named Charley wounded in left hand, & Jennings, & also a young man I love that lays now up by the door just above Jennings, that I sent them all my love.”   [226•1 

p Of course, a hundred years ago American workingmen were far more free and open than they are now in speaking of their comradely love for each other, and did not fear, as people often do nowadays, that they might seem laughable, sentimental. Nonetheless the tenderness expressed in the poet’s letters is truly astonishing. Walt Whitman had enough love for everybody.

p Sometimes the poet gave kind advice to his young comrades, like a considerate father, asking them to avoid friendships with dubious characters or recommending that they eat sparingly, and so on. At Brown’s request Whitman remained in attendance during a serious operation performed on the soldier, and then for several days stayed at his side, watching against the danger of fatal bleeding.

p Tens and hundreds of wounded men responded with love and respect to the old man who sat for long hours beside their cots. Once, when he found out that Walt Whitman was ill, a former soldier named Fox wrote him from his home: "Oh! I should like to have been with you so I could have nursed you back to health & strength.... I shall never be able to recompense you for your kind care.... I am sure no Father could have cared for their own child, better than you did me.”  [226•2 

p Words to the same effect expressing filial love can be found in many other letters written to the poet. In one letter a former soldier says that Whitman was like a father to him from the very first meeting and that thousands of other soldiers no doubt shared the feeling.

p Whitman’s experiences in the hospitals and his correspondence with the soldiers give us a better understanding of his verses about "manly love”.

227

p Whitman was aware of the vital connection between his poetic work and the feelings which he experienced in the hospitals. When in his old age he read through his old letter to Fox, a genuine hymn of comradely love, he mentioned that what it said was for him "the most important something in the world”. It was exactly this something that he had tried to "make clear in another way"   [227•1  in his poetry.

p During the war Whitman wrote a short poem which tells of the arrival in camp of a "tan-faced prairie-boy”. These lines are directly related to the poet’s pre-war poems about the bonds of comradeship and manly love.

p Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,
Praises and presents came and nourishing food,
          till at last among the recruits,
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give—
          we but look’d on each other,
When lo! more than all the gifts of the world
          you gave me.

p During the Civil War, in which the farmers and workers "in blue" defended their worthy cause, Whitman saw how the lofty feelings of friendship, mutual sympathy and solidarity with one’s comrades, feelings which he was convinced had always found a place in the hearts of the working people, began to reveal themselves in more and more obvious fashion.

p The Soviet critic Lunacharsky most likely did not know Whitman’s definition of what he considered "the most important something in the world”. But he felt intuitively how great a role the collectivist tendency played in the poet’s work.

p Meanwhile life dealt Walt Whitman further heavy blows. The poet felt the first signs of the serious illness which was later to make him an invalid.

p During the Civil War misfortunes began to rain down on Whitman’s head.

p Whitman’s eldest brother gave up working, and was finally recognized to be mentally ill. From month to month the health of another of his brothers, Andrew, an alcoholic, grew worse and worse. Andrew’s wife Nancy also drank a great deal and became a prostitute.

228

p Andrew died in late 1863. Some time later his mother wrote to Walt that Nancy was continuing to walk the streets and sent her children out begging. The poet also had a sister called Hannah, who caused him no little anguish. In her letters to her family Hannah constantly complained about her unhappy marriage. Walt Whitman tried to influence her husband, but nothing came of it.

p Relations between the mother and the families of her other children in Brooklyn were not very smooth either. This had to do with the behavior of her weak-minded son, the mischievousness of her grandchildren, caprices of her daughters-in-law, and possibly the eccentricities of the old woman herself. Walt Whitman continuously played the role of peacemaker, sending money to Brooklyn and remonstrating with his many relatives.

p Even George Whitman, the one who had turned out so well, and was now treading the paths of the war as though charmed against bullets, demanded the expenditure of great moral and physical strength on the part of the poet. About six months before the end of the war the Whitmans found out that George had been taken prisoner. For a long time they feared he was dead. The poet did everything he could to arrange an exchange of Whitman the officer for some prisoner of war held by the Northerners. As a result of the intervention of friends he managed to obtain permission for the exchange from General Grant himself.

p The kind, gentle and apparently well-balanced Walt Whitman remained a militant supporter of the North. He pitied the sick soldiers, even if they were Southerners, for he knew very well the sort of power those who stood at the apex of slave society exercised over the culturally retarded farmers of the South. But the poet passionately hated the “Copperheads”, the secret northern supporters of the Confederacy.

p When he found out in April 1864 that the “Copperheads” in the United States Congress were "getting furious" and wanted "to recognize the Southern Confederacy”,  [228•1  Whitman spoke out decisively against making peace with the slave owners.

In a letter to a certain James Kirkwood, who sometimes sent him money to help the wounded, the poet’s hatred toward the southerners’ secret supporters is expressed in extremely sharp terms. "The north has been & is yet honeycombed with 229 semi-secesh sympathisers ever ready to undermine—& I am half disposed to predict that after the war closes, we shall see bevies of star-straps, two or three of our own Major Generals, shot for treachery, & fully deserve their fate.”   [229•1