The following post was written by Neely Tucker, a writer-editor in the Library’s Office of Communications. It originally appeared on the Library of Congress Blog.
Walt Whitman, that most exuberant of poets, the 19th century bard of transcendent sensitivity, sensuousness and epic vision, was given to intimate correspondence in his personal life, too.
As the Library marks Whitman’s 200th birthday, it’s worth pausing over an affectionate letter he sent to Peter Doyle.
Doyle, a D.C. streetcar conductor, was some two decades Whitman’s junior, but the pair bonded one night in 1865 when Whitman stepped, alone, onto Doyle’s streetcar and sat beside him. Doyle later recalled that he put his hand on the older man’s knee and “we understood.” In August of 1870, the bearded poet wrote Doyle a letter, ending one section with:
“I believe that is all for to-night, as it is getting late, — Good night, Pete, — Good night my darling son —– here is a kiss for you, dear boy – on the paper here – a good long one.” Most charming is that the “o” in “one” is smudged. It is tempting to imagine Whitman giving the paper a playful wet smack before mailing, blurring the ink, though it is impossible to know.
The relationship was, in one way, critical to Whitman’s legacy as the poet who enshrined the national grief over President Lincoln’s death. The night Lincoln was assassinated, Whitman was in New York. Doyle? Sitting in Ford’s Theater, an eyewitness to the assassination.
“Whitman used that information in a lecture he often gave on the death of Abraham Lincoln,” says Barbara Bair, a historian in the Manuscript Division and lead curator of the Whitman Bicentennial exhibit. “He spoke as if he was