Many of us who live in Washington, D.C. or the
surrounding area came from somewhere else.
Because of this, we all have stories of moving here. They chronicle our arrival, finding jobs and places
to live, and building lives for ourselves.
Every city has its own "immigrant"
stories. But D.C. is different in being
a one-company town and the nation's capital.
Whatever our reasons for coming here, the presence of the federal government
touches all of us. It gives our
histories a kind of common experience, whether you work for the government or
not, because has been such a driving force in shaping the region. Ask anyone about his or her arrival in D.C., and
you're bound to find something of your own story in it.
And it's not just for our contemporaries. Open any chapter of Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C.:
The Civil War and America's Great Poet by local historian Garrett
Peck, and you'll feel the pull of familiarity.
Whitman came to D.C. in 1862 to find and care for his brother who had
been wounded fighting in the Civil War. He used his network of friends to find places
to live and federal jobs that allowed him to pursue his writing as well as to begin a
remarkable regimen of visiting wounded soldiers in D.C.'s many military
hospitals. He also met Peter Doyle, the love of his
life, and probably would have stayed had he not had a stroke in 1873
that forced him to live with family in New Jersey. [Full disclosure, Peck is a friend and
customer of my wine business.]
That's just the bare bones of the story. Add to it that Whitman had an enormous,
larger-than-life personality, that he lived through and in the center of one
the nation's most tumultuous times, that his poetry represents, for many,
something quintessentially American, and that he wrote some of his most famous
poems while living here. The result is a
fast-moving book that gives the reader a taste of a life well-lived and
well-documented, too.
Peck packs a lot of interesting material into a small
number of pages, from unhealthy conditions in Civil War hospitals to the challenges of
everyday life in the 1860s. And D.C. residents will find many details to relish:
overlays of Whitman's wanderings on current maps (he loved to take long
walks in the city and beyond); President Lincoln's daily routines; restaurants
and watering holes; horse-drawn streetcar routes and the like. Whitman's D.C.-based
literary output is also examined. But
three things in particular stand out for me in Peck's account.
The first is Whitman's boundless energy and kindness. After locating his brother and helping see to
his care, Whitman began visiting hospitals serving wounded soldiers an average
of three times a week for four years, when the war hospitals closed. Unpaid, he spent an enormous amount of time
talking with the soldiers, bringing them special things they requested (like
ice cream) to help ease their pain. He wrote
letters for them, and comforted them in their loneliness and last moments. It's hard for most of us to imagine how awful
the conditions were in these hospitals.
Yet Whitman maintained a cheerful, almost fatherly demeanor in horrible
circumstances.
Whitman claimed to have got far more out of it than what
he gave in his hospital visits.
Certainly, he got some material for his voluminous Civil War journalism,
and as a writer he no doubt absorbed stories and snippets of personality. Whitman was already in his early 40s when he
came to D.C., and didn't seem to have lived an altruistic life up until
then. Trying circumstances bring out the
best in many. But his simple and modest
accounts of doing things that meant so much to so many wounded soldiers make it
clear that he was a truly empathetic person. It's
a fitting tribute that half of the Whitman Walker Clinic name is for him.
The second is Whitman's romantic relationship with Peter
Doyle. Doyle was an Irish immigrant who
fought for the Confederate army in the Civil War, left the army, and moved to
D.C. to escape being re-drafted. He was
a nighttime horsecar conductor in D.C., and Whitman happened to take his car
one night. Whitman was the only passenger
on the ride and it was the beginning of a long romance. As Peck
notes, it might seem that the two were intellectually mismatched, but they
complemented one another. After
Whitman's death, Doyle recounted that they were "the biggest sort of
friends," a lovely way of putting it, considering that most of the
vocabulary around same-sex relationships at the time was far less benign. In 10 pages, Peck gives us a history of their
time together that seems timeless, despite the 19th-century setting.
Finally, I was struck by how Whitman acted as his own one-man P.R. machine. What authors
wouldn't relish the opportunity to write anonymous reviews of their work and
get them published in reputable newspapers?
Whitman was clearly inspired by Abraham Lincoln and created some of his
most famous poetry and prose works to honor the slain president. But as Peck notes, "Whitman may or may
not have attended Lincoln's [second] inaugural speech, and he certainly did not
attend the inauguration ball. In fact,
he missed Lincoln's assassination and funeral as well. He never even got to shake hands or speak
with the man he adored. But he
immortalized Lincoln with his poetry."
I can't help thinking Whitman was
also canny enough to realize that being a Lincoln chronicler could be a good
career move. There's nothing wrong with
that if you can deliver the goods. Whitman
did, and then some.
Whitman left D.C. after having a stroke in 1873, and it
was only after leaving that he gained financial security through his writing. Peck's account of the poet's time here makes
me wonder what he could have given us had he not had to go. In the end, that's the mark of a good
story. Both Peck and Whitman leave us
wanting more from our fellow immigrant to D.C.
Garrett Peck gives popular tours in and around Washington, D.C., including one that focuses on Walt Whitman's time in Washington. Check it out at www.garrettpeck.com
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