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It will surprise few observers of our community’s history that the correlation of queerness to artistic genius is remarkably strong. In the brief timespan I have written for this blog, a range of great artists (from Michelangelo to Josephine Baker) have already been profiled. Today’s post features a literary titan of American history, whose tangled affairs with other men are perhaps the least publicized aspect of his storied life. Poet and author Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) not only lived openly alongside his purported boyfriend for years, but was among the first major American writers to express homosexual longings in his most recognizable works.
American Adventurer
Few other writers are as synonymous with American literature as Walt Whitman, and the distinction was no accident. By all historical accounts, Whitman’s poetry was intimately informed by his lifelong travel throughout the 19th century United States at a time of historic upheavals, rampant injustices and societal reckoning.
Born on Long Island in 1819, Whitman was one of nine children to Walter Whitman and his wife Louisa.[1] The young Walt was enamored with the literary arts from the tender age of twelve when he began working in a print shop.[2] But after his first place of employment went up in literal flames (as ever, publishing is a fiery business), the seventeen-year old Whitman began his career as an educator.
By his mid-twenties, Whitman had found a new calling as a journalist and then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Whitman, an abolitionist and humanist, offended the newspaper’s owners such that he was eventually relieved of his position in 1848.[3] It would not be the last time that Whitman’s controversial tastes cost him his employment.
Leaves of Love
It was around this time that Whitman, then in his early thirties, began to hone his poetic voice. Whitman’s travels throughout the US in the late 1840s and early 1850s profoundly influenced his personal philosophies and self-expression. As a student of the Romantic age of literature, Whitman’s eventual works indicated intense reverence for the rough, untouched natural world and the dignity of common men, liberated from the vanities wrought by wealth and social status. As a titan of transcendentalism, his works emphasized the soulful, the spiritual and metaphysical – the unique and innate gifts of every man to pursue enlightenment.[4]
This confluence of ideals was showcased clearly in his first, self-published collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. It quickly became, and remains, one of Whitman’s most famous and most controversial works.
Incredibly, Whitman would later be fired from his post at the Department of the Interior when his superiors realized that he was the author of the scandalous collection of poetry.[5] Not only did Leaves of Grass approach the topics of love, passion and physical sex (dicey areas indeed in the Victorian Age) with gusto, it did so in a manner which strongly implied that other men were the objects of Whitman’s desires.
One poem in the volume, “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand” illustrates why Whitman instantly became a divisive artist – and a national sensation:
Who is he that would become my follower? Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive, You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting, The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon’d,
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down and depart on your way…
But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares,
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you, With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,
For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing, Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea, For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally…[6]
This poem, and others like it, leaves precious little room for interpretation outside of homosexual longing and perhaps even eroticism.
A few lines are especially intriguing when interpreted within Whitman’s own humanistic, stridently individualist point of view. For example, the “whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon’d” line implies a dismissal of conventional social expectations. His invitation demands an embrace of the taboo as requisite to the continuation of the relationship between the poet and “follower”.
But for the “candidate for my affection” willing to tread that dangerous path, Whitman promises “comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss” suggesting both a platonic friendship and a romantic partnership. One imagines that the subsequent “thrusting me beneath your clothing/Where I may feel the throbs of your heart” needs no further explanation.
Little wonder, then, that Whitman became both a sensation and a pariah simultaneously. While his frank and unaffected style attracted admirers, such as his own mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, respect for Whitman among his contemporaries was always tinged with uncertainty and suspicion. Despite his sudden fame, “[c]ritics and readers alike…found both Whitman’s style and subject matter unnerving.”[7] But Leaves of Grass remains Whitman’s seminal work, and he would go on to expand the volume with dozens more poems in later years – suggesting the volume was an immensely personal and valued project.
Dear Pete
The Civil War transformed Whitman’s life as it did that of virtually every American living through the deadliest war in American history. Whitman, entering his mid-forties, journeyed to Washington D.C. to nurse his wounded brother and other soldiers at a military hospital in 1862.[8] Whitman was deeply affected by his experiences as a volunteer medic, and stayed on in his role for several years. His decision to remain in public health service would prove enormously consequential, and would bring perhaps the most important man in the poet’s life into his orbit.
Peter Doyle was seemingly the last man on earth who would form a close bond with one of the most prominent American writers of his age. The Irish-born son of an immigrant family in Virginia, Peter Doyle was just twenty-one in 1865 at the close of the Civil War.[9] He was also an illiterate former Confederate soldier who was discharged in November 1862 after about seventeen months of service (but would later be accused of desertion).[10] After a prison stint, Doyle attempted to rebuild his life in the nation’s capital.
The record suggests that Doyle, for lack of better ideas, worked a series of odd jobs to support himself in Washinton D.C.’s Navy Yard and, later, as a horsecar conductor. It was likely in the latter side hustle that Doyle met Whitman in either late 1865 or early 1866. Whichever is the case, the mutual attraction was (by Doyle’s own account) instant and magnetic:
It is a curious story. We felt to each other at once. I was a conductor. The night was very stormy,—he had been over to see Burroughs before he came down to take the car—the storm was awful. Walt had his blanket—it was thrown round his shoulders—he seemed like an old sea-captain. He was the only passenger, it was a lonely night, so I thought I would go in and talk with him. Something in me made me do it and something in him drew me that way. He used to say there was something in me had the same effect on him. Anyway, I went into the car. We were familiar at once—I put my hand on his knee—we understood. He did not get out at the end of the trip—in fact went all the way back with me. I think the year of this was 1866. From that time on we were the biggest sort of friends.[11]
Calamus
But what did “biggest sort of friends” actually mean? Whitman and Doyle’s subsequent history together, which lasted until the poet’s death in 1892, gives us intriguing hints.
For the next several years, the pair were each other’s “near-constant companions”.[12] They were known to spend entire days together traversing the rivers and woodlands around the nation’s capital, hailing ferries and climbing hills with abandon until the setting sun called them home. But while modern audiences might be tempted to see their relationship as a Victorian-style “bromance” Whitman’s own writings during this period suggest a more intense affair. Notably, Whitman gave Doyle a “presentation copy” of his seminal work, Leaves of Grass, in April 1868.[13] The version he gave to Doyle is a particularly rare first issue of the fourth edition of Whitman’s prized volume.
But it is in the Calamus section of poems in Leaves of Grass where Doyle’s influence on Whitman’s life becomes clearer. These poems were first written during the late 1850s when some of Whitman’s biographers believe he may have been in a romantic relationship with a man named Fred Vaughn.[14] One of these was the poem “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand”, among others which hinted at male-male intimacy or perhaps love. Literary scholars note that in the 1867 edition, however, Whitman chose to remove a handful of the poems in this category which suggested defeat and despair in the aforementioned romantic pursuits, but kept those which suggested their fulfilment. It is a fascinating editorial choice amid his deepening friendship with Doyle; specifically, “[t]he excisions can be interpreted as Whitman putting the unhappiness of his first ‘Calamus’ love relationship with Fred Vaughan behind him, as he embarked on this new love adventure.”[15]
Whitman’s devotion to Doyle is also on display in numerous letters the pair wrote to each other throughout their long relationship. One of these, dated from August 1869, refers to “Pete” as “my darling boy” in what is apparently a serious missive:
My darling, if you are not well when I come back I will get a good room or two in some quiet place, and we will live together and devote ourselves altogether to the job of curing you, and making you stronger and healthier than ever. I have had this in my mind before but never broached it to you. I could go on with my work in the Attorney General’s office just the same—and we would see that your mother should have a small sum every week to keep the pot a-boiling at home.
Dear comrade, I think of you very often. My love for you is indestructible, and since that night and morning has returned more than before. Dear Pete, dear son, my darling boy, my young and loving brother, don’t let the devil put such thoughts in your mind again—wickedness unspeakable—death and disgrace here, and hell’s agonies hereafter—Then what would it be afterward to the mother? What to me?—Pete, I send you some money by Adams’ Express—you use it, dearest son, and when it is gone you have some more, for I have plenty.[16]
Some scholars suggest that Whitman had mused on the idea (as hinted in the letter above) of settling down permanently with Doyle; among Washingtonians, the pair were known to be virtually inseparable and wrote on a nearly weekly basis when parted by Whitman’s unavoidable travels.
But what did Doyle, then in his mid-twenties, think of his relationship with the much older Whitman? Doyle’s own relatives reportedly whispered amongst themselves that Doyle was homosexual.[17] Doyle, in their letters to each other, joked with “the old man” about the latter’s supposed lady paramours, much in the manner that celebrities might make light of tabloid coverage of their presumed romances. Doyle was not specified in Whitman’s final will, as a spouse might be – but it seems that, out of all of Whitman’s friends and family, he retained some of the most important and intimate mementos. One of these was a raglan shirt which had belonged to Whitman. Doyle said of it:
“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.”[18]
A Public Affair?
But Doyle and Whitman’s halcyon days of exploring the waterways of the Potomac were not to last indefinitely. In 1873, Whitman suffered a debilitating stroke which left him partially paralyzed; as a result, he was forced to return to his family in New York and New Jersey. Doyle, however, had no choice but to remain in the capital to care for his own relatives. Though he and Whitman would visit throughout the remaining years of the poet’s life, their (now famous) correspondence declined with Whitman’s health.
Whitman ultimately died in Camden in March 1892, a few months shy of his 73rd birthday. Doyle was among his many hundreds of mourners, and was nearly refused entry into the private viewing until some of Whitman’s other close friends recognized Doyle in the doorway. Unfortunately for Doyle, his relative anonymity would be annihilated with the publication of his and Whitman’s letters in 1897. The subsequent book Calamus, A Series Of Letters Written During The Years 1868–1880 by Walt Whitman To A Young Friend (Peter Doyle) would confirm what many Americans had suspected about Whitman for decades.
According to one contemporary review:
“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’…he seems to have been always attracted by, and attractive to, young men.”[19]
Doyle, like Whitman, never married; he died in 1907 at age 63.
Romantics of the Romantic Age
Of course, none of this information (speculative as it largely remains) is proof of a physical relationship in any sense of the phrasing. It does, however, strongly indicate a queer romance or queerplatonic love between two men at a point in history when there were precious few models for such a relationship.
I have written previously about the era of Boston Marriages, which coincided with the lifetimes of Whitman and Doyle. The Boston Marriage phenomenon may have allowed lesbians or sapphic women to enjoy long-term relationships with other women in a manner tacitly endorsed by the wider American culture. But such an outlet did not exist for men of this period. Whitman and Doyle’s relationship (regardless of the poet’s rumored affairs with other men) thus presented a conundrum to their contemporaries, and perhaps explains why the pair was never able to live openly in the same dwelling (even if they spent most of their waking hours together during the DC years).
Regardless of how precisely we might categorize the Whitman/Doyle dynamic today (if such categorization even matters at all), it seems nearly impossible to argue that Whitman himself was not a queer man. Whether the exact terms of gay, homo-romantic, gay-ace, etc. are most appropriate, only Whitman himself could have confirmed for sure.
But what is remarkable about his legacy was the sincerity with which he epitomized so many interwoven aspects of what defines queerness today: his refusal to accept artificial boundaries, his distaste for societal norms, his frank and unflinching views of sexual and romantic love, his daring in relaying his desires for men from his heart through to his pen, his elevation of the connection among and between souls above all else in a hierarchy-obsessed age.
Whitman was thus both a product of his era, and a titan within it. Though a complicated and enigmatic figure, Whitman belongs among the ranks of brilliant artists who have sprung from the vast roots of the historical queer community. At a time when conformity was rigidly enforced at all levels of society, this fearlessly queer American literary legend stands out discordantly among his peers – exactly as he would have wanted.
[1] Academy of American Poets, “Walt Whitman,” https://poets.org/poet/walt-whitman, accessed November 16, 2023.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Hampsong Foundation, “Walt Whitman Biography,” https://hampsongfoundation.org/resource/walt-whitman-biography/, accessed November 16, 2023. Note: Walt Whitman’s views on racial equality (despite his abolitionist stances) have been characterized as inconsistent and are another controversial (and hotly debated) aspect of his personality today.
[4] Rui Liu, “Whitman’s Transcendentalism: An Analysis of “Song of Myself” by Comparing with Emersonian Thought,” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 554, Atlantic Press.
[5] The Poetry Foundation, “Walt Whitman,” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/walt-whitman, accessed November 16, 2023.
[6] The full poem may be accessed here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49204/whoever-you-are-holding-me-now-in-hand.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Academy of American Poets, ibid.
[9] Martin G. Murray, “Pete the Great: A Biography of Peter Doyle,” The Walt Whitman Archive, https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/anc.00155.html.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Selby Kiffer and Halina Loft, “Literally in Love: The Story of Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle,” Sotheby’s, June 20, 2019, https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/literally-in-love-the-story-of-walt-whitman-and-peter-doyle.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Murray, ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] The letter may be read in full here: https://poets.org/text/love-letter-peter-doyle-walt-whitman.
[17] Murray, ibid.
[18] Kiffer and Loft, ibid.
[19] Murray, ibid.