Whitman and the Irish

5. Washington, D.C.

5 WA S H I N G T O N, D. C . “I dream’d that was the new city of Friends . . .” “I Dream’d In a Dream” Walt Whitman came to the nation’s capital driven by the necessity of war, as were many other Americans in the years 1861 to 1865. He came not in a uniform or carrying a government-issued rifle but with empty pockets and a fearful heart. It was December of 1862, his brother George’s name had appeared (though misspelled) on a list of those wounded at the battle of Fredricksburg. Whitman left New York immediately, had his pocket picked while changing trains in Philadelphia, and arrived in Washington, D.C., with no means of obtaining food or transportation. He walked from hospital to hospital looking for George and knocked on office doors seeking information about him but got nowhere — until two friends from his Boston days came to his rescue. William Douglas O’Connor was now clerking at the Light-House Board in Washington, and Charles Eldridge, one of Whitman’s former publishers, was assistant to the Army Paymaster . Between them they provided money and assistance in getting to Falmouth, Virginia, where George’s Fifty-first New York Regiment was bivouacked. As it turned out, George’s wound was only super- ficial, and in a short time he returned to active duty. Whitman, however , had seen in the army hospitals piles of amputated limbs and the mangled bodies of suffering men — and had noted the scarcity of help for the surgeons and medical staff. He wrote to his mother that he would be remaining in Washington for a time. Except for visits, he never returned to his Brooklyn home. His subsequent wartime experiences , relative to the Irish, were such that they occasioned a mixture of emotions, strong positive feelings based on personal relationships and negative responses to the public emphasis on the idea of the “fighting Irish” as a major constituency of the Northern armies. In the time between his visit to Boston in 1860 and his arrival in Washington two years later, Whitman had seen the publication of the third (the Boston) edition ofLeaves of Grass and admitted, “I am very, very much satisfied.” Once back in New York he also had tried unsuccessfully to help Henry Clapp save his Saturday Press from foundering . Clapp had been a good friend and had kept Whitman’s name and poetry alive in the pages of his journal even when the reviews were bad. “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” made its first appearance (as “A Child’s Reminiscence”) in the December 1859 issue of the Press, and when William Douglas O’Connor met Whitman a few months later he was filled with awe to be in the presence of the author of a piece that showed such “reach of spiritual sight [and] depth of feeling.”1 Thayer and Eldridge, responding to Whitman’s request, had tendered Clapp some money (perhaps an advance on Whitman’s expected royalties), but it was to no avail. When the war broke out the Boston publishers lost monies owed them in the South, and not long after they, too, were bankrupt. Whitman kept busy writing poems that were published in newspapers and enjoyed himself many nights at Pfaff’s, a New York restaurant and café on Broadway near Bleecker Street, frequented by a crowd of bohemians. Years later, in the summer of 1881, Whitman went back to visit Pfaff’s, then located at Twenty-fourth Street, and breakfasted with the proprietor, Charles Pfaff. The two reminisced about the old days, in 1859 and 1860, and drank a champagne toast to old friends, most of whom were dead.2 Among those Whitman recalled was an Irish author, Fitz-James O’Brien, a writer of short stories well thought of in his time, though no longer read. O’Brien was a native of Limerick, Ireland, born in 1828; he was educated at Trinity College and, having squandered an inheritance, came to the United States about 1852. A dandy, he was proud of his good looks and good clothes, but in 1858 his nose was badly broken in a fight. He was rather delightfully described by the editor and critic William Winter as having “a bluff and breezy manner of speech, tending at times to a joyous turbulence.”3 O’Brien wrote stories and poems, some of which appeared in Harper’s, and a number of plays, one...