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100 Memoirs of Walt, Leaves of Grass, & the Whitman Circle The whole article was so full of errors which anyone familiar with Whitman ’s life would recognize that it seemed desirable to find out whether the story had any foundation in fact. Fortunately this was easy to ascertain, since Peter Doyle is still a baggage master on the “Colonial Express,” between Washington and Boston. (Not, as Mr. Hubbard says, in the Grand Central Station, New York.) The following letter from Doyle is an interesting commentary on Mr. Hubbard’s pretensions as a narrator of biography: The Thorndike, Boston, Mass., May 7, 1902 Dear Laurens: The story in the Cosmopolitan is entirely imaginary. Whitman never lost any money of mine and I did not get one hundred dollars a month. I was a conductor, not a driver, and I paid myself off every night out of collections. The pay was two dollars a day. Bucke was not in WashingtonandWhitmandidnotroominthehousewithBurroughsorme. The article is full of other mistakes, most of which you know as well as I. Yours truly, Peter G. Doyle. A careful examination of Mr. Hubbard’s article in the light of this letter and some knowledge of Whitman’s life in Washington reveals the fact that the forty- five sentences of which it consists contain thirty-eight errors or misstatements of fact, most of which could easily have been verified by Mr. Hubbard if he had cared a straw about accuracy. For one reason it is too bad that the story isn’t true, for Pete’s alleged remark, “Damn the money! I didn’t want the blame stuff, anyway. Is supper ready?” is really quite typical of one who as a youth of eighteen appealed more strongly to Walt Whitman than all the writers and educated persons he knew, and who today at fifty-five is a noble true-hearted laboring man, greatly beloved by all who come in contact with him, and who can tell many delightful stories of Whitman, and who likes to do so when he finds an interested listener. Mr. Hubbard’s assertion notwithstanding, Peter has never been to visit John Burroughs at Slabsides. He has only seen him once since the old Washington days, and that was at Whitman’s funeral, when Burroughs fortunately met him just as he was turning sadly away from Walt’s house, because the person at the door had said there was no more room, and he had been too modest to tell who he was or urge his special right to admittance. Doyle has become quite used to seeing all sorts of errors in print concerning him. Probably the one which annoyed him most was when John Addington Symonds spoke of him as the baggage master of a freight train. In some way this phrase got to the ears of his fellow employees, and they used to chaff Memoirs of Walt, Leaves of Grass, & the Whitman Circle 101 him by asking how long freight trains had baggage masters and how he got the appointment. After reading Mr. Hubbard’s story he remarked with a comical twinkle in his eye: “I’ve got used to being called a driver instead of a conductor , but nobody ever made me drive a mule on a bobtail car before. We had as good horses as could be got, and there were a pair of them on each car.” {Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) was a prolific printer, editor, and writer who, inspired by William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, founded the Roycroft Press in East Aurora, New York. Maynard’s piece was probably written in 1902, to judge from the date of Doyle’s letter.} june 1919 (30 : 54) Walt Whitman’s Personality Thomas B. Harned Abstract of an address at the New York meeting, May 31st, of the Walt Whitman Fellowship. It was Richard Watson Gilder who, on one occasion, spoke of Walt Whitman as a “hobo,” and Gilder was at that time as friendly to Whitman as a conventional literary man could be. And it was Col. Ingersoll, in a burst of eloquence , who said of Whitman that “he walked among men, among writers, among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milliners and tailors, with the unconscious majesty of an antique god.” These are the two extremes. I am reminded of the time when Whitman was walking along Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and Dr. Horace Howard Furness approached him from the opposite direction. Dr. Furness raised his hand in salute and said: “You...

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