| Note: | The first extant photo of Whitman with anyone else, here Peter Doyle, Whitman's close
friend and companion in Washington. Doyle was a horsecar driver and met Whitman one stormy
night in 1865 when Whitman, looking (as Doyle said) "like an old
sea-captain," remained the only passenger on Doyle's car. They were inseparable for
the next eight years. Whitman once dated this photo 1865. In 1889, Whitman had a remarkable
talk with Horace Traubel and Thomas Harned about the photo; Traubel recalls the conversation:
"I picked up a picture from the box by the fire: a Washington picture: W. and Peter
Doyle photoed together: a rather remarkable composition: Doyle with a sickly smile on his
face: W. lovingly serene: the two looking at each other rather stagily, almost sheepishly. W.
had written on this picture, at the top: 'Washington D.C. 1865—”Walt Whitman
& his rebel soldier friend Pete Doyle.' W. laughed heartily the instant I put my hands
on it (I had seen it often before)—”Harned mimicked Doyle, W. retorting: 'Never
mind, the expression on my face atones for all that is lacking in his. What do I look like
there? Is it seriosity?' Harned suggested: 'Fondness, and Doyle should be a
girl'—”but W. shook his head, laughing again: 'No—”don't be too hard on
it: that is my rebel friend, you know,' &c. Then again: 'Tom, you would like
Pete—”love him: and you, too, Horace: you especially, Horace—”you and Pete
would get to be great chums. I found everybody in Washington who knew Pete loving him: so that
fond expression, as you call it, Tom, has very good cause for being: Pete is a master
character.' I said: 'One of your powerful uneducated persons, Walt, eh?' W. quickly: 'Just
that: a rare man: knowing nothing of books, knowing everything of life: a great big hearty
full-blooded everyday divinely generous working man: a hail fellow well met—”a
little too fond maybe of his beer, now and then, and of the women: maybe, maybe: but for the
most part the salt of the earth. Most literary men, as you know, are the kind of men a hearty
man would not go far to see: but Pete fascinates you by the very earthiness of his nobility. O
yes, you fellows will know him: you, Horace, must particularly make it your point to come in
relations with him: you will know him—”both of you—”and then you will
understand that what I say is wholly true and yet is short of the truth.'" For an
1868 portrait of Doyle also taken by M. P. Rice, see Ed Folsom, "1868 Photograph of
Peter Doyle," Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 4 (Spring 1987),
38 and back cover. |
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