Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Peter Doyle, 17 March [1874]

Date: March 17, 1874

Whitman Archive ID: amh.00011

Source: Amherst College Archives and Special Collections. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman, Jonathan Y. Cheng, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Elizabeth Lorang, and Nicole Gray



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431 Stevens1 Camden,
N. Jersey
March 17

All going on about as usual


W.W.


Correspondent:
Peter Doyle (1843–1907) was one of Walt Whitman's closest comrades and lovers, and their friendship spanned nearly thirty years. The two met in 1865 when the twenty-one-year-old Doyle was a conductor in the horsecar where the forty-five-year-old Whitman was a passenger. Despite his status as a veteran of the Confederate Army, Doyle's uneducated, youthful nature appealed to Whitman. Although Whitman's stroke in 1873 and subsequent move from Washington to Camden limited the time the two could spend together, their relationship rekindled in the mid-1880s after Doyle moved to Philadelphia and visited nearby Camden frequently. After Whitman's death, Doyle permitted Richard Maurice Bucke to publish the letters Whitman had sent him. For more on Doyle and his relationship with Whitman, see Martin G. Murray, "Doyle, Peter," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).

Notes:

1. This post card is addressed: Pete Doyle | M st South—bet 4½ & 6th | Washington D C. It is postmarked: CAMDEN | MAR | 17 | N.J. [back]


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