Walt Whitman and Warren Fritzinger by Dr. John Johnston, 1890

Taken on Camden wharf in 1890 by Dr. John Johnston of Bolton, England, this photograph shows Whitman in his wheelchair, attended by his last and favorite nurse, Warren Fritzinger. “Warry,” Whitman said, “is faithful, true, and loyal” (J. W. Wallace, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 , 1917). Whitman called him his “sailor boy,” and he indeed had spent years at sea (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, May 31, 1889; John Johnston, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 , 1917). He was the son of a friend of Mary Davis, Whitman’s housekeeper. When Warry’s parents died, Mary became his guardian, and she talked him into becoming Whitman’s nurse. He was a comfort to Whitman in the last years: “I like to look at him—he is health to look at: young, strong, lithe” (Thursday, June 28, 1888).

Dr. Johnston, one of Whitman's English admirers and a founder of the "Eagle Street College," arrived in Philadelphia to visit Whitman on July 15, 1890, and that evening photographed Whitman and Fritzinger, who were out for a walk, Fritzinger pushing Whitman in his wheel chair (which had replaced his phaeton as a mode of transportation in 1889): "As we approached the wharf he exclaimed: 'How delicious the air is!' On the wharf he allowed me to photograph himself and Warry (it was almost dusk and the light unfavourable), after which I sat down on a log of wood beside him, and he talked in the most free and friendly manner for a full hour, facing the golden sunset, in the cool evening breeze, with the summer lightning playing around us, and the ferry-boats crossing and re-crossing the Delaware" (John Johnston, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 , 1917).

For more information on Dr. John Johnston, see "Notes on Whitman's Photographers."