Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

Griffin, Larry D

Leon, Philip. Walt Whitman and Sir William Osler [review]

Examines "inhibiting assumptions--textual and aesthetic, not sexual"--that the authors believe "have persisted, apparently not so much unacknowledged by ... critics, but unrecognized" in the "Calamus" cluster in Leaves of Grass; reviews previous readings of "Calamus" and explores textual issues related to Whitman's editing and rearrangement of the cluste

Olsen-Smith, Steven

Parker, Hershel

English

"Live Oak, with Moss" and "Calamus": Textual Inhibitions in Whitman Criticism

Introduces a previously unknown prose manuscript fragment of Whitman's

Folsom, Ed

would grow into Whitman's own commemorative address, given irregularly 
during the years to come on the anniversaries of Abraham Lincoln's death. 
Whitman's work on Speed's oration must have been effortless, growing out of 
his sense of duty to himself, to the Union, to Lincoln, and even to Speed. 
After all, as Ashton reminded friend Charles W. Eldridge, the Attorney Gen-
eral did provide Whitman with a stable employment that "enabled" him "to 
bring out with comfort" the fourth and fifth editions of Leaves (Barrus, 29). 
Texas A&M University M. LYNDA ELY 
NOTES 
James Speed's letter to Ashton can be found in the FeinberglWhitman Collection 
at the Library of Congress, "To J. Hubley Ashton," December 29, 1866. See Barrus, 
Whitman and Burroughs: Comrades (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931),25-41. Barrus 
begins with Harlan's "evasive" plea of forgetfulness (some twenty-nine years after the 
fact) about his reasons for firing Whitman, and then goes on to explain his reasons 
herself through the supportive letters of friends and associates, such as Charles W. 
Eldridge, Ashton, John Burroughs, Horace Traubel, and William Douglas O'Connor. 
According to Barrus, Harlan ultimately recapitulated: '''The removal of Whitman was 
the mistake of my life"'(34). Also see The Solitary Singer (New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 1967), especially 344-350, 376-377, for a similarly supportive descrip-
tion of Whitman's dismissal/rehiring. 
2 I am indebted to Jerome Loving, currently at work on a new critical biography of 
Whitman, for bringing this document to my attention. 
3 Oration of James Speed, Upon the Inauguration of the Bust of Abraham Lincoln at 
Louisville, Kentucky, February 12, 1867 (Louisville: Bradley & Gilbert, 1867), 7. All 
citations to Speed's speech refer to this edition. 
4 All references to Whitman's poetry are taken from Leaves of Grass, edited by Sculley 
Bradley and Harold Blodgett (New York: New York University Press, 1965), 112. 
Further citations to Whitman's poetry refer to this edition, abbreviated as LG. 
5 Floyd Stovall, ed., Prose Works 1892 (New York: New York University Press, 1963), 
1 :60. Further citations to Whitman's prose refer to this edition, abbreviated as PW. 
ON THE BACK COVER: 
A WHITMAN MANUSCRIPT FRAGMENT 
The Library of Congress, through gifts and purchases, continues to add to its 
vast collection of Whitman materials. One manuscript fragment recently added 
to the collection appears on the back cover.l Along the edge of the scrap of 
paper on which Whitman's notes are written appears the inscription "Walt 
Whitman MSS from J. H. Johnston 1911." Johnston was a New York jeweler 
who befriended Whitman in the late 1870s and often invited Whitman to stay 
at his home. The manuscript is undated and reads as follows: 
As to nationality [cancelled: &] in our literature [cancelled: there are] a & a demand that 
it should be autochthonous. There are sentences here and there through his writings 
180 
but they are surface sentences merely. [Cancelled: Any] There is no deep currents flow-
ing from [cancelled: powerful powerful] the domination a powerful impulse or convic-
tions 'of itself, nor any sign of such current. The Democratic spirit, which is the 
It is unclear what writer Whitman is referring to here. The sentiments ex-
pressed in this fragment frequently appear in Whitman's essays on emerging 
democratic literature, as when he calls for "a sane, sweet, autochthonous na-
tional poetry" in his essay "Poetry To-Day in America" (PW2:484). 
The University of Iowa ED FOLSOM 
NOTES 
I am grateful to Alice Birney, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, for bring-
ing the acquisition to my attention. 
181 


On the Back Cover: A Whitman Manuscript Fragment

Responds to Homer and Krieg as a part of a forum on Thomas Eakins' photographs purported to be of Whitman and presents further photographic support and a medical assessment by neurologist Antonio R. Damasio

WHITMAN NAKED?: A RESPONSE 
Joann Krieg's essay, suggesting Percy Ives as another possible connection be-
tween Thomas Eakins and Walt Whitman in the early 1880s, adds to the 
growing circle of men who were closely involved with both artists in the years 
before 1887, the year that Whitman once recalled as the time he first met 
Eakins.l The emerging web of connections-Bill Duckett, Whitman's young 
friend, driver, and traveling partner who later became one of Eakins's nude 
models;2 Talcott Williams, Whitman's "ardent friend" who was a nude model 
for Eakins's famous "Swimming" painting;3 S. Weir Mitchell, Whitman's phy-
sician and Eakins's patron;4 Percy Ives, visiting and drawing Whitman while 
studying with Eakins-has led some scholars to question Whitman's recollec-
tion about his first meeting with Eakins. "Because Eakins had known Wil-
liams for some time," writes Elizabeth Johns in an essay investigating the rela-
tionship between the painter and the poet, "and Whitman's reputation was 
widespread, Eakins had perhaps met him earlier. " 5 Whitman's recollection of 
dates is often faulty in his conversations with Horace Traubel, and, if he did 
pose nude for Eakins and later regretted it, he would in any case have had 
reason to misremember the date. (Further, since we know that Eakins did not 
take all the photographs in his "naked series," and since it is now apparent 
that Whitman knew several people associated with Eakins and the Pennsylva-
nia Academy in the early 1880s, it is possible that he could have posed for this 
series without actually meeting Eakins.) 
William Innes Homer contends that the "Old Man" in the photographic 
series simply does not look like Whitman, but a number of scholars who have 
worked many years with images of Whitman disagree. When I first found this 
series, I circulated a print at the annual meeting of the American Literature 
Association and asked Whitman experts whether they thought the "Old Man" 
could be Whitman; most of those polled concluded that the "Old Man" looked 
like Whitman. Homer says that the "Old' Man" is bald, and that Whitman had 
a "full mane of hair" in the early 1880s. But, in fact, the photos of Whitman 
beginning in the late 1870s show a balding man (see, for example, photos 
1880s # 17 and # 19 in the photography issue of WWQR6) with the same sparse 
amount of hair on the top of his head as the "Old Man" has. Since we have no 
photos showing the back of Whitman's head, it is impossible to compare the 
final two poses of the Eakins series with images of Whitman. Readers compar-
ing these photos can draw their own judgments about whether or not the old 
man looks like Whitman. 
I submitted the "Old Man" series along with a complete collection of 
Whitman's photographs to Dr. Antonio R. Damasio, a distinguished neurolo-
gist and author of Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New 
York: Putnam, 1994) . Dr. Damasio generously agreed to examine the photos 
in light of Whitman's medical history (including his 1873 stroke) and to try to 
determine whether it was conceivable that the naked "Old Man" was Whit-
man. His findings are as follows: the "Old Man" photographs "show no direct 
evidence of paralysis on either side, although there is not enough detail in the 
left hand or in the face to make any decisive judgment about those areas .... 
I note, however, that a recovered and mild hemiparetic would be able to hold 
the left upper limb in the way the 'old man' does ." Damasio goes on to note 
33 
that the photographs of Whitman from around this time "are a little more 
suggestive of paralysis but do not show anything definite." He notes Whitman's 
tendency in his portraits to have his left hand in his pocket, perhaps "disguis-
ing its unnatural state," but "elsewhere both hands are shown in varied pos-
tures and there is really nothing abnormal to report." Damasio found "no 
evidence of obvious facial asymmetry, but of course this would be difficult to 
detect, not only because of the lack of photographic detail but also because of 
the beard and mustache (most of the interesting facial asymmetry details usu-
ally show up in the corner of the mouth and in the nasolabial fold)." Damasio 
concludes that the "old man" photographs "are entirely compatible with the 
description of Whitman's illness": "In short, it is possible that the 'old man' is 
indeed Whitman."7 
Homer bases much of his argument on a portrait by J. Laurie Wallace (an-
other of Eakins's nude models for his "Swimming" painting) of an "Old Man," 
and it is certainly an interesting piece. Sarah Cash published this painting in 
1996 and dated it "c. 1880"; it would seem highly probable, as Homer says, 
that this is the same model who posed for the photographs at around the same 
time. What do we have here, then-a good painting of a yet-unident~fied old-
man model, or a bad painting of Whitman? The key questions, I would sug-
gest, remain the same: Who is this "Old Man"? Why, out of all the models 
who posed for Eakins's "naked series" photos (many of whom were students 
at the Pennsylvania Academy), is there only one elderly person? Is it possible 
that the poet of the naked human body (who had recently written a paean to 
"Nakedness") posed one day in Philadelphia for the painter/photographer of 
the naked human body? 
The University of Iowa ED FOLSOM 
NOTES 
Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden (Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 1953),4:155. It is important to note that Whitman does not actually 
name a date when he first met Eakins, but he claims that Eakins begain painting the 
poet's portrait within a few weeks of first coming by his Camden house (accompanied 
by Talcott Williams); that would suggest a date of 1887, about two years before the 
poet's recollection as recorded by Traubel. 
2 See Elizabeth Johns, "An Avowal of Artistic Community: Nudity and Fantasy in 
Thomas Eakins's Photographs," in Susan Danly and Cheryl Leibold, eds., Eakins and 
the Photograph (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 78-80; and "Swim-
ming: Thomas Eakins, the Twenty-ninth Bather," in Doreen Bolger and Sarah Cash, 
eds., Thomas Eakins and the Swimming Picture (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 
1996), 72-78. See also Folsom, "Whitman's Calamus Photographs," in Breaking 
Bounds: Whitman and American Cultural Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 
1995),210-212. 
3 See Sarah Cash, '''Friendly and Unfriendly': The Swimmers of Dove Lake," 58-
59; and "Biographies of Models for Swimming," 119-120, in Bolger and Cash. 
4 See Phillip W. Leon, Walt Whitman and Sir William Osler (Toronto: ECW, 1995), 
58-60. 
5 Johns, "Swimming/' 69. 
34 
6 Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 4 (FalllWinter 1986-1987), 28. 
7 Letter from Antonio R. Damasio, M.D., Ph.D., M. W. Van Allen Professor and 
Head, Department of Neurology, The University of Iowa College of Medicine, to Ed 
Folsom, July 21, 1997. 
35 


Whitman Naked?: A Response

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie

Beach, Christopher. The Politics of Distinction [review]

Excerpted from the opening chapter of Loving's Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself, this essay gathers extant information about the poet's life to provide a context for understanding Whitman's vacillating attitudes toward the Civil War

Loving, Jerome

Caresser of Life: Walt Whitman and the Civil War

Back Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 14, no. 4

Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Spring 1997

ANNOUNCEMENTS 
IN MEMORIAM: CLARENCE GOHDES (1901-1997) 
Clarence Gohdes, one of the last surviving members of the editorial board 
of the New York University Press edition of the Collected Writings of1-%ltWhit-
man~ has died. He passed away on December 8, 1997, aged 96. He retired 
from Duke University in 1971, not long after teaching his last graduate Whit-
man seminar. I was one of three students enrolled in the course, held in the 
basement seminar area of the Perkins Library. The low enrollment was prob-
ably due to the fact that Professor Gohdes (it was not until many, many years 
later that I dared address him as "Clarence") had a reputation for no nonsense 
whatsoever. It was rumored that on at least one occasion he had politely asked 
an "unprepared" student to "sum up" in the middle of his oral report. He did 
not tolerate anything very theoretical or any argument too far from the textual 
evidence. 
But he introduced me to the wonders and mysteries of Walt Whitman. He 
would arrive to class every Monday and Wednesday afternoon with his dog-
eared paperback copy of Leaves of Grass, ready to take us through "Song of 
Myself" and other major poems line by line. I still have my course text, which 
now looks in about the same condition as Clarence's copy of Leaves of Grass 
did then. It contains invaluable marginalia, quotations from the master at that 
time, some of which have shaped my own writings about Whitman, many oth-
ers which still stand as corrections to the New York University Press edition. 
He often wore a carnation in his lapel, grown in his famous garden.· In class he 
sat at the end of the long seminar table, with his three students huddled close 
by. At age seventy, he was still smoking cigarettes and would bring two to class, 
which he lined up beside his book. After smoking them, he usually borrowed 
one or two from me. (You could still smoke in class in those days, the spring 
semester of 1971.) Clarence went through Leaves of Grass methodically and 
dogmatically, illuminating the poems with anecdotes and useful citations not 
in the textual notes. We were not a little overwhelmed at his vast knowledge of 
Whitman, especially the biographical. We were all newly minted M.A. stu-
dents, coming in from other universities. Not only were we somewhat awed by 
Duke itself, but by this Southern gentleman, a Texan born in San Antonio, but 
educated in the North, receiving his doctorate from Columbia University in 
1932 (where he studied under one of Emerson's biographers, Ralph L . Rusk). 
His reputation as managing editor and later editor-in-chief of American Litera-
ture and right-hand man of founding editor Jay B. Hubbell (1885-1975), was 
clearly before us. Sometimes what we said in response to his lectures was well 
received, but other times I left feeling better qualified for clerking in the near-
estA&P. 
139 
Yet I loved and admired the man, who, before the advent of student teach-
ing evaluations, conducted himself with the authority of a German professor. 
Texas was founded largely by Germans (famous today for its Octoberfests), 
and this Texan of German descent was one of its pioneers in academe. His 
first book focused on the periodicals ofTranscendentalism, and he wrote what 
is today still one of the most acute and (for its time) best researched histories 
of the American literary history of the late nineteenth century in Arthur Hobson 
Quinn's Literature of the American People (1959). The invaluable articles on 
Whitman buried today in the pages of American Literature directly benefited 
from his editorial management. He was possibly best known for his Biblio-
graphical Guide to the Study of the Literature of the United States (1959), which 
went through four or five editions. But for me his greatest service was to the 
study of Walt Whitman. I mean not only the valued material he funneled into 
American Literature., but his work with the Josiah P. Trent Collection of Whit-
man at Duke, one of the two or three most important extant manuscript col-
lections of the poet. And, of course, there was his service to the Collected Writ-
ings edition. 
With Rollo G. Silver, he edited Faint Clews & Indirections: Manuscripts of 
Willt Whitman and His Family (Duke, 1949), still a unique biographical and 
critical resource. I remember his telling me how he detected that Whitman, for 
the lack of paper or because of its expense, pasted canceled pages face to face 
so as to produce a new sheet and clean verso. By carefully detaching those 
pages, he found alternate drafts of early poems and other writings. The name-
sake of the Trent Collection had been Gohdes's student before he went to 
medical school and became a promising surgeon. Dr. Trent married into the 
Duke family, and one Christmas his wife bought him the papers originally 
belonging to Richard M. Bucke, one of the poet's three literary executors. 
After Trent's premature death and probably through Clarence's influence, the 
collection was given to Duke. 
My edition of the CivilWilr Letters of George Wilshington Whitman (1975) came 
directly from Clarence's Whitman seminar. Also, my Emerson., Whitman., and 
the American Muse (1982) was initially and partially influenced by Clarence's 
1929 ground-breaking essay on this most famous literary connection. And I 
have to say that my forthcoming biography of the poet, Willt Whitman: The Song 
of Himself, bears his mark too. In 1993 I sent him a copy of a piece I'd written 
on Emory Holloway, Whitman's first modern biographer, which was published 
in this journal. His response and last advice to this ex-student: Why did I want 
to fool around with somebody like Holloway when I could be writing about 
the likes of Whitman directly? Of course, I had been interested in how our 
critical view of Whitman had been shaped, and so the magnifying glass on 
Holloway, but Clarence was otherwise right. Not long after receiving this final 
admonition, written in his incredibly small editor's hand, I turned to writing 
the biography. I was only hoping that Clarence would live to see it! 
-Jerome Loving., Texas A&M University 
140 


In Memoriam: Clarence Gohdes

Details the relation between artist Percy Ives and Whitman, suggesting the possibility that Ives may have brought the poet into contact with Thomas Eakins earlier than they had previously been believed to have met

Krieg, Joann P

PERCY IVES, THOMAS EAKINS, AND WHITMAN 
In discussing the Thomas Eakins photographic series of a nude unidentified 
old man, Ed Folsom suggests that, if the model is in fact Walt Whitman, then 
he and Eakins would have had to meet in the early 18808, not in 1887, the 
year that Whitman told Horace Traubel he had first met the artist. 1 Folsom 
suggests that one possible connection for an earlier meeting could have been 
Talcott Williams, a prominent Philadelphia journalist who knew both Whit-
man and Eakins. I would like to suggest another person who might have brought 
together the poet and the painter/photographer in the early 1880s. 
Percy Ives was the grandson of Elisa Leggett, a Long Island friend of 
Whitman's who moved to Detroit, Michigan, in the 1860s and corresponded 
with Whitman in the 1880s.2 Ives arrived in Philadelphia in 1880 to study 
with Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and he quickly 
paid his respects to Whitman at the poet's Camden, New Jersey, home. Whit-
man describes Percy at this time as "age 16, a student intends to be an artist-
lives bachelor's hall fashion in Philadelphia-reads Emerson, Carlyle, &c-is 
a son of Lewis T. Ives, Artist-Academy of Fine ArtS."3 
Recalling that first trip some sixteen years later, Ives told an interviewer: 
We talked of ordinary things .... He seemed to be interested in what I had to say, to 
want to learn something, to know what I thought about things. It seems to me perfectly 
natural from what I know of Walt Whitman that he should expect to learn something 
interesting from me as I was then, a mere boy, as from anyone else .... Soon we were 
getting on finely together. I asked him if I might make a sketch of him and he said yes 
and so we passed two hours very pleasantly together. When I had finished the sketch he 
looked at it, but did not make any comment one way or the other .... My first impres-
sion of Walt Whitman was that of a man who was genial, healthy and wholesome, and 
while there was nothing sour or morose about him, and though his face was one that 
could easily break into a smile, I never remember hearing him laugh .... It was as iflife 
with him was something too sacred to permit laughter.4 
On a number of occasions in 1881 and 1882 Whitman made note of visits 
from young Ives, of whom he seems to have greatly approved. The friendship 
between the two raises the possibility that Whitman may have met Eakins, 
through Percy, sometime during Percy's study at the Academy, and thus may 
prove a step toward eventual verification of current speculation that the Eakins 
photo of the nude elderly male is of Whitman. Percy Ives may also prove to be 
the intermediary through whom Eakins came into contact with William 
Duckett, Whitman's young driver, whom Eakins photographed in the nude 
sometime between 1886 and 1892. Because Duckett was about the same age 
as Percy, the two may have met in Camden, with Ives perhaps suggesting that 
Duckett obtain work as a model for Eakins. 5 
According to the records of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 
Percy Ives, son of Elisa Leggett's daughter Margaret and Lewis T. Ives, also a 
painter, studied with Eakins from 1881 to 1884 (two years before Eakins was 
forced to leave the Academy). While studying in Philadelphia, young Ives did 
a small oil portrait of Whitman (1882), now in the Feinberg Collection, Li-
brary of Congress, along with preliminary sketches, done by the artist. 6 Ives 
27 
then went to Paris to continue studying and, while living in Europe, corre- . 
sponded with Whitman, writing for example in 1887: 
I now take the liberty of telling you that there is more of the essence of life and move-
ment in your Leaves of Grass than anything I have ever met with, that it is one of those 
few books whose vacancy could not be readily supplied by another. A man or woman 
with any life could not help but be electrified by immense sweeps in those inspiring 
sentences. Being away from home I think I feel more keenly the spirit of your verses. 
(Feinberg, 10) 
Later Ives moved to Detroit. Like his father, he became a noted portrait 
painter, though his most important commission, an oil portrait of President 
Grover Cleveland executed during his time in office, was originally made to 
Lewis Ives until illness made the undertaking impossible and the son took his 
place. Percy Ives was a founder of the Detroit Art Institute (originally the 
Detroit Museum of Art). When he was sixty years old, two years before his 
death in 1928, he painted another portrait of Whitman. 
Hofstra University JOANN P. KruEG 
NOTES 
See Ed Folsom, "Walt Whitman's Calamus Photographs," in Betsy Erkkila and 
Jay Grossman, eds., Breaking Bounds: Whitman and American Cultural Studies (New 
York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 193-219; and Folsom, "Whitman Naked?," 
Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 11 (Spring 1994), 200-202. Whitman recalls his first 
meeting with Eakins in Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, ed. Sculley 
Bradley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953), 4: 155. 
2 I investigate the Leggett-Whitman relationship in "Walt Whitman's Long Island 
Friend: Elisa Seaman Leggett," Long Island Historical Journal 9 (Spring 1997), 223-
233, from which some of the material in this article is excerpted. 
3 Whitman, Daybooks and Notebooks) ed. William White (New York: New York 
University Press, 1978), 1:210. 
4 "Artist-Poet: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman," Detroit Sunday-News Tribune 
(April 5, 1896); quoted in Charles E. Feinberg, "Percy Ives, Detroit and Walt Whit-
man," Detroit Historical Society Bulletin 16 (February 1960), 5, 8. 
5 For the Duckett photo, see Folsom, "Calamus Photographs," 211. 
6 For reproductions of some of the sketches and for more details of Percy Ives's life, 
see Feinberg, "Percy Ives, Detroit and Walt Whitman," 4-11. 
28 


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