Walter Whitman, Jr.
May 31, 1819 - March 26, 1892
Poet, Journalist, Essay Writer, Novelist
A Bit About the Good Gray Poet
Walter Whitman, Jr. was born in early summer 1819 on Long Island in the town of Huntington, New York to quaker parents Walter & Louisa Van Velsor Whitman who were of English and Dutch descent. To distinguish himself from his father, he took the nickname Walt. At four years old, the Whitman family moved to Brooklyn, New York and lived in a series of different homes, creating a lack of consistency in the young boy's life. Whitman's formal education ended at the age of eleven and he entered into employment to assist his financially struggling family. He performed a number of small jobs ranging from office work to apprenticeships, and eventually as a printer's devil for several weekly newspapers in New York and Long Island: the Patriot, where he learned printing and typesetting and contributed small writings; the Island Star; the New York Mirror. While working so close to the city, he developed a taste for theater, joined a debating society, attended a local library regularly, and eventually started anonymously publishing some of his earliest poetry.
In 1836, at the age of 16, he rejoined his family in Long Island. Here he periodically taught at a number of schools for two years until he made the decision to move back to Huntington, New York and establish his own newspaper the Long-Islander. He acted as editor, pressman, publisher, and distributor, which lasted only ten months before he sold it and once again returned to work for publishers and in a teaching position and in 1840 published ten editorials in a series called "Sun-Down Papers --From the Desk of a Schoolmaster". These were published in three different newspapers, and it was the first example of a technique he developed with a constructed persona that he would continue to use throughout the rest of his career with stints at publications such as the New World, the Aurora, the Brooklyn Eagle. He developed an appreciation for Italian opera while working in Brooklyn and writing performance reviews for the papers, and it had a direct impact on his style of writing in free verse. He noted later in his life "but for the opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass." All these different publications advancing his career made him determined to become a poet, experimenting with different genres of literature, appealing to different cultural topics of the era. Whitman's most famous work Leaves of Grass was started as early as 1850. He continued adding to and revising this collection of poetry for the rest of his life.
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In 1861, the United States entered into the American Civil War. Whitman's poem Beat! Beat! Drums! was published to rally support and enlistment for the Union army. His brother George served in the New York Infantry Regiment and would send extensive letters of the battle movements from the fields. He wrote to his brother frequently enough that when a list that arrived to the New-York Tribune of fallen and wounded soldiers bore the name George Whitman,Walt set out immediately to find his brother. He was so deeply struck by the scene he witnessed along the road of injury, disease, and fatality, that once he found his brother alive and well, he remained in Washington, D.C. to assist the army working as a field nurse. He wrote of his experience during the war for many years to come.
Walt Whitman continued to work in Washington, D.C. for several years after the war until 1872, when care for his elderly mother was required, and in early 1873 Whitman himself suffered a paralytic stroke, which required him to move from Washington to his brother's home in Camden, New Jersey. Shortly after his stroke, his mother became seriously ill and died in May of that year. He lived at his brother's residence from 1873 to 1884. It was during this time of recovery that Whitman took up a friendship with a young errand boy named Harry Stafford at Camden's newspaper New Republic . The Stafford family farm was only a carriage or train ride away from the city of Camden, and young Harry would take Walt to visit his parents at their Timber Creek farm. Between the years of 1876 and 1884, Whitman lodged at the Stafford farm several times a year, visiting with the family and seeking rehabilitation in the natural muds, mineral springs, sunshine and nature of Timber Creek, now known as Laurel Lake. Examples of his experiences can be found in numerous selections of his poetry and journal entries. He speaks of the spring in his most notable works "Leaves of Grass" and "Specimen Days". These were some of the best days of Whitmans' later life, which he maintained in Camden until his death in 1892.
Crystal Spring:
at the edge of the Stafford Farm
Crystal Spring, Laurel Springs
1919
"Here by the creek, nothing can exceed the quiet splendor and freshness around me ...the glassy water ... the banks with dense bushery and the picturesque beeches and shade ..."
-Walt Whitman-
Specimen Days