Outlaw Marriages (3 page)

What the poet didn't write was that a new love interest had entered his life. Whitman met Harry Stafford, who was forty years his junior and worked as an errand boy at a Camden printing shop, in 1876. Stafford never became as important to Whitman as Doyle was, but the aging poet was clearly smitten by the eighteen-year-old who he referred to as his “darling boy.”
41

And yet, Whitman continued to send his long-time partner letters that expressed his love. “I ought to have written to you before—but I believe lazy & listless fits grow stronger & frequenter on me as I get older,” the poet wrote in December 1876. “But I often, often think of you, boy, & let that make it up.” Whitman ended his letter by saying, “My loving boy, I underscore the words, for I know they will make you feel good to hear.”
42

Whitman's correspondence during this period included erotic passages that spoke of his longing to have physical contact with Doyle. By the summer of 1877, the poet's feelings for Stafford had faded and he told “Pete the Great” that he was spending many of his days at a farm near Camden. Whitman wrote, “I have a fine secluded wood & creek & springs, where I pass my time alone, & yet not lonesome at all (often think of you, Pete, & put my arm around you & hug you up close, & give you a good buss—often).”
43

In the fall of 1880, Whitman and Doyle went on a holiday together to Niagara Falls. They'd both been looking forward to the trip, and it met their expectations in full measure, as Whitman wrote a friend that having been with Doyle made him feel “as fresh as a lark.”
44

As the years passed, Whitman continued to revise
Leaves of Grass
, with the version dated 1882 ultimately becoming the most significant. That edition, which had grown to three hundred poems, was published by a prominent Boston firm. When Massachusetts state officials declared the book “obscene” and blocked its distribution, a Philadelphia publisher stepped in and took on the project. The obscenity charge attracted national attention, resulting in a plethora of flattering reviews—the
Chicago Tribune
called the book “brilliant” and “remarkable,” and
Critic
magazine lauded the poet as “an aggressive champion of democracy and the working-man.” From that point on,
Leaves of Grass
sold extremely well. In the words of one biographer, “Whitman emerged from the controversy well paid and famous.”
45

Doyle continued to visit Whitman in Camden in the early 1880s, but their times together grew less frequent as the poet's schedule became increasingly
filled with the many lectures and readings he was asked to give.
46

Now that the intense period of the men's relationship was behind them, Whitman wrote longingly of their bygone days. In one letter, he reminisced, “Pete do you remember—(of course you do—I do well) those great long jovial walks we had at times for years, out of Washington City—often moonlight nights, or Sundays, up and down the Potomac shores, one side or the other, sometimes ten miles in a stretch? Or when you work'd on the horse-cars, coming home late together?”
47

A major change in Doyle's life came in 1885 when his mother died. Now that he didn't have the responsibility of caring for her, he relocated to Philadelphia, so he lived just across the river from Camden. After the move, the men's correspondence ended because of their close geographic proximity to each other.
48

By this point, however, a new complication made Doyle's visits to Whitman infrequent. The problem was that the poet, now having enough money to buy his own house, had both a housekeeper and a nurse working for him. “In the old days,” Doyle later complained, “I had always open doors to Walt—going, coming, staying as I chose. Now, I had to run the gauntlet of [the housekeeper] Mrs. Davis and a nurse and what not. Somehow, I could not do it.” So Doyle sometimes didn't see Whitman for several months in a row. “We loved each other deeply,” Doyle continued. “I should have gone to see him, I know it now. I did not know it then, but it is all right. Walt realized I never swerved from him—he knows it now—that is enough.”
49

In early 1892, soon after Doyle expressed his regrets for not having visited more often, Whitman lapsed into a coma. The seventy-three-year-old poet remained in this condition until he died, in March, of pulmonary emphysema. Doyle was among the mourners who stood over the body as it rested inside an oak coffin and then was buried in Camden.
50

America's major newspapers published lengthy obituaries and tributes to Whitman. The
Washington Post
called him “a poet for humanity,” and the
New York Times
lauded him as a “champion of democracy” and “remarkable” literary figure who “had the courage to speak out.” None of the articles made any reference either to the poet's homosexuality or to Peter Doyle.
51

By the time Whitman died, Doyle had matured into a handsome man of forty-nine, and yet he never entered into another romantic relationship. Instead, “Pete the Great” dedicated his life to a project involving the man he'd loved for twenty-seven years.
52

That undertaking had its roots back in 1880 when a physician named
Richard Maurice Bucke had contacted Doyle. Bucke was writing a biography of Whitman, and the poet told him that his life story wouldn't be complete unless it included information about his intimate relationship with Doyle. After traveling to Washington to meet with the poet's long-time partner, Bucke was particularly excited when he learned that Doyle had kept the letters that Whitman had written to him.
53

Bucke stayed in touch with Doyle over the next several years, ultimately deciding that the letters—along with those from Doyle that Whitman had kept—deserved a book all their own. It wasn't until after the poet died, however, that Bucke moved forward with the project. When
Calamus, A Series of Letters Written During the Years 1868–1880 by Walt Whitman to a Young Friend (Peter Doyle)
was published in 1897, it not only caused a sensation in literary circles but also transformed Doyle into a celebrity among Whitman's many followers.
54

Reviews of the book were decidedly mixed.
Literature
magazine praised the letters as “positively delightful,” but the
Nation
condemned them for “their unvarying puerility.”
55

Within the community of Whitman admirers, one quotation from “Pete the Great” that was published in the book of letters brought him enormous affection. Doyle's poignant passage involved a sweater of his partner's that he'd kept. “I now and then,” Doyle said, “put it on, lay down and think I am in the old times. Then Walt is with me again. When I get it on and stretch out on the old sofa, I am very well contented. It is like Aladdin's lamp. I do not ever for a minute lose the old man. He is always nearby.”
56

Whitman devotees saw the quotation as capturing Doyle's enduring love for his partner. So the baggage handler became a welcome guest at gatherings of the Walt Whitman Fellowship, a group founded in 1893. He was repeatedly asked to give speeches or share his recollections from his outlaw marriage, and he also became a source for additional Whitman biographers.
57

Peter Doyle continued to live in Philadelphia and work for the railroad until he contracted kidney disease in early 1907. He died later that year, at the age of sixty-three. Doyle's sister wrote the brief death notices that appeared in Philadelphia and Washington newspapers, neither of them making any reference to Walt Whitman.
58

Opening Graduate Education to American Women

…

In 1885, Martha Carey Thomas made history by creating the first graduate program in the United States that admitted female students. She took that unprecedented step in her position as dean of the faculty at Bryn Mawr College, going on to become president of that institution and to be widely recognized as one of the most admired women in America.

In 1879, however, Thomas had been in a very different place. At that point in her life, she had earned a bachelor's degree and wanted to continue her education, but no college or university in the country would allow her—or any woman—to enroll in a graduate program. It was at this point that Thomas enlisted the help of Mamie Gwinn, who would become her same-sex partner and play an instrumental role in her successful efforts to make history.

Martha Carey Thomas was born into an upper-class Baltimore family in 1857. Her father was a physician, and her mother devoted her time to raising the couple's eight children. The Thomas family belonged to the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and so they didn't participate in activities involving music, art, or drama.
1

Carey—the name that Martha Carey was known by—was described, from an early age, as being plain in appearance, with a large nose and a “squarish body.” By her teens, she exhibited such strong intellectual abilities that her parents took the unusual step of sending her to a boarding school that emphasized academics rather than social skills. While at Howland Institute, Carey spent two years studying the classics.
2

At seventeen, Carey enrolled at Cornell, one of the few American universities that admitted female students. She didn't have any trouble competing with the men, thanks to her strong intellect and extremely disciplined nature. “The more I study, the more I care about it,” she wrote her aunt.
3

After earning her bachelor's degree, however, Thomas faced a brick wall vis-à-vis her education, as no college or university in the United States accepted women as graduate students.
4

Mamie Gwinn was born in 1861 into a Baltimore family that was both wealthier and more prominent than the Thomases. Her father was Maryland's attorney general, and her grandfather had served in the U.S. Senate. Her mother oversaw Mamie's upbringing and was active in the Episcopal Church.
5

During her early years, Mamie was groomed in the refinements of being a lady of the highest social class. Her mother taught her how to dress and comport herself, while private tutors came to the family home to develop her appreciation for music, art, and literature.
6

Mamie took a particular liking to modern British poets, with her favorite being Algernon Swinburne. Her parents indulged their teenage daughter by buying her all of Swinburne's works, including his controversial
Poems and Ballads
, which praised the lesbian poet Sappho.
7

Mamie possessed the pale skin and delicate frame that defined her, by the standards of the era, as the epitome of feminine beauty. Her relatives and friends described the girl, by her teenage years, as “brilliant” but also as “moody,” “restless,” and “not easily satisfied.”
8

From the moment a mutual friend introduced Martha Carey Thomas to Mamie Gwinn, the older girl was smitten. “Mamie is the cleverest girl—damnably clever—I ever had anything to do with,” Thomas wrote in her diary in 1878, when she was twenty-one and Gwinn was seventeen. “She is fantastic in so many ways.”
9

Gwinn wasn't initially attracted to Thomas, finding her unladylike because she spoke in a “sledge-hammer voice,” was “ill dressed,” and had a habit of “being highly animated when she talked.” But after learning that Thomas had an independent nature and a college degree, Gwinn was drawn to the slightly older woman. She offered the potential, as Gwinn wrote in her diary, “for me to escape alike a husband's and my parents' rule.”
10

A few months after the women met, Thomas devised a plan that had two benefits. First, the arrangement would further her efforts to earn a graduate education. Second, it would allow her to live with the woman she'd fallen in love with. In her diary, Thomas wrote, “Mamie is lovely. I am wrapped up in her,” and in a letter to Gwinn, she vowed, “I cannot do without you.”
11

The first element of Thomas's plan emerged because a handful of European universities gave some rights to women graduate students. Among these schools was the highly regarded University of Leipzig, where women could sit in on lectures, although they weren't allowed to earn degrees.
12

The second part of the plan began with Thomas knowing her parents wouldn't let her study in Germany on her own, but speculating that they'd agree to let her live abroad if she were accompanied by another young woman of high social standing.
13