The Good Gray Poet
The National Archives recently announced the discovery of nearly 3,000 documents written by Walt Whitman while an employee of the federal government. A resident of Washington, D.C. from 1863 to 1873, Whitman had already established himself as a poet, but to support himself and to help fund his work in aid of soldiers, he took a series of jobs, mainly as a clerk, in the offices of the Army Paymaster, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the U.S. Attorney General. The newly identified papers provide a new window into Whitman’s life during and immediately following the Civil War.
The Chapin Library also does its part in support of Whitman studies, by administering a major collection of books by and about Walt Whitman, together with memorabilia and artifacts, established in 1964 through the generosity of Mrs. Julian K. Sprague in memory of her late husband, a notable book collector and resident of Williamstown. Among much else, this includes every edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass published during the poet’s lifetime. More than five hundred items were added by Mrs. Sprague to Whitman materials already in the Library (some provided by the mother of Julian K. Sprague, Mrs. Frank J. Sprague, herself a major collector of Whitmaniana), and many further volumes have been acquired in later years.
The value of the Chapin Library’s collection to students of Whitman’s work has been proved time and again, most recently through presentations to classes taught by Professors Cleghorn and Kent of the Williams English Department. Even though only a small part of the Chapin Whitman holdings can be kept in the Library’s temporary Southworth Schoolhouse rooms, enough is on hand to show how Whitman edited and substantially enlarged Leaves of Grass from the first edition of 1855 (the Chapin has several variants) through the years to the so-called “deathbed edition” of 1892, and how he promoted his work through anonymous, self-written “reviews”. – WGH
Shown is the portrait engraving of Walt Whitman, by Samuel Hollyer after a daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison, first printed in Leaves of Grass in 1855.