180 “pleasant pungent sense”: Ludlow, Heart of the Continent, 401.
181 “Nazarene”: Ibid., 404.
181 “mastiff head”: Golden Era, March 20, 1864.
181 “kindest hearted and most obliging murderer”: Ibid.
181 “out-Bendemered Bendemere”: Ludlow, Heart of the Continent, 412.
182 “a dear absent friend”: Atlantic, June 1864.
183 “that magnificent nonchalance”: Golden Era, November 22, 1863.
183 group of local artists: Joanna Levin identifies Bret Harte as San Francisco’s vanguard Bohemian, indicating that he started using the term in 1860. See Joanna Levin, Bohemia in America, 1858–1920 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 75. Harte and his artists’ circle came after Pfaff’s and Clapp’s Saturday Press, which popularized the term Bohemian. Meanwhile, visits by representatives of East Coast Bohemia such as Ludlow “encouraged writers like Bret Harte.” See Franklin Walker, San Francisco’s Literary Frontier (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939), 166, 175.
183 “inveterate pipe-smoker”: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances (Boston: Lothrop, 1903), 243.
183 “James A. Rogers”: Walker, San Francisco’s Literary Frontier, 126.
185 “I am what I was”: Michael Foster and Barbara Foster, A Dangerous Woman: The Life, Loves, and Scandals of Adah Isaacs Menken (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2011), 150.
185 “luscious richness of imagery”: Golden Era, November 22, 1863.
185 “the Hasheesh Infant”: Westways, August 1935.
185 “We purchased their pens”: Golden Era, January 17, 1864.
186 “sham soldiership”: Mark Twain, “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” Century, December 1885.
186 “I knew more about retreating”: Ibid.
186 One issue of the Golden Era: Twain’s “How to Cure a Cold” and Ludlow’s “On Marrying Men” both appeared in the Golden Era of September 20, 1863.
186 “He makes me laugh”: Golden Era, November 22, 1863.
186 “And if Fitz Hugh Ludlow”: Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912), 1:244.
187 he arrived at a hong: Dulchinos dates Ludlow’s visit to a hong in San Francisco to the last week of his western journey. See Dulchinos, Pioneer of Inner Space, 192. Ludlow was always furtive about describing his opium use, but he did publish a vague anecdote that may or may not relate to that visit. See Ludlow, The Opium Habit, with Suggestions as to the Remedy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868), 263.
187 A typical one: Description of a typical nineteenth-century hong in San Francisco from multiple sources, including Malcolm Barker, More San Francisco Memoirs: 1852–1899, the Ripening Years (San Francisco: Londonborn, 1996).
CHAPTER 13: THE SOLDIERS’ MISSIONARY
189 “I cannot give up”: WW to Thomas Jefferson Whitman, March 6, 1863, CW, The Correspondence, 1:77.
190 Whitman settled into Washington: Details of the Civil War–era capital from multiple sources, including Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington (New York: New York Review of Books, 1941).
190 “a sort of German”: WW to Nathaniel Bloom, September 5, 1863, CW, The Correspondence, 1:142.
190 Washington had around thirty-five hospitals: Roy Morris Jr., The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 88.
191 “That whole damned war”: WWC, 3:293.
191 “the Civil War was fought”: George Worthington Adams, “Confederate Medicine,” Journal of Southern History (May 1940).
192 “Walt Whitman, Soldiers’ Missionary”: Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980), 275.
192 “Agonies are one”: Leaves of Grass (1855), 39, reproduction of an original printing, accessed online at the Walt Whitman Archive.
193 “I supply the patients”: WW to James Redpath, August 6, 1863, CW, The Correspondence, 1:122.
193 “I fancy the reason”: WW to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, April 15, 1863, ibid., 89.
193 “David S. Giles, co. F”: CW, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, 2:521.
193 “Hiram Scholis—bed 3”: Ibid., 605.
194 “Henry D. Boardman co. B”: Ibid., 521.
194 “Many of the men”: WW to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, June 3, 1864, CW, The Correspondence, 1:230.
194 “A wounded soldier don’t”: Cincinnati Commercial, August 26, 1871.
195 “Poor young man”: WW to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, May 13, 1863, CW, The Correspondence, 1:100.
195 “I thought it would”: WW to Mr. and Mrs. S. B. Haskell, August 10, 1863, ibid., 127.
196 “Open the envelope quickly”: Leaves of Grass (final edition), 302.
197 “To-night took a long”: CW, Prose Works, 1892, 1:40–41.
197 “Redeemer President”: Justin Kaplan, ed., Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982), 1297.
197 “I see the President”: WW to James Kirkwood, April 27, 1864, CW, The Correspondence, 1:215.
197 “He has a face”: WW to Nathaniel Bloom and Fred Gray, March 19, 1863, ibid., 82.
197 Around 1857, William Herndon: William Barton, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1928), 92. Barton is an authoritative source, since he owned Herndon’s book collection. Because Lincoln’s law partner usually made his purchases at Blanchard’s bookstore in Chicago, the copy that he bought was most likely the 1856 edition, which, while a commercial failure, achieved broader distribution across the United States than the 1855 edition.
198 It’s quite possible that Lincoln: Henry Rankin, Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916), 126, provides a vivid account of Lincoln reading Leaves of Grass out loud to his colleagues in the Springfield law office. But Rankin’s account is suspect because there’s no evidence that he worked at the firm at the time in question. See Barton, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman, 93. All that can be said with certainty is that Lincoln’s law partner owned Leaves of Grass. Given Lincoln’s passion for the arts, it’s “quite possible” that he read the work around 1857 in Springfield or even at a later date. The fact that Lincoln never mentioned reading Whitman’s book isn’t of great significance because Leaves of Grass is the kind of controversial fare with which a political candidate, and subsequently a president, would not necessarily want to be associated.
198 “I had a good view”: WW to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, June 30, 1863, CW, The Correspondence, 1:113.
198 “I love the President personally”: CW, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, 2:539.
199 “If you should come safe”: WW to Tom Sawyer, April 21, 1863, CW, The Correspondence, 1:93.
199 “Not a day passes”: WW to Sawyer, April 26, 1863, ibid., 94.
199 “It would have been”: Ibid.
199 “I suppose my letters”: WW to Sawyer, May 27, 1863, ibid., 107.
199 “I do not know”: WW to Sawyer, November 20, 1863, ibid., 186.
199 “I hardly know what”: Sawyer to WW, ibid., 90–91n86.
200 “A mighty pain”: Atlantic, June 1907.
200 “stimulating mental society”: Ibid.
200 “I happened in there”: WWC, 1:416.
201 “our meetings together”: WW to Hugo Fritsch sometime before August 7, 1863, CW, The Correspondence, 1:124.
201 “My darling, dearest boys”: WW to Nathaniel Bloom and Fred Gray, March 19, 1863, ibid., 84.
201 “I was always between”: WWC, 3:581.
202 “I feel lately”: WW to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, March 29, 1864, CW, The Correspondence, 1:205.
202 “O mother,” he wrote: WW to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, March 22, 1864, ibid., 204.
202 “Mother, I will try”: WW to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, March 29,
1864, ibid., 205.
CHAPTER 14: TWAIN THEY SHALL MEET
203 “My business is still immense”: Menken to Ed James, December 1862 (no day), HTC.
203 painted Confederate gray: Account of Menken decorating her dressing room from multiple sources, including Allen Lesser, Enchanting Rebel (Philadelphia: Ruttle, Shaw & Wetherill), 1947.
204 “It is really true”: Menken to Ed James, December 1862 (no day), HTC.
204 sold an incredible forty thousand: J. C. Derby, Fifty Years Among Authors, Books, and Publishers (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1884), 242.
204 five days after the battle of Antietam: That Lincoln read to his assembled cabinet from Artemus Ward, His Book, on September 22, 1862, confirmed by multiple sources, including Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 481.
205 “With the fearful strain”: Don Seitz, Artemus Ward: A Biography and Bibliography (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1919), 114.
205 “Upon somewhat the same”: New York Herald, February 3, 1863.
205 Tom Maguire, a powerful: Description from multiple sources, including Lois Foster Rodecape, “Tom Maguire, Napoleon of the Stage,” California Historical Society Quarterly (March 1942).
207 “They seem crazy”: Menken to Ed James, December 1862 (no day), HTC.
207 “What will you take”: Albert Parry, Garrets and Pretenders: A History of Bohemianism in America (New York: Covici, Friede, 1933), 45.
207 “dumb and cold”: Michael Foster and Barbara Foster, A Dangerous Woman: The Life, Loves, and Scandals of Adah Isaacs Menken (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2011), 135.
208 August 24, 1863: Lois Foster, Annals of the San Francisco Stage, 1850–1880 (San Francisco: Federal Theatre Projects, 1936), 1:322.
208 a single break, for Yom Kippur: Lesser, Enchanting Rebel, 112.
209 seventeen men to every woman: Renée Sentilles, Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 191.
209 “Feminine laundry, hanging”: George Lyman, The Saga of the Comstock Lode (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934), 198.
209 Virginia City was only: Description of city from multiple sources, including Roy Morris Jr., Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010).
209 “Steam-engines are puffing”: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1865.
210 “feverish”: Ralph Britsch, Bierstadt and Ludlow: Painter and Writer in the West (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1980), 42.
211 Opening night for Mazeppa: It was March 7, 1864, according to Lyman, Saga of the Comstock Lode, 270.
211 “She pitches headforemost”: Virginia City’s Daily Territorial Enterprise, September 13, 1863, reprinted in Mark Twain of the “Enterprise,” edited by Henry Nash Smith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 78.
212 “Ada Clare, the beautiful”: Golden Era, February 7, 1864.
212 “The Man’s Sphere”: Golden Era, April 3, 1864.
213 “She smoked and rode”: Walter Leman, Memories of an Old Actor (San Francisco: A. Roman, 1886), 301.
213 a small social gathering: Account of Menken’s party with Twain and DeQuille from multiple sources, including Paul Fatout, Mark Twain in Virginia City (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964).
214 “Menken was no nightingale”: San Francisco Examiner, March 19, 1893.
215 “He struck the Comstock”: San Francisco Chronicle, January 10, 1892.
215 a solitary laugh: Account of Twain as the lone laugher from J. B. Graham, Handset Reminiscences (Salt Lake City: Century Printing, 1915), 142–143.
215 “Has it been watered today?”: Ibid., 143.
216 “The man who is capable”: Morris, Lighting Out for the Territory, 126.
216 “inimitable way of pausing”: Paul Fatout, ed., Mark Twain Speaking (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006), 45.
217 “Ah,—speaking of genius”: Californian Illustrated Magazine, August 1893.
218 “sage-brush obscurity”: Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912), 1:244.
218 “I give you Upper Canada”: San Francisco Chronicle, January 10, 1892.
218 “I can’t walk”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 15: “O HEART! HEART! HEART!”
219 On June 22, 1864: CW, The Correspondence, 1:234.
219 “The People are wild”: Thurlow Weed to William Seward, August 22, 1864, Abraham Lincoln Papers, LOC, accessed online.
220 “It is my first”: WW to John Trowbridge, February 6, 1865, CW, The Correspondence, 1:254.
220 “tame & indeed unreal”: WW to William O’Connor, September 11, 1864, ibid., 242.
221 “I intend to move”: WW to O’Connor, July 5, 1864, ibid., 235.
221 “unprecedentedly sad”: WW to O’Connor, January 6, 1865, ibid., 247.
221 “We have seldom seen”: Gene Smith, American Gothic: The Story of America’s Legendary Theatrical Family—Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 94.
222 Albany, Boston, Chicago: List of cities where John Wilkes Booth played and analysis of why he preferred to perform in the North taken from multiple sources, including Gordon Samples, Lust for Fame: The Stage Career of John Wilkes Booth (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1982).
222 “wished the President”: James Cross Giblin, Good Brother, Bad Brother: The Story of Edwin Booth & John Wilkes Booth (New York: Clarion Books, 2005), 81.
222 115 Commonwealth Avenue: John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper, “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me”: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 87.
222 “weird and startling elocutionary”: Michael Kauffman, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (New York: Random House, 2004), 118.
222 “In what does he fail?”: Stanley Kimmel, The Mad Booths of Maryland (New York: Dover, 1969), 168.
223 six more performances: Lincoln attending seven performances of Edwin Booth in Richelieu is from Kauffman, American Brutus, 127.
223 “made memorable by”: Samples, Lust for Fame, 162.
223 At the conclusion of act 1: Details of performance from multiple sources, including Asia Booth Clarke, John Wilkes Booth: A Sister’s Memoir (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996).
224 On the second morning: The Booth brothers’ breakfast occurred on November 27, 1864, according to Nora Titone, My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry That Led to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Free Press, 2010), 338.
224 fire that had broken out: Details of the feeble Confederate plot to burn New York City on November 25, 1864, from multiple sources, including American Heritage, October 1971.
224 The day’s news sparked: Details of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth’s argument from multiple sources, including Titone, My Thoughts Be Bloody.
225 “rank secessionist” . . . “treasonable language”: Ibid., 340.
225 “I take things very easy”: WW to Jeff Whitman, January 30, 1865, CW, The Correspondence, 1:250.
225 “Jeff, you need not”: Ibid.
225 “The western star, Venus”: CW, Prose Works, 1892, 1:94.
225 His name was Peter Doyle: First meeting of WW and Peter Doyle in the early months of 1865 from the most authoritative source, Martin Murray, “Peter the Great: A Biography of Peter Doyle,” accessed online at the Walt Whitman Archive. While this event is sometimes dated to the autumn of 1865 or even the spring of 1866, Murray draws on such clues as the weather and Doyle’s work schedule to conclude that their meeting “likely” happened sometime in the period January to March 1865.
226 “Walt had his blanket”: Richard Maurice Bucke, ed., Calamus: A Series of Letters Written During the Years 1868–1880
by Walt Whitman to a Young Friend (Peter Doyle) (Boston: Laurens Maynard, 1897), 23.
226 “Love, love, love!”: Charley Shively, ed., Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman’s Working Class Camerados (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987), 101.
226 Doyle had been born in Ireland: Details of Doyle’s early life mostly from Murray, “Peter the Great.”
227 “hearty full-blooded everyday”: WWC, 3:543.
227 “We went plodding along”: Bucke, Calamus, 26.
227 “It was the most taciturn”: Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, DC (Washington, DC: Columbia Historical Society, 1918), 21:49.
227 “They can have the laugh”: Bucke, Calamus, 31.
228 “look’d very much worn”: CW, Prose Works, 1892, 1:92.
228 “country people, some very funny”: Ibid.
228 “I saw Mr. Lincoln”: Ibid.
228 Whitman also attended the inaugural: New York Times, March 6, 1865.
228 “With malice toward none”: Photo of original handwritten Second Inaugural Address of March 4, 1865, endorsed by Lincoln, accessed online at OurDocuments.gov.
228 “His preservation and return”: Brooklyn Daily Union, March 16, 1865, quoted in Charles Glicksberg, Walt Whitman and the Civil War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933), 89.
229 “I am in tip top”: CW, The Correspondence, 1:243.
229 total of eighteen books: Count of poetry books during the Civil War years from F. DeWolfe Miller, Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1959), editor’s introduction, xxiii.
230 a “propitious” day: CW, Prose Works, 1892, 2:503.
230 “woe and failure and disorder”: Ibid.
230 “no pleasure vehicles”: CW, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, 2:764.
230 “strange mixture of horror”: Ibid., 762.
230 “Lincoln’s death—black”: Ibid.
230 Even the morning editions: See, for example, the Nashville Union, April 15, 1865, morning edition, which includes the name of the man (John Wilkes Booth) who was believed, even at that early juncture, to have shot Lincoln.
231 specific details begin to emerge: Details of assassination from a number of reliable accounts, including Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip Kunhardt Jr., Twenty Days: A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (New York: HarperCollins, 1965).
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