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Walt Whitman Moves to Camden, New Jersey In an era when
steam was the dominant source of power, many specialty firms manufactured boiler
and engine parts, and Camden was home to one of them.
The Camden Tool and Tube Works, founded in the 1850s as Griffith’s
Pipe-Finishing Mill, produced the tubes contained within boilers.
The Reading Iron Works, which considered the products manufactured by
Griffith to be of a superior grade, purchased the works in 1864, installed all
new machinery and tools, and reopened as Camden Tool and Tube, producing not
only boiler tubes, but also tools and piping for the manufactured gas industry.
Fifty skilled workers received regular employment at these works,
including George Whitman, Walt's brother and former Civil War Lt. Colonel from
Brooklyn, New York, who came to work in Camden during 1868 as a pipe inspector.
By 1871, George Whitman moved into a house at 322 Stevens Street.
In April of the following year, George married Louisa Orr Haslam and
brought her to Camden. Four months
later, George took in his mother and his mentally retarded brother, Edward, as
members of his household.
A year later, in May 1873, Walt Whitman arrived in Camden to visit his
elderly widow mother and his siblings. Within a month of coming to George’s
house, their mother passed away, sending the already stroke-paralyzed and ailing
Walt into a deep depression. After
coming to grips with his grief, Walt resolved to quit his clerk’s job in
Washington and dedicate his life to writing.
Within the same year, George Whitman contracted to have an
Italianate-style brick dwelling of his own design erected at the northeast
corner of West and Stevens Street. Local
carpenter David Lummis constructed the new house for $3,700.
Since Walt decided to remain with George and his family, a second-floor
bedroom with a bay window facing West Street, with a grand view, was designated
as Walt’s. But the poet found it
too fancy for his tastes and, instead, sought the vistas and solitude of a
plainer, third-floor bedroom that fronted on Stevens Street and looked out on
the southern part of the growing city. It
was at his brother’s house that Walt produced three editions of Leaves
of Grass (1876, 1881-82 and 1882), along with Memoranda
During the War (1875), Two Rivulets
(1878), and Specimen Days and Collect
(1882-83). Many important cultural
figures came to visit Walt Whitman at this location—friends and colleagues
such as writers Oscar Wilde and Mary Mapes Dodge, the visual artists Sidney
Morse and Thomas Eakins, and the naturalist John Burroughs.
(Sadly, the George Whitman house was lost to fire in the late 1990s.)
In 1884, George announced he had accepted the offer of a new position
with the McNeal Pipe Foundry in Burlington and would be moving to that city, up
the Delaware River from Camden. Walt
was invited, even implored, to accompany George and his family to their new
house on Columbus Road in Burlington, but Walt declined, preferring to remain
behind in Camden, which he had grown to love much as he had the Brooklyn of his
youth: Camden
was originally an accident, but I shall never be sorry I was left over in
Camden. It
has brought me blessed returns. His 1882
edition of Leaves of Grass had been
quite successful, garnering a goodly amount of royalties.
He determined that his earnings, and a loan from a friend, should be used
to purchase a place to live. He
bought a two-story frame Greek Revival style dwelling at 328 Mickle Street for
$1,750 in April 1884 from the Lay family and entered into an agreement with
them. Since Walt was sick and had
little furniture to call his own, beyond the bed his father had made him, he
asked if the Lays would remain in the house, provide him with care and meals,
and allow him use of their furniture. He
offered them a reduced rent in exchange for these terms.
However, Walt was not an easy person to live with and after the end of
the first month, the Lays moved out, leaving Walt alone with his bed and two
packing boxes he used as a table and chair.
Unable to care for himself, Walt prevailed upon Mary O. Davis to move in
to his house with her furniture, cook for him, and tend to his physical needs as
a private nurse. Davis, a widow and
neighbor, agreed, coming to live in what Walt commonly referred to as “my
coop.”
Walt’s neighbor at 330 Mickle Street was architect Stephen Decatur
Button and his artist wife, Maria. Robert
P. Gordon (a clerk), Abner Huston (a locomotive engineer for the Pennsylvania
Railroad), and John Robertson (a paperhanger) all resided on the other side of
Whitman at 326 Mickle. The 300 block is representative of all the blocks
comprising Mickle Street, and in 1888 featured laborers, roofers, carpenters,
railroad workers, a dentist and a physician, a baker, painters, clerks, sawyers,
dressmakers, designers, a minister, machinists, a iron moulder, a blacksmith, a
publisher, salespeople, and milk dealers. At
the northwest corner of 3rd and Mickle Streets stood the Third Street
Methodist Episcopal Church, and Whitman complained bitterly about the cacophony
produced by the church’s choir. Retail
establishments on the 300 block in Whitman’s time included a fish store, a
grocery store, and a pharmacy.
Glimpses of Whitman’s life on Mickle Street can be gleaned from Horace
Traubel’s multi-volume book, With Walt
Whitman in Camden. Traubel,
Whitman’s Boswell, made daily visits to Walt and took copious notes of every
conversation, faithfully recording the poet’s utterances between 1888 and his
death in 1892. From time to time,
Whitman made comments about local affairs.
In one frustrated outburst, he indicated he found the summer heat
stifling and also expressed anger with his female neighbors who insisted on
sweeping their steps and walks:
To
one who knows as I do what it all means, it is always painful to come back into
the cities—the streets—the stinking reeking streets—Mickle
Street—sluttish gutters—women with hair a-flying—dust brooms clouding the
streets—confinement—the air shut off. Oh! But Whitman
found much pleasure on Mickle Street, too, including having easy access to the
ferries and being able to watch the trains from his bedroom window.
In June 1888, Whitman suffered another series of paralytic strokes and
became a complete shut-in. He did
not venture out of his house until May 1889, when, sitting in a wheelchair, male
nurse Warren Fritzinger pushed Whitman around Mickle Street and down to the
river. That same month and year,
his friends held a seventieth birthday party for Walt.
A book, Camden’s Compliment to
Walt Whitman, was published for the occasion.
Two years later, Whitman’s friends held his last birthday party at the
house. The following year, on March
26, 1892, Whitman died and was buried at Camden’s Harleigh Cemetery in a
mausoleum of his own design. |