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| Whitman in 1887 (public domain photo - Wikipedia) |
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Walt Whitman holds a special place in the story of American literature. He is widely considered one of the most influential poets this country has ever produced. During his lifetime, Whitman kept a large number of notebooks, which he used to help with his various writings and projects. Many years after his death, as the United States was desperately fighting off the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army during WW2, ten of these priceless notebooks mysteriously disappeared. What happened to the Whitman Notebooks and where are they now?
Walter Whitman was born on May 31st, 1819 in Huntington, Long Island to Walter and Louisa Van Velsor. The second of nine children, "Walt" as he was known to his family (in order to distinguish him from his father) had rather inauspicious beginnings. Before he was five years old, the entire family were forced to move to Brooklyn, New York, due to financial difficulties, which, according to Whitman, contributed to a troubled childhood. By the age of eleven, Whitman had left school, in order to find employment with which to help his financially struggling family. Over the next twenty years, Whitman tried all number of different jobs and businesses, mostly with local newspapers and printing houses, or as a teacher. As he grew older, Whitman began to spend time at libraries and at the theater. He even joined a debating society. At some point during this period he began submitting some of his own poetry to the New-York Mirror. As time went on, he would continue to submit his poems to various publications.
By the year 1850, Whitman began writing one of the works that would help to make him famous. Leaves of Grass, a collection of his own poetry, was a project Whitman would continue to edit and rewrite for the remainder of his professional career. Leaves of Grass is often viewed as a declaration of Whitman's' philosophy on life, in which he both praises nature and points out the individual's role within it. The book might have languished in obscurity if it hadn't of been for a glowing review by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who praised its' virtues and gave copies of it to his close friends. Leaves of Grass was, however, a source of controversy, as many viewed the themes within it as overtly sexual and improper, something that was looked upon with great suspicion and derision in many places.
Walt Whitman would continue his work as a poet and a writer for the rest of his life, until his death on March 26, 1892 in Camden, New Jersey.
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| The Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress (public domain photo) |
A Donation to The Library of Congress
On November 15, 1918, twenty four of Walt Whitman's personal notebooks were received by the Library of Congress, part of a trove of documents sent by Philadelphia attorney Thomas B. Harned, one of three literary executors for the Whitman estate. This collection of notebooks was an exciting opportunity for Whitman scholars for a number of reasons, one of which was that it contained early versions of many of Whitman's published works, including Leaves of Grass.
Alice L. Birney, an American Literature specialist with the Library of Congress, clarified, to some degree, the importance of the Walt Whitman notebooks. "These notebooks are the primary record of the poet's very early career, while he was a journalist (during the 1840s), and during his years in Washington while he was a volunteer nurse in the Civil War".
A Decision Made For Safekeeping
December 7th 1941 was one of the darkest days in United States history. The surprise air attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor shocked the nation and forced the United States to abandon it's pacifist stance, declaring war on Japan the very next day.
The attack, and the declaration of war, had far-reaching implications, forcing changes all over the country. At the Library of Congress, there was now a heightened need to secure documents in their possession. Washington D.C. was no longer a safe place in the eyes of many. Security concerns were so high in fact, that anti-aircraft guns were placed on many of the rooftops of the Library and round-the-clock air raid watches were conducted by the staff.
In the early 1940's, the Library of Congress shipped 10 of the notebooks to four different archives outside of Washington D.C., for safekeeping - Denison University in Granville, OH, the Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University in Lexington and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
It was at some point during this process that the notebooks mysteriously disappeared, believed to have been stolen.
A Decade of Fruitless Searches
It was believed by some that the Whitman notebooks were quite possibly somewhere within the Library. Library staff spent the next ten years searching throughout their vast collections for the missing notebooks, to no avail. "We never knew for sure that they got out of the Library", stated Ms. Birney.
A Reappearing Act
In 1995 a lawyer from New York approached Sotheby's auction house with a request to appraise a set of four rare books, which he said he had discovered while settling the estate of his recently deceased father. According to the man, who apparently knew nothing of the theft, the notebooks had been given to his father as a gift and that his father had kept them for thirty years. Selby Kiffer, a vice president at Sotheby's at the time the notebooks were brought in, was able to successfully trace ownership of the notebooks to the Library of Congress and they were then returned.
Six of the ten Walt Whitman notebooks remain unaccounted for.
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