Peter Doyle

The facts of Peter Doyle’s biography remain somewhat unclear. An Irish immigrant and son of a blacksmith, he enlisted with the Confederate Army at the out break of the Civil War. After the war, Doyle lived in Washington D.C., where he became a conductor on the city street cars. It was on such a street car that Doyle met Whitman. The encounter, as it is told by Doyle, occurred like the beginning of some racy Hollywood film: “We felt to each other at once...I thought I would go in and talk with him. Something in me made me do it and something in him drew me that way. He used to say there was something in me that had the same effect on him...We were familiar at once—I put my hand on his knee—we understood.” From then on, the two were deeply in love, and despite the fact that, in the last years of Whitman’s life, they fell out of touch, the affection lasted until Whitman's death.