Note 98 — Chapter I · —INTRODUCTION. (continued 2)

Whitman acknowledged, however (as in the letter to Symonds already referred to), that he had had six children; they appear to have been born in the earlier part of his life when he lived in the South. (See a chapter on Walt Whitman's children in Edward Carpenter's interesting book, Days with Walt Whitman, 1906.) Yet his brother George Whitman said: "I never knew Walt to fall in love with young girls, or even to show them marked attention." And Doyle, who knew him intimately during ten years of late life, said: "Women in that sense never came into his head." The early heterosexual relationship seems to have been an exception in his life. With regard to the number of children I am informed that, in the opinion of a lady who knew Whitman in the South, there can be no reasonable doubt as to the existence of one child, but that when enumerating six he possibly included grandchildren.