Sunday Snippet: Letters to Whitman by Margo Laurie #Short Story #HistoricalFiction #SundaySnippet #TheCoffeePotBookClub @margo_writing @cathiedunn

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Letters to Whitman

A Short Story

by Margo Laurie

During the Civil War, the poet Walt Whitman volunteered in army hospitals in Washington tending to sick and wounded soldiers.

This short story imagines one of these patients, Private Nathaniel Gwynnett of the 97th New York Volunteer Infantry, writing to Whitman after returning to his regiment. 

Dear Mr. Whitman,

I write these few lines more in hope than expectation that you might remember me. I saw you tending to so many poor souls at the Armory Square Hospital, treating each as your own son. It can’t be easy to tell us apart, in truth, except by our wounds, and I was cursed with the less noble afflictions of diarrhea and bronchitis. If this soldier life has taught me anything it’s that I’m not memorable. I blame it on the uniform – maybe it’s my face, I don’t know.

I was in Bed 5 on Ward C from February to early March, and you brought me ginger and tobacco. My name is Private Nathaniel Gwynnett, of the 97th Conkling Rifles, Company A, though you were kind enough to call me Nat, and to let me call you Walt. You sat on the edge of my bed and told me stories about Brooklyn, and I told you about my folks at Alder Creek. I don’t know if such familiarities can be extended to correspondence but hope you forgive me the attempt.

There aren’t many true friends in life, and those I have keep dying (though it’s no fault of their humble selves) in cornfields and on church floors, and laid out like kippers in the sun, no room for them, and in that sweet stinking hospital at Armory Square. What with you being older, and not a fighting man, I figure you’re more reliable as a friend. I don’t mean that to give offense – I know the boys mocked your gray beard more than once – but odds are you’ll get through. So how about it, Mr. Whitman? Walt, if I may.

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Margo Laurie

Margo Laurie studied history at university and is a member of the RNA's New Writers' Scheme. She is the author of the Christmas ghost story New York Miracle and the 1920s historical fiction novella The Anarchist’s Wife about the Sacco-Vanzetti case. 

She lives in the North West.

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