Whitmanic Fireman
Sep 14th, 2009 by garyrichards
Ah, so much for a sustained, methodical relating of my family’s nineteenth century to Whitman’s!
(Perhaps a quick Burns quotation … just to show that we’re not wholly Amero-centric: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley, / An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, / For promised joy.”)
But, as I was reading “I Sing the Body Electric,” I was struck anew by the description of firemen and their performative appearance: “The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps, / The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert, / The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d neck and the counting” (Whitman: Poetry and Prose 252). Within a cache of photographs given to me this January at my paternal grandfather’s funeral was this one of Christopher Barrington “Banks” Sutherland (1858-1928), the first cousin of my paternal grandmother’s great-grandmother Malissa (Sutherland) Sharp:
Although the image is from the 1880s, it suggests not only the sort of “costumes” nineteenth-century firemen would have worn but reminds of the democratic nature of firemen in the era. Sutherland was a furniture dealer and mortician in Corsicana, Texas from the 1870s until the 1910s (Sutherland Funeral Home still stands, although it’s now–eww!–a bed and breakfast) but was also clearly part of the volunteer fire department and thought enough of that service to be photographed in the accoutrements.
What a great photograph! Those lines also stood out to me as I was reading the poem, so it is great to see an actual picture related to the description Whitman is conveying.
It is a cool photo, though I have to admit, “the play of masculine muscle” wasn’t a phrase that positively jumped into my mind when I saw it. 😉
Are you seeing a trend in my gene pool? We perhaps embody the barbaric paunch rather than sound the barbaric yawp. I’ll try to post a hottie next time … ’cause, you know, it’s really cool to sexually objectify dead people who are related to you.
I wonder whether the “Rescue” bib served a helpful function, or if it was simply a component of the fireman’s standard “formal-wear,” designed to give the impression of a drab, baggy infant.
Surely the costume was to differentiate and identify the “professionals” on the scene of crisis, as with our contemporary costumes for police, doctors, and so forth, but there is certainly a doleful look about the infantilized Sutherland here, all of which undercuts the Whitmanic heroism and idealization.