brotherly rivalries throughout history: george howe colt's brothers

7/30/2019 Brotherly rivalries throughout history: George Howe Colt's BROTHERS

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Cnn

Chapr on:th Cl By 1

Chapr tw:Gd Brhr, Bad Brhr: edwin and Jhn Wilk Bh 24

Chapr thr:th Fallu shlr 83

Chapr Fur:

Brhr Aain Brhr: Jhn and Will Kllg 107

Chapr Fiv:Baball 167

Chapr six:Brhr Kpr: Vincn and th van Gh 191

Chapr svn:Undr h Infunc 257


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Chapr eih:Brhr, Inc.: Chic, Harp, Gruch, Gumm,

and Zpp Marx 275

Chapr Nin:Arramm 327

Chapr tn:th L Brhr: Jhn and Hnry David thrau 352

Chapr elvn:th Cl Mn 394

Acknwldmn 421slcd Bibliraphy 425

Indx 447


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Chap six

Bh Kp:

Vincn and th van Ggh

one morning in early March o 1886, Teo van Gogh, the twenty-

eight-year-old manager o the Montmartre branch o Boussod, Valadon& Co., a leading European art dealership, received a note written in black

crayon:

My dear Teo,

Dont be angry with me or arriving out o the blue. Ive given it

so much thought and Im sure well gain time this way. Shall be at the

Louvre rom midday onwards, or earlier i you like.Please let me know what time you can get to the Salle Carre. As ar

as expenses are concerned, I repeat that it wont make much dierence.

I still have some money let, o course, and I want to talk to you beore

spending any o it. Well sort everything out, youll see.

So come as soon as you can. I shake your hand.

Ever yours,

Vincent

Teo must have read the hastily scrawled message with apprehension.

Each sentence in the seemingly innocuous note had a subtext. Dont be


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angry with me or arriving out o the blue. Ever since 1880, when Vincent

had given up work as an evangelist to become an artist, Teo had peri-

odically suggested that his brother come to Paris, the epicenter o the art

world, but Vincent had insisted that he wasnt ready. He had spent most

o that time in remote corners o Holland and Belgium, drawing and

painting peasants, coal miners, birds nests, and potatoes. During the last

year, however, Vincent had started pestering Teo or the go-ahead; now

it was Teo who had been putting Vincent o. Although he was devoted

to Vincent, Teo realized that hewasnt quite ready to have his irascible

older brother in the same city, much less in the same cramped apartment.

It was hard enough getting along with him at a distance. Teo wanted

Vincent to wait, at least until June, when he could rent larger quarters.

But Vincent was unwilling to postpone his move any longer. Being in

Paris, he told Teo, would accelerate his education and give him a better

chance o selling his work.Im sure well gain time this way.And so Vin-

cent had taken the night train rom Antwerp, where he had spent the last

three months, to Paris.

As ar as expenses are concerned, I repeat that it wont make much di-erence. For six years, Teo had been his brothers sole support, sending

him more than a quarter o his modest salary each month. Teo could

ill aord the moneyhe also supported his widowed mother and two o

his sistersbut he knew his brother had nowhere else to turn. Over the

years, Vincent had burned his bridges with teachers, riends, and amily

everyone except Teo.I still have some money let, o course, and I want to

talk to you beore spending any o it. Vincent, who elt a corrosive shame atbeing a nancial burden to his brother, was attempting to impress Teo

with his thritiness. What he neglected to tell Teo was that he had the

money only because he had let Antwerp without paying his bills.

Well sort everything out, youll see. Vincent was trying to reassure his

younger brotherand perhaps himsel, as well. Both brothers suered

rom depression, a condition Vincent was convinced ran in the Van Gogh

amily. But Vincent, despite a lie o grinding poverty, had an optimis-tic, idealistic, almost childlike outlook. Practical, cautious Teo was less

hopeul. He was a shy man, eager to please and willing to make accom-

modations, but his relationship with Vincent had been conducted largely


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by mail. Tey hadnt spent more than a weekend or a Christmas vacation

in the same house since childhood, and at one point had gone over a year

without seeing each other. Teo knew rom his parents, with whom Vin-

cent moved in rom time to time to save money, how impossible Vincent

was to live with. He worried that his quiet, well-ordered lielong days

at work, evenings o billiards and conversation at the Holland Club

would be turned upside down. But he knew he had no choice. Teo was

his brothers keeper, but no one could keep Vincent; as a ormer classmate

put it, He did not know what submission was. In the end, it was always

Vincent who acted and Teo who sorted everything out. Yet even Teo

could not have guessed how dicult the upcoming months would be.

Long ater both men were dead, Teos widow would observe, o all that

Teo did or his brother, there was perhaps nothing that entailed a greater

sacrice than his having endured living with him or two years. And yet

i Teo had not met Vincent in the Salle Carre, i he had not put him

upand put up with himin Paris, there would have been no Arles, no

Sunfowers, no Starry Night.

* * *

It seems ironic that we owe the phrase brothers keeper to an incident in

which someone reusedresponsibility or his brother. Yet ever since Cain,

when asked the whereabouts o the murdered Abel, cried out Am I my

brothers keeper? the phrase has been shorthand or the assumption that

we have a raternal duty to look ater our siblings. Tat duty may last alietime, as it would or Teo van Gogh. It may consist o rising to the

occasion during a time o need: John Keats nursing his tubercular younger

brother om until oms death (and, in the process, likely catching the

disease that would kill the poet himsel three years later); Mathieu Drey-

us petitioning ocials, hiring private detectives, and consulting clairvoy-

ants or ve years until his younger brother, Alred, a French army captain

alsely convicted o treason, was pardoned; Michael Marrocco leaving hishome and job in New York City to live at the Walter Reed Army Medi-

cal Center in Washington with his younger brother, Brendan, a twenty-

two-year-old inantryman who had lost his arms and legs to a roadside


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bomb in Iraq in 2009. It may be a short-term intervention: twenty-three-

year-old Ronald Herrick donating a kidney to his dying twin, Richard,

in the rst successul organ transplant, in 1954. It may be a spur-o-the-

moment decision: Hector stepping in or eckless Paris to ght Achilles

(the classical version o the older brother ghting the playground bully

on a younger brothers behal ); the uture naturalist John Muir seeing a

man stick a needle into his inant brothers arm and, never having heard

o vaccinations, biting the doctor on hisarm.

It may consist o a simple act o kindness. When Booker . Washing-

ton, born into slavery on a Virginia plantation, was a child, his clothing

was made rom ax, a coarse material that chaed his skin raw. As he

recalled in his autobiography:

I can scarcely imagine any torture, except, perhaps, the pulling o a

tooth, that is equal to that caused by putting on a new ax shirt or the

rst time. It is almost equal to the eeling that one would experience i

he had a dozen or more chestnut burrs, or a hundred small pin-points,

in contact with his esh. Even to this day I can recall accurately thetortures that I underwent when putting on one o these garments. . . . In

connection with the ax shirt, my brother John, who is several years

older than I am, perormed one o the most generous acts that I ever

heard o one slave relative doing or another. On several occasions when

I was being orced to wear a new ax shirt, he generously agreed to put

it on in my stead and wear it or several days, till it was broken in.

* * *

Teo hadnt always been Vincents keeper. Growing up, it had been Vin-

cent who, in his own quixotic ashion, looked out or his younger brother.

Tat the balance o their relationship would change was, in some measure,

due to a third brother neither o them ever met.

On March 30, 1852, Anna van Gogh, a ministers wie in the villageo Zundert in the southern Netherlands, gave birth to a stillborn child,

a son named Vincent Willem. Te parents, who had married late in lie,

were still mourning the loss when, a year later to the day, a second son


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was born. Tey gave him his older brothers name. Te second Vincent

spent his early years in a house in which his mother was preoccupied

with her grie, his ather with his congregation. Each Sunday when the

boy went to church, he saw his own name on his brothers gravestone.

Years aterward Vincent remembered his childhood as gloomy and cold

and sterile, and went on to observe, Te germinating seed must not be

exposed to a rosty windthat was the case with me in the beginning.

But i Vincent would accuse his parents o pushing him away with

their rigidity, his parents would accuse Vincent o pushing them away

with his erratic behavior. Vincent was an unusually silent, serious child

who preerred to be alone, reading books and collecting beetles he pinned

in a box lined with white paper and neatly labeled with their Dutch and

Latin names. He liked to draw owers and animals, but disliked the atten-

tion his eorts brought him. When he was eight he destroyed a small

clay elephant hed sculpted because his parents made such a uss over it.

When his mother praised his drawing o a cat climbing an apple tree, he

ripped it up. Tere was something strange about him, recalled a maid

who worked or the Van Goghs. He did not seem like a child and wasdierent rom the others. Besides, he had queer manners and was oten

punished. Teodorus and Anna van Gogh had high expectations o their

six children, particularly o their eldest, but the more they tried to steer

their son, the more resistant he became. Worried that the rough-edged

village children were a bad inuence, they sent eleven-year-old Vincent

to boarding school nineteen miles away. On visits home, he took long

solitary walks across the marshy ats and pine orests outside Zundert,collecting allen birds nests, strengthening tree-bound nests he thought

might not survive a storm. It would be the paradox o Vincents lie that

he longed or amily, or riendship, or community, but was temperamen-

tally unable to get along with people.

Born our years ater Vincent, Teo gave Vincent a second chance

at brotherhood. Living in the shadow o the brother who died, Vincent

would orge a lielong bond with the brother who lived. (A ourth brother,born ten years ater Teo, was so much younger that he grew up, in essence,

as an only child.) Tey made an unusual pair. Teo had the blond hair and

delicate eatures o the ather or whom he had been named, while Vin-


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cent had his mothers copper hair, sturdy build, and homely ace. Vincent

was a broad-shouldered ellow o great strength and energy; Teo was

slender, rail, and requently ill. Both boys were unusually sensitive, but

Vincent could be brusque and quick-tempered, while Teo was always

unassuming and agreeable. Teir sister Lies noted that Teo had inherited

his athers warm-heartedness; their sister Anna believed he had been

a riendly soul rom birth. Perhaps in part to compensate or Vincents

obstinacy, Teo rarely gave his parents cause or worry. Pastor van Gogh

liked to compare his two elder sons to Jacob and Esau. Tere was never

any doubt which he considered the rough, uncouth Esau, and which the

practical, presentable Jacob.

Unlike the biblical brothers, Vincent and Teo got along well. Teo,

alone in the amily, enjoyed Vincents company. In later lie, his sisters

recalled young Vincent as prickly, teasing, and aloo; Teo remembered

him as imaginative and clever. Vincent built sandcastles with Teo, took

him shing and ice skating, taught him how to shoot marbles, invented

games or him to play, and talked with him into the night in the attic

room they shared. His sisters learned to give Vincent a wide berth, butrom the beginning, Teo worshiped his older brother. I adored him

more than anything imaginable, Teo recalled. Years later, when Vincent

would quarrel bitterly with his ather and look back on his early years

with resentment, his letters to Teo cited ond memories o their shared

childhood: the walks they took, the starlings that perched on the church,

the look o the clouds in the blue sky, the road lined with beech trees.

oward the end o his lie, when he lay in a hospital in Arles ater cuttingo part o his ear, and Teo laid his head in sorrow on the pillow beside

him, Vincent, recalling the days when they had shared a bed, would whis-

per: Just like Zundert.

When Vincent was sixteen, his godather, Uncle Cent, a well-known art

dealer, secured him a job as an apprentice clerk in Te Hague with hisrm, Goupil. Vincent was a tireless worker who was ascinated by the

lithographs and etchings he spent his days packing and unpacking. His

parents were heartened when they received a letter rom Vincents boss,


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telling them that everyone at the gallery liked dealing with Vincent and

that he had a bright uture in the proession. In August 1872, teen-

year-old Teo spent two days with his brother in Te Hague. One ater-

noon, they strolled out o town along a canal path to the mill at Rijswijk.

Tere, over glasses o milk, they promised that no matter what happened,

they would stand by each other or the rest o their lives. It was a day both

brothers would long remember, and at times o strain in their relationship,

each ound reason to remind the other o it. A year later, Vincent sent

Teo a reproduction o Jan Weissenbruchs painting o the mill, writing,

Tat Rijswijk road holds memories or me which are perhaps the most

beautiul I have.

It seemed inevitable that Teo would ollow his older brother into the

art business. On January 1, 1873, several months ater their walk to the

Rijswijk mill, Teo began work in the Brussels branch o Goupil. I am

so glad that we shall both be in the same proession and in the same

rm, wrote Vincent rom Te Hague. We must be sure to write to eachother regularly. Tey did. None o Teos letters to Vincent rom those

early years have survived (though Teo careully saved his brothers corre-

spondence, Vincent rarely saved Teos), but Vincents letters give a heady

sense o two young men rom the provinces sharing their excitement at

their expanding worldsthe epistolary equivalent o wide-eyed college

reshmen staying up all night to discuss lies eternal questions. Vincent

played the role o mentor, shaping the tastes o his eager acolyte. Hereare the names o a ew painters I particularly like, he wrote. Scheer,

Delaroche, Hbert, Hamon . . . (A ew, to the enthusiastic Vincent,

turned out to mean sixty-one.) Vincents reading lists or Teo were only

slightly less extensive: Balzac, Hugo, Dickens, Michelet, Zola, and Har-

riet Beecher Stowe, among dozens o others. (With the money I gave

you, you must buy Alphonse Karrs Voyage autour de mon jardin. Be sure to

do thatI want you to read it.) Vincent copied out verses by his avoriteRomantic poets; passed along quotations rom thinkers he admired; and

sent art prints, some o them duplicates o ones he owned so that he and

his brother, a hundred miles apart, could gaze at the same pictures on


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their bedroom walls. He gave Teo encouragement and advice. Indeed,

there seemed to be no subject on which the elder brother did not coun-

sel the younger: what to do (ry to take as many walks as you can and

keep your love o nature, or that is the true way to learn to understand

art); what to eel (Admireas much as you can, most people dont admire

enough); how to act (be as patient and kind as you can); how to lit ones

spirits (I strongly advise you to smoke a pipe; it is a good remedy or the

blues); and how to deal with the opposite sex, a subject about which the

advisor himsel was clueless but opinionated (you are quite right about

those priggish girls . . . but watch your heart, boy). Teo soaked up his

brothers counsel; he took long walks, he read Michelet, he smoked a pipe.

Teir relationship began to shit with an incident that, like a ault line,

would expose deeper rits in Vincents equilibrium. In 1873, ater our

years in Te Hague, Vincent had been promoted to a position at Goupils

London gallery. (Teo sent him a wreath o oak leaves hed gathered rom

the heath near the parsonage to remind Vincent o home.) For almost

a year, Vincent nursed a secret inatuation or his landladys daughter.

One aternoon, nding himsel alone with her, the awkward twenty-one-year-old declared his love. Te shocked young woman told him she was

secretly engaged. With characteristic persistence, Vincent hounded the

girl, urging her to break o her engagement, to no avail. He came home

that summer almost catatonic with depression. Hoping a change o scene

might lit his godsons spirits, Uncle Cent arranged or Vincent to work

in Goupils main oce in Paris. (Vincent unsuccessully petitioned his

uncle to transer Teo there to keep him company.) But Vincent was noless morose. At work he argued with his employers and insulted his cus-

tomers. I a client wanted to buy a painting Vincent considered inerior,

he tried to steer him toward work he considered worthy; i a client chose

to disregard his advice, Vincent couldnt hide his disgust. When his supe-

riors complained about his sales technique, Vincent insisted he couldnt

keep quiet when a customer showed poor tastedidnt they want him to

tell the truth? Not surprisingly, two days ater his twenty-third birthday,seven years ater he rst came to Goupil, Vincent was asked to leave the

company.


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Vincents intensity had ound a new ocus. In his letters to Teo,

reports on museums were replaced by reports on church services; critiques

o paintings by critiques o scripture; swatches o romantic poetry by lyr-

ics to hymns; quotes rom Zola and Michelet by quotes rom the Old

estament and Te Pilgrims Progress. In October 1876, ater preaching

or the rst time, Vincent copied out the entire sermon and sent it to his

brother. Any gratication his parents elt when their son turned to religion

curdled as Vincent, who never did anything halway, became increasingly

anatic. He ell asleep each night reading the Bible, he attended as many

as seven services each Sunday. One Sunday he threw his monogrammed

silver watch into the collection plate, another Sunday his glovesthe ini-

tial symptoms o an obsession with sacrice and suering that would end

with him wearing rags. His advice to Teo turned rigidly pious: go to

church as oten as possible; learn to distinguish between good and evil;

eat onlyplain ood; throw out every book but the Bible. Do not be araid

to sing a hymn in the evening when you are out or a walk and nobody

is about, he urged, a suggestion his sel-conscious brother was unlikely

to ollow. It was a measure o Teos growing condence that he didntsuccumb to his brothers proselytizing; as he watched his brother slip into

zealotry, Teo became less enamored o organized religion and eventually

renounced the church.

Conused, lonely, and consumed by religious ervor, Vincent bounced

rom job to job: boarding-school teacher (given the end-o-term task

o collecting overdue tuition, Vincent couldnt bring himsel to put the

squeeze on impoverished amilies and was dismissed); lay preacher (likehis ather, he was an awkward speaker and was seldom invited to the

pulpit); booksellers clerk (he spent much o his time translating the

Bible into French, German, and English, or making what the bosss son

described as silly pen-and-ink drawings); theological scholar (he quit

less than a year into his studies, insisting one didnt need to know Latin

and Greek to relieve human suering); probationary evangelist (he was

so obstinateasked whether a certain word was dative or accusative, hereplied, I really dont care, sirthat ater his three-month trial period,

the mission-school elders reused to appoint him). In December 1878,


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the evangelical-school dropout went o to serve anyway, to preach the

Gospel to the poor and to all those who needed it, as he put it, in the coal

elds o Belgium.

Vincents parents despaired. Proper Calvinists who had envisioned

Vincent as a respectable country minister, they were embarrassed by their

brooding, unpredictable son and did their best to keep news o his ailures

rom their neighbors. Vincents sisters worried that their peculiar brother

would ruin their chances or marriage. His religion makes him abso-

lutely dull and unsociable, one o them wrote. Alone in the amily, Teo

still believed in his brother, telling his parents that Vincents quirks were

marks o his special character, assuring them that Vincent would eventu-

ally nd his way. Lies scoed. You think that he is something more than

an ordinary human being, she wrote Teo, but I think it would be much

better i he thought himsel just an ordinary being.

When Teo was a child, his parents had urged him to ollow in his

older brothers ootsteps. Now they were terried that he might do so. But

their conscientious younger son was succeeding in the very job at which

Vincent had ailed. Within eight months at Goupil, Teo had gone romlling orders in the stockroom to standing in or the manager when he was

away on business; ater only a year, the sixteen-year-old was given Vin-

cents old salesmans position at the companys more prestigious branch

in Te Hague. Vincents troubles made it even more vital to his parents

that Teo do well. Now the oldest has rocked the boat, we hope all the

more that the second will steer a steady course, wrote Pastor van Gogh to

Teo. Te second, who wrote his parents regularly and sent money hometo help pay or his sisters education, rarely disappointed: Te crowning

glory o our old age, his doting parents called him, our most prized pos-

session. While Vincent was ailing theology school, Teo was in Paris

working or Goupil at the 1878 Exposition Universelle, where he sold a

painting, listened to Edisons phonograph, and met the French president,

who stopped by the Goupil booth and asked the young Dutchman a ew

questions. When, in a rare misstep, Teo took a mistress rom an ineriorsocial class (the kind o embarrassing behavior his parents had come to

expect rom Vincent), his parents pressured him into giving her up. You

shall and must be our joy and honour! his ather reminded him. We


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cannot do without it. As i trying to expunge evidence o their elder sons

ailures, the van Gogh parents saved none o Vincents letters. Tey kept

every one o Teos.

Pastor van Gogh and his wie conded their worries about their

neer-do-well elder son to his prematurely responsible younger brother. In

October 1874, when they hadnt heard rom Vincent in three weeks, they

urged seventeen-year-old Teo to keep writing to him, hoping he would

be a steadying inuence, and asked him to report back on his brothers

state o mind. Im araid that something awul will happen, my dear

Teo, wrote his ather. I say this to you as your condantei you run

across something that might be useul, let us know. I believe there must

be some kind o illness, whether physical or mental. At times, Teo and

his ather sounded like anxious parents retting over a recalcitrant teen-

ager. In 1877, on the eve o Vincents departure or Amsterdam to study

theology, Pastor van Gogh bought new clothes or his chronically dishev-

eled son. We have improved his appearance a little bit with the help o

the best tailor rom Breda, he wrote to Teo, imploring him to perorm

another work o mercy and persuade Vincent to visit a clever hair-dresser who might be able to tame his unruly orange mop. When Vin-

cent dropped out o the seven-year theology program, his ather helped

him enroll in evangelical school. But he had little hope that things would

improve. It grieves us so to see that he literally knows no joy o lie, but

always walks with bent head, whilst we did all in our power to bring him

to an honorable position! he wrote Teo. It seems as i he deliberately

chooses the most dicult path.Teo ound himsel in the position o intermediary between the par-

ents he revered and the brother he adored, trying to explain each to the

other. His aging parents increasingly relied on him to look ater the son

to whom they reerred as the lost sheep. Unbeknown to Vincent, Teo

began sending sixty rancs a month to his parents or them to pass along

to his brother. A ew years later, when Vincent was considering where to

live, his ather wrote: Just write to Teo, and arrange with him what isbest, and what will be the cheapest way. As Vincent became ever more

estranged rom his parents, he became ever more dependent on Teo.

Eventually, Teo was Vincents link to the amily he yearned to connect


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with but with which he couldnt stop quarreling. It was in letters and visits

with Teo that Vincent kept the idea o home, amily, and childhood alive.

Each time he movedand in his brie adulthood he would move more

than two dozen timesVincent never ailed to describe his lodgings to

Teo: the view rom the window, the postcards (many o them supplied

by Teo) he had nailed on the walls. It was as i by describing his rented

room to his brother, he might make it a home. Vincent treasured the rare

times Teo could get o work long enough to visit him in his ar-ung

retreats, when theyd take long walks and talk about art and amily. As

soon as Teo let, Vincent would write him a letter, picking up the thread

o their conversation. What a pleasant day we spent in Amsterdam, he

wrote ater one 1877 visit. I stood watching your train until it was out

o sight. We are such old riends already. Teos visits buoyed Vincent as

he resumed his solitary lie. I still keep thinking o the day you came to

Brussels and o our visit to the museum, he wrote in 1878. And I oten

wish you were a bit nearer and that we could be together more oten. Do

reply soon.

* * *

Teo van Gogh was part o a long tradition o brothers stepping in or

ailing or absent parents. In 1695, ater his mother and ather died within a

year o each other, twenty-three-year-old Johann Christoph Bach took in

his thirteen-year-old brother, Johann Jacob, and his nine-year-old brother,

Johann Sebastian. Although his modest income as church organist washardly enough to provide or his own children, Cristoph not only ed and

clothed his younger brothers, but taught Johann Sebastian to play the cla-

vier and introduced him to the works o Pachelbel, under whom Cristoph

had studied, and other great composers o the day. He would look ater

Johann Sebastian until the musical prodigy went away to school shortly

beore his ourteenth birthday. Nearly a century later, sixteen-year-old

Ludwig van Beethoven, the eldest o three brothers, traveled to Viennain hopes o studying with Mozart. In March 1787, two weeks ater he

arrived, Beethoven learned that his mother was ill with consumption. He

rushed home to Bonn, but his mother died not long thereater, pushing


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his ather deeper into alcoholism. Te adolescent Beethoven spent the

next ve years at home, taking care o his two younger brothers, helping

pay or their upkeep by playing viola in the court orchestra. He would be

twenty-one beore he was able to get away again; by then, Mozart was

dead.

Sydney Chaplin spent much o his childhood in late-Victorian Lon-

don looking ater his hal-brother, Charlie, as they were shuttled through

workhouses and charity institutions while their mother was intermit-

tently conned to mental asylums. Years later, he would serve as Charlies

business manager. It has always been my unortunate predicament or

should I say ortunate predicament? to concern mysel with your protec-

tion, wrote Sydney. Tis is the result o my raternal or rather paternal

instinct. In 1942, instructed by his dying ather to make sure his rail,

artistic younger brother went to college, John Warhola, a machine shop

worker, not only helped pay Andys way through the Carnegie Institute,

but ater his brother let or New York City and became Andy Warhol, he

called him every Sunday until the artists death in 1987. In 1992, ollow-

ing the deaths o his parents within several months o each other, twenty-one-year-old college student Dave Eggers assumed responsibility or his

eight-year-old brother (cooking his meals, taking him to Little League

practice, attending parent-teacher conerences), an experience he would

recount inA Heartbreaking Work o Staggering Genius.

Sometimes a brother must protect a sibling rom a parent. When

the author Richard Rhodes was ten, his widowed ather married a dis-

turbed, sadistic woman who all but starved Richard and his brother, Stan-ley; permitted them to bathe only once a month; and beat them with

belt buckles, broom handles, and stiletto heels, among other weapons.

Teir cowed ather didnt intervene, but twelve-year-old, eighty-pound

Stanley protected his younger brother as well as he could: scouring trash

cans at drive-ins or hal-eaten hamburgers, comorting him ater beat-

ings, standing up to their tormentor. When Richard, orbidden to use the

bathroom at night, resorted to surreptitiously peeing into a bottle, Stanleysmuggled the brimming vessel past their sleeping stepmother to the bath-

room each morning and poured its contents into the toilet, mufing the

splash with the sound o his own urination. Ater two years o escalating


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abuse, Stanley, worried that their stepmother might kill one or both o

them, persuaded the police to place the brothers in a boys home. Stanley

saved us, wrote Rhodes inA Hole in the World, his account o the ordeal.

Te roles o keeper and kept are not xed. Following Emancipation

in 1863, John Washington, breaker-in o Bookers ax shirts, worked in a

coal mine so that his younger brother could attend the Hampton Institute.

When Booker graduated, he returned the avor, teaching school to help

pay or John to study at Hampton himsel. (Years later, as president o the

uskegee Institute, Booker would employ his brother as superintendent

o industries.) In 1968, Chuck Hagel, the uture Nebraska senator, and

his younger brother, om, were on patrol in the Mekong Delta during the

Vietnam War when someone in their unit stumbled on a trip wire, setting

o mines the enemy had hung in the trees. Seeing that Chuck was bleed-

ing prousely rom his chest, om, who had taken shrapnel in the arms

and shoulders, tore open his brothers shirt and bandaged the wound,

saving his lie. Less than a month later, the Hagels armored personnel

carrier hit a land mine, triggering a barrage o Vietcong machine-gun re.

Badly burned rom the initial blast but knowing the ammunition-ladenvehicle would soon ignite, Chuck dragged his unconscious brother rom

the APC just beore it exploded.

With a moody, alcoholic ather, a doting but hypochondriacal mother,

and a bright but unstable older brother who went o to sea, the young

Walt Whitman was more parent than brother to his six younger siblings:

teaching them how to spell, helping build a succession o amily houses,

and paying the lions share o the amily expenses as soon as he was oldenough to work. It was as i he had us in his charge . . . said his brother

George. He was like usyet he was dierent rom us, too. Whenever

there was a amily crisis (and there were many; the Whitmans were a

prodigiously troubled brood, touched by alcoholism, insanity, prostitu-

tion, and early death), it was to Walt his siblings turned. And though

he elt close to only one o themJe, an engineer who shared his love

o opera and long walks, was, he said, his one real brother and onlyunderstanderWalt was always willing to oot a bill or extricate some-

one rom a jam. When Georges name appeared on the list o casual-

ties ater the Battle o Fredericksburg, Walt set out at once or the ront,


18/19

BrotHers 205

searching camps and hospitals, undergoing the greatest suering I ever

experienced in my lie, until he ound his wounded brother. wo years

later, when George was starving in a Conederate prison, it was Walt who

pushed General Grant to negotiate the special prisoner exchange that

reed him. Tat same year, when the eldest brother, Jesse, turned violent

and threatened their mother with a chair, it was Walt who reluctantly had

him committed to the Kings County Lunatic Asylum. And it was Walt

who provided or Eddy, his epileptic, mentally disabled youngest brother,

to whom he would leave the majority o his modest estate.

But in 1873, when ty-our-year-old Walt was crippled by a stroke

and immobilized by depression ater the death o his beloved mother,

George took Walt and Eddy into his Camden home. A stolid, practical

man who worked as an inspector in a pipe oundry, George didnt under-

stand his poetry-writing brothero Leaves o Grass, he commented,

didnt think it worth readingngered it a littleyet or eleven years

he looked ater Walt, who slept late, cared little or schedules, and could

be, said George, stubborner . . . than a load o bricks. (One can only

imagine what George thought when a long-haired, velvet-coated, op-pish young man who announced himsel as Oscar Wilde showed up at his

door to pay homage to Walt.) George and his wie named their rst child

or Walt, who, ater the inant died at eight months, visited his grave every

ew days. In 1884, when George and his wie moved to a arm, they built

a room or Walt, but he preerred the city and stayed in Camden, where,

despite a series o strokes, he managed the last eight years o his lie on

his own. Walt never lost his sense o responsibility or his dwindling am-ily. As he would tell an interviewer, a year beore he died, To always

unmarried I have had six children.

* * *

In the summer o 1879, Teo visited Vincent in the Borinage, the coal-

mining region o southwest Belgium where Vincent served as a combina-tion preacher-cum-teacher-cum-social-worker-cum-nurse to the miners

and their amilies. (o the shock o the miners wives, he even helped with

the laundry.) In an area o abject poverty, Vincent was determined to be


19/19

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brotherly rivalries throughout history: george howe colt's brothers

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