W. laughed as he said: “Some newspaper man in New York who wrote as though he saw Miller with me somewhere said: ‘Their poetry may be no good but there’s no discount on their curls.’ And he said something more. He said: ‘If hair is poetry then Walt Whitman ought to be a great success.’  (With Walt Whitman In Camden, pg. 140)

Hair jewelry was a popular niche throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In its earlier iterations, hair was commonly associated with mourning jewelry either incorporated into works or sometimes functioning as the medium itself. Portrait miniatures were frequently backed with strands of hair, the strands of which may have even been pleated or weaved. These pieces were so common that many jewelers included in their expertise the ability to work hair, and vice versa. The hair acted as a physical connection to people past and the jewelry frequently passed down through family members as an heirloom. As trends regarding the public display of sentimentality shifted in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the use of hair was less frequently disguised into an artwork or hidden on the back of a miniature. Rather the nature of nostalgia became more publicly accepted and the physical body firmly linked to the individualized self, thus a simple lock of hair often became the focus of the work – a style exemplified in both the rings containing Whitman’s locks.

These two rings acted as external tokens of Whitman’s affection for the members of the Johnston family. Walt Whitman befriended New York jeweler John Henry (J.H.) Johnston in his later years, becoming a close friend of the family and addressed by the Johnston children as “Uncle Walt.” It was J.H. Johnston’s second wife, Alma Calder Johnston, who clipped the hair encapsulated in both these rings; the first snippet taken in 1878 and displayed in a ring decorated with floral engraving. An inscription on the back of the second ring indicates that the hair it contains was clipped by Alma in 1881 before the ring was gifted to Bertha Johnston (B.J.) in 1893 followed by May Johnston (M.J.) in 1921. Turning into heirlooms, these rings gave legacy to the relationship between Whitman and the Johnston family. It was two different Johnston children, however, with whom Whitman shared a particularly special relationship. Kitty and Harry Johnston, the youngest children of J.H. and his first wife, were particular favorites of Whitman after staying with the Johnston family in 1878 at their multi-storied uptown home on Fifth avenue. Kitty and Harry would often join Whitman on his walks in Central Park opposite their house, an activity Kitty fondly recalled in her ongoing correspondence with the elderly Whitman who played the role of grandfather to the New York family.