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DEPARTMENTS – OCTOBER 2009

Hidden History—The Loss Of Frost

Famous poet once tried to disappear and end his life in the Great Dismal Swamp.

By Ben Swenson

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In 1894, Robert Frost—later to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet—showed up in Norfolk with the intention of walking into the Great Dismal Swamp ... and never coming out.

Frost's attempt at self destruction resulted from unrequited love. The 20-year-old feared that his sweetheart Elinor White was drifting from his affections while she was away at college. In an attempt to secure White for himself alone, Frost made the overnight journey from his home in Massachusetts to her college in New York, carrying a book of his verse that he had specially created for her and bearing the good news that one of his poems, "My Butterfly," would finally be published.

Much to Frost's chagrin, White refused to see him. She was obediently observing the rules of the college—namely that male callers were only to be entertained during specific hours. White commanded Frost to return home and told him they would talk face to face when she returned to Massachusetts.

Frost was heartbroken and wanted some way to get back at White. What better way to show her the pain she had caused him than to disappear, never to be seen or heard from again? It's not clear why or how Frost chose the Great Dismal Swamp, but if ever he was looking for a place to match the gloomy feelings that had enveloped his heart, he was certainly headed to the right place. Shortly after White's rebuff, Frost left his Massachusetts home and the following morning disembarked from the Merchants and Mariners Line in Norfolk. "I was trying to throw my life away," he later told a biographer.

Night had already fallen, but still Frost pressed on. The path he walked was a dirt road that ran parallel to one of the swamp's many canals used by workmen to float logs out of the impenetrable interior. For all the potential dangers that awaited him in the swamp, though, Frost encountered relatively few. In some places, the road was covered with water and he had to negotiate planks of wood that served to span these washouts. At one point, the satchel he carried became too heavy and he jettisoned some clothes and books.

But in all, Frost's journey through the Great Dismal Swamp was relatively uneventful, and certainly not life-threatening. About 10 miles after he entered the swamp, Frost came to one of the canals' locks and in it, a boat en route to Elizabeth City to take a group of duck hunters to the Outer Banks. By that point, hungry and tired (having walked nearly 20 miles), Frost paid the crew a dollar to take him aboard and out of the swamp. He stayed on the boat, sleeping mostly, all the way to Nags Head. Upon his return to Elizabeth City, Frost made a series of connections (including a short stint as a boxcar hobo), that eventually landed him back in Massachusetts, ending his morbid visit to the region where his plans to end it all didn't exactly pan out.

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