THE
ESSAY O N
WALT WHITMAN ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
WITH
A
LITTLE
JOURNEY TO THE
HOME
OF
WHITMAN BY
ELBERT HUBBARD
THE ROYCROFT SHOP-MCLM
l-
Copyright, 1900, by Elbert Hubbartl.
Walt Whitman After the Has relief by
ami Jerome Roycroft
All seems beautiful to me. I
can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
I I
will recruit for myself and you as I go. will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I
will
toss
a
new
gladness and roughness
among them. Song of the Open Road.
396064
A LITTLE JOURNEY TO THE HOME OF WHITMAN
I
AX NORDAK Virote
a
bock
with his tongue in his cheek, a dash of vitriol in the ink, & with a pen that scratched. wrote
it
And
^[
the
first critic
who seem
ed to place a just estimate on the work was Mr. Zangwill (who has no Christian name).
Mr. Zangwill made an attempt
to swear out "
writ de lunatico inquirendo against his Jewish brother, on the ground that the first a
"
symptom of
insanity
is
often the delusion that
being so, Dr. Nor dau was not a safe subject to be at large. But the Assize of Public Opinion denied the pe others are insane
;
and
this
and the dear people bought the book from three to five dollars per copy. Printed
tition at
in several languages, its sales have mounted to a hundred thousand volumes, and the au
thor
s
net profit
No wonder bursting,
it
forty thousand dollars. that, with pockets full to
is full is
Dr. Nordau goes out behind
the
house and laughs uproariously whenever he thinks of how he has worked the world !
If Dr. surely
Talmage
we may
is
call
Barnum of Theology, Dr. Nordau the Barnum
the
of Science. His agility in manipulating facts
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
*&
Hermanns now-you-see-it and now-
equal to
you -don
Hermann
with pocket handkerchiefs. Yet exhibition is worth the admittance
t
s
and Nordau
book (seemingly written in collaboration with Jules Verne and Mark Twain) would be cheap for a dollar. But what fee,
I
object to
as
s
Prof.
is
Hermann
s
disciples posing
Sure-Enough Materializing Mediums and
Lombroso
Prof.
Scientists,
when
followers calling themselves each goes forth without scrip
s
or purse with no other purpose than to sup ply themselves with both.
Yet
it
was Barnum himself
who
said that the
delights in being humbugged, and strange it is that we will not allow ourselves to be thimble-rigged without paying for the
public
privilege.
Nordau
s
sumption
success hinged on his audacious as that the public knows nothing of
Law
of Antithesis. Yet Plato explained that the opposite of things look alike, and the
sometimes are
alike,
and that was quite awhile
ago.
The
multitude
devil";
devil
Many
and
is
answered
"
:
of them said:
mad":
Thou "He
hast
a
hath a
Festus said with a loud
voice
"
:
Nordau that
Paul, thou art beside thyself/ And shouts in a voice more heady than
of
more throaty than
Pilate,
Festus
"
Mad
of
mad beyond
Whitman was
the cavil of a doubt
that
"
!
In 1862, Lincoln, looking out of a window the dooryard bloomed) (before lilacs last in
on one of the
streets
of Washington, saw a
in shirt sleeves
workingman
to a friend, the President said
man
go by. Turning There goes "
:
The
exclamation sounds singularly like that of Napoleon on meeting Goethe.
a
"
!
But the Corsican the poet
s
who
man
him
ear,
s
remark was intended
while Lincoln did not
was, although he afterward. his
came
to
for
know know
Lincoln in his early days was a workingman an athlete, and he never quite got the idea out of his head (and I still a hewer of wood.
am
He
he was glad) that once told George
William Curtis that he more than half ex pected yet to go back to the farm and earn his daily bread by the work that his hands found to do he dreamed of it nights, and ;
whenever he saw hailing the
man
a splendid toiler,
as
he
felt like
brother and striking hands 3
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
with him.
When
Whitman strollhe took him for a steve
Lincoln saw
in S majestically past,
dore or possibly the foreman of a construction gang-
Whitman was
fifty-one years
old then. His
long flowing beard was snow white and the shock that covered his Jove-like head was iron grey. His form was that of an Apollo who had arrived at years of discretion. He
weighed even two hundred pounds and was just six feet high. His plain check cotton shirt was open at the throat to the breast and he had an independence, a self-sufficiency, and ;
withal a cleanliness, a sweetness, a gentleness,
although he had a giant s strength he did not use it like a giant. Whit man used no tobacco, neither did he apply hot and rebellious liquors to his blood and that
told
that
with unblushing forehead woo the means of debility and disease. Up to his fifty-third year
he had never known a sick day, although at thirty his hair had begun to whiten. He ha4 the look of age in his youth and the look of youth in his age that often marks the exceptional man. But at fifty-three his splendid health was
crowded 4
to the breaking strain.
How
?
Through
hour
wounded, sick and dying men hour, day after day, through the watches of the night. From 1864
for
caring
:
after
long silent to the day of his death in 1892, physically, he was a man in ruins. But he did not wither
he held the healthy optimism of boyhood, carrying with him the perfume of the morning and the lavish heart at the top.
Through
of youth. Doctor Bucke,
it all
who
has been superintendent of a hospital for the insane for twenty years, and the intimate friend of Whitman all the time,
His build, his stature, his excep health of mind and body, the size and
has said tional
"
:
form of his features, his and body, the grace of
mind movements and
cleanliness of his
and especially the mag the charm of his presence
gestures, the grandeur,
netism
of his
;
voice, his genial kindly humor ; the simplicity of his habits and tastes, his freedom from con
man
vention, the largeness and beauty of his
ner
;
his calmness
forbearance
and majesty
;
his charity
his entire unreseitfulness
&
under
whatever provocation his liberality, his uni versal sympathy with humanity in all ages and lands, his broad tolerance, his catholic friend;
5
WALT WHITMAN
WALT liness, and his unexampled faculty of attractWHITMAN m & affection, all prove his perfectly propor tioned manliness/
But Whitman differed from the
disciple of
Lombroso in two notable particulars He had no quarrel with the world, and he did not wax rich. One thing thou lackest, O Walt :
"
Whitman
"
we might
have said to the poet, you are not a financier." He died poor. But this is not proof of degeneracy, save on !
"
Change. When the children of Count Tol stoy endeavored to have him adjudged insane, the Court denied the application and voiced the wisest decision that ever came out of Russia
not saves
A man who
gives away his necessarily more foolish than :
money he
is
who
it.
And with Mr. Horace L. Traubel I say: Whitman was the sanest man I ever saw.
ME
men make themselves WALT homes; and others there be who WHITMAN rent rooms. Walt Whitman was essentially a citizen
the world was
mankind were his
friends.
his
:
home and
There was
man
in the
of the world
a quality
peculiarly universal a strong, vi rile poise that asked for nothing, but took
what
He
it
:
needed.
loved
men
as brothers, yet his brothers
understood
after the flesh
him him
not
he loved
;
they turned to instinctively but he had no children of his own he loved children
;
women and yet this strongly sexed and manly man never loved a woman. And I might here xsay as Philip Gilbert
Hamerton
said
of Tur
He
was lamentably unfortunate in this throughout his whole life he never came un "
ner,
:
der the ennobling and refining influence of a
good
woman."
make a home. The first home was made when a woman, cradling in It
requires
two
to
her loving arms a baby, crooned a lullaby. All the tender sentimentality we throw around a the result of the sacred thought that live there with some one else. It is our
place
we
is
7
WALT home. The home is a tryst the WHITMAN we ret re an d shut the world i
place
where
out. Lovers
home just as birds make a nest, and unless a man knows the spell of the divine passion I hardly see how he can have a home make
a
He
only rents a room. separated from the city of Phila delphia by the Delaware River. Camden lies low & flat a great sandy, monotonous waste
at all.
Camden
is
of straggling buildings. Here and there are straight rows of cheap houses, evidently erect ed by
staid, broad-brimmed speculators from across the river, with eyes on the main chance. But they reckoned ill, for the town did not
boom. Some of
these houses have marble steps and white barn-door shutters, that might with
stand a seige. When a funeral takes place in one of these houses the shutters are tied with strips
of mournful black alpaca for a year and
a day.
Engineers, dockmen, express drivers, and mechanics largely make up citizens of
Camden. Of course, Camden has its smug corner where prosperous merchants most do congregate where they play croquet in the :
front yards, and have window boxes, and a piano and veranda chairs and terra cotta stat8
uary, but for the most part the houses of Camden are rented, and rented cheap. Many of the domiciles are frame and have
the happy in
streets
tumble-down look of the back Charleston
where white
or
Richmond
those
merges off into pros perous colored aristocracy. Old hats do duty streets
trash
in keeping out the fresh air where providence has interfered and broken out a pane ; blinds
a single hinge ; bricks ney tops threaten the passers-by
hang by
on the chim ;
stringers
and
mark the
place where proud picket fences once stood the pickets having gone for kindling long ago. In the warm summer posts
evenings steps
men
and
in shirt-sleeves
stolidly
sit
on the front
smoke, while the children
pile up sand in the streets and play in the gutters.
with Mickle
block away, are railway tracks. There noisy switch engines, that never keep Sabbath, puff back and forth, day and night, sending forth showers of soot Parallel
Street, a
and smoke when the wind
is
right (and
it
straight over Number 328, where, according to John Addington Symonds and William Michael Rossetti, MoBi lived the mightiest +J
usually
is)
i
a
^i
^^^
9
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
of the century the man whom they ran ^ with Socrates, Epictetus, St. Paul, Mi chael Angelo, and Dante.
seer
It
was in August of 1883 that
up that
a
street
little
I first
walked
summer
hot sultry
evening. There had been a shower that turned the dust of the unpaved roadway to mud. The
was
air
up
right
and muggy. The houses,
close
to the sidewalks, over
which
gutters the steaming sewage ran, have discharged their occupants
built
in little
seemed to into
the
of the day. Barefooted children by the score paddled in the mud. All the steps were filled with loungers some of street to enjoy the cool
;
men had
discarded not only coats but shirts as well and now sat in flaming red un
the
derwear, holding babies.
They
woman s work is never done," women of Mickle Street this does
say that
but to the
"
not apply, but stay never done. Anyway, sat
on the curbs
"
from
lives
?
10
I
remember
that
is
women
all
seemed supremely
care.
Can you "
I
work
in calico dresses or leaned out
of the windows, and free
perhaps their
!
tell
asked
me where Mr. Whitman a portly dame who was rest-
ing "
her elbows on a window-sill near by.
who
"
?
Mr. Whitman You mean Walt Whitman "
"
!
"
"
?
"
Yes." "
Show
the gentleman, Molly, he
a nickel, I
m
11
give you
"
sure
!
had not seen Molly. She stood behind me, but as her mother spoke she seized tight hold I
of one of
claiming me as her the other children looked
my
fingers,
lawful prey, and all on with envious eyes as little Molly threw at them glances of scorn and marched me off.
Molly was five, going on six, she She had bright red hair, a grimy
me. face and told
chapped feet that made not a sound we walked. She got her nickel and carried
little
as it
in her
mouth and
ficult.
After going one block she suddenly
stopped, squared "
Them
is
he
"
!
this
made
conversation dif
me
around and pointing and disappeared.
said,
In a wheeled rattan chair, in the hallway, a little back from the door of a plain weatherbeaten house,
sat
the coatless philosopher, his
and head wreathed in a tumult of snowwhite hair.
face
ii
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
had
a little speech, all prepared weeks be^ore anc^ committed to memory, that I in I
him how
tended to repeat, telling
I
had read
poems and admired them. And further I had stored away in my mind a few blades from Leaves of Grass that I proposed to his
"
"
bring out at the right time as a sort of certifi cate of character. But when that little girl
me
right-about-face and heartlessly de serted me, I stared dumbly at the man whom
jerked I
had come
a
angling for fetch "
my
"
!
He
"
;
Hello
Don
held out his
on the
The
t
go
!
here,
Joe/ he said to a smoking a cob pipe.
woman
s
!
a
it.
yet,
step,
old
come
boy and there was hand,
grasp with meaning in
"
began
speech, but could not
little
called the philosopher, out of the
white aureole
"
to see. I
it.
Hello
^[
hundred miles
calling
man
me,"
seated
said the
swarthy Joe. Joe evidently held truth lightly. So long, Walt "
"
!
"
Good-bye, Joe. ^[ I sat in the "
Now
lar
is
n
t it
Sit
down,
doorway queer
lad, sit
down
"
!
at his feet.
that fellow
is
a regu
philosopher and works out some great 12
problems, but he s ashamed to express em. He could no more give you his best than he could fly. Ashamed I s pose, ashamed of the best that
way
is
all but-
gardless of lous or not
him.
in
me
We
are all a
-I try to write
little
my
that
best, re
whether the thing sounds ridicu regardless of what others think
or say or have saidy Ashamed of our holiest, Is it not too bad ? truest, and best !
You are twenty-five now ? Well boy, you may grow until you are thirty and then you will be as wise as you ever will be. Have n t "
you noticed that men of vision than
we life
men
of forty
sixty ?
have no clearer
One reason is that we know all about
have been taught that and death and the mysteries of the grave.
But the main reason to shove out
is
that
we
are
ashamed
and be ourselves. Jesus expressed
own individuality perhaps more than any man we know of, and so he wields a wider influence than any other. And this though we his
only have a record of just twenty-seven days of his life. "
Now
and he
that fellow that just left is an engineer, dreams some beautiful dreams, but he
never expresses
them
to
any one, only hints 3
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
me, and this only at twilight. He is e a wease l or niink or a whip-poor-will, he comes out only at night.
them
^
"
*
to
If the weather was like this
the time,
all
people would never learn to read and write/ said Joe to me just as you arrived. And is n t that so
?
Here we can count
hundred people and not one is read a
up and down this street, ing, not one but that is just
lolling about, ex they are only happy
cept the children and when playing in the dirt.
if this trop
we would Islanders You
weather should continue
ical slip
Why
back into South Sea
!
all
can
only raise good men in a little strip around when you get the North Temperate Zone out of the track of the glacier a tender heart ed, sympathetic man of brains is an accident."
The
man
suddenly ceased and I im agined that he was following the thought out
^[
in his
The
old
twilight
street
We
own mind. fell,
silent
sat
for a space.
and the lamp-lighter
lamp on the
corner.
He
sitting
on the
he
passed. doorstep, across the the ashes out of his
smoking, knocked pipe on his boot-heel & went indoors. 14
street,
the
stopped an in
stant to cheerily salute the poet as
The man
lit
Women
called their
but
still
children,
played on.
who
Then
did not respond, the creepers were
carried in, to be fed their bread and
milk and
put to bed and shortly shrill feminine voices ordered the older children indoors, and some ;
obeyed.
The
night crept slowly on. I heard old Walt chuckle behind me, talking incoherently to himself, and then he said :
"
You
are
why
wondering
I
live
in such a
"
place as this ? Yes, that is exactly of! "
what
I
was thinking
"
You
belong in the country, in some quiet shady place. But all I have to do is to shut my eyes and go there. No man loves the "
think
I
woods more than
was born within sound of the sea- down on Long Island, and I know all the songs that the sea-shell sings. But this babble and babel of voices pleases me better, especially since
I
my
I
legs
went on
a strike, for
although I can t walk, you see I still mix with the throng, so I suffer no loss. In the woods a man must be all hands and feet. I like the folks, the plain, ignorant, unpreten tious folks ; and the youngsters that come and
15
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
slide
on
m
bit. I
my
cellar
door do not disturb
me
a
from Carlyle you know noise-proof room where he locked different
he had
a
himself
in.
Now when
a huckster goes by, the blinds and often
crying his wares, I open wrangle with the fellow over the price of things. But the rogues have got into a way lately
pay.
of leaving truck for To-day an Irishman
me
and refusing
passed
in three
quarts of berries and walked off pretending to be mad because I offered to pay. When he
was gone,
I
beckoned
to the babies over the
they came over and we had a feast. I like Yes, I like the folks around here the women, and I like the men, and I like
way "
;
the babies, and I like the youngsters that play in the alley and make mud pies on my steps. I "
expect to stay here until I die." You speak of death as a matter of course
you are not
"
?
boy, death is as natural as life, and a deal kinder. But it is all good I accept it all and give thanks you have not forgot "
(
afraid to die
Oh,
ten "
I
no,
my
Not
I
my
chant to death
"
?
?)
repeated a few lines from 16
"
Drum
Taps/
He
followed me, rapping gently with his cane on the floor, and with little interjectory re-
marks
of
"
That
"
s
so
true
"
Very
!
"
!
And when I faltered and Good, good The lost the lines he picked them up where "
"
!
"
voice of
my
spirit
the
tallied
song of the
In a strong clear voice but a voice of sublime feeling he repeated bird."
full
:
Come, lovely and soothing Death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving
In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate Death. Praised be the fathomless universe
For
And
and joy, and for objects and knowl edge curious,
life
for love, sweet love
but praise
!
praise
!
praise
For the sure enwinding arms of
cool,
folding Death. Dark Mother, always gliding near with
en soft
feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome ? Then I chant for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must in deed come, come unfalteringly, Approach, strong
deliveress,
WALT WHITMAN
WALT When it is so, when thou WHITMAN I J ? 011^ si n g. the ead
hast taken
them
<!
.>
,
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death. From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee,
And
adornments and feastings for thee, the sights of the open landscape and the
And
high spread sky are fitting, life and the fields, and the huge and
thoughtful night. night in silence under many a star, ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well veiFd Death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, Over the dense-packed cities all, the teem
The The
&
I
ing wharves, and ways, float this carol with joy, with joy to thee
O
Death.
The
playing youngster had silently disap peared from the streets. The doorsteps were deserted save where across the way a young last
man and maiden versing in 18
sat in
low monotone.
the gloaming con
The
clouds had drifted away. great yellow star shown out above the chimney tops in the east.
A
I arose to go.
wish you d come oftener I see you so seldom, lad," said the old man, half plaint "
I
ively. I
did not explain that
fore
that I
posely to see
And The
so
had come from him.
he did
rest
was
or name,
we had
He
irrelevant.
what booted
New York
pur he knew me. thought
much
as
never met be
As it
?
as I
to
could impart.
my
occupation
he had no curi
concerning me. I grasped his outstretched hand in both of my own. osity
He I
word neither did I. turned and made my way to the said not a
;
ferry
past the whispering lovers on the doorsteps, and over the railway tracks where the noisy engines puffed. As I walked on board the
boat the wind blew up cool and fresh from the west. The star in the east grew brighter,
and other
stars
came
out, reflecting themselves
gems in the dark blue of the Delaware. ^[ There was a soft sublimity in the sound of the bells that came echoing over the waters. like
19
WALT WHITMAN
WALT pssigjOST WHITMAN H^RKl B the7
writers bear no message
I
Cari
7
:
no torch Sometimes -
they excite wonder, or they
may
amuse and divert divert us from our work. To be diverted to a certain degree may be well, but there is a point where earth ends and cloudland be
and even great poets occasionally befog
gins,
the things
which they would
Homer was truth
much
seemingly blind to
Virgil carries
;
reveal.
simple
you away from earth
;
Horace was undone without his Maecenas Dante makes you an exile Shakespeare was ;
;
singularly silent concerning the doubts,
and
culties,
common
Byron s Corsair toil, and in his
lives
common people
of
does not help you in your fight with English Bards and
we
crave neutrality
caught in the meshes of Pope s is not pleasant and Lowell s ;
"
above
is
all
thor of
"
only
poets
another
who
"
"
"
"
;
to
be
Dunciad Fable
Dunciad."
have ever
Leaves of Grass
humanity. Milton knew
;
life
Scotch Reviewers
Critics
diffi
lived, the
"
for
But au
was the poet of
about Heaven, and Dante conducts us through Hell, but it was left for
20
all
Whitman
to
show
high that setto, neither does goes so
His voice never
us Earth. it
breaks in impotent
fal-
growl and snarl at things it does not understand, and not understanding does not like. He was so great that he had no it
envy, and his insight was so sure that he had no prejudice. He never boasted that he was higher, nor claimed to be less than any of the other sons of men. He met all on terms of absolute equality, mixing with the poor, the lowly, the fallen, the oppressed, the cultured, the rich simply as brother with brother.
And when he
the outcast, Not the sun excludes you will I exclude you/ voiced a sentiment worthy of a god.
He
said
was brother
tains,
them free,
the
seas,
to
"
he
moun
to the elements, the
the clouds, the sky.
till
He
loved
and partook of them all in his large, unselfish, untrammelled nature. His heart all
knew no in granite
limits,
and
and feeling
his footsteps
his feet mortis
d
tenon d in infinity
he knew the amplitude of time.
Only the great
are generous
are forgiving.
Like Lot
s
;
backward
most poets and those who
wife,
look back over their shoulders are not looking
only the strong
;
insist that
we 21
shall
WALT WHITMAN
WALT look into the future, WHITMAN ^ e whole scribbling Man
and the
vast majority
of
rabble accept the pre
but always to be blest." grieve for childhood s happy days, and ^[ long for sweet rest in Heaven and sigh for mansions in the skies. And the people about "
cept,
never
is,
We
us
seem
so indifferent,
warm and ;
and our friends so luke
no one understands
really
us,
and
our environment queers our budding spirit uality and the frost of jealousy nips our aspi rations
"
:
O
Paradise,
growing old free where love
is
;
who is
O
Paradise, the
never
cold."
fearsome dyspeptics of the he,
you bloodless
world
would not be at rest and So sing the
stylus.
O
anaemic
she, nipping at crackers, sip
ping at tea, why not consider that although the evolutionists tell us where we came from
and the theologians inform us where we are going to, yet the only thing sure of is that we are here ^[ !
we are really The present is
the perpetually moving spot where history ends and prophecy begins. It is our only pos session
:
the past
memory, halting
we
reach through lapsing
&
belief; recollection, hearsay we pierce the future by wistful faith or anx ious hope, but the present is beneath our feet.
22
Whitman
and the glory of rebukes our groans and sighs
sings the beauty
the present.
He
on every side at the wonders of creation, and at the miracles with bids us look about
in our grasp.
He
own, introduces
lifts
us up, restores us to our
us to
man and Nature and
thus infuses into us courage, manly pride, selfreliance, and the strong faith that comes when
we
He
our kinship with God. was so mixed with the universe that his
feel
voice took on the sway of elemental integ rity and candor. Absolutely honest, this man was unafraid and unashamed, for Nature has neither apprehension, shame, nor vain-glory. In Leaves of Grass Whitman speaks as all "
"
men in
have ever spoken
themselves
who
oracular,
without abasement
believe in
without
fearlessly.
He
God
&
apology, of the
tells
powers and mysteries that pervade and guide all life, all death, all purpose. His work is masculine, as the sun is masculine ; for the prophetic voice is as surely masculine as the lullaby
and
lyric cry are feminine.
Whitman
brings the warmth of the sun to the buds of the heart so that they open and
bring forth form, color, perfume.
He becomes 23
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
them aliment and dew; so these buds become blossoms, fruits, tall branches, & stately for
trees that cast refreshing
shadows.
There are men who are to other men as the shadow of a mighty rock in a weary land such is Walt Whitman.
WALT WHITMAN
name of WALT Walt Whitman has been a WHITMAN
F
late years the
good deal bandied about in books and magazines. It has become familiar both in good and ill repute. His works have been largely bespattered with praise by his
admirers, and cruelly mauled and mangled by irreverent enemies. Now,
whether
poetry is good or bad as a matter that may admit of
his
poetry, is a difference of opinion without alien could not ating those who differ.
We
peace with a man who should put forward claims to taste the
keep
and yet depreciate the choruses
but I think we shake hands with one who sees
"Samson
may
in
Agonistes";
no more in Walt Whitman s volume, from a literary point of view, than a farrago of incompetent essays in a wrong direction. That may not be at all
our
own
opinion.
We may 29
WALT think that, when a work contains so WHITMAN many unforgettable phrases, it cannot be altogether devoid of literary mer it. We may even see passages of a high poetry here and there among its ec centric contents.
Walt Whitman
But when is
all is said,
neither a Milton
nor a Shakespeare; to appreciate his works is not a condition necessary to salvation ; and I would not disinherit a son upon ,the question, nor even think much the worse of a critic, for I should always have an idea what he meant. What Whitman has to say is another affair from how he says it. It is not possible to acquit any one of defect ive intelligence, or else stiff prejudice,
who
is
not interested by
Whitman
s
matter and the spirit it represents. Not as a poet, but as what we must call lack of a more exact ex (for a prophet, he occupies a pression)
30
curious
& prominent position. Wheth- WALT
he may greatly influence the fu- WHITMAN ture or not, he is a notable symptom of the present. As a sign of the times, it would be hard to find his parallel. I should hazard a large wager, for instance, that he was not unacquaint ed with the works of Herbert Spen er
cer;
and yet where,
books, shall
we
lay
in all the history
our hands on two
more incongruous contemporaries
?
I had al Mr. Spencer so decorous most said, so dandy in dissent; and
Whitman,
like a
large shaggy dog, just unchained, scours the beaches of the world, baying at the moon. And
when was an echo more curiously like a satire, than when Mr. Spencer found Synthetic Philosophy reverberated from the other shores of the Atlantic his
in the
"
barbaric
"
yawp
of
Whitman ?
3
1
HAT
WALT WHITMAN
Whitman
to a system,
it
writes
up
cannot be
explained. He was a theorizer about so
too
ciety
soon
before he was a poet.
He
first
perceived something wanting, & then sat down squarely to supply the want.
The
reader, running over his works, will find that he takes nearly as much
pleasure in critically expounding his
theory of poetry as in making poems. This is as far as it can be from the case of the spontaneous village min strel dear to elegy, who has no the
whatever, although sometimes he may have fully as much poetry as ory
Whitman. The whole of Whitman s work is deliberate and preconceived.
A man
born into a society compara tively new, full of conflicting ele ments and interests, could not fail, if he had any thoughts at all, to reflect upon the tendencies around him. He 32
saw much good and evil on all sides, WALT not yet settled down into some more WHITMAN unjust compromise as in older nations, but still in the act of settle
or
less
And
he could not but wonder what it would turn out; whether the compromise would be very just or ment.
very/ much the reverse, and give great or little scope for healthy human en ergies.
From
speculation
is
idle
wonder
but a step;
&
to
active
he seems
been early struck with the inefficacy of literature and its ex treme unsuitability to the conditions. What he calls Feudal Literature could have little living action on the tumult of American democracy ; what he calls the Literature of Wo/ meaning the whole tribe of Werther and Byron, could have no action for good in any time or place. Both prop ositions, if art had none but a direct moral influence, would be true to have
"
"
"
33
WALT enough; and as WHITMAN Whitman s view,
seems to be they were true enough for him. He conceived the idea of a Literature which was to in here in the life of the present ; which was to be, first, human, and next, American ;; which was to be brave & this
cheerful as per contract , to give cul ture in a popular and poetical pre sentment ; and, in so doing, catch &
some democratic ideal of humanity which should be equally natural to all grades of wealth and education, and suited, in one ,of his stereotype
favorite man."
phrases,
To
the
such literature
as
to
"the
average
formation of some this his
to be regarded as so
many
poems
are
contribu
one sometimes explaining, some times superceding, the other and the whole together not so much a finished tions,
:
work
He
as a
body of suggestive
hints.
does not profess to have built the
34
but he pretends he has traced the lines of the foundation. He has not made the poetry, but he flatters himself he has done something to wards making the poets. His notion of the poetic function is ambitious, & coincides roughly with castle,
what Schopenhauer has
laid
down
WALT WHITMAN
as
the province of the metaphysician. /
The poet men, and
to gather together for set in order, the materials is
of their existence. He is The An swerer"; he is to find some way of speaking about life that shall satisfy, if only for the moment, man s endur ing astonishment at his own position. And besides having an answer ready, it is he who shall provoke the ques tion. He must shake people out of "
their indifference,
make some
and force them
to
election in this world, in
stead of sliding dully forward in a dream. Life is a business we are all
35
WALT WHITMAN
apt to mismanage
;
either living reck-
from day to day, or suffering ourselves to be gulled/ out of our moments by the inanities of custom. lessly
We
should despise a
man who
gave
activity and forethought to the conduct of any other business. But in this, which is the one thing of all others, since it contains them all, we cannot see the forest for the trees. as little
One
brief impression obliterates an other. There is something stupefying in
things.
of unimportant only on rare provo can rise to take an
recurrence
the
And
cations that
it is
we
outlook beyond daily concerns, and comprehend the narrow limits and great possibilities of our existence. It isythe duty of the poet to induce such moments of clear sight. He is the declared enemy of all living by re flex action, of all that is done be twixt sleep and waking, of all the
36
pleasureless pleasurings and imaginary duties in which we coin away our
invaluable years. He has to electrify his readers into an in hearts
and
fritter
stant unflagging activity, founded on a wide and eager observation of the
world, and
make them
direct
their
ways by a superior prudence, which has little or nothing in common with the maxims of the copy-book. That
many of
us lead such lives as they
would
heartily disown after two hours serious reflection on the subject is, I
am
afraid, a true,
and
I
am
sure, a
very galling thought. The Enchanted Ground of dead-alive respectability is next, upon the map, to the Beulah
of considerate virtue. But there they all slumber and take their rest in the middle of God s beautiful and won derful
universe;
the
drowsy heads
have nodded together in the same position since
first
their fathers
37
fell
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
asleep ; and not even the sound of the last trumpet can wake them to a single active thought. The poet has
him
a hard task before
fellows to a sense of their
other people
And
it
up such own and
to stir
principles in life. happens that literature s
is,
in
some ways, but an indifferent means to such an end. Language is but a poor bull s-eye lantern wherewith to show off the vast cathedral of the world; and yet a particular thing once said in words is so definite and
makes us forget the absence of the many which re main unexpressed like a bright win dow in a distant view, which dazzles memorable, that
it
;
&
confuses our sight of
ings.
There
are not
its
surround
words enough in
Shakespeare to express the merest fraction of a man s experience in an all
The
speed of the eyesight and the hearing, and the continual in-
hour.
38
in ten dustry of the mind, produce, minutes, what it would require a laborious volume to shadow forth by
comparisons
& roundabout
approach
If verbal logic were sufficient, life would be as plain sailing as a piece es.
of Euclid. But,
we make
as
a matter of fact,
a travesty of the
simplest
process of thought
when we put
into words
words are
;
for the
all
it
col
ored and forsworn, apply inaccurate and bring w ith them, from former ly, uses, ideas of praise and blame that r
have nothing to do with the question in hand. So we must always see to it nearly, that we judge by the realities of life and not by the partial terms that represent them in man s speech ; and at times of choice, we must leave words upon one side, and act upon those brute convictions, unexpressed
and perhaps inexpressible, which can not be flourished in an argument, but 39
WALT WHITMAN
WALT which are truly the sum and fruit of WHITMAN our experience. Words are for com munication, not for judgment. This is what every thoughtful man knows for himself, for only
fools
and
silly
schoolmasters push definitions over far into the domain of conduct ; and the majority of women, not learned in these scholastic refinements, live all-of-a-piece and unconsciously, as a tree grows, without caring to put a
name upon their acts or motives. Hence, a new difficulty for Whit
man
s
poet
;
scrupulous and argumentative he must do more than waken
sleepers to his words ; he persuade them to look over the
up the
must book
with their own eyes. This side of truth is ever present to Whitman; it is this that he means
and
at life
when he
tells
us that
"
To
glance
with an eye confounds the learning of all times." But he is not unready.
40
He
never weary of descanting on the undebatable conviction that is is
upon our minds by the pres ence of other men, of animals, or of
forced
inanimate things. To glance with an eye, were it only at a chair or a park railing, is by far a more persuasive process,
and brings us to a
far
more
exact conclusion, than to read the works of all the logicians extant. If both, by a large allowance, may be said to end in certainty, the certainty in the
one case transcends the other
to an incalculable degree. If people see a lion, run if they
away;
only apprehend
a
they
deduction, they
keep wandering around in an experi mental humor. Now, how is the poet to convince like nature, and not like books ? Is there no actual piece of nature that he can show the man to his face, as he might show him a tree if they were walking together? Yes,
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
there
In
is
one: the
fact, if
man s own
the poet
is
thoughts.
to speak effica
ciously, he must say what is already in his hearer s mind. That, alone, the hearer will believe; that, alone, he
be able to apply intelligently to the facts of life. Any conviction, even if it be a whole system or a whole religion, must pass into the condition of commonplace, or postulate, before will
it
becomes
fully
excursions and
may
interest,
operative.
high-flying
they cannot rule faith is not the highest
but
Our truth that we perceive, but est that we have been able behavior.
Strange theories
the high to assim
very texture & method of our thinking. It is not, therefore, by flashing before a man s eyes the
ilate into the
weapons of
dialectic;
it is
not by in
duction, deduction, or construction;
not by forcing him on from one stage of reasoning to another, that
it is
42
man
be effectually renewed. He cannot be made to believe anymade to see thing; but he can be
the
will
that he has always believed this is the practical canon. It
it.
is
And
when
and the reader cries, Oh, I know to see how is, perhaps, half irritated "
"
!
his nearly the author has forestalled own thoughts, that he is on the way
to
what
is
called in theology a Saving
Faith.
Here we have the key attitude.
ideal
To
to the
to
Whitman
s
give a certain unity of
average population of
America to gather their activities about some conception of humanity that shall be central and normal, if the poet must only for the moment Like portray that population as it is. human law, human poetry is simply declaratory. If any ideal is possible, it must be already in the thoughts of the people; and by the same reason,
43
WALT WHITMAN
WALT in the thoughts of the poet, who is WHITMAN one of them. And hence Whitman s own formula: "The poet is individ ual
he
complete in himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not." To show them how good they are, the poet must is
study his fellow-countrymen
& him
somewhat like a traveller on the hunt for his book of travels. There is a sense, of course, in which all true books are books of travel; and all genuine poets must run their risk of self
being charged with the traveller s ex aggeration; for to whom are such books more surprising than to those
whose own life is faithfully & smartly pictured ? But this danger is all upon one side; and you may judiciously without any like lihood of the sitter s disowning it for flatter the portrait
a faithful likeness.
has reasoned
44
:
And
so
Whitman
that by drawing at
first
hand from himself and his neighbors, WALT accepting without shame the incon- WHITMAN sistencies and brutalities that go to make up man, and yet treating the whole in a high, magnanimous spirit, he would make sure of belief, and at the same time encourage people forward by the means of praise.
45
IOWADAYS we
WALT WHITMAN
tomed
are accus
to a great deal of
puling over the stances in
circum
which we are
The
great refinement of many poetical gentlemen has rendered them practically unfit for the jostling and placed.
ugliness of life, and they record their unfitness at considerable length. The
bold and awful poetry of Job s com plaint produces too many flimsy imi tators; for there is always something consolatory in grandeur, but the sym phony transposed for the piano be comes hysterically sad. This literature of woe, as Whitman calls it, this Maladie de Rene, as we like to call it in Europe,
is
in
many ways
a
most
humiliating and sickly phenomenon. Young gentlemen with three or four
hundred a year of private means look down from a pinnacle of doleful ex perience on all the grown & hearty
men who
have dared to say a good word for life since the beginning of the world. There is no prophet but the melancholy Jacques, and the blue devils dance on all our literary wires. ^j It would be a poor service to spread culture, if this be its result, comparatively innocent and cheerful ranks of men. When
among
the
our little poets have to be sent to look at the ploughman and learn wis dom, we must be careful how we tamper with our ploughmen. When a man in not the best of circumstances preserves composure of mind, & rel ishes
ale
and tobacco, and
his wife
and children, in the intervals of dull and unremunerative labor; where a
man
in this
predicament can afford a
lesson by the way to what are called his intellectual superiors, there is
plainly something to be lost, as well as something to be gained, by teach-
47
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
him
think differently. It is better to leave him as he is than to teach him whining. It is better that ing
to
he
should go without the cheerful lights of culture, if cheerless doubt
and paralyzing sentimentalism
are to
be the consequence. Let us, by all means, fight against that hide-bound stolidity of sensation and sluggish ness of mind which blurs and decol
poor natures the wonderful pageant of consciousness; let us teach
orizes for
people, as
and they
much
as
we
can, to enjoy,
will learn for themselves to
sympathize; but let us see to it, above all, that we give these lessons in a brave, vivacious note, and build the man up in courage while we de
molish the substitute, indifference.
Whitman
is
that, if the
alive to all is
this.
to be of
He
sees
any help, he must testify to the livableness of life. His poems, he tells us, are to be poet
hymns of the praise of things." They WALT are to make for a certain high joy in WHITMAN "
living,
or what he calls himself
And
a
freedom s ath he has had no difficulty
brave delight letes,"
"
for
fit
in introducing his
optimism
enough with
:
it
fitted
system ; for the average man is truly a courage ous person and truly fond of living. readily
One of Whitman head
is
his
remarks upon this worth quotation, as he is there s
and does precise he designs to do throughout: ly what Takes ordinary and even common throws them place circumstances; perfectly successful,
out, by a happy turn of thinking, into significance and something like beauty; and tacks a hopeful moral lesson to the end.
The passionate woodmen, early "
tenacity of hunters, risers, cultivators of
gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly
49
WALT WHITMAN
form,
seafaring
persons,
drivers
horses, the passion for light
of
and the
an old unvaried sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people." There seems to be something truly original in this choice of trite exam
open
air,
all is
You will remark how adroitly Whitman begins, hunters and wood men being confessedly romantic. And ples.
one thing more. If he had love of healthy
men
said
"
the
for the female
he would have said almost a silliness; for the thing has never been dissembled out of delicacy, and is so obvious as to be a public nuisance. But by reversing it, he tells us some thing not unlike news; something that sounds quite freshly in words; and if the reader be a man, gives him a moment of great self-satisfac tion and spiritual aggrandizement. In form,"
50
you find pas- WALT sages more remarkable for grammar, WHITMAN but few of a more ingenious turn, & none that could be more to the
many
different authors
point in our connection. ity
of
many
The
tenac
ordinary people in ordi
nary pursuits is a sort of standing challenge to everybody else. If one man can grow absorbed in delving his garden, others may grow absorbed
and happy over something else. Not to be upsides in this with any groom or gardner, is to be very meanly or ganized. A man should be ashamed to take his food if he has not al chemy enough in his stomach to turn some of it into intense and enjoyable occupation.
Whitman
tries to
reinforce this cheer
by keeping up a sort of out door atmosphere of sentiment. His book, he tells us, should be read fulness
"
among
the cooling influences
of
WALT external nature; WHITMAN mendation, like
and
recomthat other famous this
one which Hawthorne prefixed to
his
collected tales, is in itself a character of the work. Every one who has been a walking or a boating tour, living in the open air, with the body in constant exercise and the mind in
upon
fallow,
knows
true
ease
and
quiet.
The
irritating action of the brain is set at rest; we think in a plain, unfeverish temper; little things seem
&
great things no longer portentious; and the world is smil ingly accepted as it is. This is the big enough,
spirit
that
parades.
He
atmosphere
Wisdom
Whitman
inculcates
and
thinks very ill of the of parlors or libraries.
keeps school outdoors.
And
he has the art to recommend this at titude of mind by simply pluming himself upon the reader, to
it
as a virtue; so
keep
the
that
advantage
over his author which most readers is tricked into professing the enjoy,
same view. And chief lesson,
is
this spirit, as it
the greatest
is
his
charm of of an un
work. Thence, in spite even and emphatic key of expression, something trenchant and straightfor ward, something simple and surpris He has ing, distinguishes his poems. his
sayings that the Bible.
come home
We
after the
write
from
fall
works of
to
one
like
upon Whitman,
so
many men who
better, with a sense of relief strain, with a sense of touching
when one
passes out of the flaring, noisy thoroughfares of a great city into what he himself has called,
nature, as
with unexcelled imaginative justice of the huge and thoughtful language, "
And
his
book
in
consequence, whatever may be the final judgment of its merit, whatever may be its influence on the future, should be in night."
53
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
parents & guardians as a specific for the distressing malady of being seventeen years old. the hands of
all
Green-sickness yields
ment
as
to
the youth,
a
to
his
treat
charm of magic; and
after
a
short course of
reading, ceases to carry the universe upon his shoulders.
54
IAMILIARITY
as
stars,
could not deceive Whitman. He considers it just as wonderful that there are myriads of that one man should rise
from the dead. on the back of ous
as
whole Sir
He his
any special
life is
to
declares
hand
hair
just as curi
His was to
revelation."
him what
Thomas Browne, one
miracle. Everything
"a
is
it
perpetual
strange, every
thing unaccountable, everything beau tiful; from a bug to the moon, from the sight of the eyes to the appetite for food. He makes it his business to
he saw them for the first time, and professes astonishment on principle. But he has no leaning toward mythology; avows his con tempt for what he calls unregenerate poetry"; and does not mean by see things as if
"
nature: "
The smooth walks, trimmed
hedges,
55
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
and nightingales of the English poets, but the whole orb, with its geologic history, the Kosmos, carrying fire and snow, that rolls butterflies, posies,
through the illimitable areas, light as a feather though weighing billions of tons."
Nor
is
this
exhaustive
acter of idealist
;
for in his char
all
impressions, all thoughts, trees and people, love and
astronomy, history, and relig ion, enter upon equal terms into his notion of the universe. He is not
faith,
-
against religion; not, indeed, against any religion. He wishes to drag with a larger net, not to
make more com
prehensive synthesis, than any or than all of them put together. In feeling after
the
central
type of man, h
must embrace all eccentricities; his cosmology must subsume all cosmol ogies, and the feelings that gave birth to them his statement of facts must ;
56
include
all
religion
and
all
irreligion,
and Boodha, God and the devil, The world as it is, & the whole world as it is, physical, and spiritual, and historical, with its good and bad, Christ
with
its
manifold inconsistencies,
is
what he wishes to set forth, in strong, picturesque, and popular lineaments, understanding of the average man. One of his favorite endeavors is to get the whole matter into a nut shell; to knock the four corners of the universe, one after another, about
for the
his
readers
ears;
to
hurry him, in
breathless phrases, hither and thither, back and forward, in time and space;
about his own mo mentary personality; and then, draw ing the ground from under his feet, as if by some cataclysm of nature, to plunge him into the unfathomable abyss sown with enormous suns and systems, and among the inconceivable to focus all this
57
WALT WHITMAN
WALT numbers and magnitudes and velociWHITMAN ties of the heavenly bodies. So that he concludes by striking into us some sense of that dispropoition of things which Shelley had illuminated by the ironical flash of these eight words: The desire of the moth for the
star.
The same ent
truth, but to
purpose
what
Whitman
!
s
a differ
moth
is
mightily at his ease about all the planets in heaven, and cannot think too highly of our sublunary tapers.
The
universe
so large that imagi nation flags in the effort to conceive it; but here, in the meantime, is the is
world under our feet, a very warm and habitable corner. The earth, that is sufficient; I do not want the constellations any nearer," he re Let your soul marks. And again stand cool and composed," says he, "
"
:
"
before a million
58
universes."
It
is
of a transcendental common sense, such as Thoreau held and sometimes uttered. But Whit the
language
man, who has clination for
WALT WHITMAN
somewhat vulgar in technical talk and the a
jargon of philosophy, is not content with a few pregnant hints; he must put the dots upon his i s; he must corroborate the songs of Apollo by some of the darkest talk of human
metaphysic. He tells his disciples that to confront the they must be ready "
growing arrogance of
Realism."
Each
for himself, the
keystone of this universal edifice. Nothing, not God," he says, greater to one than oneself is;"^ a statement with an irreligious smack at the first sight; but like most start
person
is,
and the occasion "
"is
ling sayings, a manifest truism on a second. He will give effect to his own
character without apology; he sees "that the elementary laws never
59
WALT WHITMAN
"
apologize."
I
he
reckon,"
adds,
with quaint colloquial arrogance, I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after "
The
all."
being;
level follows the
so,
will
unrelentingly,
everything, every person, his
law of
is
its
he;
good
in
place and way; God is the of all, and all are in one de
own
maker
For he believes in God, & that with a sort of blasphemous security. No array of terms," quoth he, no sign.
"
"
how much at am about God and about
array of terms can say
peace
I
death."
There
certainly never was a carried things with a
prophet who higher hand; he gives us less a body of dogmas than a series of proclama tions by the grace of God; and lan guage, you will fails
him
trepidations.
positively
how far he stands human doubts and
to express
above the highest
60
observe,
of truths to a person s sublime conviction of himself, comes the attraction of one person
But next
in order
for another,
word
the "
The
and
all
that
we mean by
man
for his
love:
dear love of
rade
com
the attraction of friend
for friend,
&
Of
the well-married husband
Of
of children and parents, city for city and land for land."
The
wife,
of the most sublime idealist is broken in upon by other people s faces; he sees a look in their solitude
eyes that corresponds to something in his own heart; there comes a tone in
which convicts him of a fellowstartling weakness for his creatures. While he is hymning the ego and commercing with God and the universe, a woman goes below his window; and at the turn of her skirt their voices
61
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
or the color of her eyes, Icarus is re^called from heaven by the run. Love is
so startlingly real that
it
takes rank
upon an equal
footing of reality with the consciousness of personal exist
We
are as heartily persuaded of the identity of those we love as of
ence.
our
own
And
so
sympathy pairs with self-assertion, the two gerents of human life on earth; and Whitman s ideal man must not only be strong, free, and self-reliant in himself, but his freedom must be bounded and his strength perfected by the most intimate, eager, & longsuffering love for others. To some identity.
taking away with the left hand what has been so generous has ly given with the right. Morality extent
this
is
been ceremoniously extruded from the door only to be brought in again by the window. We are told, on one page, to do as we please ; and on the 62
next
we
having done are
as the
author pleases.
assured that
first
WALT We WHITMAN
are sharply upbraided for not
we
are the finest
own right; and then it appears that we are only fine fellows in so far as we practise a most quixotic code of morals. The in clear ether disciple who saw himself a moment before is plunged down again among the fogs and complica tions of duty. And this is all the more overwhelming because Whitman in fellows in the world in our
sex,
not only on love between sex and and between friends of the same
sex,
but in the
sists
field
of the
political sympathies;
less
intense
and his ideal man
must not only be but a
a generous friend conscientious voter into the
bargain.
His method somewhat lessens the dif ficulty.
He
member, to be,
not, the reader will re to tell us how good we ought is
but to remind us
how good we 63
WALT WHITMAN
He
encourage us to be free & kind, by proving that we are free and kind already. He passes our corporate life under review, to show that it is upheld by the very virtues of which he makes himself the advocate. There is no object so soft," he says some are.
is
to
"
where in his big, plain way, there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel d universe." Rightly un derstood, it is on the softest of all ob "
jects, the
sympathetic heart, that the
and se easily curely as on a perfect axle. There is no room, of course, for doubt or dis
wheel of society turns
cussion about conduct, where every one is to follow the law of his being
with exact compliance. Whitman hates doubt, deprecates discussion, and dis courages to his utmost the craving, carping sensibilities of the conscience. We are to imitate, to use one of his absurd and happy phrases,
"
the sat-
isfaction
and aplomb of
animals."
If
of ranting Chrisa fit consequent to tianity in morals, the ranting optimism of his cosmol ogy, it is because he declares it to be the original deliverance of the human heart ; or at least, for he would be hon historical in method, of the hu estly
he preaches a
man
sort
heart as at present Christianized.
His is a morality without a prohibition ; his policy is one of encouragement all around. A man must be a born hero to come up to Whitman s stand ard in the practice of any of the pos itive virtues; but of a negative virtue, such as temperance or chastity, he has so little to say, that the reader need not be surprised if he drops a word or
two upon the other lay
side.
He would
down nothing that would be a clog
;
he would prescribe nothing that can not be done ruddily, in a heat. The great point is to get people under way.
65
WALT WHITMAN
WALT To the faithful Whitmanite this would WHITMAN be justified by the belief that God made all, and that all was good; the prophet in cry
his doctrine, has
only to
and mankind will gallop on the road to
"Tally-ho,"
break into a El Dorado. Perhaps, to another class of minds, it may look like the result of the somewhat cynical reflection that you will not make a kind man out of one who is unkind by any precepts under heaven; tempered by the belief that, in natural circum stances, the large majority
Thence
is
well dis
would
follow, that if you can only get every one to feel more warmly and act more courage
posed.
it
ously, the balance of results will be for good.
So far, you see, the doctrine is pretty coherent as a doctrine; as a picture of man s life it is incomplete & mis leading, although eminently cheerful.
66
he
This
is
knowledge; anything,
himself the
to ac-
prophetic in in his noble disregard
for if
it is
he
first
is
Do I contradict my of consistency. he asks somewhere; and then self? pat comes the answer, the best an swer ever given in print, worthy of a sage, or rather of a woman: "Very "
"
well,
with
then,
I
contradict
this addition,
myself! not so feminine &
perhaps not altogether so satisfactory I am I contain multitudes." large :
"
matter of fact, partakes largely of the nature of tragedy. The gospel according to Whitman, even if it be not so logical, has this ad vantage over the gospel according to Pangloss, that it does not utterly dis regard the existence of temporal evil. Whitman accepts the fact of disease and wretchedness like an honest man; and instead of trying to qualify it in the interest of his optimism, sets himLife, as a
WALT WHITMAN
WALT self WHITMAN He that
to spur people up to be helpful. expresses a conviction, indeed, all will
be
made up
to the vic
tims in the end; that "what is un tried and afterward will fail no one, not even "the old man who has lived "
without purpose and feels it with bit terness worse than gall." But this is not to palliate our sense of what is hard or melancholy in the present. Pangloss, smarting under one of the worst things that ever was supposed to come from America, consoled him self with the reflection that it was the price we have to pay for cochi neal. And with that murderous par ody, logical optimism and the praises of the best of possible words went irrevocably out of season, and have been no more heard of in the mouths
of reasonable men. us
all
treats
Whitman
evil
68
and
spares
cochineal; he sorrow in a spirit
allusions to the
of welcome; as an old seadog might have welcomed the sight of the enemy s topsails off the Span ish Main. There, at least, he seems to say, is something obvious to be done. I do not know many better things in literature than the brief almost
as
brief
pictures,
and
vivid like things
with which he by lightning, tries to stir up the world s heart upon the side of mercy. He braces us, on the one hand, with examples of he roic duty and helpfulness; on the other, he touches us with pitiful in stances of people needing help. He seen
knows how
to
make
the heart beat us with
at a brave story; to inflame
hunted slave; shame when of the drunken prostitute.
just resentment over the to stop our mouths for
he tells For all the
afflicted, all the
the wicked, a spirit
which
I
weak,
good word
is
can only
call
all
said in a
one of 69
WALT WHITMAN
WALT ultra-Christianity; and however wild, WHITMAN however contradictory, it may be in parts, this at least may be said for his book, as it may be said of the Christian Gospels, that no
one
will
however respectable, but he gets a knock upon his conscience; no one, however fallen, but he finds a kindly and supporting welcome. read
it,
70
IE
has
not been content
with merely blowing the trumpet for the battle of well-doing; he has given to his precepts the authority of his
own
brave example. Naturally a grave, believing man, with little or no sense
of humor, he has succeeded
as well
in life as in his printed performances. The spirit that was in him has come
most eloquently
forth
Many who
in his actions.
have only read
his
poetry have been tempted to set him down as an ass, or even as a charlatan; but I never met any one who had known
him personally who did not profess a solid affection and respect for the
man
s
character.
He
as
practises
he
professes; he feels deeply that Chris tian love for all men, that toleration,
that cheerful delight in serving oth ers, which he often celebrates in lit
erature with
a doubtful measure of 7
1
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
And
perhaps, out of all his writings, the best and the most hu success.
man and
convincing passages are to be found in these soil d and creas d little livraisons, each composed of a "
two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fastened with a pin," which he scribbled dur ing the war by the bedsides of the sheet or
wounded
or in
the
excitement
of
great events. They are hardly litera ture in the formal meaning of the
word; he has left his jottings for the most part as he made them; a home from the lips of a ly detail, a word dying
soldier, a
business
memoran
the copy of a letter short, straightforward to the point, with
dum,
none of the trappings of composi but they breathe a profound sentiment, they give us a vivid look at one of the sides of life, and they make us acquainted with a man tion;
72
whom
Whit- WALT man s intense Americanism, his un- WHITMAN limited belief in the future of These it is
States
(as,
an honor to love.
*J|
with reverential capitals,
he loves to call them), made the war a period of great trial to his soul. The new virtue, Unionism, of which he is the sole inventor, seemed to have fallen into premature unpopu All that he loved, hoped, or larity. hated,
hung
in the balance.
game of war was not only tous to him in its issues;
And the momen it
subli
mated his spirit by its heroic displays, and tortured him intimately by the spectacle of its horrors. It was a the was a place of education, it was like a season of religious revival. He watched Lincoln going daily to his work; he studied and fraternized with young soldiery passing to the front; above all, he walked the hos atre, it
pitals,
reading the Bible, distributing
73
WALT WHITMAN
clean clothes, or apples, or tobacco; a patient, helpful, reverend
of kind speeches. His memoranda of
this
man,
full
period are
al
most bewildering to read. From one point of view they seem those of a district visitor ; from another, they look like the formless jottings of an artist in the picturesque. More than
one woman, on
whom
I
tried the ex
immediately claimed the writer for a fellow-woman. More than
periment,
might identify him as a shoddy newspaper correspondent without the necessary faculty of style. And yet the story touches home; and
one
literary purist
you are of the weeping order of mankind, you will certainly find your eyes fill with tears, of which you have no reason to be ashamed. There is only one way to characterize a work of this order, and that is to quote. Here is a passage from a letter to a if
74
mother, unknown to Whitman, whose son died in hospital: "
as
Frank,
as I saw,
far
had every
thing requisite in surgical treatment, nursing, etc. He had watches much of the time. He was so good and well-
and
behaved,
affectionate,
I
myself
him very much. I was in habit of coming in afternoons and liked
the sit
ting by him, and he liked to have me liked to put out his arm and lay his
hand on
so
a long while.
was more
my knee
would keep
Toward
it
the last he
and
flighty at night often fancied himself with his reg
iment
restless
sometimes seem d as if his feelings were hurt by being blamed by his officers for something he was entirely innocent of said never in my life was thought capable of such a thing, and never was. At other times he would fancy himself talking as it seem d to children or
by
his talk
<I
75
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
such like,
suppose, and giving them good advice; would talk to them a long while. All the time his relatives, I
he was out of his head not one single bad word, or thought, or idea es caped him. It was remark d that
many senses
a
man
s
conversation in
was not half
so
good
as
his
Frank
s
delirium.
He
was perfectly willing to die he had become very weak, and had suffer d a good deal, and was per fectly resign d, poor boy. I do not know his past life, but I feel as if it must have been good. At any rate what I saw of him here, under the most trying circumstances, with a painful wound, and among stran gers, I can say that he behaved so brave, so composed, and so sweet and affectionate, it could not be surpassed. And now, like many other noble and "
good men,
after serving his
country
as a
soldier,
he has yielded up
his
the very outset in her service. Such things are gloomy yet there is a text, God doeth all things
young
life at
<
the meaning of which, after due time, appears to the soul. I thought perhaps a few words,
well/ "
though from a stranger, about your son, from one who was with him at the last, might be worth while, for I loved the young man, though I but saw him immediately to lose him." It
is
easy
to pick holes in the of this letter, but what are
enough
grammar we to say of and
its
tenderness
profound goodness
?
It
is
written
as
though he had the mother s face be fore his eyes, and saw her wincing in the flesh at every word. And what, again,
are
we
to
say
of
its
sober
truthfulness, not exaggerating, not running to phrases, not seeking to make a hero out of what was only
77
WALT WHITMAN
WALT an ordinary but good & brave young WHITMAN man ? Literary reticence is not Whit man s stronghold; and this reticence not literary, but humane; it is not that of a good artist but that of a
is
good man. He knew that what the mother wished to hear about was Frank; and he told her about her Frank as he was.
ERE
something should be WALT said of Whitman s style, WHITMAN for style is of the essence of thinking. And where a man is so critically deliberate as our author, and goes solemnly about his poetry for an ulterior end, every in dication is worth notice. He has chosen a rough, unrhymed, lyrical verse ; sometimes instinct with a fine
movement; often
so
rug can only be described by saying that he has not taken the trouble to write prose. I processional
ged and
careless that
it
myself that it was selected principally because it was easy to write, although not without recollec tions of the marching measures of some of the prose in our English Old Testament. According to Whitman, believe
on the other hand,
"
the time has ar
rived to essentially break barriers
down
the
of form between Prose and
79
WALT WHITMAN
for the most cogent Poetry purof those inland states, & poses great for Texas, and California, and Ore a statement which is among gon;" the happiest achievements of Amer .
.
.
ican humor. itatives,"
He
calls his verses
"
rec
in easily followed allusion
to a musical form.
"
Easily- written,
I loose-fingered chords," he cries, feel the thrum of your climax and "
close."
Too
often,
one who rhythm; and in only
I
fear,
can spite
he
is
perceive
the
the
of Mr. Swin
burne, a great part of his work con sidered as verse is poor bald stuff.
Considered,
not
as
but
verse,
speech, a great part of
it
is
full
as
of
strange and admirable merits. The right detail is seized; the right word, bold and trenchant, is thrust into its
Whitman
has small regard to free literary decencies, and is totally from literary timidities. He is neither place.
80
nor of being add, of being ri-
afraid of being slangy
dull; nor, let me diculous. The result prising
compound of
sentimental
is
most sur
a
plain grandeur,
and down
affectation,
right nonsense. It would be useless to follow his detractors and give in
stances of
how bad he
can be at his would be not
worst; and perhaps it much wiser to give extracted speci mens of how happily he can write
when he
is
at
his
best.
These come
most advantage in place; owing something,
in to
to
their it
may
the offset of their curious
roundings.
And one
thing
is
own be, sur
certain,
one can appreciate Whit man s excellences until he has grown accustomed to his faults. Until you that
no
are content to pick poetry out of his
pages almost as you must pick it out of a Greek play in Bohn s translation, your gravity will be continually up-
81
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
your ears perpetually disappointed, and the whole book will be no more to you than a particularly fla grant production by the Poet Close. ^[ A writer of this uncertain quality set,
was, perhaps, unfortunate in taking for thesis the beauty of the world as
now
not only on the hill-tops, but in the factory; not only by the harbor full of stately ships, but in the magazine of the hopelessly pro it
is,
mon tact.
To show
beauty in com things is the work of the rarest It is not to be done by the
saic hatter.
wishing. It ory, but
is
easy to posit as a the
to bring
it
home
to
men
s
minds is the problem of literature, and is only accomplished by rare talent, and in comparatively rare in stances. To bid the whole world stand and deliver, with a dogma in one s right hand by way of pistol; to cover reams of paper in a galloping, 82
headstrong vein; to cry louder and louder over everything as it comes up, and
make no
distinction in
one
s
enthusiasm over the most incompar able matters; to prove one s entire want of sympathy for the jaded, lit erary palate, by calling, not a spade a spade, but a hatter a hatter, in a this, in spite of apostrophe; the airs of inspiration, is not the
lyrical all
way
to
do
it.
It
may be
and very wounding
very wrong,
to a respectable
of industry, but the word "hatter" cannot be used seriously in emotional verse; not to understand this, is to have no literary tact; and
branch
would, for his own sake, that this were the only inadmissible expres sion with which Whitman had be decked his pages. The book teems with similar comicalities; and to a reader who is determined to take it from that side only, presents a perI
83
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
of fun. A good deal of the result of theory playing
feet carnival this
is
its
usual vile trick
is
because he
is
upon the artist. It a Democrat that
Whitman must have
in the hatter. If
you may say Admiral, he reasons, why may you not say Hatter? One man is as good as another, and it is the business of the
show poetry
"
great
poet"
in the life of the
one
to as
A
most incontro vertible sentiment surely, and one which nobody would think of con and here is the troverting, where where any beauty has been point shown. But how, where that is not the case ? where the hatter is simply introduced, as God made him and as his fellow-men have miscalled him, well as the other.
at the
sody a
?
man
ity
crisis
of a high-flown rhap
And what of
are
Whitman
we s
to say,
where
notable capac
for putting things in a bright, pic-
turesque, and novel way, simply gives up the attempt, and indulges, with
apparent exultation, in an inventory of trades or implements, with no
more
color or coherence than in so
many index-words out of a diction I do not know that we can ary say ?
anything, but that it is a prodigiously amusing exhibition for a line or so.
The
Whitman must have known better. The man is a great critic, & so far as I can make out, a good one; and how much crit icism does it require to know that worst
of
it
is,
that
capitulation is not description, or that fingering on a dumb keyboard,
with whatsoever show of sentiment
and execution,
not at all the same thing as discoursing music? I wish I could believe he was quite honest with us; but, indeed, who was ever quite honest
purpose?
It
is
who wrote is
a
flight
a
book
for a
beyond the 85
WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN
reach of
human magnanimity. One
other point, where his means failed him, must be touched upon, how ever shortly. In his desire to accept all
facts
within
loyally
and simply,
it
fell
programme to speak at some length and with some plainness on what is, for I really do not know what reason, the most delicate of his
subjects. Seeing in that one of the most serious and interesting parts of
he was aggrieved that it should be looked upon as ridiculous or shameful. No one speaks of maternity with his tongue in his cheek; and Whitman made a bold push to set the sanctity of fatherhood beside the sanctity of motherhood, & introduce this also among the things that can be spoken of without either a blush or a wink. But the Philistines have been too strong ; and to say truth, life,
Whitman 86
has rather played the fool.
We may be thoroughly conscious that WALT his
end
is
improving; that
be a good thing
if a
it
would WHITMAN
window were
opened on these close privacies of life; that on this subject, as on all others, he now and then lets fall a pregnant saying. But we are not satisfied. We feel that he was not the man for so an enterprise. He loses our sympathy in the character of a poet by attracting too much of our atten tion in that of a Bull in a China Shop. difficult
And
where, by a little more art, we might have been solemnized ourselves, it is too often Whitman alone who is
solemn
in
the face of an audience
somewhat indecorously amused.
WALT WHITMAN
INALLY, tant,
after all, to
beings state,
prudence which
most impor
as
in
what
human
our disputable
that higher was to be the aim and is
of these deliberate productions ? ^[Whitman is too clever to slip into a succinct formula. If he could have issue
adequately said his say in a single prov erb, it is to be presumed he would
not have put himself to the trouble of writing several volumes. It was his programme to state as much as he could of the world with all its con tradictions, and leave the upshot with God who planned it. What he has made of the world and the world s meanings is to be found at large in his poems. These altogether give his an swers to the problems of belief and
conduct; in many ways righteous and high-spirited, in some ways loose and contradictory. And yet there are two 88
passages
from
the
preface
to
the
of Grass" which do pretty well condense his teaching on all es "Leaves
&
sential points, yet preserve a ure of his spirit. "This
is
what you
in the one,
"love
shall
do,"
meas
he says
the earth, and sun,
and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your in come and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have pa
and indulgence toward the peo ple, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers of fam
tience
read these leaves own works) (his in the open air every season of every
ilies,
year of your
life;
re-examine
all
you
have been told at school or church, or in any book, and dismiss whatever
WALT WHITMAN
WALT insults your own WHITMAN dence of the greatest
soul."
in the other is,
^[
"The
poet,"
pruhe adds
and the greatest poet u
of course, himself
knows
that
young man who composedly per illed his life and lost it, has done ex the
ceeding well for himself; while the man who has not perilled his life, and retains
it
to old age in riches
and
ease,
has perhaps achieved nothing for him self worth mentioning; and that only that person has no great prudence to learn, who has learnt to prefer real
long-lived things, and favors body and soul the same, and perceives the in direct surely following the direct, what evil or good he does leaping
and on
ward and waiting to meet him again, and who in his spirit, in any emer gency whatever, neither hurries nor avoids
There these
death."
is
much
extracts,
90
that
is
Christian in
startlingly
Christian.
Any man
reader s
own
whatever
who
bears in
advice
and
insults his
own
find plenty that
is
mind Whit- WALT "
dismisses
soul"
will
bracing, brighten
ing, and chastening to reward him for a little patience at first. It seems hard ly possible that evil "
from
so
Leaves of
any being should get
healthy a book as the
which
is
simply comical wherever it falls short of no if there be bility; but any such, who Grass,"
cannot both take and leave, who cannot let a single opportunity pass by without some unworthy and un manly thought, I should have as great difficulty, and neither more nor less, in recommending the works of Whit
man
lending them Shakespeare, or letting them go abroad outside of the grounds of a private asylum. as in
91
WHITMAN
THE ESSAY ON WALT WHITMAN," BY SO HERE ENDETH ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THE FRONTISPIECE BEING A PHOTOGRAVURE OF THE BAS RELIEF BY ST. GEROME-ROYCROFT, THE TITLE PAGE DESIGNED BY LOUIS RHEAD, AND THE WHOLE DONE INTO A BOOK BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THE ROYCROFT SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, U. S. A., IN THE YEAR MCM. "
:
14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN
DEPT.
due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: Tel. No. 642-3405 Renewals may be made 4 days prior to date due. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. This book
is
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