CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS3231.C29 1909 
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 3 1924 020 764 324 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924020764324 
 
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 
 
 WHITMAN 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 
 
 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 BY 
 GEORGE RICE CARPENTER 
 
 ■Rda gorfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1909 
 
 AS rights reserved 
 
 T 
 

 A. z^o-y^f^ 
 
 copybioht, 1909, 
 Bt THS MAOMILLAN COMPANT. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1909. 
 
 fS:' '■'.-\ 
 
 (I t 
 
 UTotlnaoti ]^re«8 
 
 J. B. Oushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 Boyhood (1819-1841) 1 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 JOURKALIST (1841-1850) 18 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 "WOBKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 33 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 CoMEADESHip (1861-1873) 89 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 Old Age (1873-1892) 139 
 
WALT WHITMAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BOYHOOD (1819-1841) 
 
 Long Island had been the home of the Whitmans 
 for generations. Fish-shaped, as Whitman loved to 
 picture it, it stretches away from New York, running 
 a little to the north of east, for one hundred and 
 twenty-five miles, with an average breadth of about 
 twelve. On the north it has several fine harbours, in 
 the middle a ridge of low hills, on the south a scarcely 
 broken stretch of narrow, desolate, dangerous beach, 
 protecting the inner waters of a chain of bays. The 
 western settlements in the island were originally Dutch ; 
 the eastern we,re made by the English, — Independents 
 of the old breed, shut off from Connecticut by the Sound, 
 and from New York by the sandy wilderness, but 
 sturdily content in their isolation. Journeying east 
 from New York, even as late as Whitman's childhood, 
 one soon passed out of the village of Brooklyn and its 
 outlying farms into the great Hempstead plain, un- 
 broken by tree, shrub, or fence, a pasture-ground for 
 sheep and cattle, who fattened on the coai'se grass that 
 grew abundantly in its black but thin soil. Then, as 
 the mould became mixed with sand, came the " brushy 
 plains " of scrub oak. Forty miles of this, and, as the 
 sand increased in fineness and fluidity, one entered 
 the "pine plains," a low, irregular forest that con- 
 B 1 
 
2 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 tinued to the sand dunes of the east. The railroad 
 did not penetrate far into the island until 1841 ; the 
 roads were bad, and communication by sea was often 
 hazardous. " The necessary consequence is," says an 
 historian of the island in 1845, "that locomotion, at 
 least to any distance from home, is almost unknown 
 on Long Island. The writer has heard men sixty 
 years of age say that they were never twenty miles 
 from the spot on which they were born ; and no doubt 
 there are many now living who never breathed the 
 atmosphere of more than two towns in their lives." 
 Huntington, the Whitman township, lay towards the 
 middle of the island, forty miles east of Brooklyn, 
 and stretched from the beautiful many-forked north- 
 ern bay, with its excellent harbours, to the salt marshes 
 and beaches of the south. It contained more than a 
 hundred square miles and was sparsely settled. The 
 climate was tempered by the sea air ; the soU, when 
 fertilized by the weeds and fish of the sea, repaid care ; 
 the life was. peaceful, honest, and hearty; the inhabit- 
 ants 'were farmers who were no strangers to the sea. 
 And the isolation was that of a far-distant land. 
 
 Whitman is so deeply associated in our minds with 
 the teeming life of Manhattan that it is difficult to 
 realize that he was a country boy. He was born 
 May 31, 1819, in the hamlet of West Hills, in this 
 township of Huntington, Suffolk County, Long Island, 
 where his ancestors had lived since the' huddle of the 
 seventeenth century. Like Whittier, he sprang from 
 an old, permanently settled country stock, long thor- 
 oughly adapted to its environment, and now ready to 
 bear its unique flower and fruit. 
 
 This environment was scarcely to be differentiated 
 
1.] BOYHOOD (1819-1841) 3 
 
 from that of Kew England. Huntington had been 
 settled in 1663 by New England colonists, and for a 
 century and a half its connections with the mainland 
 across the Sound — scarcely more than ten miles wide 
 at this point, from land to land — were closer than 
 those with Brooklyn and New York. It had been 
 early decided by Dutch and English commissioners 
 that the Dutch should not interfere with settlements 
 to the east of Oyster Bay, which were absolutely Eng- 
 lish in character and had been admitted as members 
 of the Connecticut or the N"ew Haven Colony. In 
 1664, much against their will, Huntington and its 
 sister settlements became part of the possessions of 
 the Duke of York, to be governed by the hated 
 "Duke's laws," which did not provide for represen- 
 tation in a general assembly. The island became 
 Yorkshire, and Huntington was in the " East Eiding." 
 The pioneers submitted with ill grace, for as an out- 
 lying member of the Connecticut Colony they had been 
 almost absolutely independent, and they flatly refused 
 to contribute to the repair of the New York fort, on 
 the ground that they were deprived of the liberties of 
 Englishmen. In 1673 the Dutch seized New York 
 again and laid a heavy hand on Huntington, which 
 refused to take any oath that would pledge it to bear 
 arms against Great Britain, and plainly looked to 
 being taken, like Easthampton, Southampton, and 
 Southold, under the protection of Connecticut. The 
 Dutch occupation, however, was brief, and the town 
 was forced back under the abhorred "Duke's laws." 
 Even after representation was granted, in 1683, its 
 sympathies were still with Connecticut rather than 
 with New York, and though it was inclined to look 
 
4 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 ■with favour on the anti-aristocratic rule of Leisler, it 
 refused to send delegates to the legislature, and did 
 not cease to desire a fresh union with Connecticut 
 until the fall of the Stuarts and the new colonial 
 legislation made such a political conjunction forever 
 out of the question. 
 
 Like the majority of the early settlers in eastern 
 Long Island, the Whitmans were of English stock 
 and Independents in faith. An apparently baseless 
 tradition has connected them with Zechariah Whit- 
 man, a ruling elder and ordained teacher who emi- 
 grated from England in 1635 and lived in New Haven 
 and Milf ord ; but this Zechariah left no issue. Joseph, 
 who was admitted freeman of Connecticut from Hunt- 
 ington in 1664, is probably the same Joseph who is 
 referred to in the minutes of the meeting of the New 
 Haven general court in 1655 as living in Stratford, 
 Connecticut. He was apparently a man of solid ability 
 and character, and the carefully preserved records of 
 Huntington make frequent mention of him. In 1679 
 Andros arbitrarily ordered him to present himself, as 
 late constable of the town, in New York, as if to 
 answer charges for undue independence of his Ex- 
 cellency's trading regulations. He was constable, 
 grand juryman, surveyor, townsman, leather-sealer. 
 He owned several farms ; bought, sold, and exchanged 
 land with an activity that smacks of the Yankee spec- 
 ulator; and he was still living in 1698. His sons 
 appear to have been Joseph, John, Nathaniel, and 
 Samuel, of whom we know little except that against 
 Joseph complaint was brought in 1690 by Henry 
 Whitney for " stealing his daughter's affections con- 
 trary to her mother's mind and using unlawful means 
 
I.] BOYHOOD (1819-1841) 5 
 
 to obtain his daughter's love." The testimony cited 
 seems to show that Joseph was a " good lad," though 
 scarcely yet settled in life. Here tradition fails ; but 
 from among the increasing number of the Whitmans 
 whom the records show, one certainly moved from the 
 old " town spot " to a farm in the hills (West Hills), 
 a little to the south, henceforth to be the home of that 
 branch of the family, and his son Nehemiah was the 
 father of Jesse, whom we know to have been Walt 
 Whitman's grandfather. 
 
 Whatever may be the truth as to the exact geneal- 
 ogy, the Whitmans were old Huntington settlers, well 
 known in their district, and it is almost inconceivable 
 that they should have married otherwise than among 
 their neighbours, who were virtually all of similar 
 blood. The lady irregularly wooed by the second 
 Joseph was either a Whitney or a Ketchum, both 
 familiar names in the early records, and Jesse married 
 a Brush, a name which, since the foundation of the 
 settlement, had been written in close connection with 
 that of his ancestors. 
 
 And there these pioneers lived out their lives with 
 ,their fellows, in a region peculiarly fitted to breed 
 quiet and stalwart independence. At first they dwelt 
 on the old "town spot," with its forts and watch- 
 houses and trainbands, raising what crops they could, 
 clearing the ground, building houses and barns, plant- 
 ing orchards, making timber and clapboards. They 
 had matchlock guns, wooden ploughshares tipped with 
 iron, and ox carts. The women ground the corn. Be- 
 fore the older generation died the village was in order. 
 There were saw-mills and grist-mills, tanneries, brick 
 yards, and docks, a church and a school ; the whale- 
 
6 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 boats plied to and fro on the Sound, and smart little 
 vessels bore barrel staves and pork to the West Indies, 
 returning with sugar, molasses, and rum. Cattle had 
 increased, each bearing the crop of its owner, duly- 
 registered in the town records. The soil proved fairly 
 fertile, the Indians gave little trouble, the salt marshes 
 yielded hay in abundance, and the colonists spread 
 themselves slowly out over their district, apportion- 
 ing the lands in their semi-socialistic fashion. Of 
 the neighbouring counties they knew little. New 
 York was forty miles away, over bad roads, and its 
 authority was light. They lived quietly in peace and 
 independence — the typical life of the Anglo-Saxon 
 community. Even religion was not a disturbing fac- 
 tor, as the records show, for these were no zealots but 
 plain-living country farmers and sea-traders. 
 
 The Revolution told heavily on them. The battle 
 of Long Island cut them off from aid, British squad- 
 ron after squadron anchored in the great harbour, and 
 troops were quartered on them, — Erskine's, Tarleton's, 
 and Tryon's men and Hessians, insolent and brutal. 
 Huntington was easy of access by sea, and the troops 
 there could collect provisions for the New York garri- 
 son and at the same time keep an eye on the Connecti- 
 cut rebels. The local militia, in which Jesse Whitman 
 served, were forced to work on fortifications and (under 
 that imperious renegade Yankee, Benjamin Thompson, 
 later Count Rumford) to share in demolishing their 
 church and in building, in the midst of the burying 
 place on the hill, the hated Fort " Golgotha," using in 
 the construction of the ovens the tombstones of their 
 fathers. The young men waylaid little troops of 
 British soldiers, and spies came and went from Con- 
 
I.] BOYHOOD (1819-1841) 7 
 
 necticTit, among them Nathan Hale, who was captured 
 on the harbour shore. The township was desolated by 
 a bitter guerilla warfare, made more bitter still, 
 shame to say, by bands of marauders who robbed both 
 parties. 
 
 The Eevolution over, the quiet and prosperous life 
 began again, scarcely broken by the flurry of excite- 
 ment caused by the War of 1812. The region was still 
 remote. Eastward and westward the roads were bad, 
 and Huntington brooded in the isolation of the mid- 
 island. It was New England in its independence and 
 self-reliance, more free even than Connecticut from 
 the presence of the aristocratic ideal in any shape; 
 but unlike New England in the absence of. theoretic 
 influences, of morbid religious and emotional analysis, 
 of intense ambition for learning or godliness or wealth, 
 — an almost ideal community, it would seem, where 
 life was sane and healthy, and naught disturbed the 
 growth of all the peaceful and democratic virtues. 
 
 The Whitmans, the biographers tell us, were a sturdy 
 race; "solid, tall, strong-framed, long-lived, moderate 
 of speech, friendly, fond of their land and of horses 
 and cattle, sluggish in their passions but fearful when 
 once started," Dr. Bucke records. Their wives were 
 likely to be women of strong character, also, if we 
 judge from Mr. Burroughs' statement that Nehemiah's 
 wife, the great-grandmother, "was a large, swarthy 
 woman, who smoked tobacco, rode on horseback 
 like a man, managed the most vicious horse, and 
 becoming a widow later in life, went forth every day 
 over her farm-lands, frequently in the saddle, direct- 
 ing the labor of her slaves." The grandfather, Jesse, 
 however, married a woman of gentler type, Hannah 
 
8 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 Brusli, a schoolmistress. Whitman's mother was 
 Louisa, daughter of Major Cornelius Van Velsor, 
 a Dutch farmer at Cold Spring Harbour, three or 
 four miles from West Hills, and of Amy (Naomi) 
 Williams, his wife, daughter of Captain Williams, a ' 
 trader to the West Indies. The Williamses were sea- 
 faring folk and of Quaker sympathies, and Whitman 
 describes his grandmother as belonging to the Society 
 of Friends, though it would seem that she was not 
 technically a member of it. " The Van Velsors," says 
 Dr. Bucke, were " fond of horses, the raising of which 
 from blooded stock was a part of their occupation, 
 and Louisa when young was herself a daring and 
 spirited rider. As a woman and mother she was of 
 marked spiritual and intuitive nature, remarkably 
 healthy and strong, had a kind, generous heart, good 
 sense, and a cheerful and even temper." 
 
 The father, Walter Whitman, Senior, passed his 
 childhood on the farm at West Hills, and was as a lad 
 apprenticed as a carpenter in New York, — the first of 
 his line, apparently, to pass into the outer world. 
 " His business," says Dr. Bucke, " for many years ex- 
 tended into various parts of Long Island. He was a 
 large, quiet, serious man, very kind to children and 
 animals, and a good citizen, neighbour, and parent. 
 Not a few of his barn and house frames, with their 
 seasoned timber and careful braces and joists, are 
 still standing (1883) in Suffolk and Queen's counties 
 and in Brooklyn, strong and plumb as ever." 
 
 The boy spent his early years on the farm. The 
 family moved to Brooklyn when he was four, but for 
 a long time afterwards he apparently passed a good 
 part of each year with his grandmothers, and it was 
 
I.] BOYHOOD (1819-1841) 9 
 
 not until lie was a man grown that lie stepped defi- 
 nitely out of the old Long Island country life. His 
 childhood's impressions he has recorded in There was 
 a Child went Forth, in Out of the Cradle endlessly 
 Hocking, and in Specimen Days. He was a quiet, 
 thoughtful, but active youth, showing genius in no 
 point, but, as we can see now, capable of very deep 
 impressions, of which he did not until middle life 
 attempt analysis. In the first-mentioned poem he 
 touches only on the sights and sounds that thus became 
 part of him : — 
 
 " The early lilacs became part of this child, 
 
 And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and 
 red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird, 
 
 And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, 
 and the mare's foal and the cow's calf. 
 
 And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the 
 pond-side. 
 
 And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, 
 and the beautiful curious liquid, 
 
 And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all be- 
 came part of him." 
 
 In the second he sings a reminiscence : — 
 
 "For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding. 
 Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the 
 
 shadows, 
 Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and 
 
 sights after their sorts. 
 The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, 
 I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, 
 Listen' d long and long " 
 
 to the song of a bird, vainly and lovingly calling its 
 dead mate, and to the melodious hissing of the sea. 
 
10 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 It -was at that hour, it seemed to him in later years, 
 that the poet was bom in him, and he was never to 
 forget those two voices, the desolate bird that sang of 
 love and the sea that whispered of death. 
 
 In his prose reminiscences he entered more fully 
 into detail, recalling the " wooded, hilly, healthy sur- 
 roundings," the broad and beautiful farm lands, the 
 famous apple orchard, the " stately grove of tall, vigor- 
 ous black walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like," and the old 
 Van Velsor homestead, — " the vast kitchen and ample 
 fireplace and the sitting-room adjoining, the plain fur- 
 niture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my 
 grandmother Amy's sweet old face in its Quaker cap, 
 my grandfather 'the Major,' jovial, red, stout, with 
 sonorous voice and characteristic physiognomy." He 
 remembered vividly also his associations with the 
 picturesque inlets of the North Shore and the great 
 bays and beaches of the South Shore, and its long list 
 of tragic wrecks, with the traditions of which he was 
 familiar as a boy and of one or two of which he was 
 almost an observer. As a lad he often went to gather 
 sea-gulls' eggs in summer, and in winter to fish on the 
 frozen waters of the shallow bays, "with hand-sled, 
 axe and eel-sp^ar, after messes of eels. We would cut 
 holes in the ice, sometimes striking quite an eel- 
 bonanza, and filling our baskets with great, fat, sweet, 
 white-meated fellows. The scenes, the ice, drawing 
 the hand-sled, cutting holes, spearing the eels, etc., 
 were of course just such fun as is dearest to boyhood." 
 He knew, too, the "blue-fishers and sea-bass takers" 
 of the eastern end of the island ; on Montauk penin- 
 sula, the "strange, unkempt, half-barbarous herds- 
 men " and the few remaining Indians and half-breeds ; 
 
I.] BOYHOOD (1819-1841) 11 
 
 in the middle of the island, the spreading, prairie- 
 like Hempstead plains, -with their thousands of cattle, 
 and could recall in fancy " the interminable cow pro- 
 cessions," as they found their way home at nightfall, 
 "and hear the music of the tin and copper bells 
 clanking far and near, and breathe the cool of the 
 sweet and slightly aromatic evening air, and note the 
 sunset." 
 
 " Through the same region of the island," he continues, 
 " hut further east, extended wide central tracts of pine and 
 scrub-oak, (charcoal was largely made here,) monotonous and 
 sterile. But many a good day or half-day did I have, wander- 
 ing through those solitary cross-roads, inhaling the peculiar 
 and wild aroma. Here, and all along the island and its shores, 
 I spent [at] intervals many years, all seasons, sometimes riding, 
 sometimes boating, but generally afoot, (I was always then a 
 good walker,) absorbing fields, shores, marine incidents, char- 
 acters, the bay-men, farmers, pilots — always had a plentiful 
 acquaintance ■with the latter, and with fishermen — went every 
 summer on sailing trips — always liked the bare sea^beach, 
 south side, and have some of my happiest hours on It to this 
 day. As I write, the whole experience comes back to me after 
 the lapse of forty and more years — the soothing rustle of the 
 waves, and the saline smell — boyhood's times, the clam-dig- 
 ging, barefoot, and vrith trousers roll'd up — hauling down the 
 creek — the perfume of the sedge-meadows — the hay-boat, and 
 the chowder and fishing excursions. " 
 
 The Brooklyn in which Whitman found himself as 
 a boy was not the great city of to-day, though it was 
 at the very beginning of its rapid development. The 
 population of the whole township in 1824 was only 
 about nine thousand, and that of the village itself 
 scarcely over seven thousand. The houses were 
 mainly clustered around the Old (Fulton) Ferry, 
 below the abrupt rise which is now the Heights and 
 
12 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 was then Clover Hill. The older Dutch houses were 
 quaintly built of stone or with small imported Hol- 
 land bricks, and among them the pert-looking Yankee 
 frame edifices stood out as rude intruders. " Yet one 
 and all," says Mr. Stiles, the historian of the city, 
 " wore an unpretentious and neighborly look, under 
 the drooping shadows of the noble elms with which 
 the city abounded." The streets were unpaved, un- 
 lighted, without sidewalks, and those who went abroad 
 at night must pick their way by the light of their own 
 lanterns through streets often well-nigh impassable 
 from mud and mire. There were wharves and store- 
 houses, slaughtering-houses, distilleries, ropewalks, 
 and various manufactories. The mail went once a 
 day to New York. 
 
 The antiquarians have patiently restored the old 
 village, street by street, house by house, family by 
 family, and he who pores over their works may imag- 
 ine how it struck the eyes of the country lad. It was 
 a step in his preparation for the larger world, a friendly 
 little spot where every one knew everybody and where 
 he quietly grew to greater knowledge of mankind. It 
 was a quaint place, too, full of strange names and 
 strange characters, all good to teach a lad the many- 
 sidedness of life. He could see his townsfolk in 1829, 
 as Furman records in his manuscript notes, still dig- 
 ging for Captain Kidd's money; and he knew, no doubt, 
 the whole picturesque mixture of Dutch and Hugue- 
 not and English life, even to Het Dorp, the town plot 
 of Bushwick, reluctantly giving up its Dutch charac- 
 ter, and Greenpoint, unyielding in its old Dutch ways ; 
 
 though his earliest memories were of the ferries, 
 
 how he was petted by the gatekeepers and deck hands, 
 
I.] BOYHOOD (1819-1841) 13 
 
 and "the horses that seem'd to me so queer as they 
 trudg'd around the central houses of the boats, mak- 
 ing the -water-power. " And now and then he had a 
 glimpse of the greater outer world, as when, on the 
 occasion of the laying of a corner-stone, he found him- 
 self, a child of five, close to Lafayette, who gave him 
 a kiss and set him down in a safer place in the throng. 
 In Brooklyn, then just beginning to stir with new 
 life, the father plied his trade, and built house after 
 house for himself, each of which was successively 
 mortgaged and eventually lost. The children were 
 Jesse, born in 1818 ; Walter,* fifteen months younger ; 
 Mary Elizabeth, 1821 ; Louisa, 1823 ; an unnamed in- 
 fant, who lived only a few months, 1825 ; Andrew 
 Jackson, 1827; George Washington, 1829; Thomas 
 Jefferson, 1833; and Edw;ard, crippled in body and 
 weak of mind, 1835. With his brothers and sisters 
 Walt, it should be said in passing, was throughout his 
 life on terms of intimacy and affection. Of his rela- 
 tions with his father we hear little, and it may be sur- 
 mised that from the outset the hard-working, serious, 
 practical man found it diflBcult to understand a lad 
 whose wayward, emotional temperament grew with 
 his years, and who lacked the desire to turn his 
 pennies to the best account. For sympathy and un- 
 derstanding the child must have instinctively turned 
 then, as he did his whole life long, to his mother, a 
 remarkable woman, whose calm good sense, never 
 
 1 " At home, through infancy and boyhood, he was always 
 called ' Walt,' to distinguish him from his father ' Walter,' and 
 the short name has always been used for him by his relatives 
 and friends" (Dr. Bucke). In his manhood he deliberately 
 adopted the shorter name. 
 
14 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 failing equanimity, and insight into the essentials of 
 life and character he never ceased to praise. 
 
 The family was large and its needs were imperative, 
 and the lad was early set to work. He had attended 
 the public schools for several years, and in 1831, as 
 a lad of twelve, he was engaged in a lawyer's office, 
 where he had " a nice desk and window-nook " to him- 
 self. One of his employers helped him with his hand- 
 writing and composition, and "(the signal event of 
 my life up to that time) subscribed for me to a big cir- 
 culating library. For a time I now revell'd in romance- 
 reading of all kinds; first, the Arabian Nights, all 
 the volumes, an amazing treat. Then, with sorties 
 in very many other directions, took in Walter Scott's 
 novels, one after another, and his poetry." He left 
 this friendly haven for a similar position in a doctor's 
 office ; and then, in 1833, when his family moved back 
 to the country again, he began life in earnest as a 
 printer's apprentice in the office of the ion.gr Island 
 Patriot, a weekly paper of very limited circulation, 
 printed by hand on an old-fashioned wooden press. 
 Whitman recalled pleasantly his life there: "An 
 old printer in the house, William Hartshorne, a revo- 
 lutionary character, who had seen Washington, was a 
 special friend of mine, and I had many a talk with 
 him about long-past times. The apprentices, includ- 
 ing myself, boarded with his granddaughter. I used 
 occasionally to go out riding with the boss, who was 
 very kind to us." Later, in 1834 or 1835, he was a 
 compositor on the Long Island Star, another weekly 
 or semi-weekly paper, the editor of which afterward 
 characterized him facetiously as a lazy lad — too lazy 
 to shake even with an ague. Like many a printer, he. 
 
I.] BOYHOOD (1819-1841) 15 
 
 had a taste for literary composition. Several " senti- 
 mental bits " had appeared in the Patriot, and " a piece 
 or two in George P. Morris's then celebrated and fash- 
 ionable Mirror, of New York City. I remember with 
 what half-suppressed excitement I used to watch for 
 the big, fat, red-faced, slow-moving, very old English 
 carrier who distributed the Mirror in Brooklyn; and 
 when I got one, opening and cutting the leaves with 
 trembling fingers. How it made my heart double-beat 
 to see my piece on the pretty paper in nice type." 
 
 Whitman's love for reading, his taste for writing, 
 his sound training as a compositor, and his native 
 genius for friendship, combined to give him a bent for 
 teaching, and in 1836 and 1837, after working, accord- 
 ing to his own account, in printing-offtees in New 
 York, he began this new profession as a country peda- 
 gogue at Babylon, on the south shore of the island. 
 He is remembered as a big, earnest, quiet fellow, 
 neatly dressed, black-haired and fresh-faced, and a 
 moderately good teacher, though kindly and uncon- 
 ventional in his methods of discipline as contrasted 
 with the somewhat brutal methods of the day. His 
 pupils were partly girls, but he showed no senti- 
 mental tendencies, and his friendships were mostly 
 with his elders. 
 
 Teaching led naturally to journalism, and in 1838 
 we find him back in his own " beautiful town of Hunt- 
 ington," where he had been encouraged to start a paper 
 which he called the Long Islander. " I bought a press 
 and types," he relates, "hired some little help, but 
 did most of the work myself, including the press- 
 work. Everything seem'd turning out well; (only 
 my own restlessness prevented my gradually estab- 
 
16 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 lishing a permanent property there.) I bought a good 
 horse, and every week went all round the country 
 serving my papers, devoting one day and night to it. 
 I never had happier jaunts — going over to south side, 
 to Babylon, down the south road, across to Smithtown 
 and Comae, and back home. The experience of those 
 jaunts, the dear old-fashion'd farmers and their wives, 
 the stops by the hay -fields, the hospitality, nice din- 
 ners, occasional evenings, the girls, the rides through 
 the brush, and the smell from the dale of the south 
 woods, come up in my memory to this day." 
 
 From journalism he shifted restlessly back to 
 teaching again, in 1839-1841, at Babylon, in Jamaica 
 Academy, and elsewhere. And now we hear of him 
 as a debater in several local societies, and as a public 
 speaker on political questions. New ideas were ob- 
 truding themselves into his slow-growing mind, and 
 he was from the outset more or less of a radical. He 
 was an abolitionist, a teetotaler, and opposed to capi- 
 tal punishment — three doctrines which he held in 
 common with Whittier, the Massachusetts country 
 boy and young journalist and politician, whose early 
 career had many points of similarity with his. In 
 the campaign of 1840 he spoke often for Van Buren, 
 the Democratic nominee, and it was plain that the 
 impulse to self-expression, whether by teaching, by 
 writing, or by speaking, was rooting itself deeply in 
 his heart. 
 
 Eew facts have been published that throw any special i 
 light iipon his state of mind in this period. His mother s 
 relates that he was a very good but a very strange 
 boy. He once, in later life, spoke of his boyhood as , 
 restless and unhappy. We may perhaps surmise that, ^ 
 
I.] BOYHOOD (1819-1841) 17 
 
 in spite of his robust appearance and his constitu- 
 tional indolence, he was nervously highly impression- 
 able. He speaks himself of the Whitman stubbornness 
 of mind, and various hints would indicate that he was 
 disposed to find his own way, and to persist in it, and 
 that the many and various impulses of youth, imper- 
 fectly coordinated, gave him a vague unrest until 
 he had worked out, in his own slow-going fashion, 
 their destined combination. 
 
 At all events, it was a good start in life, and one 
 typical of the Middle States, where the great forma- 
 tive and stimulating influences of education and re- 
 ligion were weaker than in Kew England. His 
 technical learning had been slight, but he had been 
 made free of the world, of books and of men ; and his 
 fate lay in his own hands. For a college education 
 he had apparently no ambition. Nor was religion a 
 pressing matter with him. His father was fond of 
 hearing Elias Hicks preach, and as a boy Whitman 
 was deeply moved by one of the last sermons of the 
 old prophet of the inner light ; but there was nothing 
 to urge the lad to a keenfeelingof the need of salvation 
 or to a desire for a spiritual life. Promptings toward 
 self-aggrandizement or self-sacrifice were alike absent. 
 He was a healthy, hearty, well-balanced youth, temper- 
 ate, free from vicious habits, fond of out-door life, with 
 such education in books as all may have, and such educa- 
 tion in life as everybody gets who learns a trade and 
 who knows the country and the city. Such a youth, 
 slow-evolving, unawakened, easy-going, was the normal 
 American boy, whom ambition, personal charm, or 
 force of character might later lead to great distinction 
 or who might live and die a quiet and ordinary citizen. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 JOURNALIST (1841-1830) 
 
 FoK the following decade the biographer of Whit- 
 man is almost without significant data. We may 
 trace roughly the outward course of Whitman's life, 
 but we lack the knowledge of his inner life that 
 would alone make these facts of importance. No 
 definite act or recorded syllable of his or of others serves 
 to reveal any of the slow stages by which he must 
 have been steadily growing towards his greater self. 
 In the absence of information that is vitally signifi- 
 cant, we can only state the few facts of which record 
 is preserved, describe briefly his somewhat colourless 
 writing during this period, and add whatever conjec- 
 tures we can reasonably make as to the trend of his 
 mind and his art. 
 
 In 1841 Whitman was a compositor in the office of 
 the New World, and a little later he was editor suc- 
 cessively for a few months of the Aurora and the 
 Tattler, newspapers of which we know nothing more 
 than the names, and perhaps of one or two other incon- 
 spicuous or short-lived journals. In 1842 he wrote a 
 short novel, FranUin Evans, and between 1841 and 
 1848 he contributed not only to the columns of various 
 newspapers, but to the pages of the Democratic Review, 
 the Broadway Journal, the American Review, and a 
 number of other periodicals. 
 
 18 
 
CHAP. II.] JOURNALIST (1841-1850) 19 
 
 The novitiate of miscellaneous writing past, we find 
 Whitman in 1846, in a more responsible position, as 
 editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and living with 
 his father and mother in Brooklyn. His opinions 
 with regard to slavery and free soil, however, gave 
 offence to some influential readers and to the owners, 
 and with characteristic indifference he relinquished 
 the post in 1847 or early in 1848. Just at that time 
 he met one evening, in the lobby of the old Broadway 
 Theatre, a Southern gentleman who was starting a 
 daily paper in Kew Orleans, and, though that was 
 their first acquaintance, it was formally agreed after 
 fifteen minutes' talk that Whitman should be one of 
 his staff, and two hundred dollars was paid to bind 
 the contract and to cover Whitman's travelling ex- 
 penses. A few days later he was on his leisurely 
 way southward, through Pennsylvania and Virginia, 
 across the Alleghanies, and by steamer from Wheel- 
 ing down the Ohio and the Mississippi. He was 
 accompanied by his brother "Jeff," a boy of fifteen, 
 who was to work in the printing-office. 
 
 The first issue of the Crescent, a four-paged paper 
 of a type familiar at that day, appeared March 6, 
 1848, and contained Whitman's Sailing the Mississippi 
 at Midnight. His duties were apparently those 
 of a general factotum : he wrote editorials, news items, 
 or, more frequently, descriptive articles on the hotels, 
 bar-rooms, and levee front, and the people whom he 
 found there. In his old age, writing for the fiftieth- 
 year edition of the New Orleans Picayune, he recalled 
 with pleasure the varied and curious spectacle of the 
 old French market; the admirable coffee, the cool 
 "cobblers," the exquisite wines and perfect brandy. 
 
20 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 the hours " on the crowded and bustling levees," and 
 his "acquaintances among captains, boatmen, and 
 other characters." 
 
 But though his situation was a pleasant one, his 
 brother was ill and homesick, and it seemed time 
 to move on. They therefore took passage on the 
 Pride of the West, May 26, for St. Louis ; they pro- 
 ceeded thence by the Prairie Bird to La Salle, by 
 canal to Chicago, by steamer through the Lakes 
 to Buffalo, and by way of Niagara and Albany to 
 New York. Thereafter we hear nothing of him until 
 1850, when he is referred to by a brother journalist as 
 having "lately established the Daily Freeman in 
 Brooklyn, to promulgate his favourite Free Soil and 
 other reformatory doctrines." Quite probably he 
 had rejoined his family in Brooklyn on his return 
 from the South. 
 
 No portrait of Whitman at this period is extant, and 
 of his appearance we can guess only from the descrip- 
 tion of an associate of his on the Aurora, who remem- 
 bered him many years later as "tall and graceful in 
 appearance, neat in attire," and as "having a very 
 pleasing and impressive eye and a cheerful, happy- 
 looking countenance. He usually wore a frock coat 
 and a high hat, carried a small cane, and the lapel of 
 his coat was almost invariably ornamented with a 
 boutonni^re." In his habits of work he showed the 
 same calm detachment that had characterized him as 
 a youth. Reaching his office between eleven and 
 twelve o'clock, he looked over the local papers and 
 the exchanges. It was then his habit " to stroll down 
 Broadway to the Battery, spending an hour or two 
 amid the trees and enjoying the water view, returning 
 
II.] JOURNALIST (1841-1860) 21 
 
 to the office at about two or three o'clock in the after- 
 noon." Small wonder that the owner of the Aurora 
 thought him " the laziest fellow who ever undertook 
 to edit a city paper." On the Brooklyn Hagle his pro- 
 fessional habits, so the tradition runs, were much the 
 same. His house was a mile and a half away. " Not 
 only did he walk, or saunter, to and fro from the office, 
 but almost daily he left his desk and took a swim and 
 a stroll, leaving the nations to get on as they might 
 without his comment and advice, and often taking 
 one of the printers from his case for company." Such 
 a leisurely life, in a city where most men toil so 
 fiercely for fame or gain, is not to be hastily dispar- 
 aged. If he limited his chances of professional 
 success, he at least gained, by thus giving way to his 
 temperament, a more robust health, a broader outlook 
 on the world, a more hearty contentment in it, and a 
 more complete freedom from the ruts of convention- 
 alism that incessant and narrow endeavour beats so 
 quickly into the brain. And he was reserving his 
 greater strength for the heavier tasks that his genius 
 was soon to lay upon him. 
 
 Two further characteristics of Whitman's, oddly dis- 
 similar, were also becoming more clearly marked, — 
 a fondness for solitude and a craving for companion- 
 ship. In solitude he sought opportunity for medita- 
 tion and for reading. In his reminiscences he says 
 that he "used to go off, sometimes for weeks at a 
 stretch, down in the country or to Long Island's sea^ 
 shores — there in the presence of out-door influences, 
 I went over thoroughly the Old and New Testaments, 
 and absorb'd (probably to better advantage for me 
 than in any library or indoor room — it makes such 
 
22 WALT WI-IITMAN [chap. 
 
 difference where you read), Shakspere, Ossian, the best 
 translated versions I could get of Homer, Eschylus, 
 Sophocles, the old German Nibelungen, the ancient 
 Hindoo poems, and one or two other masterpieces, 
 Dante's among them. As it happen'd, I read the 
 latter mostly in an old wood. The Iliad (Buckley's 
 prose version) I read first thoroughly on the peninsula 
 of Orient, northeast end of Long Island, in a shelter'd 
 hollow of rocks and sand, with the sea on each side." 
 And, in another passage, he speaks of visits to Coney 
 Island, " at that time a long, bare, unfrequented shore, 
 ■which I had all to myself, and where I loved, after 
 bathing, to race up and down the hard sand, and 
 declaim Homer or Shakspere to the surf and seagulls 
 by the hour." 
 
 This solitude, this communion with nature, this 
 increasingly insistent habit of lonely meditation, lay 
 deep at the roots of his growing genius, and it is 
 wholly characteristic of the evolution of his special 
 powers that -we find him at first submitting himself 
 instinctively to the influence of the great classics of 
 old. Alone under stimulating physical influences, 
 he first found gratification, while powerless himself 
 to express his emotions, in reading and repeating the 
 greatest literary records of antiquity. These he 
 sought out unerringly. Uneducated in a sense, un- 
 acquainted with foreign languages, untrained in his- 
 tory and philosophy, he was yet pushing onwards 
 toward education in a truer sense of the word. He 
 had not the temptations of the man of university 
 training: literature and language did not present 
 themselves to him as an established scheme, already 
 definitely determined, with which he was to become 
 
11.] JOURNALIST (1841-1850) 23 
 
 familiar according to a system; the duty of under- 
 standing why masterpieces are what they are did not 
 lie heavy on him; philosophic and philological and 
 historical comments did not obtrude themselves be- 
 tween him and literature itself. He was free to com- 
 prehend, to appreciate, to absorb with reference to his 
 own needs alone. And, as the result showed, his 
 miscellaneous reading bred in him power. 
 
 His second passion was for people. The astonish- 
 ing range of his acquaintance at this period, and for 
 many years later, has been best described by his first 
 biographer. Dr. Bucke : — 
 
 "He knew the hospitals, poorhouses, prisons, and their in- 
 mates. He passed freely in and about those parts of the city 
 which are inhabited by the worst characters ; he knew all their 
 people, and many of them knew him ; he learned to tolerate 
 their squalor, vice, and ignorance ; he saw the good (often 
 much more than the self-righteous think) and the bad that was 
 in them, and what there was to excuse and justify their lives. 
 It is said that these people, even the worst of them, while en- 
 tire strangers to Walt Whitman, quite invariably received him 
 without discourtesy and treated him well. Perhaps only those 
 who have known the man personally, and have felt the peculiar 
 magnetism of his presence, can fully understand this. Many of 
 the worst of those characters became singularly attached to him. 
 He knew and was sociable with the man that sold peanuts at 
 the comer, and the old woman that dispensed coffee in the 
 market. He did not patronize them, they were to him as good 
 as the rest, as good as he, only temporarily dimmed and ob- 
 scured. 
 
 "True, he knew, and intimately knew, the better-off and 
 educated people as well as the poorest and most ignorant. Mer- 
 chants, lawyers, doctors, scholars, and writers were among his 
 friends. But the people he knew best and liked most were 
 neither the rich and conventional, nor the worst and poorest, 
 but the decent-born middle-life farmers, mechanics, carpenters, 
 
24 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 pilots, drivers, masons, printers, deck hands, teamsters, drovers, 
 and the like. These and their wives and children, their old 
 fathers and mothers, he knew as no one I think ever knew 
 them before, and between him and them (especially the old 
 folks, the mothers and fathers) in numberless instances existed 
 the warmest attachments. 
 
 "He made himself familiar with all kinds of employments, 
 not by reading trade reports and statistics, but by watching 
 and stopping hours with the workmen (often his intimate 
 friends) at their work. He visited the foundries, shops, rolling 
 mills, slaughter-houses, woollen and cotton factories, shipyards, 
 wharves, and the big carriage and cabinet shops — went to 
 clam-bakes, races, auctions, weddings, sailing and bathing par- 
 ties, christenings, and all kinds of merry-makings." 
 
 Wherever the concourse of men was most vivid and 
 significant, there Whitman betook himself habitually. 
 When, years later, self-expression came to him, he 
 wrote often in prose and in verse of the ferries, for 
 example, and few passages of his work are better 
 known than these. In those dumb days of which 
 we speak, however, his attention was doubtless not 
 sharply focussed on what he saw and heard ; the sen- 
 sations that poured in upon him were being stored up 
 against the time when complete consciousness of him- 
 self should burst open within him, as it were, and all 
 his rich memories of sights and sounds should take 
 on meaning. He haunted Broadway also, where the 
 whole world seemed ceaselessly to pass as in a pageant, 
 observing it by preference from the top of one of the 
 old omnibuses. With the drivers of these he was 
 well acquainted, and he wrote of them subsequently 
 in a passage which deserves to be quoted here, as 
 indicative throughout of his love of crowds and of his 
 passion for companionship : — ^ 
 
n.] JOURNALIST (1841-1850) 25 
 
 " One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded 
 
 — namely, the Broadway omnibuses, with their drivers. The 
 vehicles still (I write this paragraph in 1881) give a portion of 
 the character of Broadway — the Fifth avenue, Madison avenue, 
 and Twenty-third street lines yet running. But the flush days 
 of the old Broadway stages, characteristic and copious, are over. 
 The Yellow-birds, the Eed-birds, the original Broadway, the 
 Fourth Avenue, the Knickerbocker, and a dozen others of 
 twenty or thirty years ago, are all gone. And the men spe- 
 cially identified with them, and giving vitality and meaning to 
 them — the drivers — a strange, natural, quick-eyed and won- 
 drous race — (not only Eabelais and Cervantes would have 
 gloated upon them, but Homer and Shakspere would) — how 
 well I remember them, and must here give a word about them. 
 How many hours, forenoons and afternoons — how many ex- 
 hilarating night-times I have had — perhaps June or July, in 
 cooler air — riding the whole length of Broadway, listening to 
 some yarn, (and the most vivid yarns ever spun, and the rarest 
 mimicry) — or perhaps I declaiming some stormy passage from 
 Julius Caesar or Richard, (you could roar as loudly as you chose 
 in that heavy, dense, uninterrupted street-bass.) Yes, I knew 
 all the drivers then, Broadway Jack, Dressmaker, Balky Bill, 
 George Storms, Old Elephant, his brother Young Elephant 
 (who came afterward,) Tippy, Pop Rice, Big Frank, Yellow 
 Joe, Pete Callahan, Patsy Dee, and dozens more; for there 
 were hundreds. They had immense qualities, largely animal 
 
 — eating, drinking, women — great personal pride, in their way 
 
 — perhaps a few slouches here and there, but I should have 
 trusted the general run of them, in their simple good-will and 
 honor, under all circumstances." 
 
 As Whitman's love of solitude was associated, more- 
 over, with his enjoyment of classic literature, so his 
 love of companionship was linked with the love of 
 those forms of art which are addressed to men in 
 groups or masses — oratory, the drama, the opera. 
 In many passages of his verse and of his reminiscences 
 he refers to the deep impression made upon him by 
 
26 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 these means. New York was rich in opportunities, 
 and, during this period and later, he often heard the_ 
 greatest orators and the greatest singers of his time. 
 He was frequent in his attendance at the theatre and 
 the opera, and he records that his excellent habit was 
 to read beforehand, if he could, the text of the play, 
 and to revolve in his own mind the playwright's words, 
 in this way enriching his appreciation of the artist's 
 impersonation. 
 
 Thus stimulated by meditation in lonely places, by 
 classic literature, by companionship with his fellows of 
 every sort, by great acting and fine music. Whitman's 
 emotional life, we may surmise, grew yearly more rich 
 and full. His powers of expression meanwhile, as we 
 shall now see, lagged far behind his keenness of sensa- 
 tion and perception. 
 
 Whitman's short stories, of which for the con- 
 venience of bibliographers I subjoin a list,^ belong 
 
 1 1. Death in the School Room, Democratic Beview, August, ■ 
 1841 ; 2. Wild I'rank's Return, same, November, 1841 ; 3. Ber- 
 vance : or Father and Son, same, December, 1841 ; 4. Tomb 
 Blossoms, same, January, 1842 ; 5. The Last of the Sacred 
 Army, same, March, 1842 ; 6. The Child Ghost, or the Tale of 
 the Last Royalist, same, March, 1842 ; 7. A Legend of Life and 
 Love, same, July, 1842 ; 8. The Angel of Tears, same, Septem- 
 ber, 1842 ; 9. Eris : a Spirit Record, Columbian, March, 1844 ; 
 
 10. Dumb Kate : Story of an Early Death, same, May, 1844 ; 
 
 11. The Little Sleighers, same, September, 1844 ; 12. The Child 
 and the Profligate, same, October, 1844 ; 13. The Death of 
 Windfoot, American Seview, May, 1845 ; 14. The Boy Lover, 
 same, June, 1845 ; 15. Revenge and Requital : Tale of a Mur- 
 derer Escaped, Democratic Beview, July and August, 1845 ; 
 16. A Dialogue [against capital punishment], same, Novem- 
 ber, 1845 ; 17. Little Jane, Brooklyn Hagle, December 7, 1846, 
 
II.] JOURNALIST (1841-1850) 27 
 
 mainly to the first part of the decade. About half of 
 them appeared in the Democratic Review, then the 
 foremost literary publication in the United States, to 
 which the more important contemporary writers were 
 also contributing. These little attempts at fiction do 
 not differ greatly from the current work of the same 
 period. In general they aim to seize upon the more 
 unusual and tragic elements in real life, particularly 
 those that illustrate some moral principle, and to 
 heighten them into melodrama. A brutal schoolmas- 
 ter beats a boy who seems asleep at his desk, but who 
 has suddenly died from heart disease ; a young man on 
 a sudden impulse kills one who has defrauded him of 
 his money ; a wild lad is dragged to death by his own 
 horse ; a sensitive youth pines away with grief at the 
 death of the girl he loves ; a profligate is redeemed by 
 his protecting affection for a child; a cruel father 
 shuts his son in a madhouse, — these are all incidents 
 which may in their essence have come to his attention 
 first as facts, and were then put into the melodramatic 
 narrative form then fashionable in America. In sub- 
 stance, the sketches show a sensitive mind, an affection- 
 ate nature, a sympathy for suffering humanity. In form, 
 they are scarcely praiseworthy : the characters are gro- 
 tesque, the plot is invariably far too rapid for clear 
 development. They belong to the days when American 
 writers were still fumbling with the short story, and 
 only Poe and Hawthorne had shown any skill. In 
 
 probably reprinted from elsewhere ; 18. Lingave's Temptation. 
 Numbers 1, 2, 6, 10, 12, 14, 15 (in part under the title of 
 One Wicked Impulse), 17, and 18 were reprinted in Prose 
 Works {Pieces in Early Youth) ; the original place of publica- 
 tion of 18 is not known. 
 
28 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 style, they do not rise above the commonplace, except 
 in a few passages in which he obviously wrote under 
 the influence of Poe. 
 
 In brief, Whitman's experiments in fiction must 
 soon have convinced him that he was striving for 
 expression in a form unfriendly to his genius, which 
 lay in his extraordinary power to depict, in rhyth- 
 mical language, and with kaleidoscopic rapidity, the 
 multiplicity of detail in life, always emphasizing mean- 
 while a common emotional element that connects the 
 apparently divergent phenomena. His immense ac- 
 quaintanceship with the facts of life, his passion for 
 people, individually and in the mass, gave him mate- 
 rial which, in another mind, might have been fused 
 into great fiction ; but his temperament closed to him 
 the doors of this form of art. 
 
 The same comments may be made on his more ambi- 
 tious experiment, a novel called Franklin Evans, w 
 the, Inebriate, which was issued November 23, 1842, as 
 an extra number of the N'ew World, having been previ- 
 ously advertised as "by a popular American author, 
 one of the best novelists in the country." It was a 
 paper quarto of thirty-four pages, and was sold for 
 twelve and a half cents a copy, or at the rate of ten 
 copies for a dollar. Twenty thousand copies were dis- 
 posed of, and Whitman was the richer by a moderate 
 sum. The comparatively large circulation of the vol- 
 ume was partly due, perhaps, to the fact that it was 
 issued in a series where it stood side by side with 
 reprints of Dickens's American Notes, Macaulay's Bal- 
 lads, and novels of Bulwer Lytton, and partly because 
 it was, as the publishers announced, " written with a 
 view to aid the great work of reform, and rescue young 
 
II.] JOURNALIST (1841-1850) 29 
 
 men from the demon of intemperance." It was a 
 loosely written, moral, and Mghly melodramatic tale, 
 in which a Long Island lad, be-deviled and besotted 
 by drink, sinks lower and lower in vice and crime 
 until at last, his eyes opened by disaster, he signs the 
 pledge of total abstinence. Whitman himself was 
 always a temperate man, but by no means a total 
 abstainer, and the tone of the book is one of sincerity, 
 though it is plain that his zeal for his art carried the 
 young writer beyond the limits of his conviction. An 
 old acquaintance of Whitman's relates that Whitman 
 had once spoken to him of having refreshed himself, 
 in the midst of his labours on this tract, with gin cock- 
 tails, and Whitman in later years scorned the crude 
 art and sentimentalism of the book, and thought of 
 himself as having outgrown the barren formalism of 
 the doctrine which he then enunciated. At the time, 
 however, he seems to have been no less sincere in 
 this instance than in his contemporaneous pleas for 
 other reforms. 
 
 The poems^ known to have been written by Whit- 
 
 1 These are : 1. Each has his Grief, Ifeio World, supple- 
 ment, November 20, 1841 ; 2. The Punishment of Pride, same, 
 December, 1841 ; 3. Ambition, Brother Jonathan, January 29, 
 1842 ; 4. Death of the Nature Lover, same, March, 1843 ; 
 
 5. Dough-face Song, New York Evening Post, about 1848 ; 
 
 6. Blood-money, known to have appeared in the same, 1853, 
 but said by Whitman to have been first printed in the Tribune, 
 and dated in Pieces in Early Youth, April, 1843; 7. Wounded 
 in the House of Friends, said by Whitman to have appeared in 
 the Tribune ; 8. Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight, New Orieans 
 Crescent, March 6, 1848. Numbers 5, 6, 7, and 8 are reprinted in 
 PiecesinEarly Youth. The date of number 8, together with other 
 information relating to Whitman's work on the Crescent, has 
 been kindly furnished me by W. K. Dart, Esq., of New Orleans. 
 
30 "WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 man previous to 1850 are thin, amateurish, moralizing 
 productions, of a kind thoroughly familiar to readers 
 of old American and English periodicals. It is in 
 vain that we search them for hints of his later manner. 
 It is sufficient for the biographer to record their names 
 and the dates at which they appeared, and to pass on 
 without further comment. It is not out of these 
 casual experiments that Whitman's art grew. 
 
 His professional writing, finally, as shown in his edi- 
 torials in the Eagle, though somewhat too colloquial and 
 disjointed for genuine power, was simple and unaffected, 
 sound in judgment, familiar in tone, and usually clear 
 in expression. He gossips artlessly about the weather ; 
 he exhorts his readers to quit physic and blood-letting, 
 and to bathe with regularity ; he describes, pleasantly 
 enough, such sights as seem to him most striking ; he 
 interests himself in local reforms, rebukes trades- 
 unions, but champions a living wage. Nor is he lack- 
 ing in interest in national problems of ethics. He 
 argues shrewdly against capital punishment, urges a 
 kindlier treatment of animals, inveighs against the 
 slave trade, though he realizes that " you can't legislate 
 men into virtue. We wouldn't give a snap for the aid 
 of the legislature in forwarding a purely moral revolu- 
 tion ! It must work its way through individual minds. 
 It must spread from its own beauty, and melt into the 
 hearts of men — not to be forced upon them at the 
 point of the sword, or by the stave of the officer." In 
 political matters, though, particularly during his so- 
 journ in New Orleans, he was sometimes tempted to 
 
 The discovery of several items in this list, and in the list of 
 prose writings on page 26, is due to the patient investigations 
 carried on by Miss Charlotte Morgan. 
 
II.] JOURNALIST (1841-1850) 31 
 
 despair of the republic, he showed a large hopefulness. 
 For definite political parties he cared little. He found 
 slight difference between the Democratic party — his 
 own — and the opposition. Each had its demagogues 
 and " ignorant, ill-bred, passionate men." But he ob- 
 jected in general to the class, in any modern nation, 
 " who looked upon all men as things to be governed — 
 as having evil ways that cannot be checked better 
 than by law ; a class who point to the past and hate 
 innovation." He casts his fortunes, on the contrary, 
 with the class who wish " to deal liberally with human- 
 ity, to treat it in confidence, and give it a chance 
 of expanding through the measured freedom of its 
 own nature and impulses." In a brief essay on " Art 
 Singing and Heart Singing," in the Broadway Journal, 
 moreover, he showed a like broad-mindedness in advo- 
 cating the development of a national school of music, 
 which should be a full expression of all the character- 
 istics and idiosyncrasies of the United States — of 
 democracy and Americanism. 
 
 In spite of the sound sense and kindly feeling of 
 the writings of this type, however, there is nothing 
 that presages the special beauty of Whitman's prose 
 style. As in fiction and verse, this was for him a 
 decade merely of beginnings, of necessary but unsuc- 
 cessful experiments in alien forms. In spite of his 
 rapid intellectual and emotional growth, he was still 
 dumb. He was trying to express himself in the words 
 of others, and his own lips had not yet been unsealed. 
 
 Up to the very end of this period, then, we find in 
 Whitman only the faintest traces, in habits, in aims, in 
 tone and character of expression, of the greater per- 
 sonality he was so soon to become. Successively com- 
 
32 WALT WHITMAN [chap. n. 
 
 positor, teacher, journalist, he had satisfied the main 
 requirements of each profession without attaining dis- 
 tinction. He was, roughly speaking, still a mediocre 
 man, to all intents and purposes. He knew the coun- 
 try and the city, the East and the Southwest ; he had 
 an exceptionally large and varied acquaintance. His 
 dress was conventional, no less than his style as a 
 writer : in no respect had he broken away from the 
 current artifices of society. He was in thorough 
 health, calm and dignified in bearing, and free from 
 petty vices. He was heartily fond of literature and 
 music. He meditated much. With less literary train- 
 ing, with fewer literary associations, he had a wider and 
 deeper knowledge of the life of American citizens, and 
 a deeper sympathy with them, than any other writer of 
 his time. But nothing in his dormant, undeveloped 
 personality served to indicate the extraordinary height- 
 ening of power which was so soon to make him one of 
 the most remarkable men of his time. An observant 
 contemporary, acquainted with all the facts, could have 
 only said that if genius were to be late born in such a 
 man ; if such a mind and body were to be vitalized by 
 some unknown, some tremendously dynamic force; if 
 such a placid mortal were to be transformed into a 
 poet or prophet, he would at least be unique. It was 
 not along conventional lines that such a spirit could 
 be developed. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 
 
 It is still to be hoped that documents of some sort 
 exist which will throw light upon Whitman's life be- 
 tween his return from New Orleans and the first ap- 
 pearance of Leaves of Grass in 1855. During these 
 years he wrote much, and yet we have virtually noth- 
 ing that will indicate the nature of the marvellous 
 change that was taking place in him. He had many 
 friends, but apparently none who cared for literature, 
 or who were sufficiently acute to appreciate the trans- 
 formation that was being wrought before their eyes. 
 And in his own reminiscences, full as they are, there is 
 little that bears closely upon the matter. At thirty- 
 one he was a somewhat indolent newspaper writer, 
 with an undeveloped style — the sign of a mind that 
 bad not yet come to self-knowledge. At thirty-six he 
 had written a series of extraordinary poems, original 
 both in form and in substance. And yet the genesis 
 of this novel form and substance remains practically 
 unknown, — such are the miracles that nature works. 
 But nature does not leap, and we must endeavour as 
 best we can to bridge the gap and understand the 
 change. 
 
 Eeturning from his short trip to the South in 1848, 
 Whitman rejoined his family, then living in Brooklyn. 
 There was the father, and his sons Walt and George 
 D 33 
 
34 "WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 and Jeff, all able-bodied men, besides the disabled Ed- 
 ward, the mother, the daughter Hannah and, a little 
 later, Mattie, Jeff's wife. It was a patriarchal house- 
 hold of the old type, the men labouring outside the 
 house, and the women doing the simple domestic tasks 
 without assistance. Into this life Whitman settled 
 himself without delay and without friction. The clan 
 was in comfortable circumstances, and it was merely 
 necessary that he should contribute his share to the 
 living expenses, — a share which he always paid, 
 though sometimes intermittently. At first he had a 
 small bookstore and printing-office, and edited and 
 published the Freeman, a weekly free-soil paper, but 
 within a year his part in this venture came to an end. 
 He then associated himself with his father in the 
 mingled trade and business of master-carpenter and 
 builder, erecting small frame houses, which were sold 
 on completion. At that epoch Brooklyn was growing 
 rapidly, such speculation was profitable, and Whitman 
 was soon in the way to become well-to-do, when, early 
 in 1856, at about the time of his father's death, he 
 gave up his work without explanation. His duty to 
 himself lay more heavily on him than did money- 
 making. 
 
 Meanwhile his daily habits were simple. He spent 
 the day with his workmen, taking with him his dinner 
 pail, and a book, a magazine, or even an article torn 
 from a magazine, — generally prose, and invariably 
 serious matter, — over which he could ponder during 
 the noon hourj His holidays and the intermissions 
 in his work he spent, in good weather, in the open air, 
 often at the seashore, where he read and bathed and 
 thought and wrote. In the evening he frequently 
 
m.]' WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 35 
 
 crossed the ferry to the city, where he visited the 
 theatre or opera, or walked and meditated, continuing 
 and increasing his acquaintanceship with all classes of 
 men, but especially with workingmen, and more par- 
 ticularly with ferry-hands and stage-drivers. The 
 lesser journalists and other members of the Bohemian 
 world he met at Pfaff's restaurant, but it was appar- 
 ently not until after 1855 that he became a frequent 
 visitor there. It was a life of regular labour and much 
 meditation, under the constant stimulus of city life, 
 and without influences from the conventional world 
 of letters. 
 
 Whitman, then, was a workman and, in a modest 
 way, an employer of labour and a man of business, 
 but he never dreamed of leaving the ranks. He was 
 not the workman who strains every nerve to make and 
 save money, and thus become in his turn a capitalist. 
 Instead, he made as little as possible. With antique 
 simplicity, he had, like Thoreau, decreased the de- 
 nominator of life's fraction, instead of increasing its 
 numerator. He was unmarried ; his dress was simple, 
 his expenses small ; a few dollars a week covered his 
 share for food in the house of his clan. All his sur- 
 plus time and energy were going — unknown even to 
 his closest friend — to the enrichment of his emotional 
 and intellectual life. 
 
 Perhaps too much has been made even of Whitman's 
 reading, which might be supposed to constitute a 
 slight bond between him and the world of organized 
 tradition and learning. It is true that he was familiar 
 with Shakspere and had read other great authors, but 
 there is nothing to show that at this critical period of 
 his life he was steeped in literature, or that literature 
 
36 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 was an active influence in his development. Emerson 
 he must have read suficiently to catch some of the 
 main points of his doctrine and to be somewhat im- 
 pressed by his style. But, generally speaking, he 
 read for knowledge rather than for inspiration. Per- 
 haps he would instinctively have preferred to learn by 
 the ear, for he was a shrewd questioner and made 
 notes of what he acquired in conversation. In default 
 of first-hand information by word of mouth he turned 
 to serious books and particularly to magazines, taking 
 them apparently by chance, wherever an article seemed 
 to promise instruction. These he read and marked 
 and annotated, sucking the very marrow from the 
 bones. J Of organized knowledge, of the systematized 
 learning of the libraries, of that vast structure of 
 classified information that we call scholarship, he had 
 no real conception. He handled books clumsily ; he 
 was not a bookman. To him reading was merely an 
 adjunct of the power of observation, an additional 
 and secondary means of accximulatrng percepts. His 
 mental digestion, however, was perfect. Longfellow, 
 the typical bookman, read incessantly, as the records 
 in his journal show, but read, as it were, merely to 
 exercise his eyes, to keep fresh his linguistic know- 
 ledge, and to find hints for the use of his fancy : his 
 comments show little acumen. But among Whitman's 
 papers dating from this period we already begin to 
 find wise and shrewd memoranda on books and 
 authors, foreshadowing his later criticism, which, 
 though fragmentary, is perhaps more consistent, more 
 stimulating, and of more permanent value than that 
 of any of his contemporaries. 
 
 Books were not the most potent influence in this 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 37 
 
 period of preparation through which he was uncon- 
 sciously passing. His passion was for the outer world, 
 the tangible world. He preferred to learn directly 
 from things and through people. He haunted the opera, 
 the theatre, shows, museums, and collections of all 
 kinds, listening, comparing, absorbing. The great city, 
 growing greater by leaps and bounds, and cosmopoli- 
 tan from the first, he knew as did few others, in all 
 its nooks and corners, through all its grades of occu- 
 pation and nationality. In this knowledge he sub- 
 merged himself utterly and for long periods, as a great 
 scholar in his sources and authorities, as a great 
 scientist in the observation of his material. The little 
 group in the great mass that represented education, 
 culture, and traditional refinement he did not so 
 much ignore as put in its position of inferiority : he 
 craved the knowledge of the whole ; he was possessed 
 by the passion for humanity. A man of the crowd, 
 he loved Broadway: — and Broadway perhaps most 
 when, packed with people, it welcomed some great 
 citizen — "all that indescribable human roar and 
 magnetism, unlike any other sound in the universe — 
 the glad, exulting thunder-shouts of countless unloos'd 
 throats of men." And he was similarly moved, he 
 tells us, by the concourse at the Old Bowery Theatre : — 
 "pack'd from ceiling to pit with its audience mainly 
 of alert, well-dress'd, full-blooded young and middle- 
 aged men, the best average of American-born me- 
 chanics — the emotional nature of the whole mass 
 arous'd by the power and magnetism of as mighty 
 mimes as ever trod the stage — the whole crowded 
 auditorium, and what seeth'd in it, and fiush'd from 
 its faces and eyes, to me as much a part of the show 
 
38 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 as any — bursting forth in one of those long-kept-up 
 tempests of hand-clapping peculiar to the Bowery — 
 no dainty kid-glove business, but electric force and 
 muscle from perhaps 2000 fuU-sinew'd men." Such 
 was the real course of education through which Whit- 
 man passed. In his craving for knowledge of things 
 human he was packing his mind with almost limitless 
 acquisition of material, — material not so much ana- 
 lyzed and classified as absorbed, until the very mass 
 of it brought steadily nearer the time when expression 
 was necessary and inevitable. 
 
 In outward appearance. Whitman came back from 
 the South " looking older and wiser," to use the words 
 of his brother George. His hair and beard were 
 tinged with gray. About this time, too, he changed 
 his manner of dress. Hitherto he had retained the 
 garb of the journalist, attaching himself thus to wha.t 
 we vaguely call the upper classes. Now he chose to 
 wear the more becoming and more appropriate dress 
 of the workman, and the familiar daguerreotype of 
 1854, used in the first edition of the Leaves of Grass, 
 represents him as such, in shirt and trousers, with one 
 hand on his hip and the other in his pocket, a soft 
 black hat on his head. The relaxed pose is that of 
 the labourer off duty, and, perhaps on account of the 
 small size of the daguerreotype, which throws the 
 emphasis on the body rather than the face, one gets 
 an impression of aggressive masculinity ; but the face 
 itself, when examined closely, is earnest and solemn, 
 even wistful. More impressive still is another daguer- 
 reotype of the same year, in which only the head and 
 shoulders appear. The garb is the same, but the 
 head is uncovered, and the features are more distinct. 
 
in.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 39 
 
 The hair is not long, the grayish beard is well trimmed, 
 and these frame in a face of wonderful power and 
 beauty — large features, a full mouth slightly opened 
 as if in speech, a large nose, quiet, penetrating eyes, 
 and the peculiar look of the mystic, the man who sees 
 beyond outward phenomena into the world beyond. 
 In the next decade his face seemed shorter and 
 chubbier and his dress was less becoming. It was 
 only in later life that he regained this air of the poet 
 and the prophet. 
 
 His personal characteristics at the time are best in- 
 dicated in the reminiscences of his brother George, 
 which have special reference to this period. Whitman 
 was cool, " ne;ver_fljijxied, curiously deliberate in all 
 his actions " ; reticent to the point of stubborn reserve, 
 gentle and conciliating in intercourse with others, plain 
 in his way of living, and abstemious in his food. Alco- 
 holic drinks he used only rarely, and he did not smoke. 
 He was clean and chaste in speech and conduct, and 
 was not known even to pay attention to women. He 
 went his own way, never asking counsel of others. He 
 did not " seem greater than others — just different." 
 
 The first distinguishing element of the new writings 
 of Whitman, when they at last appeared, emerging, as 
 it were, from the depths of his solitary breedings, was 
 their form ; and it is simplest to begin our account of 
 his real work with this thread in hand. His chosen 
 medium was an unrhymed species of free verse, — at 
 first recognizable as verse only because it was printed 
 as such, — without an obvious metrical pattern, but 
 containing at intervals brief phrases or passages which 
 the attention at once seized as regularly iambic or dac- 
 tylic. It has often been compared with the rhythm of 
 
40 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 Euskin, or other so-called prose-poets, in their highest 
 flights, and condemned as being merely balanced prose 
 arranged in the printed form of verse. Yet to many- 
 ears Whitman's rhythm is finely musical, and one ends 
 by finding behind its apparent vagaries a norm, habit- 
 ual or typical, to which it is constantly approximating, 
 but which nevertheless has not yet been formulated. 
 Professor Scott, who has made the most careful study 
 of this rhythm, speaks of Whitman's " delicate suscep- 
 tibility to certain modes of motion and sequences of 
 sound, particularly the free swaying, urging motions 
 of the ferry-boat, the railroad train, the flight of the 
 birds, and, among sounds, those of the wind, the locusts 
 in the treetops, and the sea." Whitman himself was 
 accustomed to speak of his lines as seemingly " lawless 
 at first perusal, although on closer examination a 
 certain regularity appears, like the recurrence of lesser 
 and larger waves on the searshore, rolling in without 
 intermission and fitfully rising and falling." ^It is 
 plain, in brief, that he had conceived of a delicate but 
 definite rhythmical form or verse-tune, which he 
 always kept in mind, and to which he wrote, approach- 
 ing it by many corrections, which it is easy to see from 
 his successive drafts that he often made for the sake 
 of the form as distinguished from that of the sensej 
 
 There has been much debate — futile because wholly 
 rhetorical — as to whether this rhythmical form, lying 
 on the border of the two provinces, shall be called 
 prose or poetry. It is both and neither, and the com- 
 mon-sense of the matter seems to be that we lack 
 an unambiguous term to describe it, the traditional 
 nomenclature of art being faulty in this respect as in 
 others. Let us be content, however, here to call it 
 
in.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 41 
 
 verse, meaning thereby to describe its more predomi- 
 nant element and to indicate its high, value in the scale 
 of emotional expression. 
 
 We shall be wise, then, if without discussing the 
 name of this new art form, we look at its origin. 
 Plainly it is not a development from Whitman's early 
 verse or his early prose, nor is it a combination of both. 
 His known poetical productions, as late as 1849, were 
 crude in form, but conventional. Blood Money and 
 In the House of his Friends are plainly transitional 
 forms, but their dates are still uncertain. His usual 
 prose, down to as late as 1864, as shown in a published 
 letter to the mayor and common council of Brooklyn, 
 is straightforward but stiff, without signs of develop- 
 ing along rhythmical lines. Unless, therefore, some 
 missing link can be found, we can safely conclude that 
 the new form came about in a new way, without special 
 reference to his earlier habits of composition. 
 
 It seems clear also that Whitman did not light on 
 his characteristic form of expression . by imitation. 
 With BlakeVexperiments he was not familiar. The 
 balanced verge of the Bible, our'COiftmon heritage, was 
 undoubtedly an Element in his invention, but it was 
 plainly not a predominating or essential element. 
 The Ossianic formula, faintly akin, he knew, but he 
 recognized it as alien to his spirit, and he jotted down 
 among his many memoranda at this period the com- 
 mand unto himself that he was, at all costs, not to fall 
 into that method. Tupper's verse was familiar to him, 
 and has some similarity to that which he adopted, 
 though more in matter than in rhythm, but it would 
 be absurd to find in Tupper's flat and unmelodious 
 style more than a bungling reaction against conven- 
 
42 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 tional forms. ^Emerson and others of his school had 
 long sighed for a new poetic medium, and had from 
 time to time made divers experiments, but neither the 
 vague theory nor the uncertain practice could have 
 aided Whitman.^ The suggestion of a prototype in 
 Samuel Warren's Tlie Lily and the Bee seems at first 
 to offer a fair parallel ; biit careful comparison reveals 
 the distinct difference of key and tone between the 
 two methods, and makes it improbable that either 
 could have served as a model for the other. Moreover, 
 The Lily and the Bee was not published in England 
 until 1851, and by March 31, 1851, Whitman had 
 already found the key to his new style, for in a lecture 
 delivered on that day before the Brooklyn Art Union 
 occur characteristic verses that afterwards found a 
 natural place in one of his longer poems. 
 
 The passage in this lecture seems to me to give the 
 clew. Whitman's verse-method grew of his own im- 
 passioned speech. As long as he wrote for the eye 
 only, he followed the conventional forms of literature, 
 both in prose and in verse, without showing imusual 
 ability. It was only when he began to conceive him- 
 self as speaking that he found himself following un- 
 certainly a faint, new, and inner rhythm, as it were 
 that of his own pulses : — 
 
 " Talk not so much, then, young artist, of the great old 
 masters who but painted and chiselled. Study not only their 
 productions. There is a still better, higher school for him who 
 would kindle his fire with coal from the altar of ihe loftiest and 
 purest art. It is the school of all grand actions and grand vir- 
 tues, of heroism, of the deaths of captives and martyrs — of all 
 the mighty deeds written in the pages of history— deeds of 
 daring and enthusiasm and devotion and fortitude. Read well 
 the death of Socrates. Read how slaves have battled against 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 43 
 
 their oppressors — how the bullets of tyrants have, since the 
 first king ruled, never been able to put down the unquenchable 
 thirst of man for his rights. 
 
 "In the sunny peninsula where art was transplanted from 
 Greece and generations afterward flourished into new life, we 
 even now see the growth that is to be expected among a people 
 pervaded by a love and appreciation of beauty. In Naples, in 
 Rome, in Venice, that ardor for liberty which is a constituent 
 part of all well-developed artists and without which a man 
 cannot be such, has had a struggle — a hot and baffled one. 
 The inexplicable destinies have shaped it so. The dead lie 
 in their graves ; but their august and beautiful enthusiasm is 
 not dead : — 
 
 " Those corpses of young men. 
 Those martyrs that hung from the gibbets, 
 Those hearts pierced by the gray lead, 
 Cold and motionless as they seem 
 Live elsewhere with undying vitality ; 
 They live in other young men, O kings. 
 They live in brothers again ready to defy you. 
 They were purified by death ; 
 They were taught and exalted. 
 Not a grave of those slaughtered ones 
 But is growing its seed of freedom. 
 In its turn to bear seed, 
 Which the wind shall carry afar and re-sow, 
 And the rain nourish. 
 Not a disembodied spirit 
 Can the weapons of tyrants let loose 
 But it shall stalk invisibly over the earth 
 Whispering, counselling, cautioning." 
 
 •'The style qf Whitman's discourse is strikingly like 
 that of Emerson, with whose essays or lectures we 
 must probably assume him t© be familiar.j This prose 
 style of address, unlike his prose style when he was 
 writing only for others to read, tended to flower into 
 
44 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 a form of free verse that has a strong resemblance to 
 the verse of the Leaves of Gfrass. I venture to guess 
 that it was in some such way that Whitman discov- 
 ered the only medium which would serve him in his 
 desire for self-expression, for a form of expression that 
 would parallel his peculiar emotional states, and would 
 tend to produce in others emotional states of the same 
 kind. 
 
 •'what psychology has to tell us about the whole 
 language process may lend some weight to the con- 
 jecture. The poet's words are but the crude and out- 
 ward symbols of that inner language, that subtle play 
 of mental imagery, that unusual and individual com- 
 bination of percepts which is his real distinction. His 
 words are only the accompaniment of his thought: 
 they come to him in various ways, according to the 
 predominance in him — habitual or momentary — of 
 one part or another of the somewhat intricate psycho- 
 logical mechanism by which alone may words spring 
 up within our consciousness in alliance with our 
 thought. We have, it would appear, a storehouse of 
 memories of words seen, from which certain visual 
 images, apparitions — as it were — detach themselves 
 automatically at our need; and corresponding, but sep- 
 arate, storehouses of words heard, and spoken, and 
 written. On these four treasuries, heaped up by the 
 action of the eye and the ear and the muscles of the 
 throat and hand, all language ultimately depends. 
 Now the lettered poet may find his medium without 
 difficulty, because his eye-treasury is highly developed 
 by much reading, or because his hand-treasury is so 
 full that words come easily when he takes up his pen. 
 But Whitman was unlettered and came of an unlet- 
 
in.] "WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 45 
 
 tered race ; sucli treasuries in Ms brain gave him only- 
 normal aid and stimulus. As long as he depended 
 upon them, he followed merely the dull conventions 
 of literature, and his expression lagged behind his 
 thought. The incredible activity and richness of his 
 inner life only reached expression — such is my hy^ 
 pothesis — when he began to make use of the treasure- 
 houses of the heard and the spoken word — those most 
 ancient of language associations in the history of the 
 race. When he trusted to his ear and his voice, when 
 he spoke aloud or to himself, the floodgates swung 
 open. To the great mass of intricately allied inner 
 phenomena of his mind was added a characteristic and 
 individual form of expression. — -^ 
 
 Whether one gives credence or not to such a theory, 
 however, the fact remains that at the period at which 
 Whitman found his new style, he was possessed with 
 the idea of communicating his ideas to others through 
 the medium of public discourse. He wrote " barrels " 
 of lectures, his brother George recalled, which still 
 exist in the shape of a multitude of notes, outlines, 
 and short passages, some of which have been published 
 by his executors. They were written either at this' 
 time or a little later, when, with the comparative fail- 
 ure of Leaves of Grass to reach the public, his old 
 faith in his power to thrill mankind by the music off 
 the spoken word blazed up again in full force. The 
 new form hovered between prose and verse ; it was 
 living, musical, rhythmical, impassioned speech. If 
 it had a prototype or an origin, it may be said to have 
 been born of the rhythm which he heard in nature 
 and of his memories of the arias and recitatives of 
 the Italian opera. 
 
46 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 Whitman was, then, impelled to speak unto the 
 sons of men, and after much search he found a new 
 way, his own special rhythm and music. What mes- 
 sage was he to utter ? 
 
 If Whitman had been constituted as other men, 
 susceptible as they to conventional rhythm, he would 
 have written in metre and rhythm. But he was not 
 so constituted. Similarly, if he had the conventional 
 education, and the associations with his fellow-men, 
 common to other men of letters, he would perhaps 
 like them have used the ordinary poetic material. 
 But he had both a new poetic medium and new poetic 
 matter. He drew his inspiration from another world, 
 a world circumambient about his contemporaries but 
 one whose existence they ignored or were ignorant of. 
 Ours is the world of the minority — that of the stable 
 folk of education and recognized position. At this 
 period Whitman knew this world only slightly, and 
 he never knew it well ; his real sympathies and affilia- 
 tions were with the vast world of artisans and labourers. 
 In New England there was perhaps a time when ele- 
 mentary education was so widespread, and literary 
 and religious influences so pervasive, that these worlds 
 tended to overlap and merge; and under such con- 
 ditions Whittier was born and lived, in full sympathy 
 with a special and local class of somewhat sophisti- 
 cated workmen. But in the Middle States, and par- 
 ticularly in the great city, the situation then and now 
 was widely different. Separate oneself by a hand's 
 breadth, as it were, from the world to whom books 
 are even partly familiar, and one reaches the multi- 
 tude of those who live and toil and love and hate 
 outside the faintest influences of literature and art 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 47 
 
 and philosophy. They read, perhaps, but only scraps 
 from the newspapers. They are unconscious of the 
 past and unmindful of the future. Science and learn- 
 ing and art are mere -words to them. They take life 
 as it is, and have few theories about it. Between the 
 two worlds is fixed a great abyss. 
 
 This world of the majority, on which ours is only 
 tangential, and of which we are so ignorant, and par- 
 ticularly the world of the city labourer,Whitman knew 
 well, and he was the only American man of letters 
 who was thoroughly familiar with it. To Longfellow 
 and Lowell and Holmes it was terra incognita, for 
 they had travelled little in their own country, and at 
 home had never passed the social boundaries of their 
 class. Emerson had travelled much, but always as a 
 philosopher, to a large degree unconscious of and un- 
 sympathetic with the life of the masses. Whittier 
 alone had something of the same sympathy with the 
 people of the under or basic world, though it was not 
 well developed. He knew the New England country 
 folk, but mainly as the country-bred journalist and 
 politician would know them ; he would have dragged 
 them after him into the upper world of enlighten- 
 ment; he could not have conceived of abandoning 
 himself completely to their illiteracy, to their crude 
 religious feeling, or entire lack of it, to their preoc- 
 cupation with the physical toil and physical joy of 
 life. 
 
 But Whitman was a genuine democrat. America 
 was the great democracy, the land of the great mass. 
 With titanic optimism he believed that the hope of 
 humanity lay in these uneducated, illiterate hordes. 
 Here dwelt inexhaustible energy ; here the great vital 
 
48 "WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 force of humanity was blindly forcing onwards. Here 
 there was no distinction of rank or race, all was equal- 
 ity; here chiefly, rather than in the world of the 
 minority, was Nature working out her great and mys- 
 terious plans. It was the dream of Rousseau and the 
 French Revolution, of Jefferson and Jackson and of 
 Lincoln, — an ideal perhaps doomed to be shattered, 
 but held by Whitman in its fullest and purest form. 
 It was this 'America that he was to set forth in his 
 poems : — 
 
 "After years of those aims and pursuits, I found myself re- 
 maining possess'd, at the age of thirty-one to thirty-three, with 
 a special desire and conviction. Or rather, to he quite exact, 
 a desire that had been flitting through my previous life, or 
 hovering on the flanks, mostly indefinite hitherto, had steadily ad- 
 vanced to the front, defined itself, and finally dominated every- 
 thing else. This was a feeling or ambition to articulate and 
 faithfully express in literary or poetic form, and uncompromis- 
 ingly, my own physical, emotional, moral, intellectual, and 
 aesthetic Personality, in the midst of, and tallying, the momen- 
 tous spirit and facts of its immediate days, and of current 
 America — and to exploit that Personality, identified with 
 place and date, in a far more candid and comprehensive sense 
 than any hitherto poem or book." 
 
 In brief, here was the rarest phenomenon in all 
 modern literature. Other artisans, and sons of arti- 
 sans, had reached self-expression, but only on step- 
 ping-stones of their dead selves, by forfeiting their 
 birthright, by transforming themselves into members 
 of the few. But here was one of the many, who had 
 found not only self-expression but a new medium of 
 expression ; who became articulate without surrender- 
 ing his personality and his membership in his class. 
 And, most fortunate of all for humanity, this indi- 
 
in.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 49 
 
 vidual chanced to be he whose whole education had 
 lain in his love of the many, in long association with 
 them and study of them. That very man of the 
 people who knew most of the people had found his 
 tongue, and was determined to speak of what life 
 meant to him as an embodiment of the many, without 
 reference to what had been written by the few. For 
 the first time in our modern centuries a poet had been 
 born of the people who was not a renegade. Demos 
 had found its voice. 
 
 Whitman's special quality is not sufficiently differ- 
 entiated from that of his brother poets, however, by 
 either or both of the preceding considerations. If the 
 new form and the new matter alone were the active 
 forces, the resultant would have been far different — 
 perhaps more serviceable to humanity, perhaps less, 
 but certainly different. We can, for example, con- 
 ceive of a less ascetic Whittier, or a Euskin without 
 his medisevalism, as finding a new rhythm and apply- 
 ing it to the poetry of democracy. In either case we 
 should have had a clearer, more easily intelligible 
 verse, conveying more definite ideas. ^Whitman's 
 crowning characteristic was that his poetry of democ- 
 racy sprang, not from well-defined intellectual con- 
 cepts, but from an extraordinary mood, from an 
 intense and peculiar emotion._i 
 
 Eecent progress in psychology and medicine has 
 prepared us for a closer understanding of those un- 
 usual individuals whom we call mystics or saints' or 
 seers or prophets. It matters little whether we re- 
 gard such men as wise or foolish, as false prophets or 
 true: their psychological history is much the same. 
 
60 WALT WHITMAN [chap'. 
 
 'The minds of certain men are so constructed that they 
 may at times seem to pass beyond themselves and the 
 pressing actualities of life into a state of ecstatic con- 
 templation, in which the whole universe is apparently 
 revealed to their eyes under a new and glorious aspect, 
 in the light of which they thereafter live and actj 
 Such men are usually neurotic or hysterical, and 
 attempts have recently been made to find in Whitman 
 the signs of actual degeneracy, but only in the spirit 
 of controversy and without any basis in fact. Whit- 
 man's family history, however, shows certain ab- 
 normalities : his eldest brother died insane, his 
 youngest brother was an imbecile ; and it may be that 
 he inherited an abnormal or perhaps rather super- 
 normal nervous and emotional activity. One or two 
 anecdotes of intense susceptibility to fright in his 
 boyhood, his mother's remark that he was a very 
 strange child, his own that his early life was singu- 
 larly unhappy, and the strange revelation of his 
 childish emotion contained in the poem Otd of the 
 Cradle endlessly Rocking, may perhaps help to sub- 
 stantiate such an hypothesis. At all events we have 
 the plain fact before us that on no other basis can his 
 poetic method be fully explained than by regarding it 
 as in large part the product of that extraordinary 
 mental condition which we asaociate with the mystic^ 
 «* That Whitman must be considered ^..a mystic 
 becomes immediately apparent when one examines the 
 writings of mystics — Oriental or Occidental, medi- 
 aeval or modern. All show the characteristics which 
 Professor William James has formulated so precisely. 
 The mystic has the sense of special knowledge. In 
 his mood, in his vision, he sees — he knows not how — 
 
HI.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 51 
 
 the greater scheme of creation and his own relation to 
 it; but this knowledge is ineffable: it cannot be 
 uttered ; it may only be adumbrated or symbolized. 
 It is, moreover, a knowledge that, brings peace and 
 joy. The light breaks in upon and pervades the 
 mystic. The whole universe opens before him. He 
 sees all and is all. There is no beginning or end 
 to what he sees; cause and effect are identical; the 
 spirit of the universe is one, and that spirit is love. 
 Dr. Bucke, Whitman's first biographer, a physician 
 and alienist of some repute, and the first to see that 
 Whitman, scientifically speaking, belongs to this class, 
 calls this state of feeling cosmic consciousness, and 
 declares that few of our race and time have entered 
 into it, but that it is the highest step in the same slow 
 >«olution that ripened the impersonal consciousness of 
 the animal into the self-conscious spirit of man. So 
 huge a generalization may well stagger the cautious 
 critic, but it serves to indicate the nature and extentj 
 of the mystic's experience. 
 
 Mystic experience is more familiar in the Orient 
 than in the Occident and is most often produced by 
 long and solitary meditation, in which the attention is 
 intently fixed on a single object until the sense of self- 
 hood broadens enormously and the spirit seems sud- 
 denly to cross the threshold of nature, and the finite 
 self to rejoin the soul of the universe. But a little 
 investigation shows it to be more common among 
 men of letters in recent years than would be at first 
 imagined. Lowell had ecstatic experiences in which 
 he received revelations; Symonds was subject to 
 recurrences of an extreme state of mystical conscious- 
 ness; and Tennyson passed at times into a sort of 
 
52 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 waking trance. " This," he said, " has come upon me 
 through repeating my own name to myself silently, 
 till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the 
 consciousness of individuality, individuality itself 
 seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless 
 being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, 
 the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words." And 
 again, " By God Almighty ! there is no delusion in the 
 matter ! It is no nebulous ecstasy, but 'a state of tran- 
 scendent wonder associated with absolute clearness of 
 mind." 
 
 Dr. Bucke thinks that he can in the Leaves of Grass 
 identify the traces of Whitman's first remarkable 
 mystic experience in the passage: — 
 
 "I believe in you, my soul, the other I am must not abase itself 
 
 to you, 
 And yon must not be abased to the other. 
 Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, 
 Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, 
 
 not even the best, 
 Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvfed voice. 
 I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, 
 How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently 
 
 turned over upon me. 
 And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your 
 
 tongue to my bare-stript heart, 
 And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held 
 
 my feet. 
 Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge 
 
 that pass all the argument of the earth, 
 And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, 
 And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own. 
 And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the 
 
 women my sisters and lovers, 
 And that a kelson of the creation is love, 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 53 
 
 And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, 
 And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, 
 And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, 
 mullein and poke- weed." 
 
 In other passages of Ms verse, and not infrequently 
 in his prose articles and memoranda, Whitman ex- 
 presses what Professor Jaines calls his " chronic 
 mystical perception." " There is," he wrote in later 
 years, " apart from mere intellect, in the make-up of 
 every superior human identity, (in its moral complete- 
 ness, considered as ensemble, not for that moral alone, 
 but for the whole heing, including physique,) a won- 
 drous something that realizes without argument, fre- 
 quently without what is called education (though I 
 think it the goal and apex of all education deserving 
 the name) — an intuition of the absolute balance, in 
 time and space, of the whole of this multifarious, mad 
 chaos of fraud, frivolity, hoggishness — this revel of 
 fools, and incredible make-believe and general unset- 
 tledness, we call the world; a soul-sight of that divine 
 clue and unseen thread which holds the whole con- 
 geries of things, all history and time, and all events, 
 however trivial, however momentous, like a leash'd 
 dog in the hand of the hunter." 
 
 We find also frequent records of the more acute 
 phases of the mystical state : — 
 
 "The thought of identity . . . Miracle of miracles, beyond 
 statement, most spiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet 
 hardest basic fact, and only entrance to all facts. In such 
 devout hours, in the midst of the significant wonders of heaven 
 and earth (significant only because of the Me in the centre), 
 creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no account before 
 this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision, it 
 
54 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf 
 in the fable, once liberated and looked upon, it expands over 
 the whole Earth and spreads to the roof of heaven." 
 
 "Lo! Nature (the only complete, actual poem) existing 
 calmly in the divine scheme, containing all, content, careless 
 of the criticisms of a day, or these endless and wordy chatter- 
 ers. And lo 1 to the consciousness of the soul, the permanent 
 identity, the thought, the something, before [which] the magni- 
 tude even of Democracy, art, literature, etc., dwindles, becomes 
 partial, measurable — something that fully satisfies (vyhich those 
 do not) . That something is the All and the idea of All, with 
 the accompanying idea of eternity, and of itself, the soul, buoy- 
 ant, indestructible, sailing Space forever, visiting every region, 
 as a ship the sea. And again lo ! the pulsations in all matter, 
 all spirit, throbbing forever — the eternal beats, eternal systole^ 
 and diastole of life in things — wheref rom I feel and know that 
 death is not the ending, as was thought, but rather the real 
 beginning — and that nothing ever is or can be lost, nor ever 
 die, nor soul, nor matter." 
 
 The Oriental mystics have defined the various steps 
 by which, in increasing gradations of self-hypnotiza- 
 tion, they reach the mood they deliberately seek ; and 
 modern physiological psychology has accounted for 
 the phenomenon, and shown how "the vanishing of 
 the sense of self, and the feeling of immediate unity 
 with the object, is due to the disappearance, in these 
 rapturous experiences, of the motor adjustments which 
 habitually mediate between the constant background 
 of consciousness (which is the Self) and the object in 
 the foreground, whatever it may be." If one may 
 hazard an hypothesis drawn from many details in 
 Whitman's verse and fragmentary notes, we may 
 suppose that in his case the mystic experience did 
 not come, as with Tennyson, entirely from a complete 
 absorption in self, brought about by the prolonged 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 55 
 
 reiteration of a word. The habit of muscular repose, 
 the complete motor quiescence which was so charac- 
 teristic of him from his boyhood up, afforded the 
 physical basis. In this state of rapt contemplation 
 the mind, rather drawn out of itself than concen- 
 trated within itself, dwelt in rapid succession upon 
 a multitude of outward objects, until, under this swift 
 and dionysiae sequence of parallel, unrelated percepts, 
 there followed the mystic experience, the illusion or 
 the Verity, of knowledge of the Whole.^ The most 
 marked characteristic of Whitman's poetic method, 
 that by which he catalogues or inventories objects, 
 without close subordination or orderly classification, 
 is perhaps but the same process on a smaller scale. 
 The reader's attention reels under the weight of un- 
 related particulars until, just as the mind refuses to go 
 further in the hopeless task of coordination, it is sud- / 
 denly suffused, as it were, with a glow of comprehen- 
 sion, and there is born an impression of totality. 
 
 We may feel sure, then, that Whitman was a mys- 
 tic,\and that he discovered, in those' months and years 
 of meditation that preceded the appearance of the 
 Leaves of Gfrass, his own means of freeing himself 
 from the outward and understandable world and of 
 precipitating himself into the mood of ecstasy. ^Its ^ 
 characteristics were two. First, the universe appeared l^" 
 one : all things revealed themselves to him simultane- 
 ously, as it were, and on the same plane, as if space 
 and time had been annihilated. Second, the law of 
 this world was love. Eank and order vanished ; the / 
 lowest and the highest were equal; all were to be 
 comprehended only by affection. In the light of this 
 ecstasy, now brightening, now growing dim, he was 
 
56 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 to walk for the remainder of his days ; henceforward 
 he was the poet of the vision, — the vision of the 
 world as love.i 
 
 It was early in 1855 that Whitman laid down his 
 tools and devoted himself exclusively to his book. 
 Five times had it been written and rewritten, and he 
 even began to set it up with his own hands, in a little 
 printing shop in Brooklyn. In July it appeared. It 
 was a tall, thin quarto of some ninety broad pages, 
 bound in green cloth, ornamented with flowers. The 
 copyright was secured by Walt Whitman, but the title- 
 page did not bear his name, and no publishing house 
 was indicated. It was advertised as for sale at Fowler 
 & Wells' Phrenological Depot m New York and at a 
 Brooklyn bookstore. ;, The price was at first two dol- 
 lars, afterwards one dollar.^ Opposite the title-page 
 was a steel engraving of the now familiar daguerreo- 
 type representing Whitman as a workingman. 
 
 The preface, ten pages long in double columns, was a 
 rhapsody on the poet's function in America. In form 
 it was scarcely to be distinguished from the less rhyth- 
 mical parts of his verse, and in a later edition he 
 drew freely from it whUe composing On Blue Ontario's 
 Shores. It was not at all intelligible to the ordinary 
 reader, and that fact doubtless added to the perplexity 
 with which people naturally regarded the novel poems 
 that followed. 
 
 These were twelve in number and bore no titles.^ 
 
 1 Later they were called : Song of Myself ; A Song for Occupa- 
 tions ; To Think of Time; The Sleepers ; I Sing the Body Electric ; 
 Faces; Song of the Answerer ; Europe ; A Boston Ballad; A 
 Child Went Eorth; Who Learns my Lesson; Great are the Myths. 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 57 
 
 The first was the long Poem of Walt Whitman, an 
 American, as it was called in the second edition, or 
 The Song of Myself, as it was later entitled. Hard 
 to follow at first and in spots virtually unintelligible, 
 it becomes clear when one directs his attention to the 
 general movement of the thought. 
 
 The author is but a type, so runs the theory ; what 
 he says of himself he says of mankind. His theme 
 is the mood of ecstasy and understanding, which he 
 reaches through the contemplation of nature. Would 
 you have the secret ? You may, if you will ; but you 
 must seize it instantaneously, as a whole, not derive it 
 by logical steps. The secret is that man and th'e world 
 are good, are clean and holy, are to be accepted with 
 joy and trustfully. Separate your contemplative self, 
 as I do, from your active, ordinary self: thus will 
 illumination come to you. Let grass be the subject 
 of your thought. What is it ? What does it mean ? 
 One might quaintly guess it to be a part of God's ves- 
 ture, — his handkerchief, designedly dropped to pro- 
 voke curiosity, and "bearing the owner's name some way 
 in the corners "; or as a symbol of Nature's uniformity, 
 her equal proffer to all men ; or as the symbol of all 
 that has gone before us — "the beautiful uncut hair 
 of graves." But it is most typical of the ceaselessly 
 evolving universe, working out its gigantic law of 
 transmutation. 
 
 That law is love. The universe means well by us. 
 I am a better type than the insentient grass, — I, the 
 momentary symbol of conscious humanity, for I see 
 and am all forms of that pervasive spirit. And here 
 follows a magnificent catalogue of instances that 
 symbolize the infinitude of human experience, in- 
 
58 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 eluding even the beasts, none of ■whom are un- 
 worthy : — 
 
 " I do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not some- 
 thing else ; 
 
 And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills 
 pretty well to me ; 
 
 And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me." 
 
 Man, then, — actual, existing man, — "hankering, 
 gross, mystical, nude," is the great type, the great 
 reality. Man is deathless, august ; he is himself of the 
 very essence of being. He must then venerate himself, 
 rather than the gods. It follows, then, that virtue 
 and vice are, sub specie etemitatis, foolish words. Each 
 plays its part in Nature's dualism : — 
 
 " What blurt is this about virtue and about vice ? 
 Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me, I stand indif- 
 ferent." 
 
 The universe holds its steady progress : shall man fear 
 the outcome or dare to distinguish between God's in- 
 struments ? 
 
 " Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy? 
 Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over 
 and rectified ?" 
 
 Similarly, in man there can be no degradation or dis- 
 tinction : — 
 
 " I speak the pass- word primeval, I give the sign of democracy ; 
 By God 1 I will accept nothing which all cannot have their 
 counterpart of on the same terms." 
 
 And as man is divine only as a perennial element in 
 Nature, he is divine by virtue of his power of self-con- 
 tinuation, by virtue, that is, of his power of propaga- 
 
III.] WOEKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 59 
 
 tion. Hence, man's function of propagation and its 
 instruments are, from that point of view, essential and 
 noble. 
 
 Again he rushes into tumultuous inventory of mul- 
 titudinous aspects and instances of life, contemplat- 
 ing with ecstasy all the works of Nature, heroes and 
 martyrs of all ages, man in his most ordinary or most 
 picturesque occupations, even plants and beasts, — the 
 running blackberry vine that " would adorn the parlors 
 of heaven " ; the animals that are " so placid and self- 
 contained " : — 
 
 "They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 
 They do not lie awalse in the darlc and weep for their sins, 
 They do not malce me sick discussing their duty to God, 
 Kot one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania 
 
 of owning things, 
 Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands 
 
 of years ago, 
 Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth." 
 
 All life, then, he loves, and in a wonderful passage 
 he announces himself, in his typical aspect, as the 
 lover of the earth : — 
 
 " I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, 
 I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. 
 
 " Press close, bare-bosom'd night 1 Press close, magnetic, nour- 
 ishing night ! 
 Night of south winds — night of the large few stars 1 
 Still, nodding night — mad, naked, summer night. 
 
 " Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth I 
 Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees ! 
 Earth of departed sunset — earth of the mountains misty-topt 1 
 Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with 
 blue I 
 
60 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the riyer ! 
 Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my 
 
 sake I 
 Far-swooping elbow'd earth — rich, apple-blossom'd earth I 
 Smile, for your lover comes ! 
 
 "Prodigal, you have given me love — therefore I to you give 
 love ! 
 O unspeakable, passionate love ! " 
 
 Nay, more. So strongly does he feel this transcending 
 vitality which is his through his secret, that he would 
 share it with the weak and fainting spirit : — 
 
 " O despairer, here is my neck ; 
 By God ! you shall not go down 1 Hang your whole weight 
 upon me. 
 
 "I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up ; 
 Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force, 
 Lovers of me, baifiers of graves. 
 
 "Sleep — I and they keep guard all night ; 
 Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you ; 
 I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself, 
 And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell 
 you is so." 
 
 Such in the barest outline is "Whitman's famous 
 doctrine, not without its analogies to the idealism of 
 his predecessors, particularly Emerson. The succeed- 
 ing poems reinforced and completed it without adding 
 new elements; but he kept recurring to a thought that 
 then obtruded itself continually upon him, that the 
 strength and weakness of the never-ending chain of 
 life lay always in the present link. Each generation 
 must be strong and noble, and this means the strength 
 and nobility of man's body and woman's body. To 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 61 
 
 this physical basis of the continuation of the race he 
 comes back again and again with joyful insistence, for 
 men and women are the ultimate realities of life; all 
 governments and all religions, all happiness and all 
 progress, depend upon their union. 
 
 About eight hundred copies of the Leaves of Grass 
 were printed, a sufficient quantity deposited for sale 
 with dealers in New York, Brooklyn, and Boston, and 
 a considerable number sent out for review and to well- 
 known writers. Commercially, the enterprise was a 
 complete failure. Very few copies were sold, and the 
 great bulk of the edition remained on the author's 
 hands. This is not greatly to be wondered at. The 
 public at large cares little for poetry, and particularly for 
 poetry of a novel kind. Whitman's name was virtu- 
 ally unknown, and any ordinary reader who saw the 
 volume must have been puzzled by the odd form, be- 
 wildered by the thought, and quite probably shocked 
 by the apparently materialistic and anti-religious tone. 
 Whitman's own family, unaccustomed to reading, could 
 make nothing of it. "I saw the book," his brother 
 George said in later years, — "I didn't read it at all — 
 didn't think it worth reading — fingered it a little. 
 Mother thought as I did — did not know what to make 
 of it. . . . I remember mother comparing Hiawatha 
 [which came out the same year] to Walt's, and the one 
 seemed to us pretty much the same muddle as the other. 
 Mother said that if Hiawatha was poetry, perhaps 
 Walt's was." 
 
 Whitman could not have been greatly surprised at 
 the indifference shown to his poems by those who were 
 indifferent to all poetry But he must have been be- 
 wildered and disheartened by the indifference and 
 
62 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 hostility of critics and men of letters. The former, 
 almost with one accord, anathematized the volume and 
 the author. It was "muck" and "obscenity" "full of 
 bombast, egotism, vulgarity, and nonsense"; he was a 
 "lunatic" ; he was "as unacquainted with art as a hog 
 is with mathematics"; he "deserved the whip of the 
 public executioner." His brother poets, as a rule, ig- 
 nored the book, or destroyed it, — as did Whittier, — 
 or returned it to the author. This indifference of the 
 intelligent or expert public was, we may guess, due to 
 much the same causes as that of the illiterate public. 
 To be sure, they were familiar with Whitman's tran- 
 scendental ideas, as expressed in Emerson or Carlyle ; 
 but their familiarity was with mysticism expounded in 
 a more or less logical fashion, not with the mystic's 
 own natural utterance. Their ears, too, were ill attuned 
 to the new form, and they were also repelled by the 
 glorification of the common man, of the very dust at 
 their feet. 
 
 A still greater stumbling-block to the poet and 
 reader of poetry at that day were the intensity and 
 particularity of Whitman's reference to sexual rela- 
 tions. American life half a century ago is unani- 
 mously declared to have been prudish ; but even if it 
 had been as daring as it was timid, it might well 
 have been aghast at the full tone of sensuous exalta- 
 tion, of phallic frenzy, that sounded throughout these 
 poems, finding expression everywhere in sexual im- 
 agery. Thoreau thought that the beasts might have 
 so spoken. From our calmer vantage ground of half 
 a century later we can see that he missed the point. 
 No speaking beasts could have been so teleological ; 
 it was rather man speaking boldly of his essential de- 
 
HI.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 63 
 
 lights because he saw them essential to him and to 
 the race. The discussion has now grown formal 
 and academic, and whether these matters are, in the 
 hands of a great poet, tacenda, or whether the intense 
 and lasting emotional life that clusters around the 
 congress of man and woman must remain always 
 unexpressed in art, is a matter of cautious doubt. 
 One thing is clear, however, that Whitman was never 
 licentious or obscene; no attentive reader could now 
 so accuse him. But at that time, and for some years 
 to come, the issue of propriety was constantly raised.^ 
 
 1 It is necessary to add that the exuberance of sexual im- 
 agery in Whitman's work may quite possibly have been due to 
 a change in his habits of life. As a young man, all testimony 
 concurs to show him to have been chaste. His first biographer, 
 however, Mr. Burroughs, speaking of the period 1840-1855, said 
 that Whitman ' ' sounded all experiences of life, with all their 
 passions, pleasures, and abandonments." In 1893, moreover, 
 Whitman himself, writing to John Addington Symonds, plainly 
 stated that " my life, young manhood, mid-age, times South, 
 etc., have been jolly bodily, and doubtless open to criticism. 
 Tho' unmarried, I have had six children — two are dead — one 
 living Southern grandchild, fine boy, writes to me occasionally 
 — circumstances (connected with their fortune and benefit) 
 have separated me from intimate relations." The later portion 
 of the passage, taken together with the tone of his verse, seems 
 to me probably to indicate that, though Whitman may have 
 been caught in the net of accidental passion, his affections had 
 centred on one or perhaps two women, with whom he had 
 relations lasting for a considerable number of years, and whom 
 he may be regarded as having married in all but the name. In 
 later life, Whitman was averse to mentioning the subject, even 
 to his most intimate friends, and no further facts are known. 
 At oue time he intended to make a careful statement with 
 regard to the matter, to be kept sealed, and to be used by his 
 representatives, in case of need, for the protection of those dear 
 
64 "WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 On the other hand, there were a few critics sufB- 
 ciently clear-headed and broad-minded to see the 
 essential greatness of the book in spite of its peculi- 
 arities. In an unsigned notice in the North American 
 Review, Edward Everett Hale recognized " the fresh- 
 ness, simplicity, and reality of the book," and "the 
 wonderful sharpness and distinctness " of the author's 
 imagination, declaring, too, that there is not a word in 
 the volume " meant to attract readers by its gross- 
 ness." W. J. Stillman, in the Crayon, while denying 
 to it ideality, concentration, and purpose, bore witness 
 to the " wonderful vigour of thought and intensity of 
 purpose." In Putnam's Monthly an unknown reviewer 
 was keen enough to see that in its large aspects this 
 was nothing but Emerson put into practice, the formal 
 gospel of the Kew England school coming fresh from 
 the lips of the people. " A fireman or omnibus driver, 
 who had intelligence enough to absorb the speculations 
 of that school of thought which culminated at Boston 
 some fifteen or eighteen years ago, and resources of 
 expression to put them forth again in a form of his 
 own, with sufficient self-conceit and contempt for pub- 
 lic taste to affront all usual propriety of diction, might 
 have written this gross yet elevated, this superficial 
 yet profound, this preposterous yet somehow fasci- 
 nating book." And in England a writer in the Leader 
 wrote the following excellent statement — he is often 
 wiser who views from afar — of the "staggering" 
 central principle of the Leaves of Grass : 
 
 to him; but this was never done. We know (and wish to 
 know) nothing more than that he had at times been lured by 
 the pleasures of the flesh, like many a poet before him, and 
 that he had known the deep and abiding love of woman. 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 65 
 
 " It seems to resolve itself into an all-attracting egotism — 
 an eternal presence of the individual soul of Walt Whitman 
 in all things, yet in such wise that this one soul shall be pre- 
 sented as a type of all human souls whatsoever. He goes forth 
 into the world, this rough, devil-may-care Yankee ; passionately 
 identifies himself with all forms of being, sentient or inanimate ; 
 sympathizes deeply with humanity ; riots with a kind of Bac- 
 chanal fury in the force and fervour of his own sensations ; 
 will not have the most vicious or abandoned shut out from 
 final comfort and reconciliation; is delighted with Broadway, 
 New York, and equally in love with the desolate backwoods, 
 and the long stretch of the uninhabited prairie, where the vrild 
 beasts wallow in the weeds, and the wilder birds start upward 
 from their nests among the grass ; perceives a divine mystery 
 wherever his feet conduct, or his thoughts transport him ; and 
 beholds all things tending toward the central and sovereign 
 Me." 
 
 Best of all, Emerson himself, Whitman's sole master 
 and exemplar, — so far as he may. be said to have had 
 one at all, — recognized at once the extraordinary 
 merit of the volume, and promptly wrote him as 
 follows : — 
 
 CoNOOED, Mass'tts, 21 July, 1855. 
 
 " Deab Sir, I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful 
 gift of 'Leaves of Grass.' I find it the most extraordinary 
 piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I 
 am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. 
 It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the 
 sterile and stingy Nature, as if too much handiwork, or too 
 much lymph in the temperament, were making our Western 
 wits fat and mean. 
 
 " I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great 
 joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, 
 as they must be. I find the courage of treatment that so de- 
 lights us, and which large perception only can inspire. 
 
 " I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet 
 
 F 
 
66 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. 
 I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illu- 
 sion ; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It 
 has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging. 
 
 " I did not know, until I last night saw the book advertised in 
 a newspaper, that I could trust the name as real and available 
 for a post-ofBce. 
 
 " I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like strik- 
 ing my tasks and visiting New York to pay you my respects. 
 
 "R. W. Emebson." 
 
 Emerson was equally free in expressing himself to 
 others in favour of his new-found poet. To a visitor 
 at Concord he said in the first flush of his enthusiasm, 
 Mr. Burroughs records, that "Americans abroad may 
 now come home: unto us a man is born." A Kttle 
 later, when he saw how blind others were to the 
 promise he saw in Whitman, and how loud were the 
 protests, his faith in his own discernment began to 
 weaken, and he wrote to Carlyle half-heartedly : — 
 
 " One book, last summer, came out in New York, a nonde- 
 script monster, which yet had terrible eyes and bufialo strength, 
 and was indisputably American — which I thought to send 
 you ; but the book throve so badly with the few to whom I 
 showed it, and wanted good morals so much, that I never did. 
 Yet I believe now again, I shall. It is called ' Leaves of Grass ' 
 — was written and printed by a journeyman printer in Brook- 
 lyn, New York, named Walter Whitman ; and after you have 
 looked into it, if you think, as you may, that it is only an 
 auctioneer's inventory of a warehouse, you can light your pipe 
 with it." 
 
 In the meantime Whitman had not been willing to 
 leave his precious volume to the uninstructed mercy 
 of the public jury. He was more than a poet, we must 
 remember: he stood for a novel theory of composition, 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 67 
 
 for a new attitude towards literature ; he was a fierce 
 propagandist for the rights of the people in letters, and 
 as such he was impatient. To three journals whose 
 columns were open to him, therefore, he contributed 
 anonymous reviews — so characteristically worded that 
 the disguise must have been ineffectual to any one who 
 knew him or his book. In the American Phrenological 
 Journal of Powler and Wells, at that time his agents 
 and soon to become his publishers, he compared the 
 Leaves with Tennyson's Maud, dwelling bluntly on 
 the striking contrast between the vigour, the self-re- 
 liance, and the democratic character of the one, and 
 the listlessness, the ennui, the indecision, and the 
 aristocratic quality of the other. In the United States 
 and Democratic Review, to which he had in years past 
 been a frequent contributor, he sounded the call for an 
 " athletic and defiant " native literature, of which he 
 was himself a symbol. And in the Brooklyn Times, 
 •with which he seems at that period to have had some 
 connection, he deliberately sets forth his own merits : — 
 
 " To give judgment on real poems, one needs an account of 
 the poet himself. Very devilish to some, and very divine to 
 some,> will appear the poet of these new poems, the ' Leaves of 
 Grass'; an attempt as they are, of a naive, masculine, affection- 
 ate, contemplative, sensual, imperious person, to cast into 
 literature not only his own grit and arrogance, but his own 
 flesh and form, undraped, regardless of models, regardless of 
 modesty or law, and ignorant or silently scornful, as at first 
 appears, of all except his own presence and experience, and all 
 outside the fiercely loved land of his birth, and the birth of his 
 parents, and their parents for several generations before him. 
 Politeness this man has none, and regulation he has none. A 
 rude child of the people I — No imitation — no foreigner — but 
 a growth and idiom of America. No discontented — a careless 
 
68 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 slouch, enjoying to-day. No dilettante democrat — a man who 
 is art-and-part with the commonalty, and with immediate life — 
 loves the streets — loves the docks — loves the free rasping talk 
 of men — likes to be called by his given name, and nobody at 
 all need Mr. him — can laugh with laughers — likes the ungen- 
 teel ways of laborers — is not prejudiced one mite against the 
 Irish — talks readily with them — talks readily with niggers — 
 does not make a stand on being a gentleman, nor on learning or 
 manners — eats cheap fare, likes the strong flavored coffee of 
 the cofiee-stands in the market, at sunrise — likes a supper of 
 oysters fresh from the oyster-smack — likes to make one at the 
 crowded tables among sailors and work-people — would leave a 
 select soiree of elegant people any time to go with tumultuous 
 men, roughs, receive their caresses and welcome, listen to their 
 noise, oaths, smut, fluency, laughter, repartee — and can pre- 
 serve his presence perfectly among these, and the like of these. 
 The effects he produces in his poems are no effects of artists 
 or the arts, but effects of the original eye or arm, or the actual 
 atmosphere, or tree, or bird. You may feel the unconscious 
 teaching of a fine brute, but will never feel the artificial teach- 
 ing of a fine writer or speaker. 
 
 " Other poets celebrate great events, personages, romances, 
 wars, loves, passions, the victories and power of their country, 
 or some real or imagined incident — and polish their work and 
 come to conclusions, and satisfy the reader. This poet cele- 
 brates natural propensities in himself ; and that is the way he 
 celebrates all. He comes to no conclusions, and does not 
 satisfy the reader. He certainly leaves him what the serpent 
 left the woman and the man, the taste of the Paradisaic tree of 
 the knowledge of good and evil, never to be erased again." 
 
 The candid reader's first impression of these self- 
 praising notices is one of surprise and perhaps dis- 
 gust, for by tradition the poet is wrapped up in his 
 art and careless of its reception by the vulgar throng. 
 But reflection points to a more tolerant attitude. 
 Writers have, unfortunately, rarely been as self-con- 
 tained as we may think. Some of great repute have 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 69 
 
 done as Wtitman did, and many have laboured to in- 
 fluence the notices of their work, regarding favourable 
 criticism as effective advertising. Log-rolling in litera- 
 ture was certainly not extinct in Whitman's time, nor 
 was his the only offence, if offence it was. And it must 
 be added that his journalistic experience and his long 
 acquaintance with newspapers had not taught him to 
 regard printed criticism as necessarily impartial in its 
 origin. He acted, in brief, without finesse of feel- 
 ing, in the downright, whole-hearted way which was 
 characteristic of him, as the unconventionalized man, 
 as one of his " roughs," would have acted. 
 
 But such good words as appeared about the book 
 were lost in the chorus of disapproval, and though 
 Whitman was joyful over Emerson's letter, the situa- 
 tion was disheartening. He paused to consider his 
 course. " When the book aroused such a storm of 
 anger and condemnation everywhere," he confessed in 
 later years, " I went off to the east end of Lortg 
 Island and Peconic Bay. Then came back to New 
 York with the confirmed resolution, from which I 
 never afterward wavered, to go on with my poetic 
 enterprise in my own way and finish it as well as I 
 could." 
 
 In June, 1856, he made his second appearance be- 
 fore the public with an enlarged edition, a sixteenmo 
 of nearly four hundred pages. Only one of the pre- 
 vious poems was omitted. The others were touched 
 here and there, always for the better, and twenty 
 were added.^ 
 
 1 1. Unfolded out of the Folds; 2. Salut au Monde ; 3. 
 Song of the Broadaxe ; 4. By Blue Ontario's Shore ; 5. This 
 Compost; 6. To You; 7. Crossing Brooklyn Terry; 8. Song 
 
70 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 The editioa showed not only greater ricliness of 
 poetic power, but a more single purpose. The egoistic 
 note, which in the first edition had seemed to pre- 
 dominate, was diminishing. The altruistic theme 
 came out more clearly. It was plainer that I meant, 
 not Walt Whitman, but man — the American work- 
 man. The subject was democracy : — 
 
 " Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre 
 
 figure of all ; 
 From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold- 
 
 color'd light ; 
 But I paint myriads of heads, hut paint no head without its 
 
 nimbus of gold-color' d light ; 
 Prom my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it 
 
 streams, effulgently flowing forever." 
 
 With this thread held firmly in hand, we are less 
 likely to be misled by the apparent sensuality of 
 Unfolded and A Woman Waits for Me, which he in- 
 serted to confirm and complete his previous attitude. 
 It was no wife or mistress of his, but the women of 
 America, the women of the world, in whose physical 
 
 of the Open Eoad ; 9. A Woman Waits for Me; 10. A poem a 
 large part of which is left out of the later editions, but which 
 is partly preserved in " On the Beach at Night Alone." 11. 
 Excelsior; 12. Song of Prudence ; 13. A poem which now 
 makes part of the " Song of the Answerer." 14. Assurances ; 
 15. To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire ; 16. A short poem, 
 part of which is afterwards incorporated in " As I sat Alone by 
 Blue Ontario's Shore," and the rest omitted from subsequent 
 editions. 17. Miracles ; 18. Spontaneous Me ; 19. A poem called 
 "Poem of the Propositions of Nakedness," afterward called 
 " Eespondez," and printed in every subsequent edition down 
 to that of 1882-'3, but omitted from that. 20. Song of the 
 Boiling Earth. 
 
III.] WOEKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 71 
 
 keeping are the babes of mankind. If women be not 
 strong, where shall strength come to the race ? If 
 they be impassive and unworthy, prudish and cold- 
 blooded, ill-natured and hysterical, what can come of 
 it but a world of weaklings ? For — 
 
 " Unfolded out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded, 
 and is always to come unfolded ; 
 
 Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth, is to 
 come the superbest man of the earth ; 
 
 Unfolded out of the friendliest woman, is to come the friend- 
 liest man ; 
 
 Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman, can a man 
 be form'd of perfect body. . . . 
 
 Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain, come all the 
 folds of the man's brain, duly obedient ; 
 
 Unfolded out of the justice of the woman, all justice is un- 
 folded ; 
 
 Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy : 
 
 A man is a great thing upon the earth, and through eternity — 
 but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of 
 women ; 
 
 First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped 
 in Mmself." 
 
 From this glorification of motherhood and father- 
 hood as they produce "sons and daughters fit for 
 These States," we pass to the longer new poems. 
 The splendid Salut au Monde is the first of his 
 few well-articulated poems, a survey of the whole 
 world — its sounds, its physical aspect, its rivers and 
 deserts and seas and watercourses and railroads, its 
 ancient empires and temples and battlefields, its 
 uttermost parts, its teeming cities, its diverse popula- 
 tions ; to the lowest and meanest his love goes out. 
 It is God's whole universe to which he gives friendly 
 
72 WALT "WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 greetiBg. The same all-embracing sympathy shines 
 in Grossing Brooklyn Ferry, and in it, in the Song 
 of the Broadaxe,^ and the Song of the Open Boad, 
 we find the concentration and unity that mark the 
 growth of his artistic power. They lack the dove- 
 tailing accuracy of logical sequence that we find in the 
 more intellectual poets, but they have a sweeping emo- 
 tional sequence of transition from mood to cognate 
 mood that is equally effective. The Open Boad is 
 one of the most haunting of all his compositions. 
 Starting from the highway, which entices one to push 
 out boldly and carelessly into unknown districts, he 
 transfers his symbolism to the open road of thought 
 and feeling and action, urging his friends tenderly to 
 throw aside convention and conservatism and enter 
 heartily upon the journey of life, questing for the un- 
 known : — 
 
 "AUons ! after the Great Companions ! and to belong to them I 
 They too are on the road ! they are swift and majestic men ! 
 they are the greatest women. . . . 
 
 1 The beautiful opening lines of the Sroadaxe, which ap- 
 proach closely to conventional metre and rhyme, show what 
 a tremendous advance in skill Whitman had made in less than 
 ten years, and hint what he might have done in verse of a more 
 orthodox character had his temperament not forced him into 
 the rhapsodical style of the mystic : — 
 
 "Weapon shapely, naked, wan 1 
 Head from the mother's bowels drawn ! 
 Wooded flesh and metal bone ! limb only one, and lip only 
 
 one ! 
 Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown I helve produced from 
 
 a little seed sown 1 
 Besting the grass amid and upon. 
 To be lean'd, and to lean on." 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 73 
 
 " My call is the call of battle — I nourish active rebellion ; 
 He going with me must go well arm'd ; 
 He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry 
 enemies, desertions. 
 
 " AUons I the road is before us t 
 It is safe — I have tried it — my own feet have tried it 
 well. 
 
 " Allons ! be not detain' d I 
 Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book 
 
 on the shelf unopen'd 1 
 Let the tools remain in the workshop 1 let the money remain 
 
 unearn'd I 
 Let the school stand ! mind not the cry of the teacher 1 
 Let the preacher preach in his pulpit 1 let the lawyer plead in 
 
 the court, and the judge expound the law. 
 
 " Mon enfant 1 I. give you my hand ! 
 I give you my love, more precious than money, 
 I give you myself, before preaching or law; 
 Will you give me yourself ? will you come travel with me ? 
 Shall we stick by each other as long as we live ? " 
 
 On the back of the new volume were stamped in 
 gold letters a few words from Emerson's letter: "I 
 greet you at the beginning of a great career. K. W. 
 Emerson." In an appendix, which consisted mainly 
 of notices, Emerson's letter of July, 1855, was printed 
 in full, and with it a letter from Whitman which ex- 
 plained his aims : — 
 
 " Other work," he says, " I have set for myself to do, to meet 
 people and The States face to face, to confront them with an 
 American rude tongue ; but the work of my life is making 
 poems. I keep on till I make a hundred, and then several hun- 
 dred — perhaps a thousand. The way is clear to me. A few 
 years, and the average annual call for my Poems is ten or 
 twenty thousand copies — more, quite likely. Why should I 
 hurry or compromise ? In poems or in speeches I say the word 
 
74 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 or two that has got to be said, adhere to the body, step with the 
 countless common footsteps, and remind every man or woman 
 of something. 
 
 " Master, I am a man who has perfect faith. Master, we hare 
 not come through centuries, caste, heroisms, fables, to halt in 
 this land to-day." 
 
 The burden of the letter, however, is plea for a more 
 rigorous and manly literature. He is tired of " this 
 empty dish, gallantry, this tepid wash, this diluted 
 deferential love." 
 
 "Strangle the singers who will not sing to you loud and 
 strong. Open the doors of the West. . . . America is to be kept 
 coarse and broad. . . . None believes in These States. . . . Not 
 a man faces round at the rest with a terrible negative voice, re- 
 fusing at all times to be bought ofl from his own eye-sight. . . . 
 The churches are one vast lie ; the people do not believe them, 
 and they do not believe themselves. ... I think there can 
 never be again upon the festive earth more bad-disordered per- 
 sons deliberately taking seats, as of late in These States, at the 
 heads of the public tables — such corpses' eyes for judges — such 
 a rascal and thief in the Presidency." 
 
 And finally : — 
 
 "Those shores you found. I say you have led The States 
 there — have led Me there. I say that none has ever done or 
 ever can do, a greater deed for The States, than your deed. 
 Others may line out the lines, build cities, work mines, break up 
 farms; it is yours to have been the original true Captain who put 
 to sea, intuitive, positive, rendering the first report, and more 
 by the mariners of a thousand bays, in each tack of their arriv- 
 ing and departing, many years after you. 
 
 " Receive, dear Master, these statements and assurances 
 through me, for all the young men, and for an earnest that 
 we know none before you, but the best following you ; and that 
 we demand to take your name into our keeping, and that we 
 
HI.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 76 
 
 understand what you have indicated, and find the same indi- 
 cated in ourselves, and that we vfiU stick to it and enlarge upon 
 it through These States." 
 
 The comments of the press upon the second edition 
 were even more condemnatory than upon the first, for 
 to the thoughtless reader it was apparently more in- 
 decent. The public, however, showed a greater in- 
 terest, — perhaps, we may suspect, for the same reason. 
 \A- thousand copies' — no small number for a volume 
 of poems — was sold in a short time, and prepara- 
 tions for a larger sale were made through agencies in 
 the principal cities in America and in London, Paris, 
 and Brussels. But the cry of public disapproval grew 
 louder and louder, there were threats of prosecution, 
 and finally Fowler and Wells, who, though its real 
 publishers, had^not given it their imprint, withdrew 
 their support, and the book was allowed to go out of 
 /print. 
 
 In spite of the disfavour of the general public Whit- 
 man was beginning to attract the attention of men of 
 larger judgment. Emerson is said to have been dis- 
 pleased at the publicity given to his letter, though this 
 was done at the advice of Charles A. Dana,, a friend of 
 both Emerson and Whitman ; and Whitman himself was 
 innocent of wrong : " I supposed the letter was meant 
 to be blazoned," he said years later ; " I regarded it as 
 
 iln his letter to Emerson, appended to the second edition, 
 Whitman said that the thousand copies of the first edition were 
 readily sold. This seems to contradict flatly the statement 
 made by Burroughs and borne out by Whitman's allusions to 
 the subject later. Perhaps he was merely translating his hopes 
 into facts, or had in mind negotiations, of which we are igno- 
 rant, for disposing of the entire remainder of the first edition. 
 
76 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 the charter of an emperor." Whatever annoyance 
 Emerson may have felt, however, had no effect upon 
 their personal intercourse. He disapproved of the 
 publication of poems that touched on sexual relations, 
 but he had a genuine liking for Whitman and came 
 several times to see him. And even before the pub- 
 lication of the second edition he had begun to point 
 out Whitman as a man worth knowing. Thus came 
 Thoreau, greatly puzzled by the " disagreeable " pieces, 
 but carried out of himself — "put into a liberal 
 state of mind," as he expressed it, by Whitman's en- 
 thusiastic optimism ; Bronson Alcott, who saw less of 
 Whitman than of his mother, from whom he heard end- 
 less praises of her son's goodness and wisdom ; and 
 Moncure D. Conway, who found him basking in the 
 blazing sun in a pasture, went bathing with him in the 
 sea, and accompanied him to the Tombs, witnessing a 
 striking incident of his influence over the warden in 
 behalf of an ill-used prisoner. Like others, he was 
 impressed by Whitman's gentleness, modesty of per- 
 son, and simplicity of manner, by his essential greatness 
 and nobility of mind, by the magnetic, almost physical 
 influence, which he exercised over men. William 
 Cullen Bryant and Henry Ward Beecher came also, 
 and Lord Houghton, who shared his supper of roast 
 apples, as George Whitman relates. At this period, 
 too. Whitman began to make warm friendships in 
 families of a higher social status than his own, where 
 he went almost daily, meeting women of more refine- 
 ment than he had hitherto known, and winning affec- 
 tion and confidence from all. 
 
 To grasp the whole of his life, however, we must 
 not forget his frequent association with labouring men 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 77 
 
 of all classes, to be described more particularly later 
 on, and his more or less regular meetings with the so- 
 called "Bohemian" set at PfafE's, a dingy German 
 basement restaurant on Broadway, where actors and 
 journalists were wont to gather. Of the writers many 
 were out of accord with the prevailing tone of Ameri- 
 can letters, and there was much in their radical pro- 
 gramme, developed under French influence, with which 
 Whitman could sympathize, as he could sympathize 
 with anything that tended to break up routine and con- 
 ventionalism in poetry. But he was, it would seem, 
 for the most part a quiet onlooker and listener amid 
 the clouds of smoke, sitting placidly over his glass 
 of beer, and " emanating," as Mr. Howells, who first 
 saw him there, said, " an atmosphere of purity and 
 serenity." 
 
 In the quiet years that immediately followed Whit- 
 man gave himself wholly up to his work, living 
 frugally on such means as he had derived from his 
 business pursuits and the sales of his second edition. 
 His first thought was the completion of the Leaves 
 of Grass, and there are extant in his huge collection 
 of manuscript notes a multitude of memoranda for 
 revision and addition. He made lists of different 
 themes and suggestive words, and cautioned himself 
 again and again to avoid " all poetical similes — to be 
 faithful to the perfect likelihoods of nature — healthy, 
 exact, simple, disdaining ornaments." ■ 
 
 But there was a time also when he conceived of a 
 new point of attack, or rather reverted to an earlier 
 plan of reaching his fellow-countrymen more directly 
 through the spoken word. He was to prepare a whole 
 series of lectures, explaining and fortifying his 
 
78 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 theories. These would attract the -wandering atten- 
 tion of the public to his poetical work, to which it 
 could be regarded as supplementary. It was appar- 
 ently with such a purpose in mind that he made the 
 memorandum, in June, 1857 : " The Great Construc- 
 tion of the Kew Bible. Not to be diverted from the 
 principal object — the main life — the three hundred 
 and sixty-iive. — It ought to be ready in 1859." His 
 plan was to make himself the great orator of the day, 
 the man who would tell Americans their faults, and in- 
 struct them in the social and political virtues. No 
 great personal gain was to be his ; his admission fee 
 was to be fifteen or even ten cents ; but he was to be 
 the moulder of public opinion. As Washington freed 
 America from the domination of the English govern- 
 ment, so Whitman was to free us from the domination 
 of all foreign ideals. On April 24, 1857, he made the 
 memorandum : — 
 
 " True Vista before. — The strong thought-impression or 
 conviction that the straight, broad, open, well-marked trae 
 vista before, or course of public teacher, ' wander-speaker,' 
 
 — by powerful words, orations, uttered with copiousness and 
 decision, with all the aid of art, also the natural flowing vocal 
 luxuriance of oratory. That the mightiest rule over America 
 could be thus — as for instance, on occasion, at Washington to 
 be, launching from public room, at the opening of the session 
 of Congress — perhaps launching at the President, leading per- 
 sons, Congressmen, or Judges of the Supreme Court. That to 
 dart hither or thither, as some great emergency might demand 
 
 — the greatest champion America ever could know, yet holding 
 no ofBce or emolument whatever, — but first in the esteem of 
 men and women. Not to direct eyes or thoughts to any of the 
 usual avenues, as of oflBcial appointment, or to get such anyway. 
 To put all those aside for good. But always to keep up living 
 interest in public questions — and alxoays to hold the ear of the 
 people." 
 
III.] "WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 79 
 
 One of these lectures has been preserved for us, 
 in a rough outline, in An American Primer, — "a 
 primer of words for American young men and women, 
 for literats, orators, teachers, musicians, judges, presi- 
 dents, etc.," a discourse, in short, on words, for all 
 who use words to produce an effect upon the public. 
 The outline was never filled out, but the existing 
 fragments embody something of the author's insight 
 into the relation between language and life and of his 
 attitude as an artist towards his medium. The main 
 theme bears a certain resemblance to Dante's unfin- 
 ished treatise On the Vulgar Tongue and to Words- 
 worth's kindred prefaces. The language of books, 
 Whitman saw, was not the language of the people, ^ 
 and, in so far as it was merely conventional, stood as 
 a barrier between the writer and the world. He would 
 have us realize that words are not original things, but 
 accidents, transitory experiments of mankind in the 
 nomenclature of emotions and ideas, and that all who 
 deal publicly with expression must be co-workers in 
 the confused and laborious process by which the 
 new conceptions and the new moods of a nation find 
 adequate symbols. The poet, too, must build upon 
 something more basic than the word: "latent, in a 
 great user of words, must actually be all passions, 
 crimes, trades, animals, stars, God, sex, the past, night, 
 space, metals, and the like — because these are the 
 words, and he who is not these plays with a foreign 
 tongue, turning helplessly to dictionaries and authori- 
 ties." Such ideas are now not unfamiliar, but they 
 were not current in New York in the fifties, and it is 
 to Whitman's credit that he could evolve them, even 
 thus blindly, for himself. 
 
80 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 These great plans of interesting the public soon 
 came to naught, however. His fertile imagination 
 and his clear insight into the needs of the nation had 
 tricked him into proposing for himself a course of 
 action for which he had no real fitness or special 
 training. It was not long before he came to see that 
 he could not in this way press his message upon the 
 attention of the public. Moreover, his mind was now 
 becoming possessed by a new idea, — a new passion, 
 one might say. Just as he had discovered for him- 
 self the immense social importance of man's love for 
 woman, so now he was becoming aware of the fact 
 that the love of man for man was the basic rock of 
 democratic society. 
 
 Por many years he had been strongly attracted to 
 the stage-drivers of Broadway, men of a very special 
 type, who had usually been bred in the country, and 
 who had become expert in the extraordinarily difficult 
 art, compounded of strength, skUl, and intelligence, 
 of managing a clumsy vehicle in a congested thorough- 
 fare. Among his notes are a number of memoranda 
 relating to such friends of his, in which it is apparent 
 that at first he admired particularly in them their 
 
 intense virility. With regard to Peter , for in- 
 
 stancej he writes : — 
 
 " Peter , large, strong-boned yomig fellow, driver. 
 
 Should weigh 180. Free and candid to me the very first time 
 he saw me. -Man of strong self-wiU, powerful coarse feelings 
 and appetites. Had a quarrel, borrowed $300, left his father's 
 somewhere in the interior of the State, fell in with a couple of 
 gamblers, hadn't been home or written there in seven years. 
 I liked his refreshing wickedness, as it would be called by the 
 orthodox. He seemed to feel a perfect independence, dashed 
 with a little resentment toward the world in general. I never 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 81 
 
 met a man that seemed to me, as far as I could tell in forty 
 minutes, more open, coarse, self-willed, strong and free from 
 the sickly desire to be on society's lines and points." 
 
 As time wore on, however, we can dimly see that a 
 new spirit entered into his relations with these and 
 other men, a yearning, affectionate spirit. He was 
 more drawn toward the younger men, who might have 
 been his brothers or sons. His mystical imagination, 
 which had at first been preoccupied with the over- 
 powering sense of personal identity and with all that 
 tended to magnify the individual and to make him virile 
 and intense, and that hence centred itself largely in 
 the life of the senses, was now being rapidly modified. 
 He caught a glimpse of a new law — the good will and 
 tender sympathy of man for man, on which all social 
 progress might be said to rest. He began voluntarily 
 to sacrifice himself for such men, to tend them in their 
 sickness, and to comfort them in their afl9.ictions ; and 
 in one instance he took a disabled driver's place for a 
 whole winter, that his family might not lack its cus- 
 tomary support. A similar tenderness and gracious- 
 ness of feeling characterized his relationship with his 
 friends among the ferry hands, as may be seen by the 
 memories that one of them has put on record : — 
 
 " Thirty years ago, while employed upon an East Eiver steam- 
 boat, I became acquainted with Walt Whitman, and the asso- 
 ciation has ever since been a treasured one by myself and the 
 rest of my companion boatmen. He came among us simply as 
 a sociable passenger, but his genial behavior soon made him a 
 most welcome visitor. We knew somewhat of his reputation 
 as a man of letters, but the fact made no great impression upon 
 us, nor did he ever attempt a display of his gifts or learning that 
 would in the least make us feel he was not ' of us, and one of 
 us,' as he used to express it. In a charmingly practical demo- 
 
82 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 cratio manner he took great pains to teach many valuable things 
 to a hard-handed band of men whose life bad afforded little 
 time for books. In later years I have realized that ' Walt' — 
 he would allow no other salutation from us — has done much 
 gratuitous work as a teacher, and in looking back I also realize 
 his excellence as an instructor. A careful choice of words and 
 terse method of explaining a subject were truly peculiar to 
 him — at least the faculty was marvellous to us. In our long 
 watches — he would pass entire afternoons and even nights 
 with us — he would discourse in a clear, conversational sort of 
 way upon politics, literature, art, music or the drama, from a 
 seemingly endless storing of knowledge. He certainly urged 
 some of us into a desire for attainments that perhaps would 
 not otherwise have been aroused. 'My boy,' he would often 
 say, after simply but eloquently treating some theme, 'you 
 must read more of this for yourself,' and then generously put 
 his library at the listener's service. I have seen a youth swab- 
 bing a steamboat's deck with Walt's Homer in his monkey-jacket 
 pocket ! " 
 
 A passage in the Leaves of Grass which was 
 written about this time, and which appeared only in 
 the edition of 1860, reveals the progress of his thought 
 under the spur of this new feeling. He was to sing 
 no more ; he was to be the great comrade of man : — 
 
 " Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me — if 
 
 I could but obtain knowledge ! 
 Then my lands engrossed me — Lands of the prairies, Ohio's 
 
 land, the southern savannas, engrossed me — For them 
 
 I would live — I would be their orator ; 
 Then I met the examples of old and new heroes — I heard of 
 
 warriors, sailors, and all dauntless persons — And it 
 
 seemed to me that I too had it in me to be as dauntless 
 
 as any — and would be so ; 
 And then, to enclose all, it came to me to strike up the songs 
 
 of the New World — And then I believed my life must 
 
 be spent in singmg ; 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 83 
 
 But now take notice, land of the prairies, land of the south 
 
 savannas, Ohio's land, 
 Take notice, you Kanuok woods — and you Lake Huron — 
 
 and all that with you roll toward Niagara — and you 
 
 Niagara also, 
 And you Calif ornian mountains — That you each and all find 
 
 somebody else to he your singer of songs, 
 Tor I can he your singer of songs no longer — One who loves 
 
 me is jealous of me, and withdraws me from all love. 
 With the rest I dispense — I sever from what I thought would 
 
 suffice me, for it does not — it is now empty and tasteless 
 
 to me, 
 I heed knowledge and the grandeur of the States, and the 
 
 example of heroes, no more, 
 I am indifferent to my own songs — I, will go with him I love, j^^ 
 It is to he enough for us that we are together — We never 
 
 separate again." 
 
 Before his feeling reached the point where it 
 seemed that he should write no more, he had accumu- 
 lated a considerable body of new poems, and in 1860 
 an opportunity to publish them presented itself. 
 Thayer and Eldridge, a Boston firm in good standing, 
 offered to reprint the Leaves of Grass, with what- 
 ever new material he had. Whitman accepted the 
 proposal, and in March of that year went to Boston to 
 superintend the setting-up of his book. There he 
 made a number of new friends, among them Mr. 
 Eldridge himself, whom he was later to know better 
 in Washington; W. D. O'Connor, a brilliant young 
 Irishman, whose Abolitionist novel, Harrington, was 
 soon to appear from the same press, and who after- 
 wards became Whitman's stanch friend and cham- 
 pion ; and J. T. Trowbridge, in whose reminiscences 
 there is an interesting record of the silent, gray- 
 haired, and gray-bearded poet, undemonstrative, and 
 
84 "WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 ■without a touch of bravado or self-assertiveness, whom 
 he saw patiently correcting his proofs in a dingy- 
 printing-office. 
 ^ With Emerson he had a number of meetings, of one 
 of which he has left an interesting reminiscence : — 
 
 "Up and down this breadth by Beacon Street, between 
 these same old elms, I walk'd for two hours, of a bright sharp 
 February mid-day twenty-one years ago, with Emerson, then 
 in his prime, keen, physically and morally magnetic, arm'd at 
 every point, and when he chose, wielding the emotional just as 
 well as the intellectual. During those two hours he was the 
 talker and I the listener. It was an argument-statement, recon- 
 noitring, review, attack, and pressing home, (like an army 
 corps in order, artillery, cavalry, infantry,) of all that could he 
 said against that part (and a main part) in the construction 
 of my poems, ' Children of Adam.' More precious than gold to 
 me that dissertation — it afforded me, even after, this strange 
 paradoxical lesson ; each point of E.'s statement was unanswer- 
 able, no judge's charge ever more complete or convincing, I 
 could never hear the points better put — and then I felt down 
 in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all, 
 and pursue my own way. ' What have you to say then to such 
 . / things ? ' said B., pausing in conclusion. ' Only that while I 
 can't answer them at all, I feel more settled than ever to adhere 
 to my own theory, and exemplify it,' was my candid response. 
 Whereupon we went and had a good dinner at the American 
 House. And thenceforward I never waver'd or was touch'd 
 with qualms, (aa I confess I had been two or three times be- 
 fore.") 
 
 Of the i-emaining important members of the Boston 
 group of men of letters he apparently saw little or 
 nothing. Tor Emerson he had the greatest respect 
 and affection, as for an elder and more austere brother 
 I who did not deny the kinship of blood and spirit that 
 bound them both ; but between the others and him- 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 85 
 
 self there was little sympathy, and though Lowell 
 printed Whitman's As I ebb'd with the Ocean of 
 Life in the Atlantic for April, he does not seem to 
 have taken advantage of this opportunity to seek 
 Whitman's friendship. Father Taylor, however, the 
 eloquent preacher at the Seamen's Bethel, Whitman 
 heard often, recognizing him as the one "perfect 
 orator " to whom he had ever listened ; but here again 
 there was a distant but distinct spiritual kinship. 
 
 The edition of 1860-1861 is a substantial volume, 
 crowded with poems and parts of poems, new and old, 
 the old bearing many marks of patient and skilful 
 revision. It is a bewildering succession of moods, all 
 expressed in Whitman's elusive fashion, a mass of 
 sensations and symbols, from which it is impossible 
 at first to gain definite or coherent impressions. One 
 is stimulated in a multitude of ways, but it is only 
 after repeated readings that it is possible to form a 
 coherent and unified judgment. 
 
 As, however, reflection clarifies these glimpses into 
 the heart of a great dreamer, one slowly begins to see 
 how his mystic message was being transformed. The 
 poet has ceased to wonder anew at' the miracle of his 
 own being ; he has almost passed beyond his preoccu- 
 pation with the stimuli of sex, though he collects and 
 confirms his feelings on this topic before letting it 
 drop entirely into the background of his thought. 
 The message of equality, too, the mystic sympathy 
 with all created things, though similarly confirmed, is 
 scarcely so much stressed as in the previous poems, 
 and though his mind runs much on the career of 
 America and the proud democracy of labour which she 
 is developing, his real thought lies deeper still. He 
 
86 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 announces a new religion of afEectionate comradeship 
 — a spiritual fellowship without which political and 
 industrial and physical democracy is of no avail : — 
 
 " I dream'd in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks 
 
 of the whole of the rest of the earth ; 
 I dream'd that was the new City of lYlends; nothing was 
 
 greater there than the quality of robust love — it led the 
 
 rest; 
 It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, 
 And in all their looks and words." 
 
 Deeper yet, just as formerly his imagination had 
 dwelt exultantly on the passionate love of men and 
 women, to which our existence is due, so now it dwelt 
 on a second and greater law of love, — that force of 
 affection which, without stimulus of sex, binds human- 
 ity together : — 
 
 " Fast-Anchor'd, eternal, O love! O woman I love! 
 
 bride! wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of 
 
 you! 
 — Then separate, as disembodied, or another bom, 
 Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation; 
 
 1 ascend — I float in the regions of your love, O man, 
 O sharer of my roving life." 
 
 And deeper yet, in mystical broodings of fancy in 
 which few can follow him. Just as formerly he 
 pictured himself, as the type-man, as lover and hus- 
 band and father, the incarnation of sex, so now he 
 announces himself as the lover of his friend, yearning 
 for his close companionship, for his kiss and his em- 
 brace. The Anglo-Saxon, with his sense of physical 
 aloofness, finds these sayings hard. Whitman him- 
 self falters and seems at times ill at ease, and declares 
 that he shades his thought ; but it is clear that we 
 
III.] WORKMAN AND POET (1850-1860) 87 
 
 have here no abnormality or perversion of feeling. I 
 should say rather that Whitman's extraordinary nature 
 possessed to a most unusual degree, and with refer- 
 ence to many, the feeling of physical love, — wholly 
 disassociated with sex, — which we, in varying de- 
 grees, bear to our parents, or brothers, or sons, or 
 perhaps, more faintly, to friends. What appears to 
 us as a minute, almost unrecognizable element in life, 
 only revealing itself under exceptional circumstances, 
 was to him a powerful and constant yearning, — the 
 more so as he was cut off from his own children. 
 Through his timid and hesitating expression of this 
 new idea of physical comradeship one may perhaps 
 catch a glimpse of the conception that a feeling so 
 largely developed in him was merely latent in others ; 
 and that in the evolution of our race there might be- 
 come normal and natural in all men a yearning of 
 companion for companion, a love of friend for friend, 
 that would be among the highest manifestations of 
 the divinity within us. 
 
 And deeper and more mystical still, a doctrine that 
 as the love of sex was bound up with life, so this 
 greater, more basic love was bound up with death. 
 The former plays its part, fulfils its function, and has L^ 
 its end. The latter, less obvious in its aim, looks for- 
 ward beyond the term of life for the fulfilment of its 
 mysterious power. The love of sex wanes with age 
 and disappears with life, but perhaps not so the other, 
 which may somehow have the same af&nity for death 
 that its predecessor had for life. Whether Whitman 
 was conscious of this inference is open to doubt, but 
 the ideas appear in close juxtaposition in these poems, 
 and seem to have had in his mind a real connection. 
 
88 "WALT WHITMAN [chap. hi. 
 
 Such -were the contents of the new volume issuing 
 from the press in the troubled days just preceding the 
 outbreak of the war. Even at a less perturbed mo- 
 ment his voice would scarcely have been heard by 
 many, and as it was misfortune early overtook the 
 venture. The political crisis came, and with it a re- 
 striction of credit. The publishing house failed, after 
 selling four or five thousand copies, and Whitman at 
 forty-two seemed destined to be a voice vainly crying 
 in the wilderness. 
 
CHAPTER ly-" 
 
 COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 
 
 Whitmait returned from Boston in June, 1860, and 
 resumed his quiet life in his mother's house, but we 
 have little further information regarding him until 
 late in 1862. When, in April, 1861, the Civil War 
 broke out, Whitman's first thought must havejbeen of 
 what service he could render, for he was a zealous up- 
 holder of the Union, but he was obviously wise in not 
 volunteering, and in biding his time until his proper 
 duty revealed itself, though the possibility of entering 
 the army remained in his mind long after he had be- 
 come a hospital nurse. His slow ways and his unique 
 individuality made him ill-suited for the discipline of 
 camp and battle. His brother George, however, en- 
 listed at once in the 51st New York Volunteers, and 
 it was this circumstance that eventually changed the 
 whole character of Whitman's life. 
 
 Few as are the data that bear on Whitman's life 
 during this period of two years, we can surmise how 
 much he was moved by the great turmoil about him. 
 His dream of a brotherhood of Americ an y outfar "was ; 
 apparently shattered forever, by civic strife, but he 
 must have found hope in witnessing the exultant out- 
 burst of patriotism, and have been thrilled by the 
 "drum-taps" to which the streets of Manhattan 
 echoed as the troops gathered to the defence of their 
 flag. For his own part he registered a vow, written 
 in his own hand April 16, 1861, and found after his 
 
 89 
 
90 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 death, among his papers : "I have this day, this hour, 
 resolved to inaugurate for myself a pure, perfect, 
 sweet, clean-blooded, robust body, by ignoring all 
 drinks but water and pure milk, and all fat meats, 
 late suppers — a great body, a purged, cleansed, 
 spiritualized, invigorated body." A frugal liver, he 
 thus passed into something like austerity of diet, in 
 discipline and in preparation for whatever call should 
 be laid upon him. 
 
 This quiet life came to an end when, in December, 
 1862, his brother's name appeared in the list of those 
 seriously wounded at Tredericksburg. Whitman at 
 once started for Washington. His pocket was picked 
 on the route, and he arrived penniless and without 
 knowledge as to the whereabouts of his brother ; but 
 he was so fortunate as to find Mr. O'Connor, then in 
 the Treasury Department, whom he had met in Boston, 
 and who supplied him with, funds and helped him to 
 obtain information. George was not in the hospitals 
 at Washington, and Whitman made his way with diffi- 
 culty to the seat of war, where he found that his brother 
 was already recovered from a wound in the cheek 
 made by a fragment of a shell, and had just received 
 his promotion to a captaincy. Once in camp, Whit- 
 man tarried a few days to see the life there, and, 
 characteristically, became greatly interested in some 
 of the sick and wounded men. Returning to Wash- 
 ington, he was, on the way, of much assistance in 
 nursing them, and he determined to tarry awhile to 
 see what further he could do for such unfortunates. 
 
 At that time Washington contained a whole city of 
 sick and wounded men, perhaps fifty thousand or 
 more, at first occupying public buildings already 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) «1 
 
 standing — the vast area of the second story of the 
 Patent Office, for example, and even part of the Capi- 
 tol, and afterward wooden one-story barracks. There 
 were fifty hospitals, each a little town in itself, full 
 of the wrecks of battle or disease. Camp sanitation 
 was little understood, and soldiers were wasted by 
 dysentery and fevers ; antiseptic surgery had not been 
 discovered, and the mortality from suppurating wounds 
 was terrific ; there was little provision on the part of 
 the Government ; surgeons and nurses did what they 
 could, but, especially at first, there were many important 
 things left undone because there was no one to do 
 them. Particularly was this the case in respect to 
 the minor comforts of illness. The men were without 
 money, without news from their relatives, without 
 an opportunity of writing home; their major wants 
 were attended to, but they lacked comfort and inspi- 
 ration and counsel. They died of homesickness and 
 abandonment. There were many in the Sanitary Ser- 
 vice, and more particularly in the Christian Commis- 
 sion, who helped in such matters, and a few volunteers, 
 among whom Whitman was preeminent. He sup- 
 ported himself by a little newspaper work and by 
 copying a few hours each day in the office of Major 
 Hapgood, an army paymaster, where his friend and 
 former publisher, Mr. Eldridge, was now a clerk. 
 The greater part of his time he gave to the sufferers 
 in the hospitals. Friends in New York and elsewhere 
 supplied him with money for the work. Before the 
 war closed he had made about six hundred hospital 
 visits ; cared, to a greater or less extent, for nearly a 
 hundred thousand unfortunates ; and expended many 
 thousand dollars. 
 
92 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 His methods were characteristic. When practicable 
 he prepared himself for his daily or nightly tour by 
 rest, a bath, and a hearty meal. Cheerful in appear- 
 ance, quiet and slow in his movements, with apparently 
 an abundance of time for looking personally and care- 
 fully into whatever needed his attention, he was every- 
 where welcome. His theory was that personal affection 
 played a large part in therapeutics : — 
 
 " To many of the wounded and sick, especially the youngsters, 
 there is something in personal love, caresses, and the magnetic 
 flood of sympathy and friendship, that does, in its way, more 
 good than all the medicine in the world. I have spoken of my 
 regular gifts of delicacies, money, tobacco, special articles of 
 food, knick-knacks, etc., etc. But I steadily found more and 
 more that I could help, and turn the balance in favor of cure, by 
 the means here alluded to, in a curiously large proportion of 
 cases. The American soldier is full of afiection and the yearn- 
 ing for affection. And it comes wonderfully grateful to him to 
 have this yearning gratified when he is laid up with painful 
 wounds or illness, far away from home, among strangers. Many 
 will think this merely sentimentalism, but I know it is the most 
 solid of facts. I believe that even the moving around among 
 the men, or through the ward, of a hearty, healthy, clean, strong, 
 generous-souled person, man or woman, full of humanity and 
 love, sending out invisible, constant currents thereof, does im- 
 mense good to the sick and wounded. 
 
 " My custom is to go through a ward, or a collection of wards, 
 endeavoring to give some trifle to each, without missing any. 
 Even a sweet biscuit, a sheet of paper, or a passing word of 
 friendliness, or but a look or nod, if no more. In this way I go 
 through large numbers without delaying, yet do not hurry. I 
 find out the general mood of the ward at the time ; sometimes 
 see that there is a heavy weight of listlessness prevailing, and the 
 whole ward wants cheering up. I perhaps read to the men, to 
 break the spell, calling them around me, careful to sit away 
 from the cot of any one who is very bad with sickness or wounds. 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 93 
 
 Also I find out, by going through in this way, the cases that 
 need special attention, and can then devote proper time to them. 
 Of course, I am very cautious, among the patients, in giving 
 them food. I always confer with the doctor, or find out from 
 the nurse or ward-master about a new case. But I soon get 
 sufficiently familiar with what is to be avoided, and learn also 
 to judge almost intuitively what is best." 
 
 His Tery appearance served to hearten men. As 
 lie wrote to his mother : — 
 
 "I believe I weigh about 200, and as to my face, (so 
 scarlet,) and my beard and neck, they are terrible to behold. 
 I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the hospitals 
 among the poor languishing and wounded boys, is that I am so 
 large and well — indeed like a great wild buffalo, with much 
 hair. Many of the soldiers are from the "West, and far North, 
 and they take to a man that has not the bleached shiny and 
 shaved cut of the cities and the East." 
 
 The best description of his work, however, came 
 from John Swinton : — 
 
 " I first heard of Whitman among the sufferers on the Pen- 
 insula after a battle there. Subsequently I saw him, time and 
 again, in the "Washington hospitals, or wending his way there 
 with basket or haversack on his arm, and the strength of benefi- 
 cence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed the devo- 
 tion of woman. It would take a volume to teU of his kindness, 
 tenderness, and thoughtfulness. 
 
 "Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on 
 his i|ounds through a hospital, filled with those wounded young 
 Americans whose heroism he has sung in deathless numbers. 
 There were three rows of cots, and each cot bore its man. 
 "When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of affec- 
 tion and welcome on every face, however wan, and his presence 
 seemed to light up the place as it might be lit by the presence 
 of the Son of Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in 
 tremulous tones or in whispers ; they embraced him, they 
 touched his hand, they gazed at him. To one he gave a few 
 
94 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 words of cheer, for another he wrote a letter home, to others 
 he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, 
 a sheet of paper or a postage stamp, all of which and many 
 other things were in his capacious haversack. From another 
 he would receive a dying message for mother, wife, or sweet- 
 heart ; for another he would promise to go on an errand ; to 
 another, some special friend, very low, he would give a manly 
 farewell kiss. He did the things for them which no nurse or 
 doctor could do, and he seemed to leave a benediction at every 
 cot as he passed along. The lights had gleamed for hours in 
 the hospital that night before he left it, and as he took his way 
 towards the door, you could hear the voice of many a stricken 
 hero calling, ' Walt, Walt, Walt, come again ! come again ! ' " 
 
 And the following incident, quoted by Dr. Bucke, 
 in his biography, from a writer in the New York 
 Tribune, is typical of the help he gave in scores or 
 hundreds of instances : — 
 
 " While walking in the neighborhood of New Roohelle, West- 
 chester County, a few days ago, I observed a man at work in 
 a field adjoining the road, and I opened a conversation with 
 him. He had served in the Union Army during the Eebellion, 
 and I had no trouble In inducing him to fight some of his 
 battles over again. He gave me a graphic description of how 
 he was badly wounded in the leg ; how the doctors resolved to 
 cut his leg off ; his resistance to the proposed amputation, and 
 his utter despair when he found he must lose his leg (as they 
 said) to save his life. As a last resort, he determined to appeal 
 to a man who visited the hospital about every alternate day. 
 This man was a representative of the Sanitary Commission 
 [this of course is a mistake], and he described him as a tall, 
 well-built man with the face of an angel. He carried over his 
 broad shoulders a well-filled haversack, containing about every- 
 thing that would give a sick soldier comfort. In it were pens, 
 ink and paper, thread, needles, buttons, cakes, candy, fruit, 
 and above all, pipes and tobacco. This last article was in gen- 
 eral demand. When he asked a poor fellow if he used tobaoco 
 and the answer was ' no,' he would express some kind words 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 95 
 
 of commendation, but when the answer was ' yes,' he would 
 produce a piece of plug and smilingly say, ' Take it, my brave 
 boy, and enjoy it.' He wrote letters for those who were not 
 able to write, and to those who could he would furnish the 
 materials, and never forget the postage stamp. His good- 
 natured and sympathetic inquiry about their health and what 
 changes had taken place since he last saw them, impressed 
 every patient with the feeling that he was their personal friend. 
 To this man Rafferty (that was my informant's name) made 
 his last appeal to save his shattered leg. He was listened to 
 with attention, a minute inquiry into his case, a pause, and 
 after a few moments' thought the man replied, patting him on 
 the head, ' May your mind* rest easy, my boy ; they shan't 
 take it off.' Eaflerty began to describe his feelings when 
 he received this assurance, and though so many years have 
 passed since then, his emotions mastered him, his voice trem- 
 bled and thickened, his eyes filled with tears, he stopped for a 
 moment and then blurted out, slapping his leg with his hand, 
 ' This is the leg that man saved for me.' I asked the name of 
 the Good Samaritan. He said he thought it was Whitcomb or 
 something like that. I suggested it was just like Walt Whit- 
 man. The name seemed to rouse the old soldier within him ; 
 he did not wait for another word from me, but seized my hand 
 in both of his, and cried, ' That's the man, that's the name ; 
 do you know him ? ' " 
 
 While carrying on sucli noble work, Whitman was 
 keeping his vow by living with new austerity. He oc- 
 cupied a little room in one lodging-house or another, 
 by preference near to the O'Connors, who had become 
 his fast friends. For some months they insisted on 
 his taking two meals a day with them ; afterwards he 
 shifted for himself, getting his own breakfast of toast 
 and tea, dining for a few cents at a humble restaurant, 
 and supping lightly in his own room. His personal 
 expenditures, always small, were now reduced to an 
 absolute minimum. His pleasures he took in such 
 
96 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 walks in the vicinity as he could find opportunity for, 
 and in the society of the O'Connors, with whom he 
 often dined on Sundays, and around whom centred a 
 wholesome circle, which included C. W. Eldridge, his 
 former publisher, John Burroughs, and Edmund C. 
 Stedman, then clerks in the Government service. Be- 
 tween Whitman and Burroughs in particular there 
 sprang up a deep and lasting friendship. Thus passed 
 the years 1863 and 1864, and part of 1865, with the 
 exception of a month in the autumn of 1863 and the 
 whole latter part of 1864, when the state of his health 
 forced him back to Brooklyn for rest and recuperation. 
 In the midst of such labours there was no time for 
 literary composition, and his records of this period are 
 contained only in a few letters to the Ifew York and 
 Brooklyn papers, in the many blood-stained and tear- 
 spotted little books in which he kept memoranda 
 about his patients, and in the few letters to his mother 
 which chanced to be preserved, and which were after 
 his death published by Dr. Bucke under the title of 
 The Wound Dresser. They were written in haste, in 
 a homely, unformed, almost illiterate fashion, reveal- 
 ing in every page the degree to which all attention to 
 style, all fineness and decoration of expression, were 
 being burnt out of the man in this crucible of passion- 
 ate sympathy, leaving only the bare and crude state- 
 ments of actual fact and feeling. But they were full 
 of tender affection for the aged mother, anxious for 
 George in the army and Walt in the hospital, for 
 Andrew dying of consumption, and Jeff with reduced 
 pay and seemingly on the point of being drafted. 
 His letters gave her good tidings of himself and 
 George, wise counsel about those at home, and tender 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 97 
 
 messages for his brothers and his sister and sisters-in- 
 law, and the little niece he loved so much. One can- 
 not read them \nthout rich tribute to his sterling 
 soundness and fineness of feeling and judgment. 
 
 Meanwhile his own magnificent health was break- 
 ing. Previously illness had been absolutely unknown 
 to him. But the insufficient nourishment, the intense, 
 moist heat of the Washington summers, indoor life, in- 
 terrupted rest, poisonous contagion from wound dress- 
 ing, were all draining his vigour. He was at one time 
 infected through a cut in his hand, and the poison 
 seems to have passed deeply into the enfeebled sys- 
 tem. Malaria, too, had eaten into his good red blood. 
 Worse perhaps than all was the sight of so much and 
 such terrible suffering. Like most men who combine 
 a phlegmatic exterior with a sensitive imagination, the 
 after effects of his experiences were far greater than 
 the immediate results. "It is curious," he wrote to 
 his mother, " when I am present at the most appalling 
 things — deaths, operations, sickening wounds (per- 
 haps full of maggots) — I do not fail, although my 
 sympathies are very much excited, but keep singu- 
 larly cool; but often hours afterward, perhaps when 
 I am home or out walking alone, I feel sick and actu- 
 ally tremble when I recall the thing and have it in 
 my mind again before me." Again : " Mother, I see 
 awful things. I expect one of these days, if I live, I 
 shall have awful thoughts and dreams — but it is 
 such a great thing to be able to do some real good; 
 assuage these horrible pains and wounds, and save 
 life even — that's the only thing that keeps a fellow 
 up." And in other letters: "Mother, it seems not 
 men, but a lot of devils and butchers, butchering one 
 
98 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 another. ... I get almost frightened at the world. . . . 
 Oh, it is terrible, and getting worse, worse, worse." 
 To this heart of love, indeed, the war was becoming" 
 insupportable. To an ardent Abolitionist it was a war 
 for the liberation of a race, in which no sacrifice could" 
 be too great ; but Whitman saw only the frightful and 
 meaningless waste of life. 
 
 From time to time during the war Whitman thought 
 of his old scheme of lecturing. For himself, as he 
 wrote to his mother, " it don't seem to me it makes so 
 much difference about worldly successes (beyond just 
 enough to eat and drink and shelter, in the mod- 
 eratest limits) any more, since the last four months of 
 my life especially, and that merely to live, and have 
 one fair meal a day, is enough." But " I think some- 
 thing of commencing a series of lectures and reading, 
 etc., through different cities of the North, to supply 
 myself with the funds for my hospital and soldiers' 
 visits, as I do not like to be beholden to the medium of 
 others." Time and need pressed, however, and the 
 plan came to naught. 
 
 But he had not wholly forgotten his poems. He 
 asked his mother to look carefully after his papers, 
 " especially the copy of Leaves of Gh-ass covered in 
 blue paper, and the little MS. book Drum-Taps, and 
 the MS. tied up in the square, spotted (stone-paper) 
 loose covers — I want them all carefully kept." In 
 his brief absence in Brooklyn, in November, 1863, 
 he wrote to Mr. Eldridge, "I feel to devote myself 
 more and more to the work of my life, which is mak- 
 ing poems. I must bring out Drum-Taps. I must 
 be continually bringing out poems — now is the hey- 
 day — I shall range along the high plateau of my 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 99 
 
 life and capacity for a few'years now, and then swiftly 
 descend. The life here in the cities, and the objects, 
 etc., of most, seem to me Yery flippant and shallow 
 somehow since I returned this time. . . ." And in 
 his convalescence in Brooklyn at the end of 1864, he 
 wrote again, " I intend to move heaven and earth to 
 publish my Drum-Taps as soon as I am able to go 
 around." 'Mr. Trowbridge, to whom he had read 
 parts of it, tried to find a publisher in Boston, but his 
 quest was unsuccessful, and finally Whitman under- 
 took the volume at his own expense. It was print- 
 ing in April, 1865, when the news came of Lincoln's 
 assassination. At once he set himself to the composi- 
 tion of When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed 
 and Captain ! my Captain ! and these with several 
 other verses he issued in a small supplementary 
 volume, Sequel to Drum-Taps, which appeared in 
 Washington late in the same year. Copies of it were 
 also bound up with the remainder of Drum-TapsJ^ 
 
 Whitman himself was at that time inclined to 
 consider Drum-Taps as superior to Leaves of Grass, 
 "as a work of art and from the more simple and 
 winning nature of the subject and also because I have 
 in it only succeeded to my satisfaction in removing 
 all superfluity — verbal superfluity, I mean." "But," 
 he continues in the same letter to Mr. O'Connor, 
 " I am perhaps mainly satisfied with Drum-Taps be- 
 cause it delivers my ambition of the task that has 
 haunted me, namely, to express in a poem (and in the 
 way I like, which is not at all by directly stating it), 
 the pending action of this Time and Land we swim in, 
 with all their large conflicting fluctuations of despair 
 and hope, the shiftings, masses, and the whirl and 
 
100 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 deafening din (yet over all, as by an invisible hand, a 
 definite purport and idea), with the unprecedented 
 anguish of wounded and suffering, the beautiful young 
 men in wholesale death and agony, everything some- 
 times as if blood-color and dripping blood. The book 
 is therefore unprecedently sad (as these days are, are 
 they not ?), but it also has the blast of the trumpet 
 and the drum pounds and whirrs in it, and then an 
 undertone of sweetest comradeship and human love 
 threads its steady thread inside the chaos and is heard 
 at every lull and interstice thereof. Truly also, it has 
 clear notes of faith and triumph." 
 
 With this judgment all will, in the main, agree. 
 Not only is the subject-matter more simple and uni- 
 fied, but there is no trace of the turbulent spirit of the 
 earlier works, confessedly egotistic, exulting in the 
 consciousness of its just realized identity, insisting on 
 the necessity and sufftciency of carnal love. Here is, 
 instead, a purified singer. Only two short pieces of 
 the two little volumes, when Whitman redistributed 
 his verse, found their places among the Children of 
 Adam, and these are in essence farewells to love : — 
 
 "Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to 
 me, 
 Whispering, I love you, before long I die, 
 I have traveVd a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you. 
 For I could not die till I once looked on you. 
 For I fear' d I might afterward lose you. 
 
 " (Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe ; 
 Return In peace to the ocean, my love ; 
 I too am part of that ocean, my love — we are not so much 
 
 separated ; 
 Behold the great rondure — the cohesion of all, how perfect! 
 But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 101 
 
 As for an hour, carrying us diverse — yet cannot carry us 
 
 diverse forever ; 
 Be not impatient — a little space — Know you, I salute the air, 
 
 the ocean and the land. 
 Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.) 
 
 "I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday 
 
 morn I pass'd the church; 
 Winds of autumn ! — as I walk'd the woods at dusk, I heard 
 
 your long-stretch'd sighs, up above, so mournful, 
 I heard the perfect Italian tenor, singing at the opera — 
 
 I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing ; 
 . . . Heart of my love ! — you too I heard, murmuring low, 
 
 through one of the wrists around my head ; 
 Heard the pulse of you, when aU was still, ringing little hells 
 
 last night under my ear." 
 
 Moreover, the two volumes have an extraordinary 
 unity and completeness, in that they represent not 
 only the war itself as Whitman saw it, but the. war in 
 its connection with the past and the future. It came to 
 him as from the clear sky, with inconceivable sudden- 
 ness and surprise. He had been dreaming of the 
 brotherhood of man, seeing only those signs of the 
 times that symbolized the drawing together of nations. 
 In the year of meteors, 1869-1860, he had seen the 
 wonderful Great Eastern, token of the increasing 
 facility of transportation; he had seen the crown 
 prince of England, token of amity and blood brother- 
 hood with the East : — 
 
 "And you would I sing, fair stripling 1 welcome to you from 
 me, sweet hoy of England! 
 Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds,as you pass'd with 
 
 your cortege of nobles ? 
 There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attach- 
 ment ; 
 
102 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 I know not why, but I loved you. . . . (And so go forth, 
 
 little song, 
 Far over sea speed like an arrow, carrying my love all folded, 
 And find in his palace the youth I love, and drop these lines 
 
 at his feet.)" 
 
 He had seen the first Japanese envoys : — 
 
 " Over sea, hither from Niphon, 
 Courteous, the Princes of Asia, swart-cheek'd princes, 
 First-comers, guests, two-sworded princes. 
 Lesson-giving princes, leaning^hack in their open barouches, 
 
 bare-headed, impassive, 
 This day they ride through Manhattan." 
 
 And both together he accepted as marking the place 
 that his country held and was to hold among the 
 powers of the world : — 
 
 " And you, Libertad of the world I 
 You shall sit in the middle, well-pois'd, thousands of years; 
 As to-day, from one side, the nobles of Asia come to you; 
 As to-morrow, from the other side, the Queen of England 
 sends her eldest son to you. 
 
 ' ' The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed, 
 The ring is circled, the journey is done; 
 The box-lid is but perceptibly open'd — nevertheless the per- 
 fume pours copiously out of the whole box." 
 
 Prom such dreamy hopes that humanity was " form- 
 ing en-masse," and that " the earth, restive, confronts 
 a new era," he is awakened by the imperious drums, — 
 
 " So strong you thump, O terrible drums — so loud you bugles 
 blow, — " 
 
 that call the nation to arms : — 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 103 
 
 "Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading ; 
 Forty years as a pageant — till unawares, the Lady of this 
 
 teeming and turbulent city, 
 Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth, 
 With her million children around her — suddenly, 
 At dead of night, at news from the south, 
 Inoens'd, struck with clench' d hand the pavement. 
 
 " A shock electric — the night sustain'd it; 
 TUl with ominous hum, our hive at day-break pour'd out its 
 
 myriads. 
 From the houses then, and^the workshops, and through all 
 
 the doorways. 
 Leapt they tumultuous — and lo I Manhattan arming." 
 
 But, instead of feeling himself perturbed by this 
 rude shattering of his humanitarian ideals, the poet is 
 thrilled by the thought that it is the real America 
 ■which he now beholds, an aroused America, North and 
 South. He had long been sick of the petty super- 
 ficiality of city life : — 
 
 " The cities I loved so well, I abandon'd and left — I sped to 
 
 the certainties suitable to me ; 
 Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and 
 
 Nature's dauntlessness, 
 I refresh' d myself with it only, I could relish it only ; 
 I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire — on the water 
 
 and air I waited long ; 
 — But now I no longer wait — I am fully satisfied — I am 
 
 glutted ; 
 I have witness'd the true lightning — I have witness'd my 
 
 cities electric ; 
 I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America 
 
 rise ; 
 Hence will I seek no more the food of the northern solitary 
 
 wilds, 
 No more on the mountains roam, or sail the stormy sea." 
 
10-1 "WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 Indeed, the citizen soldier who surprised the world 
 by his bravery and endurance was the American he 
 had foreshadowed in his apotheosis of simple workmen 
 who, bound together by kinship and common interests, 
 constitute the state : " for who except myself have yet 
 conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are ?" 
 
 And then the war begins. There are brilliant 
 sketches of various scenes, finely and clearly drawn, 
 impressive in their simplicity and intensity : an army 
 corps oil the march, cavalry crossing a ford, a 
 bivouac on a mountain side, a vigil by the dead on the 
 field of battle, an improvised hospital in the woods by 
 night, and those who have died for the redemption of 
 their fellows : — 
 
 "Then to the third — a face nor child, nor old, very calm, as 
 
 of beautiful yellow-white ivory ; 
 Young man, I think I know you — I think this face of yours 
 
 is the face of the Christ himself ; 
 Dead and divine, and brother of all, and here again he lies." 
 
 And, the war over, the poignant memories, the dread- 
 ful images, that perpetuate themselves in the minds 
 of those who have participated in the great conflict. 
 In the dead silence of the night, the artillery soldier, 
 lying wakeful at home, sees passing before his eyes all 
 the details of the engagement. The nurse, like Whit- 
 man himself, beholds again the long hospital wards : — 
 
 " Thus in silence, in dreams' projections. 
 Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals ; 
 The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, 
 I sit by the restless all the dark night — some are so young; 
 Some suffer so much — I recall the experience sweet and sad ; 
 (Many a soldier's loving aims about this neck have cross'd 
 
 and rested. 
 Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)" 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 105 
 
 Thus, by successive movements, this great sym- 
 phony, the symbolic representation of the war, passes 
 to the finale. President Lincoln's Burial Hymn, — 
 strange and beautiful hymn, in which his name is not 
 mentioned, nor is there more than a faint reference to 
 him ; a threnody, therefore, of all that had died nobly 
 in the colossal struggle, symbolized through him. A 
 poem of three themes, it sings of the lilac blossoms, 
 sweet and homely and transient ; of the evening star, 
 shining luminous for all men, but slowly sinking to its 
 rest; of the hermit thrush, Nature's one foreboding 
 singer of the wilderness at twilight. The flower of 
 the dooryard fades at the appointed time, the star 
 disappears according ta its season, the bird sings of 
 death as the " deliveress " of mankind, for the poet's 
 trust is as strong as his love, and he contemplates 
 death with gratitude and with praise. 
 
 Further analysis fails. The poem lies almost in 
 the realm of music, but scarcely more so than many 
 or most of those contained in the two joined volumes. 
 They present the war without reference to space or 
 time. There is no mention of North or South, of 
 purpose or result, of slavery or freedom, of states' 
 rights or nationalism. All Whitman saw and suffered 
 is transmuted into a symphonic tragedy, (^purging 
 the soul of pity and fear by the excitation of these 
 same passions, and leaving it full of hope and tender- 
 ness. ) 
 
 Last of all we find the one personal note in the 
 volumes. Whitman's self-sacrifice was not without 
 its effect. He found himself the better soldier, 
 pledged anew to a warfare with his weaker self : — 
 
106 WALT WHITMAN [chap, 
 
 " Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats I 
 Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me I 
 (For what is my life, or any man's life, but a conflict with 
 
 foes — the old, the incessant war ?) 
 You degradations — you tussle with passions and appetites ; 
 You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds, the 
 
 sharpest of all ;) 
 You toil of painful and choked articulations — you mean- 
 nesses ; 
 You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest 
 
 of any ;) 
 You broken resolutions, you racking angers ; you smother'd 
 
 ennuis ; 
 Ah, think not you finally triumph — My real seU has yet to 
 
 come forth ; 
 It shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till aU lies beneath 
 
 me; 
 ' It shall yet stand up the soldier of unquestion'd victory." 
 
 Early in 1863 Whitman had secured letters of recom- 
 mendation to prominent politicians, with the inten- 
 tion of applying for a clerkship in some Government 
 bureau, planning to support himself by such labour 
 while continuing his work in the hospitals. He had 
 interviews with some of these men, but was impressed 
 by the difficulty of obtaining an appointment, and de- 
 sisted from his efforts. Late in the same year, Mr. 
 Trowbridge, who was staying in Washington as the 
 guest of Secretary Chase, discovered that Whitman 
 had letters from Emerson to Chase and Seward, and 
 at once took up the matter with his host, who, while 
 welcoming Emerson's letter for the sake of the auto- 
 graph, thought it impossible to give a clerkship to a 
 man who had written a " notorious " book. In 1865, 
 however. Whitman made a formal application, and 
 was, in February, assigned a position in the Indian 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 107 
 
 Bureau of the Department of the Interior, where he 
 had a few hours of work each day, good pay, and could 
 still continue his hospital visits in his leisure hours. 
 During his short time of service a large deputation of 
 Indians visited Washington, greatly to the delight of 
 Whitman, who observed them carefully, and later 
 made interesting memoranda of the impression made 
 upon him by their physical grace, dignity, and beauty. 
 
 In June, the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, 
 learned that Whitman had in his desk an immoral book. 
 This was a copy of the Leaves of Grass which 
 Whitman was revising for a new edition. After the 
 office was closed for the day, therefore, Mr. Harlan 
 opened Whitman's desk, examined the book, came to 
 the conclusion that it contained indecent passages, and 
 curtly notified Whitman, on June 30, that from and 
 after that date his services would be dispensed with. 
 No reason was given. 
 
 Whitman himself would naturally have been un- 
 willing to apply for reinstatement under such cir- 
 cumstances, but his friends were indignant and not 
 disposed to let the matter drop. Mr. J. H. Ashton, then 
 assistant United States attorney, went personally to 
 Mr. Harlan in protest. The Secretary acknowledged 
 that Whitman performed his duties faithfully and com- 
 petently, but, on the evidence of the book, declared him 
 to be an immoral man. Mr. Ashton, who had known 
 Whitman for some years, was easily able to show him 
 how far he had misjudged Whitman's character; but 
 though convinced on this point, Mr. Harlan was firm 
 in his refusal to have in his department the author of 
 the Leaves of Grass. Mr. Ashton, however, was for- 
 tunately able to procure the immediate transfer of 
 
108 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 Whitman to his own department, and the incident 
 seemed closed. Outside Washington it had attracted 
 no attention. 
 
 Whitman's impetuous friend O'Connor was, however, 
 not content to let what seemed to him an act of great 
 injustice pass unpunished, and he determined to appeal 
 to the sympathy of the public. In a brilliant, eloquent, 
 and even learned pamphlet, dated September 2, 1865, 
 but not published until several months later, he held 
 the offending oflBcial up to the scorn of the beholder. 
 It was the work of an orator rather than a man of 
 letters — a tirade, a philippic, a torrent of burning 
 words, in which the love of sound tended to overpower 
 the judgment. The title — The Good Chay Poet — 
 was a happy inspiration. He began by describing the 
 poet's picturesque and beneficent aspect, — "the flow- 
 ing hair and fleecy beard, both very gray, and temper- 
 ing with a look of age the youthful aspect of one 
 who is but forty-five," — and went on to relate Lincoln's 
 exclamation on first seeing him ( " Well, he looks like 
 a Man"), the' instinctive trust and admiration shown 
 him by men of the people, and his services during the 
 war. Then he narrated the incidents connected with 
 Whitman's discharge by Mr. Harlan, and Mr. Harlan's 
 defence that he was the author of an indecent and im- 
 moral book. That the Leaves of Grass was nothing 
 of the sort he attempted to show negatively by citing 
 a multitude of the great authors of antiquity and of 
 the renaissance, all containing passages to which Mr. 
 Harlan would object. If you stamp Whitman as in- 
 decent, he maintained, you must extend the condem- 
 nation to pretty much every author of reputation up to 
 very recent times. 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 109 
 
 Tlie issue thus raised was unfortunately fated for a 
 long time to hold the attention of the critic and the 
 public whenever Whitman's name was mentioned. For 
 many years the conflict was heated though intermittent. 
 Not only Mr. Harlan, but the great majority of readers, 
 held the simple doctrine that all allusions to sexual con- 
 gress were excluded from publicity, and hence from 
 literature. Such things were tacenda. Other races and 
 other times had other customs, and they admitted the 
 blots on many a fair page of earlier literature ; but they 
 would countenance no more improprieties. O'Connor's 
 negative defence laid Whitman open to a wholly false 
 impression by tacitly classing him with the licentious 
 authors of the renaissance. For an essential difference 
 at once strikes the thoughtful reader of to-day, namely, 
 that Whitman's audacious references, his apotheosis of 
 physical love, are not licentious or lascivious; they 
 deal with the subject, not slyly, but boldly ; not mirth- 
 fully, but seriously and solemnly. From this point of 
 view, the opposite dbctrine has come in the course of 
 half a century to be simply that under certain circum- 
 stances art may admit such topics ; that they are not 
 always tacenda, but may sometimes be canenda. But 
 this change of attitude on the part of a minority was 
 long in coming, as was the feeling that the topic did 
 not by any means involve the whole of Whitman's art ; 
 and in the meantime Whitman's friends were not much 
 helping his cause by their ill-advised defence on these 
 lines. 
 
 In the remainder of the famous little pamphlet, 
 O'Connor was on surer ground. He describes the book 
 positively instead of negatively, and hails it as the 
 beginning of a new movement in American literature. 
 
110 WALT "WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 'His praise is extravagant in both form and substance, 
 but time is justifying in the main his double claim 
 that Whitman's was a new way, and that he was a 
 forerunner in that he wrote, to a large degree, spon- 
 taneously, without foreign models, and on purely 
 American subjects^ in contrast, for example, with 
 Longfellow, — though O'Connor does not make the 
 comparison, — who often wrote on American subjects, 
 but who had found his methods of treatment to a large 
 extent in foreign literature, and whose acquaintance 
 with his native country was obviously so slight as 
 scarcely to make him a special representative of it. 
 ^Here again the contest of opposing views was to be 
 spirited, but it was productive of many good results, 
 and the consensus of opinion is slowly shaping itself, 
 with many limitations, along the lines of O'Connor's 
 argument, from which we quote briefly : — -^ 
 
 " What is this poem, for the giving of which to America and 
 the world, and for that alone, its author has been dismissed 
 with ignominy from a Government of&ce ? It is a poem which 
 Schiller might have hailed as the noblest specimen of naive litera- 
 ture, worthy of a place beside Homer. It is, in the first place, a 
 work purely and entirely American, autochthonic, sprung from 
 our own soil ; no savor of Europe nor of the past, nor of any 
 other literature in it ; a vast carol of our own land, and of its 
 Present and Future ; the strong and haughty psalm of the Ee- 
 public. There is not one other book, I care not whose, of which 
 this can be said. I weigh my words and have considered well. 
 Every other book by an American author implies, both in form 
 and substance, I cannot even say the European, but the British 
 mind. The shadow of Temple Bar and Arthur's Seat lies dark 
 on all our letters. Intellectually, we are still a dependency of 
 Great Britain, and one word — colonial — comprehends and 
 stamps our literature. In no literary form, except our news- 
 papers, has there been anything distinctively American. . . . 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 111 
 
 This literature has often commanding merits, and much of it is 
 very precious to me ; but in respect to its national character, 
 all that can be said is that it is tinged, more or less deeply, with 
 America ; and the foreign model, the foreign standards, the 
 foreign ideas, dominate over it all. 
 
 " At most, our best books were but struggling beams ; behold 
 in Leaves of Grass the immense and absolute sunrise 1 It is 
 all our own ! The nation is in it 1 In form a series of chants, 
 in substance it is an epic of America. It is distinctively and 
 utterly American. Without model, without imitation, without 
 reminiscence, it is evolved entirely from our own polity and 
 popular life." 
 
 O'Connor's hero-worshipping crusade was not im- 
 mediately productive of good results. It told in the 
 long run, for it helped to set the issues squarely be- 
 fore the public; but it made few converts, and the 
 comments of the press and of critics were, generally 
 speaking, unfavourable. The old charges were again 
 brought forward, though there was noticeable a grow- 
 ing warmth of personal feeling towards Whitman, and 
 a disposition to acknowledge many merits in his versej 
 The most interesting reply which the pamphlet called 
 forth was the following characteristic letter from 
 Matthew Arnold : — 
 
 Athenetim Club, Pall Mall, S.W., 
 Sept. 16, 1866. 
 
 "Dear Sir, — I have been absent from London for some 
 months, and on my return I find your note of the 4th of June 
 with the two books you have been good enough to send me. 
 Their predecessors, which you mention, I do not find. 
 
 " Mr. Harlan is now, I believe, out of of&ce, but had he still 
 remained in ofBoe I can imagine nothing less likely to make 
 him reconsider his decision respecting your friend than the inter- 
 ference of foreign expostulators in the matter. I have read 
 your statement with interest, and I do not contest Mr. Walt 
 
 A 
 
112 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 Whitman's powers and originality. I doubt, however, whether 
 here, too, or in France, or in Germany, a public functionary 
 would not have had to pay for the pleasure of being so out- 
 spoken the same penalty which your friend has paid in America. 
 As to the general question of Mr. Walt Whitman's poetical 
 achievements, you will think that it savours of our decrepit 
 old Europe when I add that while you think it is highest merit 
 that he is so unlike anyone else, to me this seems to be his 
 demerit; no one can aflord in literature to trade merely on his 
 own bottom and to take no account of what the other ages and 
 nations have acquired : a great original literature America will 
 never get in this way, and her intellect must inevitably consent 
 to come, in a considerable measure, into the European move- 
 ment. That she may do this and yet be an independent intel- 
 lectual power, not merely as you say an intellectual colony of 
 Europe, I cannot doubt; and it is on her doing this, and not on 
 her displaying an eccentric and violent originality that wise 
 Americans should in my opinion set their desires. 
 
 " With many thanks for the good will towards me which you 
 express, I am, dear sir, 
 
 " Very faithfully yours, 
 
 " Matthbw Abnold." 
 W. D. O'Connor, Esq., 
 Washington, D.C., 
 United States. 
 
 Meanwhile Whitman was living quietly as a Govern- 
 ment clerk of the third class, drawing sixteen hundred 
 dollars a year, — a large sum for him, or at that time 
 for any man of simple tastes. Some of his salary he 
 had put in the savings bank ; the residue, after his 
 regular expenses were met, went to his hospital work, 
 to his friends, or to beggars, for whom he always had 
 a few pennies. His work was not arduous, and he 
 was free from great responsibility and the necessity of 
 initiative. His desk was by the window in the Treas- 
 ury Building, with a charming view over the river. 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 113 
 
 and lie often spent the evening reading in his office. 
 He lived in a comfortable boarding-house. After his 
 day's work was over and on holidays, he took long 
 and leisurely walks in the country, and he rode much 
 on the horse-cars. On Sundays it was his custom to 
 breakfast with Mr. and Mrs. Burroughs and to take 
 tea with the O'Connors ; between the two visits he 
 made, until the end of 1866, a little hospital round. 
 It was a quiet, thoughtful, leisurely life, a period in 
 which to rest after the strain of the preceding years, 
 and to store up energy for the next emergency — soon 
 to come — in which it would be required. 
 
 His circle of friends and acquaintances among 
 people of distinction was by no means small, and 
 among ordinary folk it was very large indeed. Such 
 friends knew little or nothing about his writings, but 
 they liked him and his unobtrusive ways. Indeed, he 
 had become in a sense a public character, partly on 
 account of his striking appearance and unusual attire, 
 but mainly because he was felt instinctively to be, as 
 it were, the friend of every one. He had, moreover, a 
 set of friends in what we might call the other world, 
 the world of working people, a world into which few 
 of us actually penetrate except by proxy. John Bur- 
 roughs has recorded a characteristic incident of those 
 days : — 
 
 "I give here a glimpse of him in Washington on a Navy 
 Yard horse car one summer day at sundown. The car 
 is crowded and suffocatingly hot, with many passengers 
 on the rear platform, and among them a bearded, florid- 
 faced man, elderly, but agile, resting against the dash, by 
 the side of the young conductor, and evidently his intimate 
 friend. The man wears a broad-brim white hat. Among the 
 jam inside near the door, a young Englishwoman, of the work- 
 
114 "WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 ing class, with two children, has had trouble all the way with 
 the youngest, a strong, fat, fretful, bright babe of fourteen 
 or fifteen months, who bids fair to worry the mother com- 
 pletely out, besides becoming a howling nuisance to everybody. 
 As the car tugs around Capitol Hill the young one is more 
 demoniac than ever, and the flushed and perspiring mother is 
 just ready to burst into tears with weariness and vexation. 
 The car stops at the top of the Hill to let off most of the rear 
 platform passengers, and the white-hatted man reaches inside 
 and gently but firmly disengaging the babe from its stifling 
 place in the mother's arms, takes it in his own, and out in the 
 air. The astonished and excited child, partly in fear, partly in 
 satisfaction at the change, stops its screaming, and as the man 
 adjusts It more securely to his breast, plants its chubby hands 
 against him, and pushing off as far as it can, gives a good long 
 look squarely in his face — then as if satisfied snuggles down 
 with its head on his neck, and in less than a minute is sound 
 and peacefully asleep without another whimper, utterly fagged 
 out. A square or so more and the conductor, who has had an 
 unusually hard and uninterrupted day's work, gets off for his 
 first meal and relief since morning. And now the white-hatted 
 man, holding the slumbering babe also, acts as conductor the 
 rest of the distance, keeping his eye on the passengers inside, 
 who have by this time thinned out greatly. He makes a 
 very good conductor, too, pulling the bell to stop or go on as 
 needed, and seems to enjoy the occupation. The babe mean- 
 while rests its fat cheeks close on his neck and gray beard, one 
 of his arms vigilantly surrounding it, while the other signals, 
 from time to time, with the strap ; and the flushed mother in- 
 side has a good half hour to breathe, and cool, and recover 
 herself." 
 
 By such open-hearted kindness and friendliness 
 Whitman endeared himself to working-men, who 
 recognized in him at once a kindred spirit. The most 
 notable of these friendships was that with Peter 
 Doyle, a simple, manly, and affectionate mechanic, 
 thirty years younger than Whitman, a homeless 
 
IV.] COMBADESHIP (1861-1873) 115 
 
 soldier of the Confederacy, who, freed in Washington 
 on parole, became a street-car conductor. He has him- 
 self told the story of his first meeting with Whit- 
 man: — 
 
 " I was a conductor. The night was very stormy, — he had 
 heen over to see Burroughs before he came down to take the 
 car — the storm was awful. Walt had his blanket — it was 
 thrown round his shoulders — he seemed like an old sea-captain. 
 He was the only passenger, it was a lonely night, so I thought 
 I would go in and talk with him. Something in me made me 
 do it and something in him drew me that way. He used to say 
 there was something in me had the same efiect on him. Any- 
 way, I went into the car. We were familiar at once — I put 
 my hand on his knee — we understood. He did not get out at 
 the end of the trip — in fact went all the way hack with me. 
 I think the year of this was 1866. From that time on we were 
 the biggest sort of friends. . . . Walt rode with me often — 
 often at noon, always at night. He rode round with me on the 
 last trip — sometimes rode for several trips. Everybody knew 
 him. He had a way of taking the measure of the drivers' 
 hands — had calf-skin gloves made for them every winter in 
 Georgetown — these gloves were his personal presents to the 
 men. He saluted the men on the other oars as we passed — 
 threw up his hand. They cried to him, ' Hullo, Walt ! ' and 
 he would reply, ' Ah, there 1 ' or something like. He was 
 welcome always as the flowers in May. Everybody appreci- 
 ated his attentions, and he seemed to appreciate our attentions 
 to him." 
 
 Whitman formed not a few such friendships, but 
 that with Doyle was the most intimate and the moit 
 enduring. He loved him as a father, and the young 
 man responded with a son's affection. Always at night 
 Whitman joined Doyle on his car for the last trip\ 
 of the day, and after that was over they supped to- 
 gether, and sat long in a restaurant, talking not of 
 books but of the simple things of life, or talking not 
 
116 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 at all. "Like as not," said Doyle in his affectionate 
 reminiscences, " I would go to sleep — lay my head on 
 my hands on the table. Walt would stay there, wait, 
 watch, keep me undisturbed — would wake me up 
 when the hour of closing came. . . . We took great 
 walks together [particularly on moonlight nights] — 
 off towards or to Alexandria, often. We went plodding 
 along the road, Walt always whistling or singing. 
 We would talk of ordinary matters. He would recite 
 poetry, especially Shakspere. He was always active, 
 happy, cheerful, good-natured." 
 
 When Whitman was away on his vacations he wrote 
 Doyle at short intervals, and by good fortune these 
 missives were preserved by Doyle, and, after Whit- 
 man's death, were published by Dr. Bucke, one of 
 Whitman's executors, under the appropriate title of 
 Calamus. The letters are simplicity itseK, and reveal 
 not so much a side of Whitman's character as another 
 personality. It is amazing to consider that this really 
 great thinker and poet, capable of discussing subjects 
 of national or universal importance with grasp and 
 acuteness, should be capable of so lowering, so to 
 speak, his threshold of consciousness as to dwell in an 
 infantile world of little happenings and of primitive 
 emotions. At such times he is another man — writing 
 crudely, feeling crudely, not so much putting himself 
 in the place of the humble workman as actually be- 
 coming such. The following extract is typical : — 
 
 I '■'■ Brooklyn, September 2, \%^(). Dear Pete. I received your 
 
 \j welcome letter of Aug, 27th and also 31st, enclosing Ned Stew- 
 \| art's — when you write tell Ned I am here in Brooklyn, loafing 
 around — and that I send my love. Pete, there is nothing par- 
 ticular to write about this time — pretty much the same story 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 117 
 
 — every day out on the bay awhile, or going down to Coney 
 Island beaoh. — and every day from two to four or five hours in 
 the printing ofBoe — I still keep well and hearty, and the 
 weather is fine — warm through the middle of the day, and 
 cool morning and nights — I fall in with a good many of my 
 acquaintances of years ago — the young fellows, (now not so 
 young) — that I knew intimately here before the war — some 
 are dead — and some have got married — and some have grown 
 rich — one of the latter I was up with yesterday and last night 
 
 — he has a big house on Fifth Avenue I was there to — dinner 
 (dinner at 8 p.m. I) — everything in the loudest sort of style, 
 with wines, silver, nigger waiters, etc. etc. etc. But my friend 
 is just one of the manliest, jovialest, best sort of fellows — no 
 airs, and just the one to suit you and me, — no women in the 
 house — ! he is single — he wants me to make my home there — 
 I shall not do that, but shall go there very frequently — the 
 dinners and good wines are attractive — then there is a fine 
 library. Well, Pete, I am on the second month of my furlough 
 
 — to think it is almost six weeks since we parted there that 
 night — my dear loving boy, how much I want to see you — it 
 seems a long while. I have received a good letter from Mr. 
 O'Connor, and also one from John Rowland who is in the office 
 for me. Nothing new in office — Well, Pete, about half of our 
 separation is over — the next six weeks will soon pass away — 
 indeed it may be only four, as John Rowland told me he might 
 wish to go away — Good-bye for the present, my loving son, 
 and give my respects to any of the boys that ask about me. 
 Walt." 
 
 Another letter shows more plainly his deep affec- 
 tion. Doyle had been ill, and was in so despondent a 
 condition that he had hinted at suicide : — 
 
 " Dearest boy, I have not a doubt but you will get well and 
 entirely well — and we will one day look back on these draw- 
 backs and sufierings as things long past. The extreme cases 
 of that malady, (as I told you before) are persons that have 
 Very deeply diseased blood so they have no foundation to build 
 on — you are of healthy stock, with a sound constitution and 
 
118 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 good blood — and I know it is impossible for it to continue 
 long. My darling, if you are not well when I come back I will 
 get a good room or two in some quiet place, and we will live to- 
 gether and devote ourselves together to the job of curing you, and 
 making you stronger and healthier than ever. I have had this 
 in my mind before but never broached it to you. I could go on 
 with my work in the Attorney General's office just the same — 
 and we would see that your mother should have a small sum every 
 week to keep the pot a-boiling at home. Dear comrade, I 
 think of you very often. My love for you is indestructible, and 
 since that night and morning has returned more than before. 
 Dear Pete, dear son, my darling boy, my young and loving 
 brother, don't let the devil put such thoughts in your mind 
 again — wickedness unspeakable — death and disgrace here, and 
 hell's agonies hereafter — Then what would it be afterward to the 
 mother ? What to me ? — Pete, I send you some money by 
 Adams' Express — you use it, dearest son, and when it is gone 
 you shall have some more, for I have plenty. I vrill write 
 again before long — my love to Johnny Lee, my dear darling 
 boy. I love him truly — (let him read these three last lines) — 
 Dear Pete, remember — Walt. ' ' 
 
 "While in one personality Whitman was a humble 
 son of the people, without apparent motive beyond 
 the simple enjoyment of life and the fulfilment of its 
 daily duties of labour, and in another was the Gov- 
 ernment clerk with a circle of well-dressed friends, 
 contented in his little routine, and without special 
 interest in literature, he was, in a third personality, 
 separated widely from either of the others, meditating 
 deeply on high problems and singing nobly of them. 
 In 1871 he wrote a long poem, After All, not to 
 create Only, for the opening of the fortieth exhibi- 
 tion of the American Institute, a forerunner of the 
 many " expositions " of later days. It treated antiq- 
 uity with somewhat rough humour, and implored the 
 muse to desert her ancient haunts, leave her worn-out 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 119 
 
 themes, placard " removed " and " let " on Parnassus, 
 and realize that there are better spheres and a wider 
 domain for her rule. But this jocose passage is 
 atoned for by that -which follows, a glowing summary 
 of all that was most beautiful in a past now 
 
 "Pass'd to its charnel vault — laid on tlie slielf — cofBn'd, with 
 crown and armor on, 
 Blazon'd with Shakspeare's purple page, 
 And dirg'd by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme." 
 
 The sphere for the muse is now in the democracy of the 
 New World, with its rich industrial life and its hope 
 of healthful and happy citizens. 
 
 In 1871, too, appeared a new edition of the Leaves 
 of Grass, with many slight changes and improve- 
 ments, and with the addition of a group of remarkable 
 poems centring around the Passage to India, which 
 were also published separately. The new edition 
 turned to democracy for its keynote : " One's Self I 
 sing — a simple, separate person; yet after the word 
 Democratic, the word En-masse." The elder genius of 
 poetry declared to him that the muse should sing of 
 war: — 
 
 " Be it so, then I answer'd, 
 I too, haughty Shade, also sing war — and a longer and 
 greater one than any." - 
 
 But it was the great war of man with himself, as he 
 rises to higher freedom, a war for the "old cause! 
 Thou peerless, passionate good cause ! " 
 
 In the little group of poems centring around the 
 Passage to India, we find Whitman at Ms highest level 
 of composition. They are, in the main, short, highly 
 musical in phrasing, and begin always with splendidly 
 
120 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 sonorous lines; the rhythm is strong, flexible, and 
 well sustained, and there is a marked tendency to the 
 use of the refrain. They are, too, readily intelligible, 
 so far as any poems can be intelligible ■which express 
 their meaning by symbols alone, or rather use symbols 
 for the purpose of creating an affective mood of great 
 range and intensity. They deal almost entirely with 
 the larger aspirations of the soul, and the symbolism 
 continually used is that of the ship or the bird quest- 
 ing on strong pinions. 
 
 The Passage to India itself was suggested by 
 the opening of the Suez Canal and of the railroads 
 across this continent. Physically speaking, the bar- 
 riers of the world were thus demolished, leaving hu- 
 manity free for comradeship : — 
 
 " Lo, soul ! seest thou not God's purpose from the first ? 
 The earth to be spann'd, connected by net-work, 
 The people to become brothers and sisters, 
 The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, 
 The oceans to be cross' d, the distant brought near. 
 The lands to be welded together. 
 
 " (A worship new, I sing ; 
 You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours ! 
 You engineers 1 you architects, machinists, yours I 
 You, not for trade or transportation only, 
 But in God's name, and for thy sake, soul.)" 
 
 His fancy dwelt with delight, moreover, on the long 
 line of adventurous spirits who had striven to burst 
 these barriers, the ancient traders, the mediaeval 
 travellers and merchants, the valorous explorers of 
 the renaissance, — a whole magnificent group of 
 pioneers and visionaries. All these are but symbols 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 121 
 
 of the adventures of the soul, its continual flight into 
 the unseen, its passionate voyaging towards God : — 
 
 " Reckoning ahead, O soul, when thou, the time achiev'd, 
 (The seas all oross'd, weather'd the capes, the voyage done,) 
 Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yleldest, the aim attaln'd. 
 As, flll'd with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother 
 
 found. 
 The Younger melts in fondness in his arms." 
 
 The minor poems of the group repeat in different 
 keys the same theme, dwelling, as in Whispers of 
 Heavenly Death, on the setting free of the soul from the 
 body : — 
 
 " I see, just see, skyward, great cloud-masses ; 
 Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing ; 
 With, at tunes, a half-dimm'd, sadden'd, far-off star. 
 Appearing and disappearing. 
 
 (Some parturition, rather — some solemn, immortal birth : 
 On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable, 
 Some Soul is passing over.)" 
 
 Or, under the favourite symbol of the ship and the 
 sailor, they sing of voyagers saying farewell before 
 departing on the great quest, as in Now Finale to the 
 Shore, and in 
 
 " Joy 1 shipmate — joy ! 
 (Pleas' d to my Soul at death I cry;) 
 Our llEe is closed — our life begins ; 
 The long, long anchorage we leave, 
 The ship is clear at last — she leaps I 
 She swiftly courses from the shore ; 
 Joy I shipmate — joy 1 " 
 
 In 1871, too, Whitman published his first body of 
 prose, Democratic Vistas, a set of linked medita- 
 tions on the fortunes of democracy in America, on 
 
122 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 which he had been working for several years. They 
 follow the lines suggested by him in his earlier pref- 
 aces, but they are also somewhat in the nature of a 
 commentary on Carlyle's Shooting Niagara, and After, 
 which had appeared in 1867. Carlyle's rough- 
 and-ready condemnation of American democracy had 
 at first roused Whitman's wrath, but reflection had 
 shown him certain similarities between their ideas. 
 Carlyle found practical democracy a failure and be- 
 lieved in the sterner rule, secured somehow, of the 
 aristos, the really best man. And this aristos will be 
 sometimes " speculative, speaking or vocal," the hero as 
 poet or prophet or priest, who will deliver the truth 
 to mankind. He will not be the mere man of letters, 
 with his sUly verse or fiction, but one who can teach 
 the public what liberty really means and lead it in 
 paths of wisdom and high ideals. Whitman, though 
 not doubtful of the material success of the democracy, 
 was, no less than Carlyle, alive to the slightness of its 
 progress on higher lines : — 
 
 " The depravity of the business classes of our country is not 
 less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official 
 services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their 
 branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated 
 in corruption, bribery, falsehood, maladministration ; and the 
 judiciary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as 
 much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashion- 
 able life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, 
 or no aims at all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-de- 
 vouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any 
 means, pecuniary gain. The magician's serpent in the fable ate 
 up all the other serpents ; and money-making is our magician's 
 serpent, remaining to-day sole master of the field. The best 
 class we show is but a mob of fashionably dress'd speculators 
 and vulgarians. True, Indeed, behind this fantastic farce. 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 123 
 
 enacted on the visible stage of society, solid things and stupen-: 
 dous labors are to be discover'd, existing crudely and going on in' 
 the background, to advance and tell themselves in time. Yet 
 the truths are none the less terrible. I say that our New 
 World democracy, however great a success in uplifting the 
 masses out of their sloughs, in materialistic development, \ 
 products, and in a certain highly-deceptive superficial popular 1 
 intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its social 
 aspects, and in really grand religious, moral, literary, and I 
 esthetic results. In vain do we march with unprecedented \ 
 strides to empire so colossal, outvying the antique, beyond ' 
 Alexander's, beyond the proudest sway of Rome. In vain have ' 
 we annex'd Texas, California, Alaska, and reach north for 
 Canada and south for Cuba. It is as if we were somehow being 
 endow'd with a vast and more and more thoroughly-appointed 
 body, and then left with little or no soul." 
 
 To free the citizen from conscienceless greed much 
 was necessary. He must be led to higher ideals. 
 Nothing would help us more than that the states, " with 
 all their variety of origins," should possess " an aggre- 
 gate of heroes, characters, exploits, sufferings, pros- 
 perity or misfortune, glory or disgrace, common to all, 
 typical of all." Nothing is ^ really of value except 
 "the fervid and tremendous Idea," — the true basis 
 of nationality. To realize that high common feeling, 
 we must insist on perfect individualism, the " simple 
 idea that the last, best dependence is to be upon 
 humanity itself, and its own inherent, normal, full- 
 grown qualities, without any superstitious support 
 whatever." It was the people iu whom he believed. 
 
 t he common stock, and tha-£ Qmmon atock does .aoii . 
 
 so muchjaeed learning ■.and..j?.nltiije-as-Jt~d,oes-conT, 
 science and .tP^igion JIfld. comead«shJ^— To gain such 
 basic qualities he has, in essence, only two means to 
 suggest. First, the physical race must be strong and 
 
124 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 fine, and this is a question of good fatherhood and 
 motherhood. Second, the race must be roused to spir- 
 itual activity by a new group of poets and orators : — 
 
 " Then still the thought returns, (like the thread-passage in 
 overtures,) giving the key and echo to these pages. When I 
 pass to and fro, different latitudes, different seasons, beholding 
 the crowds of the great cities, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, 
 Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, 
 Baltimore — when I mix with these interminable swarms of 
 alert, turbulent, good-natured, independent citizens, mechanics, 
 clerks, young persons — at the idea of this mass of men, so 
 fresh and free, so loving and so proud, a singular awe falls 
 upon me. I feel, with dejection and amazement, that among 
 our geniuses and talented writers or speakers, few or none 
 have yet really spoken to this people, created a single image- 
 making work for them, or absorb'd the central spirit and the 
 idiosyncrasies which are theirs — and which, thus, in highest 
 ranges, so far remain entirely uncelebrated, unexpress'd. 
 
 "Dominion strong is the body's; dominion stronger is the 
 mind's. What has fiU'd, and fills to-day our intellect, our 
 fancy, furnishing the standards therein, is yet foreign. The 
 great poems, Shakspere included, are poisonous to the idea of 
 the pride and dignity of the common people, the life-blood of 
 democracy. The models of our literature, as we get it from 
 other lands, ultramarine, have had their birth in courts, and 
 bask'd and grown in castle sunshine ; all smells of princes' 
 favors. Of workers of a certain sort, we have, indeed, plenty, 
 contributing after their kind ; many elegant, many leam'd, all 
 complacent. But touch'd by the national test, or tried by the 
 standards of democratic personality, they wither to ashes. I 
 say I have not seen a single writer, artist, lecturer, or what not, 
 that has confronted the voiceless but ever erect and active, 
 pervading, underlying will and typio aspiration of the land, 
 in a spirit kindred to itself. Do you call those genteel little 
 creatures American poets ? Do you term that perpetual, pista- 
 reen, paste-pot work, American art, American drama, taste, 
 verse ? I think I hear, echoed as from some mountain-top afar 
 in the west, the scornful laugh of the Genius of these States." 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 125 
 
 Whitman's ideas thus have much in common with 
 Carlyle's. Both men were profoundly dissatisfied 
 with existing conditions ; both looked to literature 
 to right the wrongs of the present ; both felt greatly 
 rather than reasoned well ; both wrote with high en- 
 thusiasm, in an involved, oratorical, many-coiled style, 
 forever winding back to a few simple ideas. The 
 difference lay mainly in the constitutional, perhaps 
 physical, contrast of temperament between the opti- 
 mist and the pessimist. Like Plato, Whitman saw a 
 vision of the perfect state, and yearned for its attain- 
 ment, and he believed heartily that the grand common 
 stock, each man and woman well begotten and well 
 nurtured, conscious of his own identity, inspired by 
 great poets to high comradeship, would one day gain 
 the victory over itself. But that victory, as he said 
 in his noble closing passage, would not be without toil, 
 nor without the aid of the poet : — 
 
 " Even to-day, amid these whirls, incredible flippancy, and 
 Wind fury of parties, infidelity, entire lack of first-class captains 
 and leaders, added to the plentiful meanness and vulgarity of 
 the ostensible masses — that problem, the labor question, be- 
 ginning to open like a yawning gulf, rapidly widening every 
 year — what prospect have we? We sail a dangerous sea of 
 seething currents, cross and under-currents, vortices — all so 
 dark, untried — and whither shall we turn ? It seems as if the 
 Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial des- 
 tinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep intestine 
 difficulty, and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection, — 
 saying, lo ! the roads, the only plans of development, long and 
 varied with all terrible balks and ebullitions. You said in your 
 soul, I will be empire of empires, overshadowing all else, past 
 and present, putting the history of old-world dynasties, con- 
 quests behind me, as of no account — making a new history, a 
 history of democracy, making old history a dwarf — I alone 
 
126 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, lands of 
 America, are indeed the prizes, the determinations of yoiu: 
 soul, be it so. But behold the cost, and already specimens of 
 the cost. Thought you greatness was to ripen for you like a 
 pear ? If you would have greatness, know that you must con- 
 quer it through ages, centuries — must pay for it with a pro- 
 portionate price. For you too, as for all lands, the struggle, 
 the traitor, the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, the sur- 
 feit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell of pas- 
 sion, the decay of faith, the long postponement, the fossil-like 
 lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions, prophets, thunder- 
 storms, deaths, births, new projections and invigorations of 
 ideas and men. 
 
 "Yet I have dream'd, merged in that hidden-tangled prob- 
 lem of our fate, whose long unraveling stretches mysteriously 
 through time — dream'd out, portray'd, hinted already — a little 
 or a larger band — a band of brave and true, unprecedented 
 yet — arm'd and equipt at every point — the members separ 
 rated, it may be, by different dates and States, or south, or 
 north, or east, or west — Pacific, Atlantic, Southern, Canadian 
 — a year, a century here, and other centuries there — but al- 
 ways one, compact in soul, conscience-conserving, God-incul- 
 cating, inspired achievers, not only in literature, the greatest 
 art, but achievers in all art — a new, undying order, dynasty, 
 from age to age transmitted — a band, a class, at least as fit to 
 cope with current years, our dangers, needs, as those who, for 
 their times, so long, so well, in armor or in cowl, upheld and 
 made illustrious, that far-back feudal, priestly world. To 
 offset chivalry, indeed, those vanish'd countless knights, old 
 altars, abbeys, priests, ages and strings of ages, a knightlier 
 and more sacred cause to-day demands, and shall supply, in a 
 New World, to larger, grander work, more than the counter- 
 part and tally of them." 
 
 In June, 1872, at the invitation of the United Lit- 
 erary Societies, Whitman delivered As a Strong Bird 
 on Pinions Free as the Commencement poem at Dart- 
 mouth College. The invitation is said to have origi- 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 127 
 
 nated in a boyish joke, somewhat lacking in courtesy, on 
 the part of the students, who, perhaps bearing in mind 
 the Children of Adam, wished to embarrass their elders 
 by the choice of a poet whose personality and whose per- 
 formance would be the subject of mirth. If such were 
 the case, their hopes were disappointed, for Whitman 
 bore himself with quiet dignity, and his poem, though 
 not well read, was a noble and patriotic utterance, fore- 
 telling the joys of the new democracy. From Hanover, 
 the rural peace of which was doubly delightful to one 
 coming from Washington, he journeyed to Burlington, 
 Vermont, to visit his sister Hannah and thence back 
 to Brooklyn. The Dartmouth poem, with the Mystic 
 Trumpeter and several others, was issued the same 
 year in a little pamphlet, together with a preface along 
 the same general lines as those of Democratic Vistas. 
 He followed, too, his old custom of spreading correct 
 ideas about his own work, by writing an able review 
 of the pamphlet. The conclusion shows the calm and 
 sensible way in which he regarded himself: — 
 
 "Time only can show If there is indeed anything in them. 
 This Walt Whitman — this queer one whom most of us have 
 watched, with more or less amusement, walking by — this goer 
 and comer, for years, about New York and Washington — good- 
 natured with everybody, like some farmer, or mate of some 
 coasting vessel, familiarly accosted by all, hardly any one of us 
 stopping to Mr. him — this man of many characters, among the 
 rest that of volunteer help in the army hospitals and on the field 
 during the whole of the late war, carefully tending all the 
 wounded he could, southern or northern — if it should turn out 
 that in this plain unsuspected old customer, dressed In gray and 
 wearing no neck-tie, America and her republican institutions are 
 possessing that rara avis a real national poet, chanting, putting 
 in form, in her own proud spirit, in first class style, for present 
 and future time, her democratic shapes even as the bards of 
 
128 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 Judah put in song, for all time to come, the Hebrew spirit, and 
 Homer the war-life of pre-historic Greece, and Shakspere the 
 feudal shape of Europe's kings and lords I 
 
 " Whether or not the future will justify such extravagant 
 claims of his admirers, only that future itself can show. But Walt 
 Whitman is certainly taking position as an original force and 
 new power in literature. He has excited an enthusiasm among 
 the republicans and young poets of Europe unequalled by our 
 oldest and best known names. The literary opposition to him 
 in the United States has, it is true, been authoritative, and con- 
 tinues to be so. But the man has outlived the stress of misrep- 
 resentation, burlesque, evil prophecy, and all calumnies and im- 
 putations, and may now answer, as Captain Paul Jones did, 
 when, after the onslaught of the Serapis, he was asked if he had 
 struck his colors — ' Struck ? ' answered the Captain quietly, 
 ' not at all — I have only just begun my part of the fighting.' " 
 
 We may smile, if we choose, at tlie uneonventionality 
 of his undertaking to comment in this anonymous way 
 on his own work, and at the odd phrases which he 
 employs, but what he said was true. He had out- 
 lived much misunderstanding ; he was still undefeated 
 and confident of eventual victory ; he was, in his way, 
 " a real national poet." 
 
 Though Whitman had been so active in composition, 
 the condition of his health was far from satisfactory. 
 In August, 1869, while on his vacation, he had written 
 to Peter Doyle that he had been ill for several days : 
 " I don't know what to call it — it makes me prostrated 
 and deadly weak, and little use of my limbs." A fort- 
 night later he wrote that he felt ill " most every day 
 — some days not so bad. Besides I have those spells 
 again, worse, last longer, sick enough, come sudden, 
 dizzy and sudden sweat. — It is hard to tell exactly 
 what is the matter or what to do. The doctor says it 
 is all from that hospital malaria, hospital poison ab- 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 129 
 
 sorbed in tlie system years ago." As the years passed 
 by these attacks tended to increase, and during the 
 night of January 23, 1873, he awoke to find that he 
 could not move his left arm and leg. Characteristically, 
 he went off to sleep again ; but in the morning his 
 condition was the same, and it was evident that he 
 had suffered a slight attack of paralysis. 
 
 His friends came at once to his assistance. The 
 Ashtons would have had him removed to their house, 
 but, as he wrote to his mother, " They live in grand 
 style and I should be more bothered than benefited by 
 their refinements and luxuries, servants, etc." He 
 added, " Mother, I want you to know truly that I do 
 not want for anything — as to all the little extra fixings 
 and superfluities, I never did care for them in health, 
 and they only annoy me in sickness — I have a good 
 bed — as much grub as I wish and whatever I wish 
 — and two or three good friends here." 
 
 The paralysis was slight and yielded slowly to good 
 treatment. Meanwhile Doyle, Eldridge, and Bur- 
 roughs took turns in caring for him, and Mrs. O'Connor 
 came often to do little acts of kindness. At no time 
 did he lose control of his intellectual faculties ; he 
 soon began to occupy himself with reading and com- 
 position ; and he sent to his mother, at short intervals, 
 affectionate and sensible letters, not disguising the 
 truth, but showing that he took his illness bravely and 
 hopefully. In a few weeks he was about his room, and 
 early in April he began regularly to work at his ofB.ce for 
 a couple of hours each day. Early in May, however, 
 Mrs. Whitman, who was living with George at Camden, 
 New Jersey, became seriously ill, and he hastened 
 to her bedside, arriving in time to be present at her 
 
130 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 death. The bond between them had been peculiarly- 
 strong and the shock was great, and was intensified by 
 the decease, shortly before, of his sister-in-law, Martha, 
 Jeff's wife, who had been a great favourite of his. 
 Weakened by his illness, his journey, the hot weather, 
 which at that time affected him unusually, and by his 
 grief, he succumbed again to a more severe attack of 
 paralysis, which brought an end to his clerk's life at 
 Washington. He was fifty-four and was destined to 
 live nearly twenty years longer. As we shall see, he 
 later recovered his strength to an astonishing degree 
 and did notable work in his old age; but he was 
 now to pass through a period of illness and poverty 
 which might well have broken even his confident 
 spirit. His poems had expressed the glad aspirations 
 of his soul at the thought of quick release from the 
 body, but he was now to be long tied to a crippled self, 
 and all his optimism was to be tested to the full. 
 
 This is an appropriate place, however, to speak of 
 the cheering effect upon him, in 1866 and the years 
 immediately following, of the markedly greater ap- 
 preciation of his work at home and abroad. In 1867 
 the New York Times had accepted a laudatory re- 
 view of the new edition of the Leaves of Grass by 
 O'Connor, and The Galaxy issued a similar article 
 by Burroughs; and Burroughs also published an in- 
 teresting little biography, the first of many, entitled 
 Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person. M[n June, 
 1868, moreover, there appeared in Putnam's Magazine 
 a short but remarkable work of prose fiction called 
 Tlie Carpenter, by O'Connor. No mention is made of 
 Whitman's name or work, but the chief character of 
 the story is plainly drawn from him, and is the first 
 
iv.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 131 
 
 expression of the extraordinary feeling of reverent 
 affection with whicli many persons regarded Whitman 
 in his middle and later life. He had over them an 
 inexplicable influence, comfort-giving, strength-bear- 
 ing, such as might come from divinity itself.} The 
 tale has to do with Christmas Eve in a farm-house in 
 Pennsylvania at the time of the war. All prepara- 
 tions have been made for a festival, but discord and 
 sorrow hang heavily over the family. The father 
 knows himself to be bankrupt; the mother mourns 
 her youngest son, who has fled from home to fight in 
 the Southern army ; the eldest son, just returned from 
 the Northern army, is tortured by jealousy, and his 
 wife, finding him stern, is drawn more than ever to a 
 younger and more sympathetic man ; and he in his 
 turn, egotistic and light-hearted, stands hovering on 
 the edge of a sinful passion. A knock is heard at 
 the door, and there enters a traveller seeking shelter 
 for the night. " He was tall and stalwart, with un- 
 covered head ; a brow not large, but full, and seamed 
 with kindly wrinkles; a complexion of rosy clear- 
 ness ; heavy-lidded, firm blue eyes, which had a stead- 
 fast and draining regard ; a short, thick, gray beard 
 almost white, and thinly-flowing dark-gray hair. His 
 countenance expressed a rude sweetness. He was 
 dressed in a long, dark overcoat, much worn, and of 
 such uncertain fashion that it almost seemed a gab- 
 ardine. As he stood there in the gracious darkling 
 light, he looked an image of long and loving experi- 
 ance with men, of immovable composure and charity, 
 of serene wisdom, of immortal rosy youth in reverend 
 age. A faint perfume exhaled from his garments. 
 In the lapel of his coat he wore a sprig of holly. His 
 
132 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 left hand, in -which he also held his shapeless hat, 
 carried a carpenter's plane." 
 
 The influence of the wayfarer is almost immediate. 
 Each member of the family feels strongly attracted to 
 him, and to each he shows at once his affection and 
 his comprehension of the other's difficulties. He had 
 nursed both sons in the hospitals, and now he recon- 
 ciles the younger with his father and the elder with 
 his wife; the wife's lover he rebukes and then in- 
 structs him how to turn his genius for affection to 
 noble uses ; and even the father's financial difficulties 
 he disperses by his calm and intelligent grasp of the 
 situation. Then, leaving a happy household behind 
 him, he departs into the night as abruptly as he came, 
 and the crippled little grandchild whose pain he has 
 assuaged declares him in her childish fancy to be the 
 good Christ Himself. 'The conception was a daring 
 » one, and in other hands it would have provoked either 
 laughter or indignation; but O'Connor's skill was 
 equal to the occasion, and the narrative is so full of 
 tenderness that the reader finds it neither irreverent 
 towards God nor overbold in its idealization of man^ 
 
 Copies of the earlier editions of the Leaves of Grass 
 had been sent abroad, but they had apparently fallen 
 for the most part on barren soU. It was otherwise 
 with the edition of 1867, which was favourably re- 
 viewed in Germany in the Allegemeine Zeitschrift in 
 1868, by Freiligrath, who, accustomed through Wagner 
 to the idea of a freer method of musical composition, 
 was inclined to a similar open-mindedness in regard 
 to verse. In England there were favourable notices 
 also, and the book fell into the hands of the younger 
 men of letters, Swinburne, W. M. Eossetti, F. W. 
 
ly.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 133 
 
 Myers, Symonds, Dowden, and others, who, for rea- 
 sons somewhat diverse, were eclectic in their tastes 
 and disposed to welcome good poetry, in whatever 
 garb it was attired. These men were all deeply moved 
 by Whitman. "My academical prejudices," wrote 
 Symonds some years later, "the literary instincts 
 trained by two decades of Greek and Latin studies, 
 the refinements of culture, and the exclusiveness of 
 aristocratic breeding, revolted against the uncouthness, 
 roughness, irregularity, coarseness of the poet and his 
 style. But in the course of a short time. Whitman 
 delivered my soul of these debilities. . . . Leaves of 
 Grass, which I first read at the age of twenty-five, in- 
 fluenced me more perhaps than any other book has 
 done, except the Bible ; more than Plato, more than 
 Goethe. ... I do not think it is a religion only for 
 the rich, the powerful, the wise, the healthy. For my 
 own part, I may confess that it shone upon me when 
 my life was broken, when I was weak, sickly, poor, 
 and of no account ; and that I have lived thencefor- 
 ward in the light and warmth of it." 
 
 This spontaneous recognition of Whitman as a poet 
 soon became evident in literature. In 1868 appeared 
 Swinburne's essay on Blake, at the close of which he 
 points out " sides of likeness many and grave " be- 
 tween Blake and Whitman : — 
 
 "To each the imperishable form of a possible and universal 
 Eepublio is equally requisite and adorable as the temporal and 
 spiritual queen of ages as of men. They are both full of faith 
 and passion, competent to love and to hate, capable of contempt 
 and of worship. The divine devotion and selfless love which 
 makes men martyrs and prophets are alike visible and palpable 
 in each. And in externals and details the work of these two 
 constantly and inevitably coheres and coincides. A sound as 
 
134 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 of sweeping wind ; a prospect as over dawning continents at 
 the fiery visitant of a sudden sunrise ; a splendour now of stars 
 and now of storms ; an expanse and exultation of wing across 
 strange spaces of air and above shoreless stretches of sea . . , 
 a strength and security of touch in small sweet sketches of 
 colour and outline, which bring before the eyes of their student 
 a clear glimpse of the thing designed — some little inlet of sky 
 lighted by moon or star, some dim reach of windy water or 
 gentle growth of meadow-land or wood ; these are qualities 
 common to the work of either." 
 
 Later in the same year also, there appeared a volume 
 of selections from Whitman's poems, edited by W. M. 
 Eossetti, and intended exclusively for English readers. 
 Kossetti had been for some time in correspondence 
 with Whitman and his friends in regard to the deli- 
 cate question of expurgation. The publisher was un- 
 willing to print the complete edition, which might 
 have laid him open to prosecution, and Whitman was 
 unwilling to permit in England what he had refused 
 to allow at home ; the matter was settled by Whit- 
 man's giving leave to Eossetti to choose such poems 
 as he pleased, but to puhlish these in full. 
 
 Rossetti's interest in Whitman was certainly genuine, 
 and in his preface to the selections he declared the 
 Leaves of Grass to be " incomparably the largest per- 
 formance of our period in poetry," and prophesied 
 that Whitman's " voice will one day be potential or 
 magisterial wherever the English language is spoken." 
 There were, however, limitations : he objected to the 
 grossness of Whitman's language and the grossness of 
 the ideas he sometimes expressed, to his absurd and 
 ill-constructed words ; to the peculiarities of his style, 
 in particular to his method of agglomeration ; and to 
 his boundless (though often vicarious) self-assertion. 
 
IV.] COMRADESHIP (1861-1873) 135 
 
 Such limitations, shared by many of Whitman's early 
 admirers in England, showed that they were far from 
 understanding thoroughly the relation that these 
 matters bore to his theory of art ; but, whatever limita- 
 tion Eossetti set on his praise of Whitman, his selec- 
 tions served to make the poet known to a small but 
 important set of readers in Great Britain, and formed 
 for some years the central point of the movement, if 
 such it may be called, in Whitman's favour. 
 
 Essays and reviews of Whitman now appeared more 
 frequently, the most remarkable of these being an 
 article in the Westminster Review for July, 1871, by 
 Edward Dowden, the first critic to seize the essence 
 of Whitman's theory and to present it intelligently. 
 Swinburne addressed a poem to Whitman in his Songs 
 before Sunrise (1871) ; Tennyson wrote him twice, in 
 terms of fraternal affection, as one monarch might ad- 
 dress another ; Eudolf Schmidt, who had written on 
 Whitman in a Danish literary journal, translated 
 Democratic Vistas into Danish, and sent him a message 
 from Bjornson ; and a multitude of pleasant relation- 
 ships were thus little by little established. 
 
 The greatest and most delightful tribute which 
 Whitman received at this period was one of a sort 
 wholly unexpected. Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, who, after 
 her husband's death, completed with much skill and 
 learning his life of Blake, was a friend of Eossetti's, 
 and becoming acquainted with the Selections, felt im- 
 pelled to read the complete edition of the Leaves of 
 Gha^s. In asking Eossetti to lend her the volume, 
 she wrote quite frankly that, " as for what you spe- 
 cially allude to, who so well able to bear it — I will 
 say, to judge wisely of it — as one who, having been a 
 
136 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 happy wife and mother, has learned to accept with 
 tenderness, to feel a sacredness in all the facts of 
 nature ? " " But," she adds, " perhaps Walt Whitman 
 has forgotten — or, thro some theory in his head, 
 has overridden — the truth that our instincts are 
 beautiful facts of nature, as well as our bodies, and 
 that we have a strong instinct of silence about some 
 things." A few days later, having received and read 
 the poems, she wrote Eossetti thus courageously about 
 them : — 
 
 " 11 July. I think it was very manly and kind of you to put 
 the whole of Walt Whitman's poems into my hands ; and that I 
 have no other friend who w'd have judged them and me so 
 wisely and generously. ... In regard to those poems which 
 raised so loud an outcry, I wiU take courage to say frankly that 
 I find them also beautiful, and that I think even you have mis- 
 apprehended them. Perhaps indeed they were chiefly written 
 for vrives. I rejoice to have read these poems ; and if I or any 
 true woman feel that, certainly men may hold their peace about 
 them. You will understand that I still think that instinct of 
 silence I spoke of a right and beautiful thing ; and that it is 
 only lovers and poets (perhaps only lovers and this poet) who 
 may say what they will — the lover to his own, the poet to all 
 because all are in a sense his own. Shame is like a very flexible 
 veil that takes faithfully the shape of what it covers — lovely 
 when it hides a lovely thing, ugly when it hides an ugly one. 
 There is not any fear that the freedom of such impassioned 
 words will destroy the sweet shame, the happy silence, that 
 enfold and brood over the secrets of love in a woman's heart." 
 
 With Mrs. Gilchrist's consent, her letters were sent, 
 without mention of her name, to Whitman, and a 
 little later they were published in the Boston Radical 
 under the title of A Woman's Estimate of Walt Whit- 
 man. Their influence in decreasing the attacks on 
 Whitman for indecency of expression is scarcely to 
 
IV.] COMEADESHIP (1861-1873) 137 
 
 be exaggerated. Wten once a woman of refinement 
 had declared that the wife and mother understood his 
 meaning and was not shocked by it, the ground was, 
 as it were, cut out from under the prudish male critic. 
 At the same time, the limitations which she placed 
 upon her admiration defended her from any imputa- 
 tion of recklessness in opening wide the realm of song 
 for the indiscriminate admission of poems that dealt 
 with love in this fashion. 
 
 In general, however, the effect of foreign apprecia- 
 tion of Whitman's work on the home public was not 
 considerable. Indeed, American readers and critics 
 were both inclined to underrate the value of such judg- 
 ments from afar, classing them with such ill-informed 
 opinion as fancied that Indians in their war-paint still 
 roamed in the outskirts of the great Eastern cities, 
 and that the typical American of the cultivated class 
 was portrayed in Dickens's American Notes. They 
 forgot, nevertheless, that to the English reader verse 
 or prose that merely represented the continuation of 
 English tradition seemed naturally worthy of no 
 special remark, and that while the majority of Amer- 
 ican writers, particularly perhaps those from New 
 England, were living under conditions not easily to be 
 distinguished from English conditions, and writing 
 much as Englishmen would, there was throughout the 
 world a deep interest in such American writing as rep- 
 resented conditions more widely national. America, 
 Europe has steadily felt, is the great modern experi- 
 ment in democracy, the pioneer in the mastery of a 
 huge continent ; she attempts the assimilation of 
 many races ; her peoples are living on a new basis, 
 they are facing new problems, — their life must have 
 
138 WAXT WHITMAN [chap. iv. 
 
 in it something suggestive of all these. "What 
 thoughtful Europeans heard most gladly from us, 
 therefore, was not the speech of the sophisticated, the 
 virtually Europeanized literary class, but the speech 
 of the people at large, the song of democracy. And 
 though Whitman did not write in a way that could 
 often be understood by the people, he spoke of them 
 and, in a great measure, /or them. 
 
t CHAPTER V 
 
 OLD AGE (1873-1892) 
 
 Camden in Kew Jersey, where Whitman was to spend 
 the greater part of the remaining years of his life, lies 
 on the opposite side of the Delaware from Philadel- 
 phia, of which it may be regarded as a suburb. Colo- 
 nel Whitman was an inspector of gas and water pipes, 
 and his family occupied a comfortable house, in which 
 Whitman had the room formerly used by his mother. 
 In September, the Whitmans moved to a larger and 
 more pleasantly situated house, where Whitman chose 
 for himself a chamber on the top floor. His relatives 
 were kind to him and saw carefully to all his needs. 
 But he was far from happy. He was partly disabled 
 by paralysis and got about only with difficulty. His 
 brother had little time to spend in convoying his slow 
 steps, and he had as yet no friends or even acquaint- 
 ances. In addition to his paralysis, he suffered from 
 gastric catarrh or some obstinate affection of the liver, 
 brought on, he thought, by his unaccustomed sedentary 
 life and confinement indoors. His brain, too, was 
 often in a " blur," as he expressed it. His Washington 
 friends could only come to see him at rare intervals, and 
 he was lonely and depressed, missing his old wood fire 
 (the house was heated in a more modern fashion), and 
 finding it hard work to get through the long evenings. 
 We know most of his life during 1873-1875 through 
 139 
 
140 WALT WHITMAN [ch^p. 
 
 his letters to Peter Doyle, to whom he wrote frequently 
 in the old colloquial, fragmentary, almost illiterate 
 fashion. He confesses to him how much he misses his 
 " friendly presence and magnetism " and warns him 
 that, though " I still think I shall get over this, and 
 we will be together again and have some good times, 
 for all that it is best for you to be prepared for some- 
 thing different — my strength can't stand the pull 
 forever, and if continued must sooner or later give 
 out." As a rule, however, he is hopeful and declares 
 that he puts a bold face on and his best foot foremost. 
 His main longing was for companionship ; close by 
 were men of the sort that he liked — " lots of E. E. 
 [railroad] men living near, around here — if only I 
 felt just a little better I should get acquainted with 
 many of the men, which I could very easily do if I 
 would. I should much like to go on the trips so 
 handy and cheap, right as you might [say] from mv^ 
 door, to Cape May, or to Long Branch, etc. If youms 
 only here to convoy me — but I suppose no one is to 
 have everything." And so he plans for the welfare of his 
 " dear son," dreams of returning to Washington soon, 
 and sends messages of affection to one and another of 
 his humble friends. 
 
 For a year Whitman was allowed to perform his 
 Washington duties by proxy, but when, in the mid- 
 summer of 1874, it became evident that his return 
 would be postponed indefinitely, he received his dis- 
 charge. Up to this time he had been meeting his 
 expenses from his savings and the residue of his 
 salary. Now that the latter was cut off and his sav- 
 ings were vanishing, his financial situation began to 
 look black, for the sale of his books was small, and 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 141 
 
 even the slight sums that should have reached him 
 from them were withheld by dishonest agents, who 
 seemed to think that his death would soon relieve 
 them from an accounting. His physical condition 
 slowly improved. He got out of doors more, and once 
 able to reach the horse-car lines, he had long rides, 
 crossed the ferry to Philadelphia, and took the cars 
 on the other side. The drivers gave him their little 
 stools on the forward platforms, and the ferrymen 
 welcomed him cordially. Late in 1875 he even made 
 a brief visit to Washington, "convoyed" by Burroughs, 
 and, with Doyle, to Baltimore, where he attended the 
 ceremonies at the reburial of Poe's body. But these 
 years were, all in all, the most lonely and miserable 
 period of his life. 
 
 Of literary composition, during this time, he was 
 almost absolutely incapable; yet we owe to it at 
 least three poems : The Song of the Universal, read 
 by proxy at Tufts College at Commencement, in 
 1874, on the thought that " only the good is uni- 
 versal," and that in America, in particular, the plan 
 of God is slowly bringing men to a larger hope and 
 reality; The Song of the Bedwood Tree, the dying 
 message of the dryads of the mighty forests of the 
 Pacific coast, majestic giants passing away because 
 their time had come, abdicating, as it were, to a 
 superber race, in the new and promised land of free- 
 dom and true democracy ; and, best of all, the mag- 
 nificent Prayer of Columbus, published in Harper's 
 Monthly. In this he symbolizes his own condition. 
 Columbus, " a batter'd, wreck'd old man," long pent 
 by the sea, on a savage shore, reports himself once 
 more to God : — 
 
142 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 "Thouknowest my years entire, my life, 
 My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely; 
 Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth, 
 Thou knowest my manhood's solemn and visionary meditations, 
 Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come 
 
 to Thee, 
 Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows and strictly 
 
 kept them, 
 Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee, 
 In shackles, prison'd, in disgrace, repining not, 
 Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee. . . . 
 
 "The end I know not, it is all in Thee, 
 Or small or great I know not — haply what broad fields, 
 
 what lands. 
 Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know. 
 Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy 
 
 Thee, 
 Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn'd to 
 
 reaping-tools, 
 Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's dead cross, may 
 
 bud and blossom there. 
 
 " One effort more, my altar this bleak sand ; 
 That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted. 
 With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, 
 Light rare untellable, lighting the very light. 
 Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages ; 
 For that, O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees. 
 Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee." 
 
 In 1876, however, the tide of fortune began to turn. 
 In his few working hours he had been able to prepare 
 for the press a new edition of the Leaves of Grass, the 
 sixth, and a companion volume. Two Rivulets, — that 
 is, twin streams of prose and verse, respectively, — 
 containing Democratic Vistas, the new prose Memoranda 
 of the War, and such poems as had been written since 
 the previous edition of the Leaves of Grass. The two 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 143 
 
 volumes sold, at five dollars each. Before they were 
 actually published, a letter from Eobert Buchanan 
 appeared in the London News, accusing Americans of 
 neglecting Whitman, who was old and ill and in want. 
 The charge was, from some points of view, unjust, 
 but it moved W. M. Eossetti to write to Whitman, 
 offering the assistance of his English friends. Whit- 
 man replied (March 17, 1876) that he was no worse, 
 and might remain for years in the same condition. 
 He added: — 
 
 " My books are out, the new edition ; a set of which, im- 
 mediately on receiving your letter of 28th, I have sent you, (by 
 mail, March 15,) and I suppose you have before this receiv'd 
 them. My dear friend, your offers of help, and those of my 
 other British friends, I think I fully appreciate, in the right 
 spirit, welcome and acceptive — leaving the matter altogether 
 in your and their hands, and to your and their convenience, 
 discretion, leisure, and nicety. 'Though poor now, even to penury, \ 
 I have not so far been deprived of any physical thing I need 
 or wish whatever, and I feel confident I shall not in the future. 
 During my employment of seven years or more in Washington 
 after the war (1865-72) I regularly saved part of my wages : 
 and, though the sum has now become about exhausted by my 
 expenses of the last three years, there are already beginning at 
 present welcome dribbles hitherward from the sales of my new 
 edition, which I just job and sell, myself, (all through this ill- 
 ness, my book-agents for three years in New York successively, 
 badly cheated me,) and shall continue to dispose of the books 
 myself. And that is the way I should prefer to glean my sup- 
 port. In that way I cheerfully accept all the aid my friends find 
 it convenient to proffer^ 
 
 " To repeat a little, and without undertaking details, under- 
 stand, dear friend, for yourself and all, that I heartily and most 
 affectionately thank my British friends, and that I accept their 
 sympathetic generosity in the same spirit in which I believe 
 (nay, know) it is offer'd — that though poor I am not in want 
 
144 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 — that I maintain good heart and cheer ; and that by far the 
 most satisfaction to me (and I think it can be done, and believe 
 it will be) will be to live, as long as possible, on the sales, by 
 myself, of my own works, and perhaps, if practicable, by further 
 writings for the press. W. W. 
 
 "I am prohibited from writing too much, and I must make 
 this candid statement of the situation serve for all my dear 
 friends over there." 
 
 Kossetti took steps to circulate this information 
 among Whitman's friends in Great Britain, and the 
 result was a handsome subscription for the two vol- 
 umes, some of the subscribers voluntarily paying for 
 the books double the stated price. To Whitman these 
 remittances came just in time to free him from serious 
 financial inconvenience. "These blessed gales from 
 the British isles probably (certainly) saved me," he 
 said ; and he had the happiness not only of knowing 
 that he was loved and helped by his friends, but that 
 the receipts were derived from his own labours. 
 
 Feeling by this time somewhat better in body, and 
 surer now of financial independence, he was able to 
 lead a less secluded and monotonous life. In the 
 spring of 1876 he accordingly left Camden for the 
 village of Whitehorse, some ten miles away, where he 
 lodged in an old farm-house, with the family of Mr. 
 George Stafford. The country is gently rolling, well 
 timbered, and full of rich meadowland. The farm 
 lay far from the main roads, and near by was Timber 
 Creek, a placid brancli of the Delaware. The farm- 
 house was comfortable, his hosts became his warm 
 friends, country life agreed with him, and he remained 
 until late in the autumn, returned for the following 
 summer, and in fact made the Staffords' house one of 
 his homes for several years. 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 145 
 
 He lived mucli in the open air, Ms chief resort be- 
 ing "a particularly secluded little dell off one side 
 by the creek, originally a large dug-out marl-pit, now 
 abandon'd, fiU'd with bushes, trees, grass, a group of 
 willows, a straggling bank, and a spring of delicious 
 water." Here he gave himself up to the medicine of 
 air and water and exercise. For several hours each 
 day he enjoyed the mud-bath of the creek and the 
 clear bath of the brook, and the friction of a flesh- 
 brush. He Ijasked in the sun, and wrestled with a 
 young hickory sapling, swaying and yielding to its 
 tough, limber stem, " haply to get into my old sinews 
 some of its elastic fibre and clear sap. . . . Wander- 
 ing by the creek, I have three or four naturally favor- 
 able spots where I rest — besides a chair I lug with me 
 and use for more deliberate occasions. At other spots 
 convenient I have selected, besides the hickory just 
 named, strong and limber boughs of beech or holly, in 
 easy-reaching distance, for my natural gymnasia, for 
 arms, chest, trunk-muscles. I can soon feel the sap 
 and sinew rising through me, like mercury to heat. I 
 hold on boughs or slender trees caressingly there in 
 the sun and shade, wrestle with their innocent stal- 
 wartness — and know the virtue thereof passes from 
 them into me. . . . How it is I know not, but I often 
 realize a presence here — in clear moods I am certain 
 of it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning nor esthet- 
 ics will give the least explanation. All the past two 
 summers it has been strengthening and nourishing my 
 sick body and soul, as never before. Thanks, invis- 
 ible physician, for thy silent delicious medicine, thy 
 day and night, thy waters and thy airs, the banks, the 
 grass, the trees, and e'en the weeds ! " 
 
146 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 In the years immediately following this happy 
 change of fortune we see Whitman at his very best. 
 No longer in financial anxiety, comparatively free from 
 bodily pain, with faculties not yet dimmed by old age, 
 with powers of enjoyment undiminished, he seemed 
 at the very height of his powers. The reminiscences 
 of Dr. Bucke and Edward Carpenter, who came to 
 know him at this period, are of great interest as show- 
 ing the growth in him of a peculiar physical or 
 psychic power, felt keenly by certain persons, less 
 perceptibly by others, and by some not at all. 
 
 Dr. Bucke records of their first meeting that he was 
 "almost amazed by the beauty and majesty of his 
 person and the gracious air of purity that surrounded 
 and permeated him." The interview was short, but 
 shortly after it "a sort of spiritual intoxication set 
 in. . . . It seemed to me at that time certain that he 
 was either actually a god or in some sense clearly and 
 entirely praeter-human. Be all this as it may, it is 
 certain that the hour spent that day with the poet was 
 the turning point of my life." Elsewhere he describes 
 a similar experience of another person,,'^ — an exaltation 
 that "lasted at least six weeks in a clearly marked 
 degree, so that, for at least that length of time, he 
 was plainly different from his ordinary self. Neither, 
 he said, did it then or since pass away, though it 
 ceased to be felt as something new and strange, but 
 became a permanent element in his life, a strong and 
 living force (as he described it), making for purity 
 and happiness. I may add that this person's whole 
 life has been changed by that contact (no doubt the 
 previous reading of Leaves of Gh-ass also), his temper, 
 character, entire spiritual being, outer life, conversa- 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 147 
 
 tion, etc., elevated and purified in an extraordinary 
 degree." Indeed, "no description," Dr. Bucke af- 
 firms, " can give any idea of the extraordinary physi- 
 cal attractiveness of the man. I do not speak now of 
 the affection of friends and of those who are much 
 with him, but of the magnetism exercised by him 
 upon people who merely see him for a few minutes or 
 pass him on the street. An intimate friend of the 
 author's, after knowing Walt Whitman a few days, 
 said in a letter: 'As for myself, it seems to me now 
 that I have always known him and loved him.' And 
 in another letter, written from a town where the poet 
 had been staying for a few days, the same person 
 says : ' Do you know, every one who met him here 
 seems to love him? ' " 
 
 Edward Carpenter's testimony lies in the same 
 direction : — 
 
 " Meanwhile in that first ten minutes I was becoming con- 
 scious of an impression which subsequently grew even more 
 marked — the impression, namely, of immense vista or back- 
 ground in his personality. If I had thought before (and I do 
 not know that I had) that Whitman was eccentric, unbalanced, 
 violent, my first interview certainly produced quite a contrary 
 effect. No one could be more considerate, I may almost say 
 courteous ; no one could have more simplicity of manner and 
 freedom from egotistic wrigglings ; and I never met any one who 
 gave me more the impression of knowing what he was doing 
 than he did. Yet away and beyond all this I was aware of a 
 certain radiant power in him, a large benign effluence and 
 inclusiveness, as of the sun, which filled out the place where 
 he was — yet with something of reserve and sadness in it too, 
 and a sense of remoteness and inaccessibility." 
 
 In person Whitman was impressive. He was six 
 feet in height, weighed nearly two hundred pounds. 
 
148 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 still held himself straight, and was -vrell proportioned. 
 His long, very fine, and nearly snow-white hair and 
 beard made him appear at first sight older than he was, 
 and at sixty he was taken to be seventy or eighty. 
 He walked feebly, owing to his paralysis, but his face 
 had none of the lines of age or weariness. His com- 
 plexion was singularly ruddy — a bright maroon tint, 
 strikingly in contrast with the whiteness of his hair 
 and beard ; and his flesh had a delicate rose colour. 
 Edward Carpenter records that he was "most struck, 
 in his face, by the high arch of the eyebrows, giving a 
 touch of child-like wonder and contemplation to his 
 expression ; yet his eyes, though full of a kind of wist- 
 ful tenderness, were essentially not contemplative but 
 perceptive — active rather than receptive — lying far 
 back, steady, clear, with small definite pupils and 
 heavy lids of passion and experience. A face of ma- 
 jestic simple proportion, like a Greek temple as some 
 one has said; the nose Greek in outline, straight (but 
 not at all thin or narrow, rather the contrary), broad 
 between the brows, and meeting the line of the 
 forehead without any great change of direction; the 
 forehead high, with horizontal furrows, but not exces- 
 sively high; the head domed, and rising to a great 
 height in the middle, above the ears — not projecting 
 behind ; ears large and finely formed ; mouth full, but 
 almost quite concealed by hair. A head altogether 
 impressing one by its height, and by a certain un- 
 tamed 'wild hawk' look, not uncommon among the 
 Americans." 
 
 His dress was plain and comfortable. He preferred 
 clothes of light gray, loosely cut, and an overcoat with 
 pockets in the breast cut diagonally, into which he 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 149 
 
 could thrust his hands. He ■wore a large, soft gray 
 felt hat, usually pushed back on his forehead. His 
 shirts were made to suit his own fancy, with loose, 
 tuined-down collars, the neck button several inches 
 lower than usual, and he wore no tie, so that they lay 
 open about his throat and the upper part of his breast. 
 The cuffs sometimes turned up over the coat-sleeves, 
 and the whole impression was one of white and gray 
 and pink. 
 
 His manners were informal and unaffected. Intro- 
 ductions meant little. Once he held out his hand 
 (either the left or the right, as chance directed), and 
 grasped that of another, the ceremony was over, and 
 a friendship was begun. His dominant mood, though 
 probably with some exaggeration, was admirably an- 
 alyzed by Dr. Bucke, who .added the perceptions of a 
 skilled physician to the affectionate interest of a friend, 
 in a passage that must be quoted almost in full : — 
 
 " His favorite occupation seemed to be strolling or saunter- 
 ing about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, 
 the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, 
 and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the 
 hundreds of natural sounds. It was evident that these things 
 gave him a pleastire far beyond what they give to ordinary peo- 
 ple. . . . Until I knew the man, it had not occurred to me that any 
 one could derive so much absolute happiness from these things 
 as he did. He was very fond of flowers, either wild or culti- 
 vated ; liked all sorts. I think he admired lilacs and sunflowers 
 just as much as roses. Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived 
 liked so many things and disliked so few as Walt Whitman. 
 All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. All sights 
 and sounds seemed to please him. He appeared to like (and 
 I believe he did like) all the men, women, and children he saw 
 (though I never knew him to say that he liked any one), but 
 each who knew him felt that he liked him or her, and that he 
 
150 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 liked others also. I never knew him to argue or dispute, and he 
 never spoke about money. He always justified, sometimes 
 playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke harshly 
 of himself or his writings, and I often thought he took pleasure in 
 the opposition of enemies. When I first knew him, I used to 
 think that he watched himself, and would not allow his tongue 
 to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy, complaint, and 
 remonstrance. It did not occur to me as possible that these 
 mental states could be absent in him. After long observation, 
 however, I satisfied myself that such absence or unconscious- 
 ness was entirely real. He never spoke deprecatingly of any 
 nationality or class of men, or time in the world's history, or 
 against any trades or occupations — not even against any ani- 
 mals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of 
 nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, 
 deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled 
 either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never 
 swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger 
 and apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and 
 I do not believe he ever felt it." 
 
 This Saint Martin's summer of his later life Whit- 
 man expressed rather in prose than in verse. Once 
 he felt the flush of rene'wed vigour, he began again his 
 note-taking and memorandum-making. Some of these 
 notes and memoranda, collected in Specimen Days, 
 show how keen was his enjoyment of Nature, now that 
 he was at last freed from the tyranny of bed and 
 chair and four walls. They had less than ever before 
 to do with men and women. His thoughts were of 
 birds and bumblebees, of flowers and trees, of the 
 scent of the woods and fields, of brooks, and country 
 lanes, of starlight, of the ice on the Delaware of a 
 winter's night, of his old mistress, the sea, the image 
 and sound of whose pounding waves had from boy- 
 hood haunted his memory. They run the whole 
 
v.]^ OLD AGE (1873-1892) 151 
 
 gamut of the seasons from sap to frost and back to 
 sap again. They are full of sights and sounds and 
 odours, the accurate record of his sensations. There is 
 little of mood, of subjective shaping of Nature to his 
 own purposes. Rather is his attitude that of cheerful 
 receptivity; one of drawing nearer, as it were, and 
 listening and waiting, of expectancy for he knew not 
 what, until Nature seemed to be actually permeating 
 him with unknown influences. "I had," he records 
 in a parenthesis, "a sort of dream-trance the other 
 day, in which I saw my favorite trees step out and 
 promenade up, down and around, very curiously — 
 with a whisper from one, leaning down as he pass'd 
 me. We do all this on the present occasion, exceptionally, 
 just for you." 
 
 Between the country and the city he now passed 
 with more freedom, staying as he chose at Whitehorse 
 with the StafEords, with his brother at Camden, or in 
 Philadelphia at the house of Mrs. Gilchrist. In the 
 autumn of 1876 he made frequent visits to the exposi- 
 tion in Philadelphia. In January, 1877, he spoke in 
 Philadelphia on the one hundred and fortieth anniver- 
 sary of Thomas Paine's birthday. In February he 
 came to New York, where a reception given in his 
 honour showed him how greatly respect and affection 
 for him had grown amoiig persons of repute. He 
 visited, too, with delight the scenes dear to him in 
 New York, and then went up the Hudson to tarry for 
 a while with Mr. Burroughs amid the beautiful 
 scenery of Ulster County. In 1878 he repeated the 
 excursion, and in the autumn of 1879 he was ready 
 for a longer adventure. In September he journeyed 
 with friends as far west as Colorado, revelling in 
 
152 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 enjoyment of the extraordinary beauty of the scenery, 
 the fertility of the soil, the exuberant vitality of the 
 cities, and in the pressing realization that these are 
 new lands in which humanity, untrammelled by much 
 that oppressed it in older soils, may, if it will, reach a 
 larger and finer growth. And such a new people should 
 have its new literature, he dreamed, one free from all the 
 accumulated stock phrases and types and situations : — 
 
 " Will the day ever come — no matter how long deferr'd — 
 when those models and lay-figures from the British islands — 
 and even the precious traditions of the classics — will be remi- 
 niscences, studies only ? The pure breath, primitiveness, bound- 
 less prodigality and amplitude, strange mixture of delicacy and 
 power, of continence, of real and ideal, and of all original and 
 first-class elements, of these prairies, the Rocky mountains, 
 and ol the Mississippi and Missouri rivers — will they ever 
 appear in, and in some sort form a standard for our poetry 
 and art ? " 
 
 He was, however, it may be added, disappointed in 
 one respect. By his theory, and Plato's, a state's ro- 
 bustness depended upon the women who would bear 
 aud nurture the young, giving them strong bodies and 
 healthy minds. But he was moved to record his as- 
 tonishment that, while Western women were fashion- 
 ably dressed and bore themselves well, they did not 
 seem to " have, either in physique or the mentality 
 appropriate to them, any high native originality of 
 spirit or body (as the men certainly have, appropri- 
 ate to them). They are 'intellectual' and fashion- 
 able, but dyspeptic-looking and generally doll-like; 
 their ambition evidently is to copy their eastern 
 sisters. Something far different and in advance must 
 appear, to tally and complete the superb masculinity 
 of the West, and maintain and continue it." 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 153 
 
 In general, he felt himself at home in the West, 
 particularly at Denver, and wholly in sympathy with 
 the active and optimistic tone of Western life, a radi- 
 cally American tone. Indeed, even in the magnifi- 
 cent and turbulent scenery of the high-coloured, ir- 
 regular canons he saw a landscape akin to his own 
 verse : — 
 
 " ' I have found the law of my own poems,' was the unspoken 
 but more-and-more decided feeling that came to me as I pass'd, 
 hour after hour, amid all this grim yet joyous elemental aban- 
 don — this plenitude of material, entire absence of art, untram- 
 mel'd play of primitive Nature — the chasm, the gorge, the 
 crystal mountain stream, repeated scores, hundreds of miles — 
 the broad handling and absolute uncrampedness — the fantastic 
 forms, bathed in transparent browns, faint reds and grays, 
 towering sometimes a thousand, sometimes two or three thou- 
 sand feet high — at their tops now and then huge masses pois'd, 
 and mixing with the clouds, with only their outlines, hazed in 
 misty lilac, visible." 
 
 And the same thought he expressed, in 1881, in 
 Spirit that formed this Scene : — 
 
 " Spirit that form'd this scene, 
 These tumbled rock-piles grim and red. 
 These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks. 
 These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness. 
 These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own, 
 I know thee, savage spirit — we have communed together, 
 Mine too such wild arrays for reasons of their own; 
 Was't charged against my chants they had forgotten art ? 
 To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delioatesse ? 
 The lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out temple's grace — 
 
 column and polish'd arch forgot ? 
 But thou that revelest here — spirit that form'd this scene. 
 They have remember'd thee." 
 
154 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 On his return, Whitman spent several months with 
 his brother Jefferson in St. Louis, enjoying its peculiar 
 fusion of Northern and Southern and native and for- 
 eign qualities, its bustling and varied life, and the 
 night views of the Mississippi and the great bridge. 
 In January, 1880, he returned to the East, and in May, 
 with irrepressible ardour, he was off on another long 
 jaunt, this time by way of ^Niagara to London, Ontario, 
 where he was the guest of Dr. Bucke, and, in com- 
 pany with Dr. Bucke, down the St. Lawrence and up the 
 Saguenay. In this almost equally picturesque and 
 stimulating journey and visit, which lasted from May 
 to September, and which is in part recorded in Specimen 
 Days and in the recently published Diary in Canada, 
 Whitman showed himself as before a methodical and 
 acute observer. He saw not only the beauties of Nature 
 but the works of man, and everywhere he penetrated 
 the outward shell, divining the essentially human im- 
 portance of what many a good traveller would scarcely 
 have noticed. 
 
 The winter of 1880-1881 Whitman spent at Camden 
 and in the country, but in the spring he began his 
 journeyings again, this time on a smaller scale. In 
 April he visited Boston, delivering there his lecture in 
 commemoration of the death of Lincoln as he had 
 previously done in New York and Philadelphia. It 
 was a new Boston that he found, after an absence of 
 twenty years, larger, busier, more active, less puritani- 
 cal, and Whitman saw it with new eyes, recognizing 
 the current of conservatism that ran so sturdily be- 
 neath the surface. It was, he thought, like " a jolly 
 old Greek city," where people lived happily because 
 wisely, and he admired particularly the essentially 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 155 
 
 New England type of "fine-looking gray-hair'd 
 women." He paid a short visit to Longfellow, who 
 had called on him several years before, and records 
 in his diary the cordiality of Longfellow's welcome, 
 adding an admirably appreciative page of criticism 
 of his work and that of Emerson, Bryant, and Whit- 
 tier, "the mighty four who stamped this first Ameri- 
 can century with its birth-marks of poetic literature." 
 The crowning pleasure of the journey, however, was 
 seeing Mr. Quincy Shaw's remarkable collection of 
 Millet's pictures, by which he was greatly impressed, 
 and in which he must have recognized an analogue, in 
 many particulars, of his own art, highly emotional in 
 method and democratic in subject. 
 
 The summer of 1881 Whitman spent partly in Glen- 
 dale, a cross-roads village near Whitehorse, with the 
 Staffords, who were now keeping a country store, and 
 partly in visits to his friends, including one, with Mr. 
 Burroughs, to the old Whitman homestead at West 
 Hills and other scenes of his boyhood. In August he 
 was in New York, rediscovering the peculiar charm 
 and comfort of the city in midsummer, and enjoying 
 especially the beauties of the upper portion of the 
 island. Staying with his friends, the Johnstons, at 
 Mott Haven, he worked a few hours each day on the 
 definitive edition of the Leaves of Grass. One 
 day in August, too, he took breakfast at PfafE's new 
 restaurant, the host, his old friend of ante-bellum 
 days, welcoming him, and recalling with him the va- 
 rious members of the circle that gathered so regularly 
 in the dingy Broadway cellar. "And there," he re- 
 cords, " Pfaff and I, sitting opposite each other at the 
 little table, gave a remembrance to them in a style 
 
156 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 they would have themselves fully confirm'd, namely, 
 big, brimming, fiU'd-up champagne-glasses, drain'd in 
 abstracted silence, very leisurely, to the last drop." 
 
 In the " elastic, mellow, Indian-summery " autumn 
 of 1881 Whitman made his last journey to Boston, 
 lodging at Bullfinch's, by Bowdoin Square, correcting 
 the proofs of the Leaves of Grass, which was at last 
 to be issued by a distinguished publishing firm, James 
 E. Osgood and Company, and spending his spare time in 
 loitering about the city and visiting old friends. Mr. 
 Frank Sanborn, whose trial as an Abolitionist he had 
 attended, meditating a rescue, in 1861, took him out 
 to Concord, and there he saw Emerson twice, the 
 second time dining at his house. Emerson was at 
 that time not wholly in command of his faculties, and 
 quite probably he did not always remember Whitman ; 
 he sat for the most part silent, smiling, with his 
 habitual expression of sweetness, " and the old clear- 
 peering aspect quite the same." To Whitman it was 
 something like a benediction, as he remarked to his 
 friends, and one can understand the feeling, for he 
 had kept much of his youthful reverence for Emer- 
 son, and he must have been moved by the thought 
 that he was ending his own career with the blessing 
 of one who had saluted him so bravely at its be- 
 ginning. He was taking his fill of life for the last 
 time, with keener pleasure than ever. Old friends 
 and old scenes seemed doubly dear. In his diary 
 he records that " perhaps the best is always cumular 
 tive." The best does not reveal itself at first, " some- 
 times suddenly bursting forth, or stealthily opening 
 to me, perhaps after years of unwitting familiarity, 
 unappreciation, usage." 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 157 
 
 The second Boston edition, like the first, was ill- 
 fated. Some two thousand copies had been sold when 
 complaint was lodged against it in the office of the 
 attorney-general of Massachusetts by the Society for 
 the Suppression of Vice in Boston. The District 
 Attorney, apparently without close examination of 
 the points at issue, thereupon notified the publishers 
 that the volume fell within the provisions of the 
 public statutes respecting obscene literature. The 
 publishers, who had approved the manuscript and had 
 taken the volume on the express understanding that 
 the poems about which discussion had previously 
 arisen should be printed without change, now felt 
 alarmed, shrinking timorously from the thought of a 
 trial on such a charge. Whitman was willing to do 
 whatever he could to help them out of the difficulty 
 and agreed to make various minor changes, but the 
 attorney-general's office insisted on more extensive 
 alterations, and the publishers decided to drop the 
 ' book. In lieu of royalty they gave Whitman a clear 
 title to the electrotype plates, and these he put into 
 the hands of a Philadelphia publisher (Eees, Welsh 
 and Company, soon succeeded by David McKay), who 
 sold in a single day an edition of three thousand 
 copies, and soon brought out another edition. No com- 
 plaint was brought against the book in Pennsylvania, 
 somewhat to the disappointment of the publisher, 
 who would willingly have had the book adver- 
 tised in that way, and the postmaster at Boston, who 
 had excluded the volume from the mails, was forced 
 to abandon his position on directions from his su- 
 perior officers. And thus, with the growing intelli- 
 gence of the country in matters of literature, came 
 
158 WALT WHITMAN [chap, 
 
 to naught the last attempt at public prosecution of 
 Whitman's work. 
 
 The remainder of 1882 and the whole of 1883 Whit- 
 man passed without notable incident, save the publica- 
 tion in 1882 of Specimen Days and Collect, containing 
 all his prose works, and the appearance in 1883 of 
 Dr. Bucke's biography. In 1884, however, a new 
 period of his life began with his removal, March 26, 
 to a house of his own, on Mickle Street, Camden. It 
 was a humble two-story cottage, such as might have 
 been occupied by any working-man in good circum- 
 stances, and Whitman bought it for about two thou- 
 sand dollars, of which sum he had more than half in 
 hand; the remainder was lent him by a generous Phila- 
 delphia merchant. Mickle Street was well shaded 
 and fairly broad, and inhabited by the kind of people 
 Whitman felt most at home with. His friends 
 with more delicate tastes found the neighbourhood 
 too common, the street too noisy, the domestic 
 arrangements too simple; and they were at times 
 offended by the odours from a guano factory across 
 the river. But such things meant little or nothing to 
 Whitman ; and he soon made himself thoroughly 
 comfortable. For a while an elderly working-man 
 and his wife kept the house for him ; but soon their 
 place was taken by a competent widow, Mrs. Mary 
 Davis, who served him until his death with complete 
 fidelity. 
 
 The front room downstairs was a sort of office and 
 an antechamber for the reception of callers, and con- 
 tained the unsold copies of such editions of his books 
 as were not handled by his Philadelphia publishers. 
 His real dwelling-place was a large room above, only 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 159 
 
 partly carpeted, and heated by a Jittle stove. Its 
 contents have been described in detail by an English 
 visitor, Dr. Johnston : — 
 
 "All around him were books, manuscripts, letters, papers, 
 magazines, parcels tied up with bits of string, photographs, and 
 literary materiel, which was piled on the table a yard high, 
 filled two or three wastepaper baskets, flowed over them on to 
 the floor, beneath the table, on to and under the chairs, bed, 
 washstand, etc., so that whenever he moved from his chair he 
 had literally to wade through this sea of chaotic disorder and 
 confusion. And yet it was no disorder to him, for he knew where 
 to lay his hands upon whatever he wanted, in a few moments. 
 
 " His apartment is roomy, almost square, with three win- 
 dows — one blinded up — facing the north. The boarded floor 
 is partly carpeted, and on the east side stands an iron stove 
 with stove pipe partly in the room. On the top of the stove is 
 a little tin mug. Opposite the stove is a large wooden bed- 
 stead, over the head of which hang portraits of his father and 
 mother. Near the bed, under the blinded-up window, is the 
 washstand, a plain wooden one, with a white wash-jug and 
 basin. There are two large tables in the room, one between 
 the stove and the window, and one between that and the wash- 
 stand. Both of these are piled up with all sorts of paper, 
 scissorings, proof-sheets, books, etc., etc. Some big boxes and 
 a few chairs complete the furniture. On the walls, and on the 
 mantel piece, are pinned or tacked various pictures and photo- 
 graphs. He himself sits between the two windows, with his 
 back to the stove, in the huge cane chair." 
 
 In this frugal, comfortable, and characteristic man- 
 ner Whitman passed the remaining years of his life. 
 Living as a working-man and among working-men, he 
 was rich in acquaintances and friendships with that 
 part of the community, young and old. Men stopped 
 to chat with him as he sat in front of his door, the 
 children played about him, and he saw to it that the 
 sick and the unfortunate shared what prosperity was 
 
160 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 his. For drivers in Philadelphia he had a special 
 fondness and, as the agent of others of larger means, 
 he took pleasure in seeing that they did not lack stout 
 gloves and warm coats. But his relations were by 
 no means confined to working-men and their families. 
 He was a welcome and honoured guest at the houses 
 of several well-to-do Philadelphians ; his old friends 
 O'Connor, Burroughs, Bucke, came often to see him ; 
 and, most important of all, a little band of new friends 
 from Camden itself, chief among whom were Mr. 
 Traubel and Mr. Harned, were gathering about 
 him, — a group of younger disciples, who considered 
 themselves as his bodyguard. And there were hosts of 
 visitors from abroad and at home, distinguished trav- 
 ellers with letters of introduction, simpler men and 
 women who loved his work and wanted to press his 
 hand for an instant, besides the crowd of mere auto- 
 graph seekers and cranks. He was impatient with 
 the notoriety hunter, or the extremist of any kind ; 
 but the gentle-mannered, open-minded visitor he re- 
 ceived cordially, whatever his status might be in the 
 world; such men became at once his friends. Indeed, 
 the spontaneity of his comradeship was such that for- 
 mal introduction was not necessary ; names and titles 
 counted for nothing ; whether one had known him for 
 years or was seeing him for the first time was a mat- 
 ter of indifference ; he cared not. A complete stran- 
 ger, in a sympathetic account of a first visit to him, 
 relates that he found him sitting in the open air. 
 After a quick glance Whitman welcomed him with 
 cordiality and began to talk freely and affectionately, 
 and when he rose to go, said, " Come again, son. You 
 come so rarely." One is reminded of Orientals so high 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 161 
 
 in caste that caste becomes meaningless, so deep in the 
 secrets of life that distinctions fade away, and all 
 men are to them really brothers. ^ 
 
 The royalties on Whitman's books were not large, 
 and seemed to be dwindling, so that his income from 
 such sources was irregular and at times scarcely suffi- 
 cient even for his simple needs. But now and then 
 some of his new verses appeared in periodicals and 
 were well paid for, and he was for years kept on the 
 staff of the New York Herald, receiving a small but 
 regular remittance, and furnishing verses as he felt 
 inclined. His friends, too, were always trying to aid 
 him in one way or another. In 1886, his English 
 friends collected for him a fund of about a hundred 
 pounds and in the following year his Boston friends 
 sent him eight hundred dollars, intended at first to 
 provide for a cottage at Timber Creek. In the same 
 year, his friends in New York and Philadelphia ar- 
 ranged for him to give his Lincoln lecture again in 
 each city, before a distinguished audience, and under 
 circumstances that brought him considerable sums. 
 His new friends in Camden took on themselves many 
 expenses connected with his illness, and whenever any 
 special need arose in his later life, it had only to reach 
 the ears or eyes of any of his friends for some one's 
 purse to be opened at once. As Mr. Donaldson states 
 in his excellent volume of reminiscences, " there was 
 after 1882 a settled determination in the United States 
 that Mr. Whitman should not want for the essentials 
 of a good livelihood, and this was faithfully seen to." 
 All these favours he took gratefully, with the grace of 
 a man who had always paid his way, but who in his 
 old age was willing to receive from his friends what 
 
162 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 he ■would, in other circumstances, have been glad to 
 give. Prudently setting aside whatever he did not at 
 the moment need for himself or for the expenses of 
 his youngest brother, of which he had for years borne 
 half, he was able to accumulate a little fund that 
 would have secured him against want or disaster in any 
 great emergency, and that provided for the future of 
 his brother and paid for the granite tomb which he 
 had built, and in which he desired that his bones should 
 rest, together with those of his father and mother. 
 
 The habit of composition was deeply ingrained in 
 Whitman ; it may almost be said that he did not stop 
 writing until he stopped living, though the volume of 
 his production (and to some degree its value) gradually 
 diminished as his physical force abated. In 1888, 
 while still very ill, he saw through the press his No- 
 vember Bouglis, containing a score or more of new 
 poems, together with a considerable amount of prose, 
 — in particular, articles on Elias Hicks and George 
 Pox, both of whom, as men led by the inner light and 
 the inner voice, seemed to him to be his spiritual 
 kinsmen. In-1891, at the very verge of life, he pub- 
 lished a few further poems with the pathetic title. 
 Good-bye, my Fancy ! The closing poem, which gave 
 the name to the volume, has a touch (perhaps a remi- 
 niscence) of the animula vagula, blandula : — 
 " Good-bye, my Fancy I 
 
 Farewell, dear mate, dear love ! 
 
 I'm going away, I know not where, 
 
 Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again, 
 
 So Good-bye, my Fancy. 
 
 " Now for my last — let me look back a moment ; 
 The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me, 
 Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping. 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 163 
 
 Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together ; 
 Delightful ! — now separation — Good-bye, my Fancy. 
 
 " Yet let me not be too hasty, 
 Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really 
 
 blended into one ; 
 Then if we die we die together, (yes, we'll remain one, ) 
 If we go anywhere we'll go together to meet what happens. 
 May-be we'll be better off and blither, and learn something, 
 May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true 
 
 songs, (who knows ?) 
 May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning — so 
 
 now finally. 
 Good-bye — and hail ! my Fancy." 
 
 But he had still another little handful ready before 
 his death, which his executors, Dr. Bueke, Mr. Traubel, 
 and Mr. Harned, issued under the title, chosen by 
 Whitman himself, of Old Age Echoes. One of these 
 poems, A Tliought of Columbus, now printed at the end 
 of the definitive edition of Leaves of Grass, was his last 
 deliberate composition. 
 
 As a helper on the mechanical side in the prepara- 
 tion of November Boughs and his last literary work, 
 and as his devoted and unselfish friend. Whitman was 
 fortunate in having Mr. Horace Traubel, whom he 
 loved as a grandson, and who encompassed him with 
 all manner of affectionate solicitude. And it is to Mr. 
 Traubel, moreover, that the world is indebted for the 
 publication of parts of a diary which he kept for years, 
 setting down therein with great detail the record of 
 his daily intercourse with Whitman. Pressed by the 
 questions of this young and ardent disciple, the veteran 
 told bit by bit the long story of his tenacious struggle 
 for his creed against the allied forces of conventional- 
 ity, giving fitting honour to those who had early or late 
 
164 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 joined his ranks, and pointing out each vantage gained 
 as, decade after decade, the conflict wore on. The 
 Leaves of Gfrass had come in his eyes to be more than 
 a book : it was an attitude toward life, a test of liber- 
 ality of mind and democratic feeling, almost a doctrine. 
 In all this, however, there was nothing immodest, no 
 touch of the complacent braggart, but rather the honest 
 delight of a very old man in the fact that his vision of 
 the world as love was no longer rejected by all men. 
 
 Mr. Traubel has recorded, too. Whitman's passing 
 judgments, delivered in their intimate conversation, 
 without rancour but without reserve, on his literary 
 contemporaries. These were always trenchant, and 
 sometimes seem unduly severe. It must be remembered, 
 however, that Whitman had consistently held himself 
 aloof from the literary guild and from what might be 
 called the literary or educated or cultivated class. 
 Like many men who have toiled with their hands 
 and lived frugally with those who toil, he had at the 
 bottom of his heart a mistrust for the gentleman per 
 se, the person who dresses according to his tailor's 
 code, thinks in terms of the code of the schools, and 
 conforms to the elaborate conventions of society. 
 Similarly, he was unfriendly to what he called the West 
 Point way of taking literature, the martinets' fashion, 
 as if it were a matter of technique, of precedents and 
 tradition. " Style " reminded him of artificial flowers. 
 And men of this alien class, men who had at their 
 pleasure accepted his work with limitations and res- 
 ervations or rejected it entirely, were in their turn 
 accepted by him, at his pleasure, with his own reservar 
 tions, or rejected entirely. Professors and preachers 
 and philosophers, in particular, all those who give 
 
T.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 165 
 
 assent only after due deliberation, after checking their 
 emotion by their logic, — these he valued less highly 
 than such as yielded themselves freely, without analysis, 
 to the promptings of the spirit within them. It is too 
 early to evaluate such criticism ; but he spoke with 
 the voice of Demos, and the voice of Demos is very 
 often that of posterity. 
 
 Whitman's vital force failed gradually, but in 1885 
 he suffered a slight sunstroke, and this marked the close 
 of his last period of roving and the beginning of closer 
 confinement. As walking now became more difScult 
 for him, his closer friends planned a fund to buy him 
 an easy-riding buggy and a good horse. The older 
 men of letters throughout the country took their share 
 in this gladly, and their thoughtful cooperation in such 
 a timely gift delighted Whitman no less than the gift 
 itself. Thenceforward he drove regularly and fre- 
 quently — and, it must be added, often at a speed 
 somewhat unbecoming his years, having exchanged 
 the safe beast presented to him for one of a livelier 
 gait. Only rarely, in these later years, did he leave 
 Camden or Philadelphia, but in 1887 he read his 
 Lincoln lecture at the Madison Square Theatre, and 
 afterward met his friends at a reception at the West- 
 minster Hotel. In June, 1888, just after his sixty- 
 ninth birthday, he was driving by the Delaware at sun- 
 set. The scene was one of unusual splendour and he 
 urged his horse out into the shallow river, and there, 
 in contemplation of the sky and the water, spent " an 
 unspeakable hour," as he described it, of ecstasy. The 
 evening air chilled him, however, and he suifered sev- 
 eral slight attacks of paralysis, for the first time losing 
 temporarily the power of speech. For some days it 
 
166 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 did not seem possible that he could recover, but his 
 dogged persistency of will brought him back to life 
 again, and allowed him, by working for short periods, 
 to see November Boughs through the press in his usual 
 painstaking fashion. 
 
 During the winter of 1888-1889 he was virtually a 
 prisoner, and sat by the fire in his big arm-chair. The 
 horse and buggy were now sold, and he moved about 
 on the arm of his nurse, Warren Fritzinger, Mrs. Davis's 
 son, or in an invalid's chair. At the end of May he 
 sat for a while at the great dinner given in his honour 
 on his birthday, a quasi-public function in the largest 
 hall in Camden. The succeeding winter passed in the 
 same fashion, but in February, 1890, he read his Lincoln 
 lecture for the last time before an audience in Camden, 
 and on his birthday he attended a dinner in his 
 honour in Philadelphia, at the close of which Colonel 
 Ingersoll spoke long and eloquently in his praise. In 
 October, Mr. Ingersoll spoke on the same topic before 
 a large audience in Philadelphia, and Whitman sat on 
 the platform, taking the praises showered on him with 
 the unaffected pleasure of the old man who looks back 
 on the exploits of his earlier life almost as on those of 
 another person ; though he thought there was too much 
 " guff and taffy," he knew that it sprang from good-will 
 and affection. 
 
 The winter of 1890-1891 was one of confinement and 
 niness. "The main abutments and dikes," he said, 
 were now "shattered and threatening to give out." 
 The poems in Qoodrbye, my Fancy, which was pub- 
 lished late in 1891, he spoke of as his "last chirps." 
 " In fact," he said in the preface, " here I am these 
 current years 1890 and '91, (each successive fortnight 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 167 
 
 getting stiffer and stuck deeper) much like some hard- 
 cased dilapidated grim ancient shell-fish or time-bang'd 
 conch (no legs, utterly non-locomotive) cast up high 
 and dry on the shore-sands, helpless to move any- 
 where — nothing left but behave myself quiet, and 
 while away the days yet assign' d, and discover if there 
 is anything for the said grim and time-bang'd conch to 
 be got at last out of inherited good spirits and primal 
 buoyant centre-pulses down there deep somewhere 
 within his gray-blurr'd old shell." Slowly he grew 
 more frail and more feeble, and his hoary head, resting 
 on the wolfskin in the heavy old chair, was like that 
 of an aged prophet. But he was present at his last 
 birthday dinner, given in his house, and bore himself 
 with gayety. Still he kept busy, so far as his strength 
 allowed, with reading and writing, but he was notice- 
 ably more silent, sitting for hours in quiet meditation. 
 In 1891 the gray granite tomb was completed, and 
 the ashes of his father and mother transported thither. 
 All was ready for its other occupant, and he did not 
 long tarry. The consulting physician who examined 
 him early in the year found no evidence of gross 
 organic disease, but recorded that his apparent age 
 was greater than his real years. He complained of 
 "torpor inertia — as though a great wet soggy net 
 were spread over me and holding me down." His own 
 diagnosis was interesting : " possibly," he wrote to the 
 physician, " that slow, vital, almost impalpable by-play 
 of automatic stimulus belonging to living fibre has, by 
 gradual habit of years and years in me (and espe- 
 cially of the last three years), got quite diverted into 
 mental play and vitality and muscular use." In other 
 words the mind was ceasing to inform the body and 
 
168 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 recoiling upon itself. The physician agreed with him 
 that there might be a great deal in the hypothesis; 
 but the post-mortem examination showed that deep- 
 seated pathological processes were at that time going 
 on. Almost to the end of the year he kept up his 
 mental activity. "Never idle," notes Dr. Longaker, 
 " he sat surrounded by a vast heap of books, papers, 
 manuscripts, and what not, always busied in some- 
 thing." On December 17 a sharp chill presaged the 
 setting in of pneumonia. Soon very little of the lung 
 surface was active, and his spirit seemed on the 
 point of departure, but his stubborn vitality rallied, 
 and he lived for nearly three months. He still in- 
 sisted each day on reading the papers, and he sent 
 messages, and wrote short notes, and did not until the 
 end lose hold entirely of the actual world, though he 
 lay for hours in a state of acute quiescence, with all 
 his senses active but turned inward, so to speak. He 
 suffered acutely and constantly, slept little and rest- 
 lessly, and became greatly emaciated, but kept his 
 characteristic charm and cheerfulness. At last, on 
 March 26, the exhausted vital flame flickered and 
 then went out. The physicians who made the post- 
 mortem examination thought it marvellous that he 
 could have lived so long. " It was no doubt due largely 
 to that indomitable will pertaining to Walt Whitman. 
 Another would have died much earlier with one-half 
 of the pathological changes that existed in his body." 
 On March 30, the little cottage was, for some hours, 
 open to the procession of thousands who wished to 
 look once more upon his face. Many had come from 
 afar, but the great mass were the people of the town, 
 working-men and women and children. In the after- 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 169 
 
 noon the funeral services were held in the open air, 
 in the presence of a multitude, at the cemetery. His 
 older and nearer friends made brief addresses, and 
 one of them read passages from the sacred writings 
 of various peoples, all expressing belief in the im- 
 mortality of the soul. There was little mourning for 
 the poet and seer who had lived to the term of his 
 natural years, but rather joy in his love and thankful- 
 ness for his influence. To those who might be called 
 his disciples, it was a day of heightened, joyful emo- 
 tion. " We are at the summit," said one. Their great 
 leader had fulfilled his earthly mission. 
 
 A short biography has no room for critical analy- 
 sis, nor is it its function to provide it, particularly 
 when the subject is a writer so near to us in point 
 of time. Generations must pass before opinion hard- 
 ens and unifies. It may not be too early, however, 
 to guess at the present trend in the estimate of 
 Whitman's poetry. In the years immediately follow- 
 ing the publication of Leaves of Grass, his contempo- 
 raries were much exercised over elements in his work 
 that do not now attract great attention. Then they 
 were bewildered by his form of free verse ; now the 
 boundaries of taste and appreciation have been much 
 enlarged, and our increasing acquaintance with Orien- 
 tal poetry and the general movement toward free verse 
 in English and in other literatures have greatly dimin- 
 ished the prejudice. Whitman's rhymeless and faintly 
 rhythmical form seems less and less an innovation 
 and more and more to be merely one of the many 
 known ways of producing poetic effects. Then the 
 public was startled by the degree to which he stressed 
 
170 WALT WHITMAN [chap. 
 
 the facts of sex. Now we are less inclined to dogma- 
 tism on the content of poetry, and in any event we 
 understand that Whitman's seeming insistence in such 
 matters was connected with his larger theory of the 
 ideal state and, further, that the emphasis of the 
 greater part of his work falls elsewhere. Then critics 
 found his personality turbulent and egotistic : the bar- 
 baric yaup that he sounded over the roofs of the 
 world was thought to be his own braggart voice. 
 Now we see that he spoke as the symbol of democ- 
 racy. 
 
 There remains only one element of Whitman's verse 
 to which the public at large is still somewhat un- 
 friendly — his multitudinous inventories and cata- 
 logues, and about this point the critics are still at vari- 
 ance. It begins to grow clearer, however, that this 
 element is of the very essence of his art ; that it was 
 perhaps actually the origin of his art. It was, I sur- 
 mise, through the psychological process of which the in- 
 ventory is the sign that he reached the peculiar state of 
 consciousness by virtue of which he is a poet ; and the 
 inventory is the test of the reader's ability to follow 
 him in this process. Whoever would have the mystic's 
 poetic illusion must use the mystic's means. If this 
 be true, it follows that this special method has limited 
 very considerably the general appreciation of Whit- 
 man's poetry. From this point of view, as from others. 
 Whitman may perhaps be best regarded as a forerun- 
 ner. The peculiarly cosmic quality of his verse, its 
 power of unifying details infinite in number and heter- 
 ogeneous in character, is due to the method of ex- 
 pression which he devised; but the method reveals 
 his great vision only to a few. Possibly, as time 
 
v.] OLD AGE (1873-1892) 171 
 
 wears on, there will come others, stimulated by him 
 to embrace the whole framework of the world in their 
 sympathy, who will discover a medium less mystical, \ 
 more intellectual, which will not prove such a barrier. 
 Or, perhaps, the unities of the universe will never 
 be grasped save in the mystic's vision, and never ex- 
 pressed in verse save for those that can follow his 
 steps at a great distance. 
 
 Nor have we space for an extended treatment of 
 Whitman's literary relationships — of the writers that 
 influenced him and the writers whom he has in- 
 fluenced. Fortunately, such an inquiry is not of great 
 importance in Whitman's case. He was little in- / 
 fluenced by books. When his [mind was simmering, 
 as he once said, Emerson helped to bring it to a boil ; 
 but he was never a man of books, and so far as his 
 ideas were conditioned by those of others it was 
 rather by the whole widely diffused spirit of Ameri- 
 can, English, and Grerman transcendentalism than by 
 any particular work or author. His influence on other 
 writers has been somewhat more marked, and can be 
 traced in several literatures. But the new form in 
 which he cast his expression was one of which he 
 alone held the delicate secret. No one else has 
 succeeded in mastering it, and his influence has 
 tended to blend and assimilate itself with all the 
 cognate forces that lead to the expression of similar 
 ideas in free verse. 
 
 Whitman has been often likened to Eousseau, to 
 Carlyle, to Browning, to Tolstoi, and to Metsche, and 
 there are obvious similarities in each case. The 
 points of dissimilarity, however, are even more strik- 
 
172 WALT WHITMAN [chap. t. 
 
 ing, Eousseau was less robust ; Carlyle, less positive 
 in his influence ; Browning, more analytic and in- 
 tellectual ; Metsclie, more insurgent and rebellious ; 
 Tolstoi, more ascetic and conscience-haunted. Whit- 
 man's analogues, I suspect, are rather to be found 
 in great personalities, in men who represent a 
 new attitude, in men who bring a message to their 
 brothers, a truth mainly expressed in their lives 
 and only incidentally through their writings, — such 
 men, shall we say, as Francis of Assisi, or George 
 Fox, or many an Oriental teacher of earlier or later 
 times. These are the great accepters and unifiers of 
 life ; their teachings and examples pass beyond the 
 confines of literature or politics ; they show new and 
 noble ways of living. Of this type, in his own degree, 
 Whitman seems to me to have been. He is the first 
 and the most notable of those who, in the nineteenth 
 century, in Europe and in America, preached the 
 vision of the world as love and comradeship. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Alcott, Bronson, 76. 
 American Primer, 79. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 111. 
 Ashton, J. H., 107, 129. 
 
 Beeoher, H. W., 76. 
 
 Bjoinson, 135. 
 
 Blake, 41. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 171. 
 
 Bryant, 76, 155. 
 
 Buchanan, Robert, 143. 
 
 Bucke, R. M., 7, 8, 13, 23, 52, 94, 
 
 96, 116, 146, 149, 154, 160, 163. 
 Burroughs, John, 7, 63, 76, 96, 
 
 113, 129, 151, 155, 160. 
 
 Calamus, 116. 
 
 Carlyle, 62, 66, 122, 125, 171. 
 Carpenter, Edward, 147. 
 Chase, S. P., 106. 
 Conway, M. D., 76. 
 
 Dana, C. A., 75. 
 Davis, Mrs. Mary, 158, 166. 
 Democratic Vistas, 121, 127. 
 Diary in Canada, 154. 
 Donaldson, Thomas, 161. 
 Dowden, Edward, 133, 136. 
 Doyle, Peter, 114, 128, 129, 140, 
 
 141. 
 DrumAaps, 98. 
 
 Eldridge, C. W., 83, 91, 96, 98, 
 
 129. 
 Emerson, 36, 43, 47, 62, 65, 73, 
 
 84, 106, 155, 156, 171. 
 
 Fox, George, 162, 172. 
 Francis of Assisi, 172. 
 
 Franklin Evans, 18, 28. 
 Freiligrath, Ferdinand, 132. 
 Fritzinger, Warren, 16(5. 
 
 Gilchrist, Mrs. Anne, 135, 136, 
 
 151. 
 Good Gray Poet, The, 108. 
 
 Hale, E. E., 64. 
 Harlan, James, 107. 
 Hamed, T. B., 160, 163. 
 Hawthorne, 28. 
 Hicks, Elias, 17, 162. 
 Holmes, 47. 
 Houghton, Lord, 76. 
 Howells, W. D., 77. 
 
 Ingersoll, B. O., 166. 
 
 James, William, 60, 53. 
 Johnston, Br. John, 169. 
 Johnston, J. H., 155. 
 
 Leaves of Grass, first appear- 
 ance, 56; summary of, 57-60; 
 sale, 61; reception, 61-65; ap- 
 proval of Emerson, 65; W.'s 
 reviews of, 67; second edition, 
 75; third edition, Boston, 83; 
 fifth edition, 119 ; summary of, 
 119-122; English edition, selec- 
 tions, 134; sixth edition, 142. 
 
 Longfellow, 36, 47, 155. 
 
 Lowell, 47, 51, 86. 
 
 Memoranda of the War, 144. 
 Myers, P. W., 132. 
 173 
 
174 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Nietsche, 171. 
 
 November Boughs, 162, 166. 
 
 O'Connor, W. D., 83, 90, 95, 108, 
 113, 129; The Good Gray Poet, 
 108; The Carpenter, 130. 
 
 Old Age Echoes, 163. 
 
 Ossian, 41. 
 
 Pfaff's restaurant, 35, 77, 155. 
 Plato, 125, 152. 
 Foe, 27, 28. 
 
 Rossetti, W. M., 132, 134, 135, 
 
 143, 144. 
 Rousseau, 171. 
 Ruskin, 40, 49. 
 
 Sanborn, F. B., 156. 
 Schmidt, Rudolf, 135. 
 Scott, F. N., 40. 
 Seward, W. H., 106. 
 Specimen Bays, 9, 150, 154, 158. 
 Stafford, George, 144, 151, 155. 
 Stedman, E. C, 96. 
 Stillman, W. J., 64. 
 Swinburne, 132, 133, 135. 
 Swinton, John, 93. 
 Symouds, J. A., 51, 63, 133. 
 
 Taylor, " Father," 85. 
 Tennyson, 51, 54, 67. 
 Thoreau, 35, 62, 76. 
 Tolstoi, 171. 
 
 Traubel, Horace, 160, 163, 164. 
 Trowbridge, J. T., 83, 99, 106. 
 Tupper, M. F., 41. 
 Two Rivulets, 142. 
 
 Warren, Samuel, 42. 
 
 Whitman, Andrew Jackson, 13, 
 
 34,96. 
 Whitman, Edward, 13, 34, 50, 
 
 162. 
 Whitman, Gteorge Washington, 
 
 13, 33, 38, 61, 89, 90, 96, 129, 
 
 138. 
 
 Whitman, Haniah, 13, 34, 127. 
 
 Whitman, Jessr^ 13, 50. 
 
 Whitman, MrsfLouisa, 7, 13, 16, 
 34, 61, 96, 97, 98, 129. 
 
 Whitman, Martha, 34, 130. 
 
 Whitman, Thomas Jefferson, 13, 
 19, 96, 154. 
 
 Whitman, Walter, Senior, 8, 13, 
 33, 34. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, ii/c ; Hunting- 
 ton in the old times, 1-7; his 
 ancestors, 4-8 ; reminiscences 
 of his country life, 8-11; 
 Brooklyn in his boyhood, 11; 
 first employment, 14 ; compos- 
 itor, 14, 18; teacher, 15, 16; 
 editor, 15, 18, 19, 20; his start 
 in life, 16-18; journey South, 
 19 ; his appearance and habits, 
 20 ; mental characteristics, 21 ; 
 his wide acquaintance, 23-25; 
 early prose, 26-29 ; early verse, 
 29 ; editorial writing, 30 ; lack 
 of distinction, 32; again an 
 editor, 34; carpenter and 
 builder, 34; habits of life, 34; 
 reading, 35; his passion for 
 people, 37; daguerreotypes of 
 1854, 34; personal character- 
 istics, 39; origins of his new 
 style, 39-45 ; plan of lecturing, 
 45, 77, 98; his message, 46-49; 
 a mystic, 49-66; Leaves of 
 Grass, 56-75 ; comradeship, SO- 
 BS; visit to Boston, 83-85; be- 
 comes a hospital nurse, 90-98 ; 
 weakened health, 97; Drum- 
 taps, 99-106 ; becomes a govern- 
 ment clerk, 106; dismissed, 
 107; new appointment, 107; 
 protests by O'Connor, 108-112; 
 his life in Washington, 112; 
 friendship with Peter Doyle, 
 113-119 ; Democratic Vistas, 121- 
 126; visit to Dartmouth, 127; 
 failing health, 128; paralysis, 
 129; increased appreciation of 
 
INDEX 
 
 176 
 
 his work, 130; O'Connor's 
 The Carpenter, 130 ; biography 
 by Burroughs, 130; apprecia- 
 tion abroad, 132-138; illness 
 in Camden, 138-140; his 
 fortunes turn, 142; help from 
 abroad, 143; recuperation in 
 the country, 144 ; reminiscences 
 by Dr. Bucke, 146 ; by Edward 
 Carpenter, 147 ; his appearance 
 at this period, 147; mental 
 characteristics, 149; journey to 
 the West, 151 ; to Canada, 154 ; 
 visit to Boston, 154; and to 
 old scenes, 155; last visit 
 to Boston, 156; his house 
 in Camden, 158; friends and 
 acquaintances in old age, 159- 
 162; last poems, 162;. his 
 Camden disciples, 163; his 
 criticism of his contempora- 
 ries, 164; last days and death, 
 165-168 ; critical estimate, 169- 
 172. 
 
 Poems referred to : After all, 
 not to create only, 118; As a 
 strong bird on pinions free, 
 126 ; As I ebb'd with the ocean 
 of life, 85; A thought of 
 Columbus, 163 ; A woman 
 
 waits for me, 70; Crossing 
 Brooklyn Ferry, 72; Good-bye, 
 my fancy, 162, 166; Mystic 
 trumpeter, 127 ; Now finale to 
 the shore, 121 ; O captain ! my 
 captain, 94 ; Out of the cradle 
 endlessly rocking, 9, 50 ; Pas- 
 sage to India, 119 ; Prayer of 
 Columbus, 141; Salut au 
 monde, 71 ; Song of the broad- 
 axe, 72 ; Song of the open road, 
 72 ; Song of the redwood tree, 
 141; Song of the universal, 
 141; Spirit that formed this 
 scene, 153; There was a child 
 went forth, 9; Unfolded, 70; 
 When lilacs last in the door- 
 yard bloomed, 99, 105; Whis- 
 pers of heavenly death, 121 . 
 
 WorJcs: early prose, 26-29, 
 30; early prose, 29. See also 
 American Primer, Calamus, 
 Democratic Vistas, Diary in 
 Canada, Drurrir-taps, Franklin 
 Evans, Leaves of Grass, Mem- 
 oranda of the War, Old Age 
 Echoes, Specimen Days, Two 
 Eivulets, The Wound Dresser. 
 
 Whittier, 2, 16, 46, 49. 
 
 Wound Dresser, The, 96. 
 
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