Nor has he been content with merely blowing the trumpet for the battle of
well-doing; he has given to his precepts the authority of his own brave
example. Naturally a grave, believing man, with little or no sense of
humour, he has succeeded as well in life as in his printed performances.
The spirit that was in him has come forth most eloquently in his actions.
Many who have only read his poetry have been tempted to set him down as
an ass, or even as a charlatan; but I never met any one who had known him
personally who did not profess a solid affection and respect for the
man’s character. He practises as he professes; he feels deeply that
Christian love for all men, that toleration, that cheerful delight in
serving others, which he often celebrates in literature with a doubtful
measure of success. And perhaps, out of all his writings, the best and
the most human and convincing passages are to be found in “these soil’d
and creas’d little livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper,
folded small to carry in the pocket, and fastened with a pin,” which he
scribbled during the war by the bedsides of the wounded or in the
excitement of great events. They are hardly literature in the formal
meaning of the word; he has left his jottings for the most part as he
made them; a homely detail, a word from the lips of a dying soldier, a
business memorandum, the copy of a letter-short, straightforward to the
point, with none of the trappings of composition; but they breathe a
profound sentiment, they give us a vivid look at one of the sides of
life, and they make us acquainted with a man whom it is an honour to
love.
Whitman’s intense Americanism, his unlimited belief in the future of
These States (as, with reverential capitals, he loves to call them), made
the war a period of great trial to his soul. The new virtue, Unionism,
of which he is the sole inventor, seemed to have fallen into premature
unpopularity. All that he loved, hoped, or hated, hung in the balance.
And the game of war was not only momentous to him in its issues; it
sublimated his spirit by its heroic displays, and tortured him intimately
by the spectacle of its horrors. It was a theatre, it was a place of
education, it was like a season of religious revival. He watched Lincoln
going daily to his work; he studied and fraternised with young soldiery
passing to the front; above all, he walked the hospitals, reading the
Bible, distributing clean clothes, or apples, or tobacco; a patient,
helpful, reverend man, full of kind speeches.
His memoranda of this period are almost bewildering to read. From one
point of view they seem those of a district visitor; from another, they
look like the formless jottings of an artist in the picturesque. More
than one woman, on whom I tried the experiment, immediately claimed the
writer for a fellow-woman. More than one literary purist might identify
him as a shoddy newspaper correspondent without the necessary faculty of
style. And yet the story touches home; and if you are of the weeping
order of mankind, you will certainly find your eyes fill with tears, of
which you have no reason to be ashamed. There is only one way to
characterise a work of this order, and that is to quote. Here is a
passage from a letter to a mother, unknown to Whitman, whose son died in
hospital:—
“Frank, as far as I saw, had everything requisite in surgical
treatment, nursing, etc. He had watches much of the time. He was so
good and well-behaved, and affectionate, I myself liked him very
much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by him,
and he liked to have me—liked to put out his arm and lay his hand on
my knee—would keep it so a long while. Toward the last he was more
restless and flighty at night—often fancied himself with his
regiment—by his talk sometimes seem’d as if his feelings were hurt by
being blamed by his officers for something he was entirely innocent
of—said ‘I never in my life was thought capable of such a thing, and
never was.’ At other times he would fancy himself talking as it
seem’d to children or such like, his relatives, I suppose, and giving
them good advice; would talk to them a long while. All the time he
was out of his head not one single bad word, or thought, or idea
escaped him. It was remark’d that many a man’s conversation in his
senses was not half so good as Frank’s delirium.
“He was perfectly willing to die—he had become very weak, and had
suffer’d a good deal, and was perfectly resign’d, poor boy. I do not
know his past life, but I feel as if it must have been good. At any
rate what I saw of him here, under the most trying circumstances,
with a painful wound, and among strangers, I can say that he behaved
so brave, so composed, and so sweet and affectionate, it could not be
surpassed. And now, like many other noble and good men, after
serving his country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life at
the very outset in her service. Such things are gloomy—yet there is
a text, ‘God doeth all things well,’ the meaning of which, after due
time, appears to the soul.
“I thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger, about your
son, from one who was with him at the last, might be worth while, for
I loved the young man, though I but saw him immediately to lose him.”
It is easy enough to pick holes in the grammar of this letter, but what
are we to say of its profound goodness and tenderness? It is written as
though he had the mother’s face before his eyes, and saw her wincing in
the flesh at every word. And what, again, are we to say of its sober
truthfulness, not exaggerating, not running to phrases, not seeking to
make a hero out of what was only an ordinary but good and brave young
man? Literary reticence is not Whitman’s stronghold; and this reticence
is not literary, but humane; it is not that of a good artist but that of
a good man. He knew that what the mother wished to hear about was Frank;
and he told her about her Frank as he was.