name of Mr. and Mrs. Mailloux, and Dr. Bell of New York, admirers of
Walt Whitman, who came on and got acquainted with Mother. They took a
great liking to her and offered her a home with them, but she still
stayed on in Berkley Street. Mother paid them several visits, and at
last was persuaded to accompany Mrs. Mailloux to Paris on their
regular trip, as a companion. She left America feeling as well as
ever. My wife and I saw her aboard the train at Broad Street, and she
was met in Jersey City by her friends.
"While she was in Paris, this woman who was living with her started
the devil going, when I was compelled to go down and take charge of
the house. It warmed up until I was compelled to write to Mother and
ask her to send me authority to protect her interests. This spoiled
her visit; she returned to America before the rest of the party. When
she arrived she came directly to my house; was suffering with a severe
cold. She was with us about six weeks. In the meantime my wife had her
fixed up in fairly good shape. She told me that she was going to break
up and come to live with us, but could not do it in a day or two.
"After she was home about a week she was sick. She fooled along until
I became dissatisfied and sent my doctor down to her. He attended her
two days, and ordered her to the hospital, as an operation was the
only thing to save her. After she was opened they found the bowels
separated, also a cancerous tumor. She lived five days after the
operation.
"All this trouble was not felt until two weeks before she died. Where
the report came from about her ill health and going to Paris for aid I
do not know, but you always find newspaper reports wrong.
"Well, there is one thing that I feel thankful for: that she died
before I did. If such had not been the case, she would have been
buried in a pauper's grave, or gone to the dissecting table.
"Mother has been a friend to many; they have handled what money she
had, amounting to hundreds of dollars. When she died all debts were
cancelled as far as they were concerned, and not one would say: 'Here
is five cents towards putting a good and faithful servant away.' But
Mother was laid away as fine as anybody...."
Little more need be said. Mrs. Davis was comparatively a young woman at
the time of Walt Whitman's death,--being then in her fifty-fifth
year,--and in the sixteen years that followed, his friends passed away
one by one, and she almost passed out of the memory of his life, as
though she had never taken part in it. But the part she did take
deserves remembrance.
Harry Fritzinger's letter speaks for itself, and I have tried, poorly as
I may have done so, to speak for one whom I valued and value as a good
woman and a loving friend.
WALT WHITMAN'S MONUMENTS
A LETTER WRITTEN IN CAMDEN ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS
DEATH
BY GUIDO BRUNO
DEAR WALT WHITMAN:
To-day is the 27th anniversary of your death. I came here to worship at
your shrine. I am a European, you must know, and reverence of our great
writers and artists is bred in us, is part of our early training. We
love to visit the houses where genius lived, to see with our own eyes
the places our great men loved. Camden hasn't changed much since you
left. The people among whom you lived are to-day the same as they were
then: petty, mean, vain, unforgiving. Your friends are few just as in
the olden days. Let me tell you about it.
It never entered my mind to make sure of the street number of your old
residence. "Any child on the street will direct me," I thought, "to
Whitman's house." Getting off the ferry, the same ferry on which you
loved to ride back and forth, in spring and autumn, I asked a policeman
how to get to your house. "The Whitman House?" he repeated; "it's
somewhere out of the way, I'm sure. You had better stop in the Ridgely
House. That's the best place in town." He knew nothing of you and
thought I was looking for a hotel. A druggist at the nearby corner knew
about you. "William Kettler used to be a great friend of his," he told
me. "He'll tell you all about him." And he gave me Mr. Kettler's
address. Mr. Kettler still lives on North Street, and has become chief
city librarian lately. He's very deaf, but extremely kind and friendly.
He was in the midst of moving. Mrs. Kettler is ill, you must know, and
they will live on the shore for the rest of the season.
"This Whitman cult makes me sick," he commenced. "Who was Whitman
anyway? A poet? I dare say that there are hundreds of magazine writers
to-day as there were during his lifetime, who write just as good verse
as he did. And his prose is abominable. His writings are not fit to be
read in a respectable home. They corrupt the mind and are dangerous to
the morals. We knew him well, we saw him daily and his disgraceful way
of living was open town talk.
"I was a newspaper man and associated with the old Camden _Post_ at the
time of Bonsall, when Whitman used to come to see us almost daily.
Bonsall used to be a friend of his and did him a great many good turns.
But Whitman was an ingrate.
"Shall I tell you what we respectable citizens of Camden think of him? I
don't mean the young generation, but the people who actually knew him.
It doesn't sound nice to speak badly about dead people. But we knew him
as an incorrigible beggar who lived very immorally ... an old loafer.
"Why, only a few months ago, one of the most prominent citizens of our
town, John J. Russ, the great real estate dealer, objected to Whitman's
name on the Honor Tablet of our new library. Judge Howard Carrot of
Merchantville could tell you how that old scoundrel got people into
trouble, and if the case had come into court, the scandal would have
been so great, that the Judge decided to dispose of it privately.
"I remember, several years after the Civil War, Whitman's last visit to
the Camden _Post_. Mr. Bonsall, the chief editor, myself and Whitman
were chatting in the office. There was a very young reporter in the
room. Mr. Whitman insisted on telling us one of his filthy stories. He
knew many of them and would tell them without discriminating who was
present. Filth seemed to be always on his mind. Mr. Bonsall was shocked.
And I remember distinctly what he told him, before turning him out of
the office. 'Look here, Whitman,' he said, 'why don't you become a
useful citizen, like every one of us? You never did anything decent and
worthy of an American citizen. While we took up our guns and went out to
fight the enemy, you stalked about hospitals, posing as a
philanthropist. Later on, we returned to civilian life, hunting jobs and
pensions, trying to earn a livelihood, while you were preaching
Humanitarian principles and talking against the cruelties of warfare on
Union Square. _Now_, while we are chained to our jobs, you are writing
pornographic pieces that no self-respecting publisher would print, and
loaf about most of the time, corrupting our young folk. I will not
tolerate loose talk in these offices, therefore, get out and never let
me see you again.'"
"But haven't you said," I interjected, "that Mr. Bonsall was a friend of
Whitman?"
"They used to be friends," cried Mr. Kettler, "until that treacherous
business of the poem came up. Whitman was getting up a little book of
poems. Mr. Bonsall, who, in my estimation, was not only an excellent man
and writer, but also a poet of no mean ability, sent in a contribution.
This particular poem was very beautiful. It was the only one that
Whitman did not print. Ever since Mr. Bonsall and myself had not much
use for Whitman, who stabbed his friends in the back at the first
opportunity."
"Hurt vanity," I thought. How small this man Kettler seemed to me with
his petty grievances. Forty years have passed and he couldn't forget
your refusal of a poem.
"But what is the worst," Mr. Kettler continued, "Whitman has spoiled the
life of Horace Traubel. What an excellent young man he used to be, the
son of an honored, upright citizen. Traubel got obsessed with Whitman's
greatness. He devoted his whole life to Whitman. He took Whitman's
morals for his own standard." And Mr. Kettler proceeded to tell about
Traubel's private life. Some stories a policeman's wife, Traubel's next
door neighbor, had told him.
Does all this amuse you, Walt Whitman?
The frame-house where you lived is in a dreadful condition. An Italian
family is living there. A taxi driver, Thomas Skymer. He has three
children and four boarders. The boarders have children, too. A litter of
young ones are playing in your back yard, around the broken well. Your
front room, where you used to sit near the window and entertain your
visitors, is a living and dining room combined. Not even a picture of
yours is in this room. Over the mantel hangs a cheap chromo of the
Italian King. One of the little boys knew your name. "Do you want to see
where the old guy died?" he asked, and led me into the back room on the
same floor. There was a big bed there. I never saw a bigger one in my
life. "We all sleep in it," said the boy.
I know, Walt Whitman, you are shrugging your shoulders, smiling
indifferently. What does it matter to you who is sleeping now in the
room where you died, who is living now in the house where you lived,
loved and sang? But my heart cramped and ached. The poverty, the bad
odor, the utter irreverence! This Italian pays $10 a month rent. The
neighborhood is run down, and the property could be easily bought for a
few thousand dollars. Is this how the greatest nation honors its
greatest literary genius?
Your enthusiastic young physician, Dr. Alexander McAlister, has grown a
bit old, but not in spirit. He took me up to his library and here, as
well as in his heart, you have found your sanctuary.
"I loved Walt Whitman," Dr. McAlister said, "ever since I was a student
in the medical school, and met the old gentleman regularly on the
street. We talked occasionally; once he asked me to his house, later on,
after my graduation, I had occasion to render him professional services,
and for all the years, until Whitman's death, I called on him at least
once a day. He was the most clean-minded and kind man I have ever met. I
never heard him utter an obscene word. The magnificent personality of
Walt Whitman and his general comradeship, inspired by his ingrained
feelings and intuitive beliefs concerning the destiny of America, must
certainly have impressed all who met him long before he was known as a
poet. He lived a life so broad and noble that it will be more studied
and emulated, and will sink deeper and deeper into the heart. The
social, human world, through his aid, will reach a level hitherto
unattained. The new life which he preached has not been even dreamed of
yet, has not become yet an object of aspiration to us Americans. He has
set the spark to the prepared fuel, the living glow has crept deeply
into the dormant mass; even now tongues of flame begin to shoot forth.
The longer Whitman is dead the better he will be known. He seems to me
the typical American, the typical modern, the source and centre of a
new, spiritual aspiration, saner and manlier than any heretofore.
Whitman thought that man has within him the element of the Divine, and
that this element was capable of indefinite growth and expansion.
"He was the most democratic man that ever lived. Everybody was welcome
to his house, everybody his equal, he was everybody's friend. He had
many enemies, but also many friends. He thought Ingersoll his best
friend. Dr. Longaker and Horace Traubel were almost always present,
especially during the last years of his life. Once in a while they got
on his nerves because they continually carried paper and pencil, writing
down every word he said. Let me tell you a few incidents of his last
illness. They all expected him to die. Traubel and Dr. Longaker were
constantly in the hall outside of the sick room, eager to catch every
one of Whitman's words. Warren Fritzinger, his nurse, was with him.
"'Are those damn fools out there this afternoon?' he remarked when his
condition became very weak and the rustling of papers in the hall seemed
to annoy him.
"The day before he died I came in the morning and asked him, 'How do you
feel?'
"'Well, Doctor,' he answered, 'I am tired of this dreadful monotony of
waiting. I am tired of the sword of Damocles suspended over my head.'"
Would it interest you, Walt Whitman, to know about your last minutes on
earth, when you lay unconscious in a coma? Dr. McAlister described them
to me. "His end was peaceful. He died at 6:43 P. M. At 4:30 he called
Mrs. Davis and requested to be shifted from the position he was lying
in. The nurse was sent for, and later on they sent me a message. When I
reached his bedside, he was lying on his right side, his pulse was very
weak and his respiration correspondingly so. I asked him if he suffered
pain and if I could do anything for him. He smiled kindly and murmured
low. He lay quietly for some time with closed eyes. A little after 5 his
eyes opened for a moment, his lips moved slightly, and he succeeded in
whispering: '_Warry, Shift._' Warry was his nurse, and these were the
last words of Whitman. Then the end came. I bent over him to detect the
last sign of the fleeting life. His heart continued to pulsate for fully
fifty minutes after he ceased breathing."
Dr. McAlister was a great friend of yours, Walt Whitman, and I feel that
you are with him every minute of his life. He showed me letters from
your old nurse, Mrs. Keller, who wrote a few articles about you. He
treasures the books you inscribed for him, your pictures hang on his
walls and he especially loves the little plaster cast you gave him.
Of course, you know that an autopsy was performed shortly after your
death. May I tell you about your brain, which is at present in the
possession of the Anthropometric Society? I believe it is an honor to
have one's brains placed in this society's museum, because this society
has been organized for the express purpose of studying high-type brains.
The cause of your death was pleurisy of your left side and consumption
of the right lung. You had a fatty liver, and a large gall stone in the
gall bladder. The good doctors marvelled that you could have carried on
respiration for so long a time with the limited amount of useful lung
tissue. They ascribed it largely to that indomitable energy "which was
so characteristic of everything pertaining to the life of Walt Whitman."
They said in their official report that any other man would have died
much earlier with one-half of the pathological changes which existed in
your body.
In the late afternoon while the sun was setting over an ideal spring
day, I walked out to the Harleigh Cemetery, where you built for yourself
that magnificent tomb. How wise you were, Walt Whitman, to supervise the
cutting of the stones, to watch the workmen while they were preparing
your grave. What a beautiful spot you chose for your last resting place.
The lake lay still in the warm evening air, the willows swayed gently as
if patted by unseen hands. An old working-man, about to leave the
cemetery, showed me the spot where you used to sit and watch them work.
He told me how you wrote "pieces" on scraps of paper that you borrowed
here and there, and how you read them to the stonecutters, who were
building your tomb. I asked for the key. They keep it locked lately. I
opened the heavy granite door, and stood for quite a while in the
semi-darkness of your little house. I thought of you lying there on
your bier, peaceful, indifferent, kind. Then I thought of the other
monument you had built in words, a temple not made with hands, builded
for eternity.
Always self-sufficing, walking your own path towards your own goal. No
legend tells of you, of your life or achievement. You live in the hearts
of thousands of Americans. Soon, very soon, perhaps, your name and
America will be synonymous. Walt Whitman, we here on earth are awakening
to your ideals of America.
Affectionately yours,
GUIDO BRUNO
WALT WHITMAN SPEAKS
Ever upon this stage
Is acted God's calm annual drama,
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,
The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,
The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The liliput countless armies of the grass,
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,
The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra,
The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the
silvery fringes,
The high dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products.
[_The Return of the Heroes_]
Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn,
The earth's whole amplitude and Nature's multiform power consign'd for
once to colors;
The light, the general air possess'd by them--colors till now unknown,
No limit, confine--not the Western sky alone--the high meridian--
North, South, all,
Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.
[_A Prairie Sunset_]
Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man;
(Have former armies fail'd? then we send fresh armies--and fresh
again);
Ever the grappled mysteries of all earth's ages old or new;
Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud
applause;
Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last,
Struggling to-day the same--battling the same.
[_Life_]
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 delicatesse?
The lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out temple's grace--column and
polish'd arch forgot?
But thou that revellest here--spirit that form'd this scene,
They have remember'd thee.
[_Spirit That Formed This Scene_]
Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,
Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and
elude me,
Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess'd soul, eludes
not,
One's-Self must never give way--that is the final substance--that out
of all is sure,
Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally
remains?
When shows break up what but One's-Self is sure?
[_Quicksand Years_]
O living always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content);
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look
at where I cast them,
To pass on (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.
[_O Living Always, Always Dying_]
This is thy hour, O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
[_A Clear Midnight_]
I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day
exhibited,
I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless
around me myriads of other globes.
Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will
measure myself by them,
And now touch'd with the lives of other globes arrived as far along as
those of the earth,
Or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther than those of the earth,
I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,
Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to
arrive.
O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.
[_Night on the Prairies_]
Now the great organ sounds,
Tremulous, while underneath (as the hid footholds of the earth,
On which arising rest, and leaping forth depend,
All shapes of beauty, grace and strength, all hues we know,
Green blades of grass and warbling birds, children that gambol and
play, the clouds of heaven above)
The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not,
Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest, maternity of all the rest,
And with it every instrument in multitudes,
The players playing, all the world's musicians,
The solemn hymns and masses rousing adoration,
All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals,
The measureless sweet vocalists of ages,
And for their solvent setting earth's own diapason,
Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves,
A new composite orchestra, binder of years and climes, ten-fold
renewer,
As of the far-back days the poets tell, the Paradiso,
The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done,
The journey done, the journeyman come home,
And man and art with Nature fused again.
[_Proud Music of the Storm_]
Now trumpeter for thy close,
Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet,
Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope,
Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future,
Give me for once its prophecy and joy.
O glad, exulting, culminating song!
A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes,
Marches of victory--man disenthral'd--the conqueror at last,
Hymns to the universal God from universal man--all joy!
A reborn race appears--a perfect world, all joy!
Women and men in wisdom, innocence and health--all joy!
Riotous laughing bacchanals fill'd with joy!
War, sorrow, suffering gone--the rank earth purged--nothing but joy
left!
The ocean fill'd with joy--the atmosphere all joy!
Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life!
Enough to merely be! enough to breathe!
Joy! joy! all over joy!
[_The Mystic Trumpeter_]
The touch of flame--the illuminating fire--the loftiest look at last,
O'er city, passion, sea--o'er prairie, mountain, wood--the earth
itself;
The airy, different, changing hues of all, in falling twilight,
Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences;
The calmer sight--the golden setting, clear and broad:
So much i' the atmosphere, the points of view, the situation whence
we scan,
Brought out by them alone--so much (perhaps the best) unreck'd before;
The lights indeed from them--old age's lambent peaks.
[_Old Age's Lambent Peaks_]
Thanks in old age--thanks ere I go,
For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air--for life, mere life,
For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you, my mother dear--you,
father--you, brothers, sisters, friends),
For all my days--not those of peace alone--the days of war the same,
For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,
For shelter, wine and meat--for sweet appreciation,
(You distant, dim unknown--or young or old--countless, unspecified,
readers belov'd,
We never met, and ne'er shall meet--and yet our souls embrace, long,
close and long);
For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books--for colors, forms,
For all the brave strong men--devoted, hardy men--who've forward
sprung in freedom's help, all years, all lands,
For braver, stronger, more devoted men--(a special laurel ere I go,
to life's war's chosen ones,
The cannoneers of song and thought--the great artillerists--the
foremost leaders, captains of the soul):
As soldier from an ended war return'd--as traveller out of myriads,
to the long procession retrospective,
Thanks--joyful thanks!--a soldier's, traveller's thanks.
[_Thanks in Old Age_]
_Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death._
[_When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd_]
INDEX
Acharon Society, 60
Aldrich, T. B., 139
Anthropometric Society, 204
"Auntie, Blind," 1, 2, 3
Bell, Dr., 192
"Blind Auntie," 1, 2, 3
Bolton, Mr., 171
Bonsall, Mr., 197
Bruno, Guido, 195, 206
Bucke, Dr. R. M., IX, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 109, 149, 150, 151, 152,
153, 154, 158, 173, 177
Button, Miss, 168
Camden _Post_, 197
Carrot, Judge Howard, 197
Childs, George W., 13
"Coddie," 162
Cooper Hospital, 190
Davis, Capt. L. J., 4, 190
Davis, Mary O., _passim_
Donaldson, Blaine, 49
Donaldson, Thomas, 1, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 21, 30, 37, 38, 39, 47,
48, 49, 52, 61, 100, 103, 111, 113, 119, 127, 146, 172, 175
Duckett, Wm., 69
Ellis, Sarah, V
Fritzinger, Capt., 4, 5, 11, 25, 62
Fritzinger, Henry M., 119, 163, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194
Fritzinger, Mrs., 3, 18, 68
Fritzinger, Walt Whitman, 164