"The lustrous orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,
Sister of loftiest gods."
Some of his poems were written at the opera. The great singers evidently
gave him clews and suggestions that were applicable to his own art.
His study was out of doors. He wrote on the street, on the ferry, at the
seaside, in the fields, at the opera,--always from living impulses arising
at the moment, and always with his eye upon the fact. He says he has read
his "Leaves" to himself in the open air, and tried them by the realities
of life and nature about him. Were they as real and alive as they?--this
was the only question with him.
At home in his father's family in Brooklyn we see him gentle, patient,
conciliatory, much looked up to by all. Neighbors seek his advice. He is
cool, deliberate, impartial. A marked trait is his indifference to money
matters; his people are often troubled because he lets opportunities to
make money pass by. When his "Leaves" appear, his family are puzzled, do
not know what to make of it. His mother thinks that, if "Hiawatha" is
poetry, may be Walt's book is, too. He never counsels with any one, and is
utterly indifferent as to what people may say or think. He is not a
stirring and punctual man, is always a little late; not an early riser,
not prompt at dinner; always has ample time, and will not be hurried; the
business gods do not receive his homage. He is gray at thirty, and is said
to have had a look of age in youth, as he had a look of youth in age. He
has few books, cares little for sport, never uses a gun; has no bad
habits; has no entanglements with women, and apparently never contemplates
marriage. It is said that during his earliest years of manhood he kept
quite aloof from the "girls."
At the age of nineteen he edited "The Long Islander," published at
Huntington. A recent visitor to these early haunts of Whitman gathered
some reminiscences of him at this date:--
"Amid the deep revery of nature, on that mild October afternoon, we
returned to the village of Huntington, there to meet the few, the very
few, survivors who recall Walt's first appearance in the literary world as
the editor of 'The Long Islander,' nigh sixty years ago (1838). Two of
these forefathers of the hamlet clearly remembered his powerful
personality, brimful of life, reveling in strength, careless of time and
the world, of money and of toil; a lover of books and of jokes; delighting
to gather round him the youth of the village in his printing-room of
evenings, and tell them stories and read them poetry, his own and others'.
That of his own he called his 'Yawps,' a word which he afterwards made
famous. Both remembered him as a delightful companion, generous to a
fault, glorying in youth, negligent of his affairs, issuing 'The Long
Islander' at random intervals,--once a week, once in two weeks, once in
three,--until its financial backers lost faith and hope and turned him
out, and with him the whole office corps; for Walt himself was editor,
publisher, compositor, pressman, and printer's devil, all in one."