For one of the best pen-sketches of Whitman in his old age we are indebted
to Dr. J. Johnston, a young Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who
visited Whitman in the summer of 1890. I quote from a little pamphlet
which the doctor printed on his return home:--
"The first thing about himself that struck me was the physical immensity
and magnificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty
of his presence as a whole.
"He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad
in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shirt of pure
white linen, with a great wide collar edged with white lace, the shirt
buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown
open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of
his hirsute chest. He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned
almost to the bottom. He had no coat on, and his shirt sleeves were turned
up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arms, and flesh of
the most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire
visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and
massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong,
white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an
eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was
not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is
concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon
his broad, square shoulders; and it is almost entirely covered with long,
fine, straggling hair, silvery and glistening, pure and white as sunlit
snow, rather thin on the top of his high, rounded crown, streaming over
and around his large but delicately-shaped ears, down the back of his big
neck; and, from his pinky-white cheeks and top lip, over the lower part of
his face, right down to the middle of his chest, like a cataract of
materialized, white, glistening vapor, giving him a most venerable and
patriarchal appearance. His high, massive forehead is seamed with
wrinkles. His nose is large, strong, broad, and prominent, but
beautifully chiseled and proportioned, almost straight, very slightly
depressed at the tip, and with deep furrows on each side, running down to
the angles of the mouth. The eyebrows are thick and shaggy, with strong,
white hair, very highly arched and standing a long way above the eyes,
which are of a light blue with a tinge of gray, small, rather deeply set,
calm, clear, penetrating, and revealing unfathomable depths of tenderness,
kindness, and sympathy. The upper eyelids droop considerably over the
eyeballs. The lips, which are partly hidden by the thick, white mustache,
are full. The whole face impresses one with a sense of resoluteness,
strength, and intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness,
unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness. His voice is highly
pitched and musical, with a timbre which is astonishing in an old man.
There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in
them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But
it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in
his _tout ensemble_, and the irresistible magnetism of his sweet, aromatic
presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and
exercised over me an attraction which positively astonished me, producing
an exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before. I
felt that I was here face to face with the living embodiment of all that
was good, noble, and lovable in humanity."
X
British critics have spoken of Whitman's athleticism, his athletic
temperament, etc., but he was in no sense a muscular man, an athlete. His
body, though superb, was curiously the body of a child; one saw this in
its form, in its pink color, and in the delicate texture of the skin. He
took little interest in feats of strength, or in athletic sports. He
walked with a slow, rolling gait, indeed, moved slowly in all ways; he
always had an air of infinite leisure. For several years, while a clerk in
the Attorney-General's Office in Washington, his exercise for an hour each
day consisted in tossing a few feet into the air, as he walked, a round,
smooth stone, of about one pound weight, and catching it as it fell. Later
in life, and after his first paralytic stroke, when in the woods, he liked
to bend down the young saplings, and exercise his arms and chest in that
way. In his poems much emphasis is laid upon health, and upon purity and
sweetness of body, but none upon mere brute strength. This is what he says
"To a Pupil:"--
1. Is reform needed? Is it through you?
The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you
need to accomplish it.
2. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,
complexion, clean and sweet?
Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and Soul,
that when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and
command enters with you, and every one is impressed with your
personality?
3. O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to
inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
elevatedness,
Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.
It is worthy of note that Whitman's Washington physician said he had one
of the most thoroughly natural physical systems he had ever known,--the
freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the
perfect sanity which all his friends must have felt with regard to his
mind.
A few years ago a young English artist stopping in this country made
several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the
face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It
was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain
majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I
looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments
seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's
friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it
would speak so emphatically as did this incomplete sketch. I thought it
all the more significant in this case because Whitman laid such stress
upon the human body in his poems, built so extensively upon it, curiously
identifying it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the
poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the
poems of the soul and of immortality. "Behold," he says, "the body
includes and is the meaning, the main concern, and includes and is the
soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
of it!" He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and
strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiments. Those who
knew him well, I think, will agree with me that his bodily presence was
singularly magnetic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a
curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry.
The Greeks, who made so much more of the human body than we do, seem not
to have carried so much meaning, so much history, in their faces as does
the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly
distributed over the whole body. Their faces expressed repose, harmony,
power of command. I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect. His
face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern
face. It had but few lines, and these were Greek. From the mouth up, the
face was expressive of Greek purity, simplicity, strength, and repose. The
mouth was large and loose, and expressive of another side of his nature.
It was a mouth that required the check and curb of that classic brow.
And the influence of his poems is always on the side of physiological
cleanliness and strength, and severance from all that corrupts and makes
morbid and mean. He says the "expression of a well-made man appears not
only in his face: it is in his limbs and joints also; it is curiously in
the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his
neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide him; the
strong, sweet, supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and
flannel; to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more.
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side."
He says he has perceived that to be with those he likes is enough: "To be
surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,--I
do not ask any more delight; I swim in it, as in a sea. There is something
in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact
and odor of them, that pleases the soul well. All things please the soul,
but these please the soul well." Emerson once asked Whitman what it was he
found in the society of the common people that satisfied him so; for his
part, he could not find anything. The subordination by Whitman of the
purely intellectual to the human and physical, which runs all through his
poems and is one source of their power, Emerson, who was deficient in the
sensuous, probably could not appreciate.