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 creased 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 filled 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.
V
Something should be said of Whitman's style, for style is of the essence
of thinking. And where a man is so critically deliberate as our author,
and goes solemnly about his poetry for an ulterior end, every indication
is worth notice. He has chosen a rough, unrhymed, lyrical verse;
sometimes instinct with a fine processional movement; often so rugged
and careless that it can only be described by saying that he has not
taken the trouble to write prose. I believe myself that it was selected
principally because it was easy to write, although not without
recollections of the marching measures of some of the prose in our
English Old Testament. According to Whitman, on the other hand, "the
time has arrived to essentially break down the barriers of form between
Prose and Poetry ... for the most cogent purposes of those great inland
states, and for Texas, and California, and Oregon";--a statement which
is among the happiest achievements of American humour. He calls his
verses "recitatives," in easily followed allusion to a musical form.
"Easily written, loose-fingered chords," he cries, "I feel the thrum of
your climax and close." Too often, I fear, he is the only one who can
perceive the rhythm; and in spite of Mr. Swinburne, a great part of his
work considered as verses is poor bald stuff. Considered, not as verse,
but as speech, a great part of it is full of strange and admirable
merits. The right detail is seized; the right word, bold and trenchant,
is thrust into its place. Whitman has small regard to literary
decencies, and is totally free from literary timidities. He is neither
afraid of being slangy nor of being dull; nor, let me add, of being
ridiculous. The result is a most surprising compound of plain grandeur,
sentimental affectation, and downright nonsense. It would be useless to
follow his detractors and give instances of how bad he can be at his
worst; and perhaps it would be not much wiser to give extracted
specimens of how happily he can write when he is at his best. These
come in to most advantage in their own place; owing something, it may
be, to the offset of their curious surroundings. And one thing is
certain, that no one can appreciate Whitman's excellences until he has
grown accustomed to his faults. Until you are content to pick poetry out
of his pages almost as you must pick it out of a Greek play in Bohn's
translation, your gravity will be continually upset, your ears
perpetually disappointed, and the whole book will be no more to you than
a particularly flagrant production by the Poet Close.
A writer of this uncertain quality was, perhaps, unfortunate in taking
for thesis the beauty of the world as it now is, not only on the
hill-tops but in the factory; not only by the harbour full of stately
ships, but in the magazine of the hopelessly prosaic hatter. To show
beauty in common things is the work of the rarest tact. It is not to be
done by the wishing. It is easy to posit as a theory, but to bring it
home to men's minds is the problem of literature, and is only
accomplished by rare talent, and in comparatively rare instances. To bid
the whole world stand and deliver, with a dogma in one's right hand by
way of pistol; to cover reams of paper in a galloping, headstrong vein;
to cry louder and louder over everything as it comes up, and make no
distinction in one's enthusiasm over the most incomparable matters; to
prove one's entire want of sympathy for the jaded, literary palate, by
calling, not a spade a spade, but a hatter a hatter, in a lyrical
apostrophe;--this, in spite of all the airs of inspiration, is not the
way to do it. It may be very wrong, and very wounding to a respectable
branch of industry, but the word "hatter" cannot be used seriously in
emotional verse; not to understand this is to have no literary tact; and
I would, for his own sake, that this were the only inadmissible
expression with which Whitman had bedecked his pages. The book teems
with similar comicalities; and, to a reader who is determined to take it
from that side only, presents a perfect carnival of fun.
A good deal of this is the result of theory playing its usual vile trick
upon the artist. It is because he is a Democrat that Whitman must have
in the hatter. If you may say Admiral, he reasons, why may you not say
Hatter? One man is as good as another, and it is the business of the
"great poet" to show poetry in the life of the one as well as the other.
A most incontrovertible sentiment, surely, and one which nobody would
think of controverting, where--and here is the point--where any beauty
has been shown. But how, where that is not the case? where the hatter is
simply introduced, as God made him and as his fellow-men have miscalled
him, at the crisis of a high-flown rhapsody? And what are we to say,
where a man of Whitman's notable capacity for putting things in a
bright, picturesque, and novel way, simply gives up the attempt, and
indulges, with apparent exultation, in an inventory of trades or
implements, with no more colour or coherence than so many index-words
out of a dictionary? I do not know that we can say anything, but that it
is a prodigiously amusing exhibition for a line or so. The worst of it
is, that Whitman must have known better. The man is a great critic, and,
so far as I can make out, a good one; and how much criticism does it
require to know that capitulation is not description, or that fingering
on a dumb keyboard, with whatever show of sentiment and execution, is
not at all the same thing as discoursing music? I wish I could believe
he was quite honest with us; but, indeed, who was ever quite honest who
wrote a book for a purpose? It is a flight beyond the reach of human
magnanimity.
One other point, where his means failed him, must be touched upon,
however shortly. In his desire to accept all facts loyally and simply,
it fell within his programme to speak at some length and with some
plainness on what is, for I really do not know what reason, the most
delicate of subjects. Seeing in that one of the most serious and
interesting parts of life, he was aggrieved that it should be looked
upon as ridiculous or shameful. No one speaks of maternity with his
tongue in his cheek; and Whitman made a bold push to set the sanctity of
fatherhood beside the sanctity of motherhood, and introduce this also
among the things that can be spoken of without either a blush or a wink.
But the Philistines have been too strong; and, to say truth, Whitman had
rather played the fool. We may be thoroughly conscious that his end is
improving; that it would be a good thing if a window were opened on
these close privacies of life; that on this subject, as on all others,
he now and then lets fall a pregnant saying. But we are not satisfied.
We feel that he was not the man for so difficult an enterprise. He loses
our sympathy in the character of a poet by attracting too much of our
attention in that of a Bull in a China Shop. And where, by a little more
art, we might have been solemnised ourselves, it is too often Whitman
alone who is solemn in the face of an audience somewhat indecorously
amused.