CHAPTER XIV_A Life of Walt Whitman

FRIENDS AND FAME

In October, 1867, the new volume appeared; it was intended to replace

the former final edition of 1860, and in itself was now regarded as

final. Whitman wrote home to his mother that at last he had finished

his re-arrangings and corrections, for good.[458] But he was mistaken;

for because the book was a whole, every page which he added to it in

succeeding years entailed a new revision of the rest. Each new note

affects the old sequence, which thus requires to be ordered anew.

The book might be handsomer, he says; but he notes that he has omitted

some excessive phrases, and even dropped a passage or two which had not

stood the test of time; and now he feels that the volume proves itself

to any fair-minded person. Beyond these alterations, the book contains

little that is new.

That public interest in Whitman was increasing is shown by the

appearance this year of the first of those brief biographical studies

which have since become so numerous. It was from the pen of his

intimate friend, Mr. John Burroughs, than whom none knew him better

during the Washington days; and having besides the full advantage of

Whitman's supervision, remains a principal authority to this day.[459]

Equally important was the preparation in England this autumn of a

volume of selections by Mr. W. M. Rossetti.[460] The editor of the

_Germ_, that most interesting expression of a new and pregnant spirit

in art whose brief but brilliant course had ended a few years before

the first appearance of the _Leaves_, was the right man to introduce

Walt Whitman to the English reader. Both he and his brother, the poet,

had for several years been admirers of Whitman's work; and before the

publication of the new edition he had written an able notice of the

book in _The Chronicle_, a short-lived organ of advanced Catholic

views.[461]

This was widely copied by the American press. It preserves a judicial

tone, which while fully appreciating the literary value of the new

work, is far from indiscriminate praise. Mr. Rossetti frankly protested

against what he regarded as the gross treatment of gross things, not

so much on ethical as on æsthetic grounds; against jarring words and

faulty constructions. He noted the obscurity and fragmentary character

of many passages, commented on the agglomerative or cataloguial habit,

and upon the author's justifiable, but at first sight exasperating,

self-assertion.

Much of this was, at least from its writer's literary point of view,

just and valuable criticism. Mr. Rossetti was less fortunate when he

asserted that if only he were brought down by sickness many things

would appear very different to Whitman; for while the remark contains

an incontestable element of axiomatic truth, its particular application

was based upon a misapprehension of the poet's character. He conceived

that Whitman's faith depended upon physical well-being--just as Walt

once declared that Goethe's religion was founded simply upon good

digestion and appetite--thus missing the spiritual basis of his

personality.

But if Rossetti's literary criticisms are searching and upon the whole

just, his praises are not less notable. _Leaves of Grass_ he describes

as by far the largest poetical performance of our period; and while

acclaiming him the founder of American poetry, he foresees that its

author's voice will one day be potential and magisterial wherever the

English language is spoken.

The criticism was followed by the compilation of a volume of selections

containing nearly one half of the current _Leaves of Grass_, and a

large part of the original Preface of 1855. The enterprise brought the

compiler into cordial personal relations with the poet.[462] There had

at first been a slight misunderstanding as to the scope of the English

version, and an expurgated but otherwise complete edition had been

suggested. Whitman could not be a party to such a volume, and would

naturally have preferred his own complete book to any selections. But

in Mr. Rossetti he recognised an understanding friend. While frankly

expressing his own views, he was most cordial and generous in the

declaration of his faith in his correspondent's wisdom, and of his

desire to leave him unshackled.

The selections contained none of the poems which had aroused the

indignation of Mr. Harlan and his friends, and would probably have

more than satisfied the very different criticisms of Emerson. Their

publication established the foundation of Whitman's English fame, which

now rapidly outstripped his American. Already known to the few--to such

men for instance as Tennyson, Dante G. Rossetti, Swinburne, W. Bell

Scott, J. A. Symonds and Thomas Dixon--_Leaves of Grass_ was from this

time eagerly sought after by a considerable number of the younger and

more vigorous thinkers.

* * * * *

Although they never met, Whitman's friendship with Symonds is so

important that I cannot pass it by without some reference to the

younger man's character.[463] He had been, as is well known, an

exceptionally brilliant Oxford scholar; who had shown so little trace

of the disqualifying elements of genius that his painfully accurate

poetic form carried off the Newdigate prize. After his studies at

Balliol, he entered early manhood with impaired sight, an irritable

brain and incipient consumption. His temper was naturally strenuous,

but this quality was accompanied by introspective morbidity.

In the autumn of 1865, at the age of five and twenty,[464] the

late Mr. Frederick Myers introduced him to _Leaves of Grass_; his

reading of one of the Calamus poems--"Long I thought that knowledge

alone would suffice me"[465]--from the edition of 1860, sending, as

Symonds says, electric thrills through the very marrow of his bones.

Whitman of course rode rough-shod over all the scholar's academic and

aristocratic prejudices, and required slow assimilation. This process

continued during the next four years; but he says that the book became

eventually a more powerful formative influence in his life than Plato's

works,[466] or indeed any other volume, save the Bible.

Married already, and already largely an invalid, life was full of

difficulties for so keen and eager a mind; and the _Leaves_ became

his anchor, especially the poems of Calamus.[467] It was in 1869 and

1870[468] that he realised their full value.

Already his mind had responded to the idea of the cosmos and of cosmic

enthusiasm,[469] suggested to it in the Hymn of Cleanthes, in certain

pages of Marcus Aurelius, Giordano Bruno, Goethe, and the Evolutionists

of his own time. To these ideas Whitman brought conviction and

reality. It was through his study of the _Leaves_ that Symonds came

to understand for himself the infinite value and possibility of human

comradeship, and became a glad participant in the Universal Life.

For twenty years the two men corresponded as close friends; and there

were few in whose admiration for his work Whitman found such keen

satisfaction. But Addington Symonds was always a conscientious as well

as an affectionate and reverent friend; and while at a later date he

publicly protested against Mr. Swinburne's assault,[470] and in his

posthumous study of Whitman, proved himself second to none in his

admiration of him whom he called Master, yet he himself made some of

the frankest and most trenchant criticisms of his friend's work. He

thus preserved his independence, and, unlike that of the mere disciple,

his praise of Whitman is rendered really valuable by this quality.

* * * * *

[Illustration: ANNE GILCHRIST]

In the summer of 1869, Mr. Madox Brown lent a copy of the _Selections_

to his friend Mrs. Alexander Gilchrist, the widow of Blake's

biographer. She responded to the book's appeal, and immediately

borrowed Mr. Rossetti's copy of the complete volume.[471] While wholly

approving the omission from his _Selections_ of such poems as the

"Children of Adam," and herself making some partial reservation with

regard to these as perhaps infringing in certain passages the natural

law of concealment and modesty, she expressed to Mr. Rossetti, in

fervid and impassioned phrases, the joy that came to her in this new

gospel, worthy at last as she thought of America. Her friend obtained

her permission to allow her letters to him to be published; and they

appeared in the Boston _Radical_ for May, 1870.

Her words of womanly understanding stirred Whitman too deeply for much

outward expression.[472] He hardly regarded them as a declaration

of individual friendship, showing himself at the time even a little

indifferent[473] to the personality of their writer. They were, he

knew, a testimony not so much to him as to his _Leaves of Grass_, which

were a half-impersonal utterance, and as such he received them with

gratitude.[474] Nothing, not even O'Connor's brilliant vindication, had

so justified the poems to their maker.

Whitman has been roundly abused by Mr. Swinburne[475] and others,

because, as they say, he lacks the romantic attitude toward woman.

Mr. Meredith has shown in his own inimitable way the fiends that mask

themselves too often under this romantic mien; and one is not always

sure whether Whitman's honesty is not in itself a little distasteful to

some of his critics.

It is true that he has addressed woman as the mother or the equal mate

of man, rather than as the maid unwed, as though his thought of sex

transcended the limits usually assigned to it. I am persuaded that the

explanation of this is to be found in the fact that Whitman's mystic

consciousness had broken many of the barriers which have constricted

the passion of sex too narrowly during past centuries. He heard all the

deeps of life calling to one another and responding with passionate

avowals of life's unity. The soul of the lover--as all the poets have

been telling us since Dante's day--discovers its true self in the

beloved person: but the soul of Whitman discovered itself as surely

and as passionately in the Beloved World. The expression is so novel

that it sounds well-nigh absurd to ears that do not "hear". But for

those who can hear, Whitman's voice is all surcharged with the lover's

passion; not less intense but larger in its sanity than the voices of

other poets.

Again we may justly urge that, in general, it was Woman as Madonna,

rather than as Venus, whom he contemplated. Or shall we say he saw the

Madonna in Venus, as Botticelli did? His love, when he wrote, was that

of a man of middle life, in whom the yearning tenderness of fatherhood

mingled with the other currents of passion. His vision beheld the

Divine Child, without whom love itself is incomplete. For fatherhood

and motherhood are seen by the insight of the poet to be implicit in

the passion of sex, and it was impossible for Whitman, the seer, to

think of one apart from the other.

As a wife and a mother, Anne Gilchrist recognised the beauty and

purity of Whitman's conception of love; and his book was to her like

the presence of a great and wise comrade.[476] She was the first woman

who had publicly recognised his purpose in these poems, and it was an

act of no small heroism.[477] Whitman might well be moved by it.

* * * * *

[Illustration: WHITMAN AT ABOUT FIFTY]

The _Selections_ had appeared in 1868, a year which also saw the

publication[478] of O'Connor's tale, _The Carpenter_, in whose pages

commences that legendary element in Whitman's story, which follows the

advent of the more striking personalities. Here Whitman is confused

with Christ, somewhat as was Francis by his followers, more than six

centuries before.

That such a thing should have been possible in the Whitman circle

requires a few words of explanation. I have already described the poem

in which he himself claims comradeship with "the Crucified".[479] The

further assertion of such a claim inevitably fell to O'Connor, whose

work was always marked by an element of vehemence and even of excess.

Brilliant, generous, eloquent, he was oftener a fervid partisan than a

safe critic.

Having already coupled Whitman's name with the greatest in

literature[480]--an act of audacity, even if we accept the

conjunction--it was but natural that, finding the man himself nobler

even than his works, he should compare him with the greatest masters

of human life. He was not satisfied even with the praises he had piled

upon his hero in his indignant rejoinder to the Hon. James Harlan.

O'Connor's tale is of no great value; but it reminds us that there was

in Walt something which bewildered those who knew him best: something

Jove-like says one;[481] something that, judged by ordinary standards,

was superhuman, alike in its calm breadth of view and its capacity for

love. They observed that what others might do under the constraint of

exceptional influences, of intellectual conviction, moral ideal or

religious enthusiasm, he did naturally. He did not rise to an occasion,

but always embraced opportunity as though from a higher level. He

was not shocked or alienated by things which shocked other men; and

personal slights and injuries hardly touched him, dropping from him

at once. He was the best of comrades, and yet he was a man of deep

reserve. And he was so many-sided that his friends were hardly aware

that he concealed something of himself from them. Always when you

met him again you found him bigger than you had remembered him; and

the better you knew him, the less certain you would be of accurately

forecasting his actions or understanding his thoughts.

If, however, we call him superhuman, it must be by an unusual manner

of speech; for he was, as we know, the most human of men, seeming to

be personally familiar and at home with every fragment of humanity.

He comprehended the springs of action in individuals, as the soul

comprehends the purpose of each limb and article of the body. He had

the understanding which comes through a subtle sympathy with the whole

of things.

Explain or ignore it as we will, there is in every man that which is

Divine; but usually this side of his nature is, as it were, turned away

from view. Our personality has deeps which even our own consciousness

has not plumbed, though at times it catches a glimpse of them. And we

know that there are men whose consciousness is as much deeper than ours

as ours is deeper than that of a babe. Whitman was one of these; and

the fact that he was such a one must always render the writing of his

biography a tentative task. It seems as though O'Connor, feeling this,

had thrown his own attempt at portraiture into the form of a sort of

parable. For his friends, while they saw possibilities in him which

they also recognised in themselves, saw also others which bewildered

them by their suggestions of the old hero-stories; and it cannot

therefore be wondered, if sometimes they found in his life a similitude

to that of the Nazarene.

The world is ever telling over the old legends, and wondering in spite

of itself if, after all, they might be true. In our nobler moments

we find ourselves rebelling against the traditional limitations of

our manhood; something within our own hearts assures us that humanity

is destined to attain a nobler stature. Every new revelation of the

possibilities of life, every new incarnation of humanity in some great

soul, brings to our lips the name of Jesus. For in it the aspirations

of the world's childhood have been made our own.

We can never believe that the story of the Christ closed with the

earthly career of Jesus. We know that He will come again; that humanity

will renew its promise; that the old stock will break once more into

prophetic blossom. And waiting and watching, at the advent of every

great one, our hearts cry out the ineffable name of our hope, at whose

very hearing the soul of faith is refreshed. Every great soul assures

us that the old, old stories are more than true; they are prophetic

for our very selves; speaking to us of a Divine destiny and purpose to

which we, too, may--nay, must--eventually arise. To Whitman's closest

friends such was his gospel.

* * * * *

But it was not every one who could read him so significantly. Merely

intellectual people, trying him by their own standards, often found

him stupid. A young doctor, for instance, who had known him in New

York, and was now a fellow-boarder with him upon M Street, records his

own impression formed at this time, that Walt was physically lazy and

intellectually hazy;[482] that his conversation was disappointingly

enigmatic and obscure, and his words were misty, shadowy, elusive

adumbrations. His vocabulary, says this gentleman, even when he was

deeply affected by natural scenes, was almost grotesquely inadequate;

they were "tip-top," he would declare; and you could only gather from

his manner and the tone of his voice that he meant more than a shabby

commonplace.

The doctor, who was doubtless an encyclopædia of accurate knowledge,

found his companion sadly ignorant of the common names of the trees

and birds they noticed on their rambles. A few years later, however,

Whitman displayed so considerable a knowledge in these directions that

one may at least suppose he profited considerably from his companion's

information.[483] And even if he did not know their names, he came near

to knowing their actual personality; which is probably more than even

the worthy doctor attempted.

It is very certain that Whitman was no dreamer of vague dreams. His

face at this time was equally expressive of alertness and of calm.

His small eyes, grey-blue under their heavy-drooping passionate lids,

were of an extraordinarily penetrating vision. They were the eyes of

a spirit which looked out through them ceaselessly as from behind a

shelter. Circled by a definite line, they had the perceptive draining

quality of a child's when it is first awake to all the world's

storehouse of strange things.[484] Never a merely passive onlooker, he

was always a dynamic force, challenging and evoking the manhood of his

friends.

* * * * *

This is notably the case in his relations with Peter Doyle, of whom

I have already spoken as one of Walt's closest companions during the

greater part of the Washington period. Doyle was a young Catholic,

born in Ireland but raised in the Virginian Alexandria.[485] His

father, a blacksmith and machinist, eventually went to work in a

Richmond foundry; and when the war broke out, Pete, who was a mere

lad, entered the Confederate army. Soon after, he was wounded and

made a prisoner, and being carried to Washington, he obtained during

his convalescence[486] the post of conductor on one of the tram-cars

running upon Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a course of some four miles,

from Georgetown, by the White House and Treasury and near to Armory

Square, up the hill by the Capitol and down again to near the Navy Yard

on the Anacostia River. And in such a course he was bound sooner or

later to make the acquaintance of Whitman.

[Illustration: DOYLE AT TWENTY-TWO AND WHITMAN AT FIFTY]

Their meeting occurred one wild stormy night, perhaps in the winter

of 1864-65,[487] when Pete was about eighteen. Walt had been out

to see John Burroughs, and was returning wrapt around in his great

blanket-rug, the only passenger in the car. Pete was cold and lonely:

something about the big red-faced man within promised fellowship and

warmth. So he entered the car and put his hand impulsively on Walt's

knee. Walt was pleased; they seemed to understand one another at once;

and instead of descending at his destination, the older man rode an

extra four miles that night for friendship's sake.[488]

Pete was a fair well-built lad, with a warm Irish heart; and in Walt,

who was old enough to have been his father, the fraternal and paternal

qualities alike were very strong. Separated from his own children,

and his own younger brothers whom he had dearly loved, his heart's

tenderness expended itself upon other lads, and upon none more than

upon Pete. There are few ties stronger than those which bind together

the man or woman of middle life whose sympathies are still natural and

warm, and the adolescent lad or maiden upon life's threshold.

Whitman did not appear merely as a good fellow to his young comrade:

his affection ran too deep for that. This is well illustrated by an

incident in their relationship.[489] In a passing fit of despondency

Pete declared that life was no longer worth living, and that he had

more than half a mind to end it. Walt answered him sharply; he was

very angry and not a little shocked. This occurred upon the evening

of his departure for Brooklyn for one of his visits home, and the two

separated somewhat coldly.

Walt arrived really ill, suffering from a sort of partial and temporary

paralysis, which seems to have attacked him at times during the latter

part of his residence in Washington. As soon as he was sufficiently

recovered, he wrote his friend a letter full of loving reproaches, of

affectionate calls to duty, and promises of assistance. The unmanly

folly of Pete's words had, he says, repelled him; but afterwards the

sense of his indestructible love for the lad had returned again in

fuller measure than ever, and he became certain that it was not the

real Pete, "my darling boy, my young and loving brother," who had

spoken those wicked words. He adjures him, by his love for his widowed

mother and for Walt his comrade, to be a man.

Many of the letters to Pete, during the vacations in Brooklyn from

1868 to 1872, are marked by a sort of paternal anxiety for the young

man's welfare. Pete was impulsive and emotional; he was not one to

whom study or thrift was naturally easy. Walt aided him all he could

in both directions. He was always encouraging his "boys" to read

good books, combining still, as in earlier years, the rôles of teacher

and comrade; but he never checked in any degree his friend's boyish,

generous and pleasure-loving nature. And his love was returned with the

whole-hearted loyal devotion of the true Celt.

* * * * *

[Illustration: PETER G. DOYLE AT FIFTY-SEVEN]

This friendship with Doyle was only one among many,[490] and the fact

that Pete was a Catholic and had been a Confederate soldier, shows how

far such relations transcended any mere similarity of opinion. Indeed,

there is nothing more notable in the circle of Whitman's friends than

their extraordinary dissimilarity one from another.

Day after day, Pete would come to the Treasury building after his work

was done, and wait sleepily there till Walt was free; when they would

start off upon a stroll, which often extended itself for many miles

into the country. Walt frequently had other companions upon these

rambles. Sometimes it would be John Burroughs, and sometimes quite a

party of men, laughing, singing and talking gaily together as they went.

Whitman was the heart of good-fellowship; he was the oldest of them

in years, but in years only. One wonders sometimes whether he himself

realised that all these men were so much his juniors. There was no

comrade, either man or woman, who had grown up beside him, learning

with him the lessons of life. His mother was the great link with his

own boyhood, and the letters which he wrote to her from Washington[491]

show how strong was his attachment to her, and how great his capacity

for home-love.

It is, then, not a little tragic that he had no home to call his own.

In a sense he was a solitary man; in the midst of his all-embracing

love and his self-revealing poems, Walt Whitman lived his life apart

and kept many secrets. In spirit he was as solitary as Thoreau, nay,

even more than he, for, though his fellowship was with the life

Universal, his consciousness of it seemed unique.

His self-reliant, masculine nature was attractive to women, with whom

he had, as one of his friends phrased it, "a good way". With them and

with children he was natural and happy.

Vague and anonymous figures of women move from time to time across

his story. In 1863 it is with "a lady" that he first remarks the

President's sadness.[492] In 1868 he has great talks and jolly times

with the girls he meets on a trip in New England,[493] and he writes

of his "particular women friends in New York". In 1869 he declares

laughingly, he is quite a lady's man again as in the old days.[494]

Women trusted him instinctively, and he repayed their trust by a

remarkable silence as to his relations with them. He understood the

hearts of women, for there was in him much of the maternal. This

quality often finds quaint expression in his letters to Pete, who is

"dear baby"[495] sometimes, and who found more than one kiss sent him

upon the paper.

As he became famous, Whitman had his queue of visitors. Now it is a

spiritualistic woman, who breaks off her interview in order to converse

with the spirit of Abraham Lincoln; and now a Mrs. McKnight,[496] who

would paint his portrait. Later, when he fell ill, "Mary Cole" came and

ministered to him.[497] Mrs. O'Connor, with Mrs. Burroughs and Mrs.

Ashton, belonged to the circle of his friends. With women, as with men,

he had his own frank way of expressing affection, and many a time he

greeted them with a kiss, knowing it would not be misinterpreted.

* * * * *

From 1868 to 1870 he was engaged upon a brief political treatise,

apparently suggested to him by Carlyle's vehement assault upon

Democracy and all its ways, in _Shooting Niagara_.[498]

Life in Washington during and after the war had made the short-comings

of Democracy very evident to Whitman. The failure of President Johnson

and his attempted impeachment, had been followed by drastic measures

for enforcing Republican ideas in the South by all the abominable

methods known to corruption and carpet-bag politicians. The year 1868

saw the election of Grant to the Presidency, and under him corruption

extended in every direction. Grant's real work was finished at

Appomattox,[499] and his eight years of official life added nothing to

his fame. But Whitman, sharing the national regard for a simple-minded,

downright soldier, heartily approved his nomination, and urged his

brothers to support him.

For the carpet-bag reconstruction of the South he had, of course, no

sympathy. He longed for a union of hearts, and looked ardently forward

to the day when the South, whom he loved so passionately, would realise

again her inalienable part in the Union. Without her America was

incomplete. And in the "magnet South"[500] was much that was personally

dearest to Whitman's heart.

The more extreme Abolitionist sentiment had combined with the exigency

of party to create a position in the Southern States which was

intolerable to all right feeling. The suffrage had been taken away

from the rebellious whites and given instead to the negroes. It was as

though the management of the household affairs should be entrusted to

wholly irresponsible children. One need hardly add that it was not the

negro who ruled, but the political agent who bought his vote and made

a tool of him. Such a policy only exasperated the antagonism between

North and South.

And Whitman, though he hated slavery, saw that the negro was not ready

to exercise the full rights of citizenship. When the negro vote in

the capital became dominant in political elections, and the black

population paraded the city in their thousands, armed and insolent,

they seemed to him "like so many wild brutes let loose".[501]

It was upon this question of negro-citizenship that he quarrelled

with O'Connor. They had been arguing the subject, as O'Connor would

insist on doing, and Walt, for the nonce, had the better of the bout.

Thoughtlessly, and in the heat of the moment, he pressed his advantage

too far; O'Connor lost his temper--perhaps Walt did the same--but when

a moment later the older man returned to his usual good humour and held

out his hand warmly to his friend, O'Connor's wrath was still hot; he

was offended and refused the reconciliation. In spite of their friends

the sad estrangement continued for years.

* * * * *

The political treatise appeared at last under the title of _Democratic

Vistas_.[502] It is the outcome of Whitman's experiences and

meditations upon the purpose of social and national life, especially

during the last decade in Washington. In many respects it is an

enlargement of portions of the first Preface.

In these fragmentary political memoranda Whitman is seen as the

antagonist of what is often supposed to be the American character.

The book is a scathing attack upon American complacency, which is

even more detestable to Whitman than it was to Carlyle. He recognises

the vulgarity and corruption that everywhere abound; the superficial

smartness and alert commercial cunning which have taken the place of

virtues in the current code of transatlantic morals. Flippant, infidel,

unwholesome, mean-mannered; so he characterises New York, his beloved

city. As fiercely as Carlyle he detests all the shams and hypocrises

of democratic government, and he is as keen to discover the perils of

universal suffrage.

But withal he holds fast to faith, and offers a constructive ideal.

The jottings are threaded together by the reiterated declaration

that national life will never become illustrious without a national

literature. It is precisely here, says he, that America is fatally

deficient. Except upon the field of politics, what single thing of

moral value has she originated? And what possible value has all her

material development unless it be accompanied by a corresponding

development of soul?

There is something like an inconsistency of attitude in this book;

for here, on the one hand, we have Whitman assuming the rôle of the

moralist, denouncing, menacing, upbraiding, and generally allowing

himself to employ the moralist's exaggerated, because partial, manner

of speech. On the other hand, we find, interspersed among these

passages of condemnation, others which assert his unwavering faith in

the issue, his constant sense of the heroic character of the people.

Whitman never professed consistency, but his inconsistency is generally

explicable enough. In this case he is of course denouncing the America

of his day, only because he is regarding her from the popular point of

view as something perfect and complete. He has faith in America when

he views her as a promise of what she shall be; but even then only

because he sees far into her essential character. The shallow, popular

optimism is, he knows, wholly false; for if America is to triumph, as

he believes she will, it can only be by the profound moral forces which

are silently at work beneath the trivial shows of her prosperity.

The last enemy of the Republic was not slain when the slave party of

secession, with its feudal spirit, was overcome. The victory of the

North has for the present secured American unity, and with it the

broad types both of Northern and of Southern character essential to

the creation of a generous and profound national spirit. But America

has set forth upon the most tremendous task ever conceived by man; a

task indeed beyond the scope of any man's thought. Urged on by the

inner destiny-forces of the race, she is attempting to realise the

race-ideal of a true democracy. To accomplish her errand she must be

nerved and vitalised by the highest and deepest of ideals; for hers is

a world-battle with all the relentless foes of progress.

Whitman, seeing clearly the dark aspect of the future, the wars

and revolutions yet in store, and having counted the cost of them,

though he had faith that America would eventually achieve her purpose,

yet might well be foremost in scourging her light moods of optimism

with bitter words. And though he had not despaired of America--and

even if he had, would have been the last man to suggest despair to

others--though, also, he knew and loved the real soul of the nation; he

was not so blind to possibilities of disaster, possibilities which he

had faced more than once in recent years, as to suppose that she was of

necessity chosen to be the elder sister of the Republics of the coming

centuries.[503]

On the contrary, while he had no doubt of the growth and progress

of humanity, he knew that a branch of the race might wither away

prematurely; and he saw in the current culture and social beliefs of

the city populations a wholly false and mischievous conception of

American destiny. If the people of America were to perceive nothing but

a field for money-making wherever the Stars and Stripes might float,

then their patriotism would be worthless, and the Republic must fall.

He loved America too passionately to be cynically indifferent as to

her fate. In spite of unworthy qualities, she yet might realise the

world's hope. But seeking ardently for a way, there was only one that

Whitman could see; it was the way of religion. The old priestcraft was

effete, but religion had not died with it.[504] In a new fellowship of

prophet-poets, who should awaken the Soul of the Nation in the hearts

of their hearers, as did the prophet-poets of Israel, in these and in

these alone he had assurance--for already he seemed to behold them afar

off--assurance of the future of his land.[505]

Whitman agreed with Carlyle as to the infinite value to the race

of great men. He continually asserts their necessity to Democracy;

not, indeed, as masters and captains so much as interpreters and as

prophets. The truly great man includes more of the meaning of Democracy

than the little man, and is therefore the better fitted to explain the

purpose of the whole. Moreover, according to Whitman, it is for the

creation of great personalities that Democracy exists; for he differs

widely from the Platonic mysticism with its Ideal State as the goal of

personal achievement.

He includes in his philosophy of society what is best both in the

individualistic and the socialistic theories. He sees progress

depending upon the interplay of two forces, which he calls the two

sexes of Democracy[506]--Solidarity and Personality. It is for great

souls to declare in the name of Personality the fundamental truth

of Democracy, that every man is destined to become a god. They must

realise for themselves, and assert for the world, that a man well-born,

well-bred and well-trained, may and must become a law unto himself.

According to Whitman, the one purpose of all government in a

democracy is to encourage by all possible means the development of

Soul-consciousness in every man and woman without any exception.[507]

For, speaking generally, one may affirm that every fragment of humanity

is ultimately capable of the heroism which is the force at humanity's

heart; but each fragment can only realise its possibilities as a part

of the whole, and as sharing in the life of Solidarity.

To accomplish this destiny, and not for reasons of merit, Democracy

encourages and requires of every one a participation in the duties and

privileges of citizenship. And similarly, it requires that every one

should be an owner of property in order that each may have his own

material cell in the body politic.[508]

All persons are not yet prepared for citizenship; but such as are

minors must be wisely and strenuously prepared, for Democracy suffers

until all become true citizens.

The idle and the very poor are always a menace to Democracy.[509]

Even a greater menace, if that be possible, is to be found in the low

standard of womanhood which still prevails in America. Woman, if only

she would leave her silliness and her millinery,[510] and enter the

life of reality and enterprise, would, by the majesty of maternity,

be more than the equal of man. I think, though approving of women's

suffrage, he doubted whether it could effect the change he desired to

see.

It cannot be doubted that, like Plato, he saw in the triviality of

the women of the upper classes especially, one of the gravest dangers

which beset the Republic. For the aim of Democracy is great free

personalities, and these can only be produced from a noble maternity.

Unless motherhood and fatherhood in all their aspects become a living

science,[511] and the practice of personal health is recognised as the

finest of the arts, any achievement of the purpose of Democracy must be

slow indeed.

Of other and very secondary kinds of culture, desirable enough in their

place, America, he continues, has no lack. In some respects she is more

European than Europe. But to personality, and the moral force which is

personality, she is alarmingly indifferent. We have fussed about the

world, cries this stern speaker of truth to his age and nation; we have

gathered together its art and its sciences, but we have not grown great

in our own souls. Our mean manners result precisely from that.

Thus he returns to reiterate the cry that can always be heard whenever

we open any book of his, the cry of the quintessential importance of

religion in every field of human life.[512] For religion is the life of

the soul; that is to say, it is the heart of life.

Whitman's religion, however, is not that which is taught by churches

and churchmen. It is a religion extricated from the churches. In a

notable passage[513] he declares: "Bibles may convey, and priests

expound, but it is exclusively for the noiseless operation of one's

isolated self to enter the pure ether of veneration, reach the Divine

levels, and commune with the unutterable". In short, religion is moral

or spiritual force: it is that which forms and maintains existence:

without it, the continued life of nation or individual is inconceivable.

For a nation, too, has its soul-identity; and must become conscious of

that if it is to live, much more if it is to lead. The awakening of

America to this consciousness of its spiritual purpose Whitman awaits,

as the prophets of Israel awaited the Messiah.[514] And we may add that

with its realisation of nationhood, there comes to a people the sense

of its membership in the solidarity of the race.

Now this soul-consciousness, he proceeds, comes to a nation through its

literature. In its songs and in its great epics, a people tells and

reads the secrets of its life; it sees there, as in a glass, the Divine

purpose which tabernacles in its own heart.

A literature which can do this for America will not be made by merely

correct and clever college men, or by fanciful adepts in the arts

of verse. Those who make it must breathe the open air of Nature;

they must, in the largest sense, be men of science. But in Whitman's

language nature and science include more than the material and the

seen. They are the world of reality and its knowledge; and the soul

is the essence of reality: wherefore its experience is the sum of

knowledge.

Thus made, literature will for the first time be worthy to quicken and

immortalise the life of America.[515] It will feed the infant life of

the real nation. Reading it, Americans will become aware at last of

their world-destiny; and they will face the whole of life and death

with a new faith and joy. America will become not merely a new world,

but the mother of new worlds:[516] and lowering as the skies must often

be, and tragic though the day's end, she will behold the stars beyond.

* * * * *

Such, in crudest outline, is the gist of Whitman's tractate; which,

with the fifth edition of the _Leaves_, appeared early in 1871.

_Leaves of Grass_ now included _Drum-taps_; but the poems of President

Lincoln's death, with other matter suggested by the close of the war,

were separately published in a little volume of 120 pages, which, while

containing poems upon the lines suggested in _Democratic Vistas_, and

reverting again to old themes, was more especially marked by those in

which the idea of death as a voyage upon an unknown sea is dominant.

[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF MS. BY WHITMAN, BELONGING PROBABLY TO 1875]

The little book was called _Passage to India_, after the opening poem;

and it has a completeness of its own, closing with a "Now Finalé

to the Shore". In its preface, he alludes to a plan which he had

entertained--his active imagination entertained so many plans which

he never realised![517]--the scheme of a new volume to companion and

complement the _Leaves_, suggestive of death and the disembodied soul,

as the _Leaves_ were of the life in the body. He found, however, that

the body was not so soon to be put aside; to the end, its hold upon him

was extraordinarily tenacious. Doubting his ability for the task, he

became content to offer a fragment and hint of what he had intended.

_Passage to India_ is among his finest efforts.[518] Some of its

single lines ring like clear bells, while the movement of the whole is

varied, solemn and majestic. He shows his reader how the enterprise

and invention of the world is binding all lands together to complete

the "rondure" of the earth. The opening of the Suez Canal and of the

Pacific Railroad are fulfilling the dream of the Genoese, who sought a

passage to India in the circumnavigation of the world.

But, says Whitman, with that characteristic mystical touch which is

never absent in his poems, it is only the poet who conceives of the

world as really one and round. For none but he understands that the

universe is essentially one, Soul and Matter, Nature and Man. To

the mystic sense, India becomes symbolic of all the first elemental

intuitions of the human race. Thither now again the poet leads his

nation, back to its first visions and back to God.

Returning almost to the phrases of his first great poem,[519] Whitman

declares his sureness of God, and his resolve not to dally with the

Divine mystery. For him, God is the heart of all life, but especially

the heart of all life that is true, good and loving: He is the

reservoir of the spiritual, and He is the soul's perfect and immortal

comrade. Thus Whitman's idea of God embraces the "personal" element,

so-called, which has been predicated by Christian experience and dogma.

When the soul has accomplished its "Passage to India"--has realised the

unity of all[520]--then, says he, it will melt into the arms of its

Elder Brother, the Divine Love. He does not mean that it will lose its

slowly gained consciousness of selfhood; but that, to employ a formula

of the Christian faith, it will enter the Godhead as a distinct Person.

For the Godhead of Whitman's theology is the ultimate unity of ultimate

personalities--Many-in-one, the God of Love, the Heart of Communion or

Fellowship.

It is with a splendid cry of adventurous delight and heroic ardour

that Whitman sets out upon his perilous voyage, seeking the meaning of

everything and of the whole, all hazards and dangers before him, upon

all the seas of the Unknown: but not foolhardily--"Are they not all the

seas of God?"

* * * * *

In passing, we may note that in these Washington poems the feeling for

formal perfection is often clearly manifested. Many of the shorter

lyrics repeat the opening line at their close. And careful reading, or

better, recitation, will show that some at least of the longer poems

are constructed with a broad, architectonic plan.

It is indeed a great mistake to suppose that Whitman was careless of

form. Paradoxical though it sound, it was nothing but his overwhelming

sense of the necessity for a living incarnation of his motive-emotions

which led him to abandon the accepted media of written expression.

He probably laboured as closely, deliberately and long upon his

loose-rhythmed verses as a more precious stylist upon his. Whether

successful or no, he was most conscientious and self-exacting in

his obedience to the creative impulse, and in his selection of such

cadences and words as seemed to his ear the best to render its precise

import.

Probably the quiet life at Washington, and the intercourse there with

studious and thoughtful men and women, helped his artistic sense. With

a few exceptions, however, the Washington poems are somewhat less

inevitable and procreative in their quality than those of an earlier

period. They are not less interesting, but they are less elemental.

* * * * *

"The older he gets," wrote a correspondent of the _New York Evening

Mail_, "the more cheerful and gay-hearted he grows."[521] Though he was

now beginning to wear glasses, his jolly voice as he sang blithely over

his bath, and his thrush-like whistle,[522] his hearty appetite and

love of exercise, bore witness to vigour and good spirits.

The circle of his friends grew daily wider, and a measure of

international fame began to come to him. Both in Germany and in France

his book was being read, criticised and admired.[523] Rossetti's

selections had given him an English public, which was eager now for new

editions of his complete poems; he had cordial letters from Tennyson

and Addington Symonds; Swinburne addressed him in one of his "Songs

before Sunrise," and there were many others.[524]

From time to time he would receive an invitation from some academic or

other body to recite a poem at a public function. Thus, in the autumn

of 1871, he gave his "Song of the Exposition" at the opening of the

annual exhibition of the American Institute;[525] it is a half-humorous

poem, which follows some of the political themes suggested in

_Democratic Vistas_. Again, at midsummer, 1872, he recited "As a Strong

Bird on Pinions Free"[526] on the invitation of the United Literary

Societies of Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire; making at this time a

further tour as far as Lake Champlain, to visit his sister Hannah, who

was married unhappily and far from all her people.[527]

Later the same autumn, old Mrs. Whitman left Brooklyn to live with her

son, the colonel, in Camden; a quiet unattractive artisan suburb of

Philadelphia. The old lady, now nearly eighty, partially crippled by

rheumatism, and a widow for some eighteen years, did not long survive

this transplanting. But sorrows came thick upon the Whitmans at this

time. And first of all, it was Walt himself who broke down and was

house-tied.

FOOTNOTES:

[458] Camden, viii., 218.

[459] _Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person_, 1867.

[460] _Poems of W. W._, 1868.

[461] See also Preface to _Poems of W. W._, and _Rossetti Papers_, 240.

[462] _Rossetti Papers_, 270, 287, etc.

[463] Symonds, 4; _J. A. Symonds, a Biography_, by H. R. F. Brown.

[464] Symonds, 158.

[465] _Supra_, 133 n.

[466] _J. A. Symonds_, ii., 70; _Camden's Compliment_, 73.

[467] _J. A. Symonds_, ii., 15.

[468] _Ib._, ii., 82.

[469] _Ib._, ii., 130, 131.

[470] Symonds in _Fortnightly Rev._, xlii., 459; A. C. S. in _ib._, 170.

[471] _Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings_, by H. H. G., 1887; and

_In re_, 41, 42.

[472] _Rossetti Papers_, 459, 460.

[473] Bucke, 31.

[474] _In re_, 72.

[475] _Fort. Rev._, _loc. cit._

[476] _In re_, 42.

[477] See _infra_, 264.

[478] In _Putnam's Magazine_, Jan., 1868.

[479] See _supra_, 167.

[480] In the _Good Gray Poet_.

[481] Burroughs, 85.

[482] Potter, _op. cit._

[483] See _infra_, 262.

[484] O'Connor, qu. in Bucke, 62.

[485] Calamus, 21.

[486] MSS. Wallace.

[487] Calamus, 23, gives 1866; but _Comp. Prose_, 70, throws date back: