HE BECOMES A HOUSEHOLDER
Emerson and Longfellow died within six months of Whitman's Boston
visit; the former being buried in that graveyard at Sleepy Hollow
where Walt had so recently stood by the green mounds that mark the
resting-places of Hawthorne and of Thoreau.[652] Carlyle had died a
year earlier; Carlyle who so deeply impressed his impetuous pathetic
personality upon all that he handled, and who was one of the principal
literary influences upon Whitman during his later years, as Emerson
had doubtless been an inspiration in the earlier. And while Walt had
been working on the Osgood proof-sheets, James Garfield, the friend who
used to hail him as he passed on Pennsylvania Avenue riding with Pete
Doyle, shouting out some tag from the _Leaves_, and who had now become
President of the United States, died amid the mourning of the nation.
Whitman's daily life had been poorer these last two or three years,
since Mrs. Gilchrist's return to England, but new friends were
continually added to his circle. Among these was Mr. W. S. Kennedy, who
was working for awhile on one of the Philadelphia papers, and has since
published a notable collection of reminiscences and memoranda of his
relations with the Camden poet.
The Christmas of 1882[653] brought him a delightful gift in the
friendship of a Quaker family. Mr. Pearsall Smith was a wealthy
Philadelphia glass merchant, who with his wife had, till recently, been
a member of the Society of Friends. He had had a remarkable career as
an evangelist, both in his own country and in Europe; his eloquence
and magnetic personality having been instrumental in changing the
course of many lives. His wife also was an active worker in the fields
of religion and philanthropy; and their home in Germantown--one of
the suburbs of Philadelphia most remote in every sense from plebeian
Camden--became a meeting-place for men and women interested and engaged
in the work of reform. By this time, however, Mr. Pearsall Smith
himself, finding in human nature more forces than were accounted for in
the evangelical philosophy, had withdrawn from active participation in
its labours.
The elder of his daughters, Miss Mary Whitall Smith, a thoughtful and
enthusiastic college girl, came back from New England, where she was
studying, fired by a determination to meet Walt Whitman. Her parents
discovered with dismay that she had read the _Leaves_, at first with
the consternation proper to her Quaker training, but later with ardour.
Respectable Philadelphians, and especially members of the Society of
Friends, were disposed to regard the poet as an outrageous, dangerous
person, who lived in a low place, among disreputable and vulgar
associates. His works were classed by them with the wares of obscene
book-vendors, as absolutely impossible.
The parents' consternation at their daughter's resolve may well be
imagined. But being wise parents, they were prepared to learn; and Mr.
Smith eventually drove her over in a stylish carriage behind a pair of
excellent horses.
[Illustration: MARY WHITALL SMITH (MRS. BERENSON) IN 1884]
They found Whitman at home. He descended slowly, leaning on his stick,
to the little stuffy parlour where they were waiting; and with a
kindly, affectionate amusement received the girl's homage. Her father
immediately and impulsively asked the old man to drive back and spend
the night with them. This was the spontaneous kind of hospitality
which most delighted Walt, and after a moment's hesitation, in which
he weighed the matter, he decided in favour of his new friends and
their excellent equipage. His sister-in-law quickly produced the boots
and other necessaries, and they set forth. Whitman loved to drive and
to be driven, and as he sat on the back seat by his adoring young
friend, he heartily enjoyed the whole situation. It was indeed enough
to warm an old man's heart.
After listening to her avowals, he recommended Miss Smith to study
Emerson and Thoreau, but was evidently well pleased with her praise.
Genuine devotion he always accepted.
He stayed a couple of days on this occasion; delighting in long drives
along the Wissahickon Creek, and showing himself very much at home
among the young people of the household.
From this time on, and until the family left for England in 1886,
he was their frequent visitor; and in later years--while reverently
remembering Mrs. Gilchrist, who died in 1885--he came to speak of Mary
Whitall Smith as his "staunchest living woman friend". His letters to
her father also are evidences of a close intimacy between the two men.
Thus it seems permissible to speak here at greater length than usual
of their relations, which serve besides to illustrate others not less
affectionate.
Often during the college vacations, when the house was filled with
merry young folk, Whitman would sit in the hall to catch the sounds
of their laughter, enhanced by a little distance; or from his corner,
leaning upon his stick, he would look on for hours together while they
danced. Spirits ran high on these occasions, and all the higher for his
smiling presence. He enjoyed everything, and not least the wholesome
incipient love-making which he was quick to notice, and encourage.
Often he was full of fun; and still, as in the old days, he sang gaily
as he splashed about in his bath, a delighted group of young people
listening on the landing without to the strains of "Old Jim Crow," some
Methodist hymn, or negro melody. At night, before retiring, he would
take a walk under the stars, sometimes alone, sometimes with his girl
friend, who could appreciate the companionableness of silence.
He was always perfectly frank, as well as perfectly courteous; if he
preferred solitude he said so; and if, when at table, his hostess
proposed to read aloud some long family letter, and asked him in an
aside whether he would like to hear it, he would smile and answer, No.
He came to see them usually in his familiar grey suit; but in winter he
wore one of heavier make, which was, however, provided with an overcoat
only; indoors, he then put on the knitted cardigan jacket seen in some
of his portraits. On one occasion, when some local literary people
were invited to meet him, he appeared unaccustomedly conscious of his
clothes. Uncomfortable at the absence of a coat, he tried the overcoat
for awhile; but becoming very hot before the dinner was done, he beat
a retreat into the hall; and there divesting himself of the burden,
returned in his ordinary comfortable dress. Such incidents admirably
illustrate his simple and homely ways.[654]
* * * * *
Henceforward, though records are multiplied, the movement of Whitman's
life is less and less affected by outer events, and becomes yearly more
private and elusive.
[Illustration: WHITMAN AT SIXTY-TWO]
There is little to record of 1883, save that shortly after his
sixty-fourth birthday there appeared the biographical study of Whitman
by his Canadian friend. Like the earlier and smaller sketch by John
Burroughs, Dr. Bucke's volume was revised and authenticated by the
poet, and is an invaluable record. Though fragmentary and far from
exhaustive, it is written by one of the very few who can be said to
have caught the real significance of the life and personality of the
author of _Leaves of Grass_. That he fully understood Whitman, neither
he nor his poet friend ever suggested; but then one must add that
Whitman always laughingly asserted he did not by any means understand
himself.[655]
As a result of the sales of the Philadelphia edition and the royalties
which they brought him, the old man was now enabled to carry a
long-cherished plan into execution.
On March the 26th, 1884,[656] he left his brother's house, and
removed to a little two-story cottage on Mickle Street, near by.
Here he installed himself, at first with an elderly workman and his
wife, and afterwards under the more efficient _régime_ of Mrs. Mary
Davis, a buxom New Jersey widow of comfortable presence, who brought
into the house that homely atmosphere which Whitman had so long been
seeking.[657]
Downstairs, in the little front parlour, he carried on what remained
to him of his own publishing--the old autograph editions which he had
not entrusted to Mr. McKay; and over it, upstairs, was his bedroom,
which he liked to compare with a big ship's cabin. In the backyard were
lilacs, which he loved; and a shady tree stood in the side-walk in
front.
He found his little "shack," as he called it, pleasant and restful,
and his own. He was not much worried by the rasping church choir and
the bells, which jangled cruelly loud for such sensitive hearing
every Sunday; nor by the neighbourhood of a guano factory, which was
noticeable enough to the most ordinary nose.[658] Here his friends from
far and near were frequent visitors, Dr. Bucke, John Burroughs and
Peter Doyle among them; and in June came Edward Carpenter from England
on his second visit.[659]
* * * * *
Carpenter had now issued his slender green _Towards Democracy_, that
strange, prophetic, intimate book, so unlike all others, even the
_Leaves_ which it most resembles. It was seven years since the two men
had met, and the older had grown thinner and more weary-looking. He had
not been worsted in the long struggle with time and illness, but they
had left their mark upon his body.
The visitor renewed his first impressions of that complex
personality; felt again the wistful affection mingled with the
contradictiousobstinacy; recognised the same watchful caution and
keen perception, "a certain artfulness," and the old "wild hawk look"
of his untameable spirit; but, beneath all, the wonderful unfathomed
tenderness.
Whitman manifestly had his moods, "lumpishly immovable" at times, at
times deliberately inaccessible. He took a certain wilful pleasure
in denial, for the quality of "cussedness" was strong in him. And
his friends admired his magnificent "No," issuing from him naked and
unashamed, just as mere acquaintances dreaded it.
But in other moods he was all generosity, and you knew in him a man who
had given himself body, mind and spirit to Love, never contented to
give less than all.
Among the topics of their conversations was the Labour Movement, in
which Carpenter was actively interested. Whitman professed his belief
in co-operation, at the same time reiterating his deeply-rooted
distrust of elected persons, of officials and committees. He had lived
in Washington; and besides, his feeling for personal initiative, his
wholesome and passionate love of individuality, and its expression
in every field, set him always and everywhere against mere delegates
and agents. Above all things, he abhorred regimentation, officialism
and interference. "I believe, like Carlyle, in _men_," he said with
emphasis. He hoped for more generous, and, as he would say, more
prudent, captains of industry; but he looked for America's realisation
to an ever-increasing class of independent yeomanry, who should
constitute the solid and permanent bulk of the Republic.
Regarding America from the universal point of view, as the
standard-bearer of Liberty among the nations, he thought of Free-trade
as a moral rather than a merely economic question. Free-trade and
a welcome to all foreigners were for Whitman integral parts of the
American ideal. "The future of the world," he would say, "is one of
open communication and solidarity of all races"; and he added, with
a dogmatism characteristic of his people, "if that problem [of free
interchange] cannot be solved in America, it cannot be solved anywhere".
* * * * *
In considering Whitman's attitude towards the Social Problem, and
especially the Labour Problem, whose development in America he had been
watching since the close of the war, one must consider the conditions
of his time and country.[660] The Industrial Revolution, which is still
in progress--and which in its progress is changing the face of the
globe, disintegrating the old society down to its very basis in family
life--has revealed itself to us in the last generation, much more
clearly than to Whitman, who grew up seventy years ago in a new land.
We can see now that, though it may prelude a reconstruction of human
society and relations in all their different phases, it is itself
destructive rather than constructive. We recognise that it does not
bring equality of opportunity to all, as its earlier observers had
predicted;[661] but that, on the contrary, it destroys much of the
meaning of opportunity; the control of capital which is the motive
power of modern industrial life, falling more and more into the hands
of a small group of legatees, on whose pleasure the rest of the
community tends to become dependent for its livelihood.
And we see the results of this new economic condition in the character
of the populations of those vast cities into which the Industrial
Revolution is still gathering the peoples of Europe and America.
Among these, the spirit of individual enterprise and initiative
is continually choked by the narrow range of their opportunity.
Their lives become the melancholy exponents of that theory of the
specialisation of industry against which the humanitarians of the age
have all inveighed.
Serious as it was becoming in the New World, the Labour Question had
not yet, in Whitman's time, assumed an aspect so menacing as in the
Old. Even to-day the proportion of Americans engaged in agriculture is
four times as large as that which rules in Great Britain; and except
in the North Atlantic States, the rural population does not seem to be
actually losing ground;[662] though its increase is much less rapid
than that of the urban districts, into which more than a third of
the population is now gathered, as against a fifth at the close of
the war, or an eighth in the middle of the century. At the time of
Whitman's death nearly three-quarters of the total number of American
farmers were the owners of their farms; and it was in these working
proprietors, with the similar body of half-independent artisans who
were owners of their houses, that he placed his social faith. These
were, as we have seen, the men whom he regarded as citizens in the
fullest sense.[663]
In this view he was doubtless influenced by Mill, whose _Principles of
Political Economy_ he seems to have studied soon after its appearance
in 1848. Roughly speaking, Mill had supplemented the teaching of
Adam Smith, that individual liberty is the one sure foundation for
the wealth of nations, by describing the proper sphere of social
intervention in industrial matters. His picture of the future
industry--the association of the labourers themselves on terms of
equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on
their operations, and working under managers selected and removable by
themselves--has been quoted as the socialist ideal.[664]
And Mill was deeply influenced by the early Socialists.[665] Their
activity in Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century
was so remarkable that it must have come under the notice of Whitman.
Robert Owen, intoxicated with what was perhaps a rather shallow
conception of the great truth of human perfectibility, had spent his
life and wealth in unsuccessful but most suggestive social experiments.
No less optimistic were his French contemporaries, St. Simon and
Fourier.
In striking contrast with them and their doctrinaire systems, Proudhon,
the peasant, who presents not a few points of agreement with Whitman,
looked forward to voluntarism as the final form of society, and
detested alike the theoretic elaboration and the sexual lubricity of
his amiable but, on the whole, unpractical compatriots.
The failure of the risings of 1848, and the succeeding period of
reaction, checked the socialist movement,[666] and social reform was
left for awhile to middle-class Liberalism, with its philanthropic
ignorance of the real needs of the workers; until, in the last
generation, the demands of labour, the pressure of poverty and the
aspirations of social enthusiasts, have together furnished the motive
power for a further struggle for the collectivist ideal of "intelligent
happiness and pleasurable energy" for all.[667]
This recent movement was at first most unequally yoked with an
unbeliever in the brilliant, fatalistic theory of Karl Marx. Marx was
a year older than Whitman; his acute Hebrew intellect was trained
under the Hegelian system of thought, but he was apparently destitute
of the finer historic sense, as well as of Hegel's idealism.[668] The
humanitarian character of the social movement is now once more sweeping
it far beyond his formulas; but in Whitman's time the Marxian theory
dominated Socialism.
In Long Island and New York, during the period of Whitman's youth,
the social condition was, on the whole, free from serious disorders,
save those incident upon growth and rapid development. The spirit of
Elizabethan enterprise, the practical achievement of brave and ardently
conceived ideas, ruled in that democratic society wherein his habit
of mind was shaped, and of which it was in large degree a natural
product. Whitman's youth and early manhood were little touched by
evidences of any social disease so deep-seated as to encourage ideas
of revolution. It is true that the vested interests of the slave
party made themselves felt in New York; but neither to him nor to the
"Free-soil" party did the anti-slavery movement suggest that other
change which the political title they adopted brings so vividly before
the mind to-day. "Free-soil" had for him no definitely Socialistic
significance.
And it was only, as we have seen, after the war that the accentuation
of the labour problem brought it into prominence in the American
cities. Whenever, thereafter, Whitman, leaving the comparative quiet
of his own surroundings, revisited the metropolis, or wandered to some
great western centre of industry, he realised dimly the progressive
approach of the crisis.
The increase in the accumulation of wealth was far outrunning even the
rapid increase in population; but a large proportion of this wealth
was being concentrated in a few hands which threatened to control the
national policy. Manufacture was facilitated by the immense influx
of immigrants who swelled the dependent city populations, and these
immigrants coming more and more from the south-east of Europe, that
is to say, from the most backward, ignorant and turbulent nations,
promised by their presence to create a social problem in the North and
Middle West not less acute if less extensive than that of the negro in
the South.
* * * * *
Democracy looks with suspicion on the very poor,[669] quoth Whitman,
meaning that the poverty of the poor incapacitates them for
citizenship. That, I think, is one of the great and final arguments
against the policy of _laissez faire_ under existing circumstances.
Things would go very well if left to themselves, says the philosophic
theorist, and so even Whitman is often inclined to declare.[670] But
just as the organised party of slavery, in the fifty years before
the war, refused to leave things to right themselves, so the party
of property to-day interferes, more or less unconsciously, with the
principle which it so loudly proclaims. It is because of the existence
of innumerable sacrosanct parchments, customs and traditions, and all
the subtly clinging fingers of mortmain, that _laissez faire_ remains
an empty phrase. If we could burn the parchments and loose the fingers,
men might go free. But still for the sake of the nation's health the
poor would need to be assisted to rise out of the helpless condition
into which society has allowed them to be thrust and held.
We have noted Whitman's hearty approval of Canada's benevolent
institutions for the incapable; he fully recognised the duty of society
toward such as these.[671] And however hesitating his declarations
on a subject which he was willing to leave to younger men, the main
principle of his social economy, the right of each individual to be
well born, carries us far from the policy of any party dominant to-day
in our political life.
He recognised this right as far more fundamental than any secondary
privilege which has been accorded to property for social convenience.
And it is because this right continues to be denied to millions of
future citizens, to the most serious peril of the whole Republic,
and apparently for no better reason than that its recognition must
impede the present rate of increase in material development, that the
Socialist party has arisen in America. It is safe to say that it is the
only party which deliberately aims at social amelioration and the equal
opportunity of all citizens; and in this respect it seeks to realise
Whitman's ideal. In so far, however, as it clings to European theories,
and identifies itself solely with a section of the nation, proclaiming
a class-war in the interests, not of America or of Humanity, but of
Labour--large, and inclusive as the term may be--it seems directly to
antagonise that ideal.
Whitman would certainly be belied by the label of "Socialist"; but
"Individualist" would as little describe him. He was, and must always
remain, outside of parties, and to some extent in actual antagonism
to them; for while recognising its purpose and necessity, he was
essentially jealous of government and control. He wanted to see the
Americans managing their own affairs as little as possible by deputy,
and, as far as possible, in their own persons. That, I take it, is the
only form of collectivism or social life which is ultimately desirable;
and all political reform will aim at its practical realisation.
It depends most of all upon the simultaneous deepening of social
consciousness and sympathy and increase of the means and spirit of
individual independence. Only by these simultaneous developments can we
hope to see established that Society of Comrades which was the America
of Whitman's vision.
* * * * *
On the practical side of the Labour Question the old man occasionally
expressed his emphatic dislike of certain sides of Trade Unionism,
and probably misunderstood, as he clearly mistrusted the movement.
"When the Labour agitation," he would say, "is other than a kicking of
somebody else out to let myself in, I shall warm up to it, maybe."[672]
And of the workman he added: "He should make his cause the cause of the
manliness of all men; that assured, every effort he may make is all
right".
But he was a poor man himself, judged by modern standards, and he
had a profoundly human and practical sympathy with the lives of the
poor. He knew exactly where their shoe pinched. And thus, whatever his
dislike of Unionism, he was an admirable administrator of charity.
His delight in giving made him the willing almoner of at least one
wealthy Philadelphia magnate,[673] and during severe winters he was
enabled to supply his friends, the drivers of the street cars, with
warm overcoats. In his diary, alongside of the addresses of those who
purchased his books, are long lists of these driver friends, dimly
reminiscent of the hospital lists which he used to keep in Washington.
Walt was always an incurable giver of gifts, and these, one may be
sure, never weakened the manly independence of their recipients. His
admiration for generous men of wealth, like George Peabody, has found
a place in _Leaves of Grass_.[674] For he saw that to love is both to
give and to receive, and in that holy commerce both actions alike are
blessed.
His interest in social work is shown in a hitherto unpublished letter
written about this time to Mary Whitall Smith, who had married and gone
to England, and who sent him accounts of the work being done among the
poor of the East End through the agency of Toynbee Hall. Of this he
writes at noon on the 20th of July, 1885: "The account of the Toynbee
Hall doings and chat [is] deeply interesting to me. I think much of
all genuine efforts of the human emotions, the soul and bodily and
intellectual powers, to exploit themselves for humanity's good: the
_efforts_ in themselves I mean (sometimes I am not sure but _they_ are
the main matter)--without stopping to calculate whether the investment
is tip-top in a business or statistical point of view.
"These libations, ecstatic life-pourings as it were of precious wine
or _rose-water_ on vast desert-sands or great polluted river--taking
chances for returns _or no returns_--what were they (or are they) but
the theory and practice of the beautiful God Christ? or of all Divine
personality?"[675]
FOOTNOTES:
[652] _Comp. Prose_, 183, 186.
[653] MSS. Diary; MSS. Berenson (_a_).
[654] MSS. Berenson (_a_).
[655] _Cf. In re_, 315.
[656] Kennedy, 11; MSS. Diary.
[657] _In re_, 45, 141, 382; and Johnston.
[658] Donaldson, 69.
[659] Carpenter (_a_), (_b_).
[660] _Comp. Prose_, 247, 325; _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 707.
[661] W. Cunningham, _Western Civilisation_ (ii.), 258-60.
[662] _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 712; _En. Brit. Suppt._
[663] _Comp. Prose_, 215.
[664] Kirkup, _Hist. of Socialism_, 286.
[665] Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, 64.
[666] Kirkup.
[667] Morris and Bax, _Socialism_, 321.
[668] Kirkup, 162.
[669] See _supra_, 240.
[670] _In re_, 379, 380; Carpenter (_b_), etc.
[671] See _supra_, 277.
[672] _In re_, 379.
[673] MSS. Diary and Donaldson.
[674] _L. of G._, 294; fuller in 1876 ed.
[675] MSS. Berenson.