AT MICKLE STREET
The presidential election of the autumn of 1884 brought the long
Republican _régime_ to an end. During the twenty-four years of its
continuance the old party cries had become almost meaningless, and
the parties themselves ineffective, while political life had grown
increasingly corrupt from top to bottom.[676] The only practical demand
of the hour was for a good government, and this required a change of
party. Whitman, with a number of independent Republicans known as
"Mugwumps," supported the Democrat, Mr. Grover Cleveland. With his
return to the White House the South may be said to have returned to the
Union, after a generation of bitter estrangement.
In the following summer Whitman had a slight sun-stroke, which rendered
walking much more difficult.[677] For several months he was a good deal
confined to his little house, but his friends promptly came to the
rescue with a horse and light American waggon.[678]
He was overcome with gratitude for the gift--driving, as we have seen,
was one of his delights--and he promptly began to make full use of his
new toy. He soon disposed of the quiet steed, thoughtfully provided,
and substituted one of quicker paces, which he drove furiously along
the country roads at any pace up to eighteen miles an hour.[679] Rapid
movement brought him exhilaration, and he displayed admirable nerve
upon emergency.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF PORTION OF LETTER FROM WHITMAN TO THE LATE
MR. R. PEARSALL SMITH, MAR. 4, 1884]
Though he was getting old, his capacity for enjoyment was as great
as ever. He enjoyed everything, especially now that at sixty-five he
was, for the first time in his life, a householder; he enjoyed his
quarters, his friends, his food, and in a grim way his very suffering.
"Astonishing what one can stand when put to one's trumps,"[680]
he wrote on a black day. While he could rattle along the roads in
his waggon, he was naturally happy enough, and he encouraged all
opportunities for pleasure. He enjoyed his food, and he now relaxed
some of the stricter rules of temperance which hitherto he had followed.
During periods of his life, as a young man and through the years at
Washington, he was practically a total abstainer, and till he was sixty
he only drank an occasional toddy, punch, or glass of beer. After that
he followed the doctor's advice and his own taste, enjoying the native
American wines, and at a later period, champagne.
Stories of heavy drinking were circulated by the gossips, and were
tracked at last to the habits of a local artist, who imitated Whitman
in his garb, and somewhat resembled him.[681] Walt's head was
remarkably steady, and it need hardly be said that he was always most
jealous of anything which could dispute with him his self-control.
In 1885 and several subsequent years[682] a popular caterer on the
river-side, a mile or two below Camden, opened the summer season, about
the end of April, with a dinner to some of his patrons, and Whitman was
one of those who did fullest justice to his planked shad and champagne.
For the latter he would smilingly admit an "incidental weakness".[683]
His temperance had given him a keen relish for fine flavours, and he
enjoyed all the pleasures of the senses without disguise, and with a
frank, childlike response to them. This responsiveness, more almost
than any other thing, kept his physical nature supple and young.
His consciousness was never imprisoned in his brain, among stale
memories and thoughts whose freshness had faded; it was still clean and
sensitive to its surroundings, and found expression in the noticeably
fresh, rich texture of his skin.
* * * * *
It was well that he should practise these simple pleasures, for
apart from his own ailments, which increased with time, he was still
troubled with financial difficulties. The purchase of the house had
not been exactly prudent, as it added considerably to his expenses,
and the success of the Philadelphia edition was not long continued.
The royalty receipts soon dwindled to a very little stream, and his
other earnings--though he was well paid for such contributions as the
magazines accepted, and was retained on the regular staff of the _New
York Herald_--were not large.[684]
Word went round among his friends, both in America and in England, that
the old man was hard up again, and a second time there was a hearty
response. A fund, promoted by the _Pall Mall Gazette_ at the end of
1886, brought him a New Year's present of £80,[685] and individual
friends on both sides of the sea frequently sent thank-offerings to him.
Some Boston admirers attempted at this time to secure for him
a Government pension of £60 a year,[686] in recognition of his
hospital work. But Whitman disliked the plan, and though it was
favourably reported upon by the Pensions Committee of the House of
Representatives, he wrote gratefully but peremptorily refusing to
become an applicant for such a reward, saying quite simply, "I do not
deserve it".[687] His services in the Attorney-General's Department
seem to have been adequately paid, and one is glad the matter was not
pressed. The hospital ministry could not have been remunerated by an
"invalid pension"; it was given as a free gift, and now it will always
remain so.
[Illustration: MICKLE STREET, CAMDEN IN 1890: THE LITTLE HOUSE ON
THE RIGHT IS WHITMAN'S]
From time to time special efforts were made by his friends to remove
any immediate pressure of financial anxiety. Whitman, who was on the
one hand generous to a fault, and on the other not without a pride
which consented with humiliation to receive some of the gifts bestowed,
manifested a boyish delight in money of his own earning, and it did his
friends good to see his merriment over the dollars taken--six hundred
of them[688]--at his Lincoln lecture of 1886 in the Chestnut Street
Opera House. By way of profit-sharing he insisted on presenting each of
the theatre attendants with two dollars.
The repetition of the lecture in New York the following spring, at the
Madison Square Theatre, before a brilliant company of distinguished
people, including Mr. James Russell Lowell, "Mark Twain," Mr. Stedman,
and Whitman's staunch admirer, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, brought him a
similar sum;[689] while Colonel Ingersoll's lecture for his benefit in
1890 was yet more productive, and the birthday dinners also contributed
something to his funds. But the mention of these financial matters must
not be construed into a pre-occupation with the subject in the old
man's later years; it troubled his friends far more than it troubled
him.
After the gift of the horse and waggon, Mr. W. S. Kennedy and others
planned to provide Whitman with a cottage at Timber Creek.[690] The
idea delighted him; he craved for the pure air and the living solitude
of the woods. But his health became too uncertain for the realisation
of the scheme, and the remainder of his days was spent in Camden.
* * * * *
The little house in quiet, grassy Mickle Street,[691] standing modestly
between its taller neighbours, with the brass plate, "W. Whitman," on
the door, and the mounting-stone opposite, was becoming a place of
frequent pilgrimage, and it has often been lovingly described.
During the earlier years, Walt's favourite seat was at the left-hand
lower window, and there the children would call out to him, and
he would answer brightly as they went by to school. The walls and
mantel-shelf were covered with portraits, and as to the books and
papers, so long as he used the room, it was beyond the wit of any woman
to keep them within bounds. But it was afterwards, when he was more
confined to his bedroom, that they fairly broke loose.
He seems to have enjoyed this native disorder, for in the big, square,
three-windowed upper room they occupied not only the shelves and chairs
and table but the floor itself. "His boots," says a friend--who, when
Mrs. Davis was out, used to effect an entrance at the window to save
her host descending the stairs--"his boots would be standing on piles
of manuscript on a chair, a half-empty glass of lemonade or whiskey
toddy on another, his ink-bottle on still another, his hat on the
floor, and the whole room filled with an indescribable confusion of
scraps of paper scrawled over with his big writing, with newspapers,
letters and books. He was not at all eager to have order restored, and
used to grumble in a good-natured way when I insisted upon clearing
things up a bit for him."[692]
He liked to think and speak of the room as his den or cabin; it was
his own place, and bustling with his own affairs.[693] Here were his
old-time companionable books: the complete Scott of his youth, and a
volume of poets which he used in the hospitals; his friend Mr. E. C.
Stedman's _Library of American Literature_; studies of Spanish and
German poets, and Felton's _Greece_; translations of Homer, Dante,
Omar Khayyam, Hafiz, Saadi; Mr. Rolleston's _Epictetus_--a constant
friend--Marcus Aurelius and Virgil; with Ossian, Emerson, Tennyson and
Carlyle, and some novels, especially a translation of George Sand's
_Consuelo_; and last, and best read of all, Shakespeare and the Bible.
The book of Job was one of his prime favourites in the beloved volume
which was always by him in later years.
Perilously mingled with the papers was wood for his stove, over whose
crackling warmth he would sit in the cold weather, ensconced in his
great rattan-seated, broad-armed rocker, with the wolf-skin over it;
his keen scent relishing the odour of oak-wood and of the printer's ink
on the wet proofs which surrounded him.
Visitors usually waited in the room below for his slow and heavy step
upon the stairs. There the canary sang its best, as though to be
caged in Whitman's house was not confinement after all; and a bunch
of fragrant flowers stood on the window-sill. A kitten romped about
the premises, which were inhabited besides by a parrot, a robin, and a
spotted "plum-pudding" dog; not to mention Mrs. Davis, and eventually
her two stepsons. One of these, Warren Fritzinger, who had been a
sailor and three times round the world, afterwards became Walt's nurse,
while his brother Harry called his first child Walt Whitman, to the old
man's delight.
Among the visitors was a young Japanese journalist, who
afterwards published an amusing but ill-advised record of their
conversations,[694] a document which seems to the English mind somewhat
more injudicious than other Whitmanite publications, which certainly
do not err on the side of reticence. After his first visit, Mr.
Hartmann maintains that Walt shouted after him, "come again," and this
injunction from time to time he fulfilled, naïvely recording his own
desperate attempts to cope with the long silences which threatened
to overwhelm his forlorn sallies into all conceivable regions of
conversation.
The older man would sit absent-mindedly, replying with an ejaculation
or abruptly clipped phrase, or impossible sentence; but chiefly with
his monosyllabic "Oy! oy?" which served, with a slight inflection, for
almost any purpose of response. They say that Whitman grew garrulous,
or at least less laconic, in his old age;[695] but Mr. Hartmann hardly
found him so.
One day, when Mrs. Davis was absent, they lunched together on "canned
lobster" and Californian claret in the kitchen. The sun shone on the
grass in the little back garden, on the pear-tree half-smothered in its
creeper, and the high boarded fence; and on the hens, poking in and out
through the open door, and recalling the old farm life at West Hills.
Whitman talked of the West, and of Denver, his queen-city of the West.
Over another similar meal, he declared his love for the _Heart of
Midlothian_, and his distaste for the gloomy poets from Byron to
Poe. They discussed music among their many topics. Mr. Hartmann
declared himself a Wagnerian, but Whitman confessed his ignorance of
the "music of the future"; Mendelssohn, of course, he knew; and in
later life he had discovered Beethoven as a new meaning in music, and
had been carried out of himself, as he says, seeing, absorbing many
wonders.[696] But he was brought up on the Italians; it was from Verdi
and his predecessors, interpreted by Alboni, Bettini and others, that
he had learnt the primal meanings of music, and they always retained
his affection.
* * * * *
About the middle of May,[697] 1887, a sculptor, who had already studied
Whitman in the Centennial year, came on from Washington to Mickle
Street. Mrs. Davis sided some of the litter in the parlour; and the old
man sat for him there as amiably as ten years before in the improvised
studio on Chestnut Street.
They talked much of the President, on a portrait of whom Mr. Morse
had been working. Whitman had a high opinion of Mr. Cleveland, and
displayed a lively interest in all the personal details his friend
could supply.
During the sittings Herbert Gilchrist arrived from England, where his
mother had died of a painful disease some eighteen months earlier; and
he set up his easel also. Callers came from far and near; while dozens
of children entered with a word or message from the street, and older
folk looked in at the window.
Whitman was not very well even for him, and he missed his solitude. But
he was a delightful and courteous host. The three men often lunched
together, while several English visitors--taking Whitman on their tour
even though they missed Niagara[698]--sat down to a bite of beef, a
piece of apple-pie, and a cup of tea poured out by the reverend host in
the hot little kitchen.
Good Mrs. Davis watched her old charge and friend with some anxiety,
as this constant stream of visitors flowed in and out; but she herself
rose more than equal to every emergency. She had for lieutenant a
coloured char-woman, born the same day as Whitman, who felt herself
for that reason responsible in no ordinary degree for the general
appearance of the premises. The sculptor and she often found themselves
in conflict. As for his clay, she disdained it along with the whole
genus of "dirt". She succeeded in white-washing the delightful
moss-covered fence, and would, he felt sure, have liked to treat both
him and his work in the same summary fashion. They debated theological
problems together, to Whitman's amusement, and he would have it that
Aunt Mary came out of these encounters better than the artist.
"How does your Satan get work to do," the latter would ask, "if God
doeth all?"
"Never you fear for _him_," she retorted. "He's allers a-prowlin'
around lookin' fer a chance when God's back is turned. There ain't a
lazy hair on _his_ head. I wish," she added significantly, "I could say
as much for some others."[699]
Beside Aunt Mary other characters appear upon the pages of his friends'
journals; notably a garrulous, broad-brimmed Georgian farmer, who had
served in the Confederate army. He was the father of a large family,
which he had brought up on the _Leaves_. As for himself, he had the
book by heart, and was never so happy as when reciting his favourite
passages at Sunday School treat or Church meeting. He knew Emerson's
writings with almost equal intimacy, but complained that these set his
soul nagging after him, while Whitman's were soothing to it. With Walt
he declared that he loafed and invited his soul; with Waldo, his soul
became importunate and invited him.[700]
Meanwhile, he admitted, his farm ran more to weeds than it should.
Doubtless, during his pilgrimage the weeds prospered exceedingly; for
he stayed long, and sad to say, in the end he went away a "leetle
disappointed". "I have to sit and admire him at a distance," he
complained, "about as I did at home before I came." Walt liked him,
and was amused by his talk, but his advice, his criticism and his
interpretations to boot, were overmuch for a weary man.
There came one day a "labour agitator," who required an introduction
or testimonial of some sort from Whitman; and he also went away
disappointed. In answer to all his loud-flowing, self-satisfied
declarations, Whitman merely ejaculated his occasional colourless
monosyllable; and when at last the discomfited man took his leave,
the poet's absent-minded "Thanks!" was more ludicrously and baldly
opportune than intentional.[701]
Humorous as they appeared at the time, there was another side to
interviews of this character; for it began to be noised about that
Whitman was quite spoilt by his rich friends, and had lost his interest
in and sympathy with the American working-man. This was due, of course,
to a complete misunderstanding. The old fellow who lived in his "little
shack" on Mickle Street, and dined in Germantown in his cardigan
jacket, might have a world-reputation, but he was not forgetful of the
people from among whom he sprang and to whom he always belonged.
At the same time it is true, as we saw, that he did not himself profess
to understand or to approve the party organisation of labour. He was
rather inclined to sit in his corner and have faith, and to listen
to what the younger men had to say. In any case, he saw no remedy for
present troubles in the exploitation of class feeling; he could see no
help in urging the battle between two forms of selfishness.
Generosity and manhood were his constant watchwords, whether for labour
or for the nation. No circumstances, he would say, sitting in his room
broken by the suffering of years, can deprive a hero of his manhood.
But he would add his conviction that the Republic must be in peril as
long as any of her sons were being forced to the wall, and his wish
that each "should have all that is just and best for him".
* * * * *
The sculptor and his sitter had many a long evening chat together, the
shadows of the passers-by cast by the street light and moving across
the blind. The old man's mellow and musical, but somewhat uncertain,
voice filled at these times with a confidential charm.
One night he wrote out a tentative statement of his general views,
declaring for Free-trade, and for the acknowledgment of the full
human and political equality of women with men. He regarded the world
as being too much governed, but he was not against institutions in
the present stage of evolution, for he said that he looked on the
family and upon marriage as the basis of all permanent social order.
He seems to have disliked and even condemned the practices of the
American Fourierist "Free-lovers,"[702] though Love's real freedom is
always cardinal in his teachings. Anything like a laxity in fulfilling
obligations, but especially the ultimate obligations of the soul, was
abhorrent to him.
He was not a critic of institutions; and he accepted the work of the
churches and of rationalism as alike valuable to humanity. He added to
his statement various personal details; saying, half-interrogatively,
that he thought if he was to be reported at all, it was right that
he should be reported truthfully. This feeling was undoubtedly very
strong with him from the day when he wrote anonymous appreciations of
the _Leaves_ in the New York press.[703]
Talk turned sometimes to the Washington days, to Lincoln's yearning
passion for the South, to the affectionate admiration felt by the
Union veterans for the men and boys who fought under Lee, and to the
terrible rigidity of the Southern pride. Such talk would often end in
reminiscences of the hospitals; and Whitman told his friend that he
would like him to cut a bas-relief showing Walt seated by a soldier's
cot in the wards. It had been his most characteristic pose, if one may
use the word; and such a study would have shown him at his own work,
the work in which he was most at home, surrounded by the boys who were
his flesh and blood.[704]
FOOTNOTES:
[676] _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 651.
[677] Kennedy, 17.
[678] Donaldson, Kennedy, and MSS. Diary.
[679] MSS. Diary.
[680] Kennedy, 64.
[681] Donaldson, 61.
[682] Kennedy, 15, 53; MSS. Diary.
[683] _In re_, 129.
[684] Donaldson, MSS. Diary.
[685] Kennedy, 24.
[686] Donaldson, 170; Kennedy, 23, 24.
[687] MSS. Kennedy.
[688] Donaldson, 109; Kennedy, 6.
[689] Kennedy, 29.
[690] _Ib._, 54.
[691] Johnson, 18; Kennedy; Donaldson; _Comp. Prose_, 520.
[692] MSS. Berenson (_a_).
[693] _In re_, 137, etc.
[694] _Conversations with W. W._, by "Sadakichi," 1895.
[695] Johnston, 92, 93.
[696] _Comp. Prose_, 151; _cf._ Camden, xxxiii.
[697] _In re_, 367.
[698] _In re_, 374.
[699] _Ib._, 375, 376.
[700] _In re_, 376, 377.
[701] _Ib._, 379.
[702] MSS. Johnston.
[703] See _supra_, 109.
[704] _In re_, 390.