Walt Whitman

“ Fifteen years ago, with feelings partly of indifference, partly of antagonism—for I had heard none but ill words of them—I first opened Walt Whitman’s poems. But as I read I became conscious of receiving the most powerful influence that had ever come to me from any source. What was the spell? It was that in them humanity has, in a new sense, found itself; for the first time has dared to accept itself without disparagement, without reservation. For the first time an unrestricted faith in all that is and in the issues of all that happens has burst forth triumphantly into song. ”

“ Funeral of Walt Whitman
BY ROBERT O. INGERSOLL,
At Harleigh, Camden, New Jersey, March 30, 1892.
Again, we, in the mystery of Life, are brought face to face with the mystery of Death. A great man, a great American, the most eminent citizen of this Republic, lies dead before us, and we have met to pay tribute to his greatness and his worth.
I know he needs no words of mine. His fame is secure. He laid the foundations of it deep in the human heart and brain. He was, above all I have known, the poet of humanity, of sympathy. ”

“ Moralists have criticized Whitman as immoral; religionists have deplored his lack of a religious creed; literary critics have denied his claim to high rank in the world of literature; but Walt Whitman is unquestionably without a peer in the roundness of his genius; in the simplicity of his soul; in the catholicity of his sympathy; in the perfect poise and self-control and imperturbability of his kindness. His biographers agree as to his never-failing good nature. ”

“ In the clear light of that regenerated time, when the world looks back to the doubt and mist and confusion of to-day, Walt Whitman will stand alone, the greatest, truest, noblest prophet of the age, a man untainted by artificial life and unmoved by the false standards of his time. In a sodden, commercial, money-getting age, he enjoyed all the beauty of the earth without the vulgar lust to own. In a world of privilege and caste, he felt and taught the brotherhood of man and the kinship of all living things. ”

“ The hill-range which forms the back-bone of Long Island, and upon whose slopes Walt Whitman was born, terminates on the west in Brooklyn Heights, which overlook the busy bay and crowded city of New York.
The heights recall Washington’s masterly retreat; and the hint is enough to remind the shame-faced English visitor that the American is not without cause for a certain coolness in the very genuine affection which he manifests for the mother country. ”

“ What Whitman did that is unprecedented was, to take up the whole country into himself, fuse it, imbue it with soul and poetic emotion, and recast it as a sort of colossal Walt Whitman. He has not so much treated American themes as he has identified himself with everything American, and made the whole land redolent of his own quality. He has descended upon the gross materialism of our day and land and upon the turbulent democratic masses with such loving impact, such fervid enthusiasm, as to lift and fill them with something [Pg 233] like the breath of universal nature. ”

“ But in reality it is one consciousness with two functions: the first for fellowship and communion, the second for definition and for concrete achievement.
Whitman developed these two functions harmoniously; he never sacrificed his individual self-consciousness to the cosmic. He was just as positively Walt Whitman the man, as he was Walt Whitman the organ of inspiration. ”

“ Notable, even among these, was Walt Whitman. Even here, he was unlike other men: the fulness of his spirits, his robust individuality, the generosity of his whole nature, was so exceptional as to make itself felt. His figure began to grow familiar to all kinds of New Yorkers during these years. He was frequently to be seen on Broadway, [147] in his favourite coign of vantage, on the stage-top by the driver’s side, a great, red-faced fellow, in a soft beaver, with clothes of his own choosing, an open collar like that of Byron or Jean Paul, and a grey beard. ”

“ He and his soul—he distinguishes decisively between the temporal and the eternal elements in himself whose equal balance, neither abdicating its place nor contesting that of the other, makes the harmony of his life—he and his soul commune together, and discover that the world means Love, and that the very grass is full of suggestions of immortality.
Everything indeed has its word for Walt Whitman; he understands what the streets are unconsciously saying; the animals of the country-side, the working men, the youths and the women, each and all are teaching him something of himself. ”

“ Less the reminders of properties told my words, And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication, And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt, And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire. 24 Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest. ”

“ No one ever fell in love with Whitman’s work for its literary art, but his work must live or die because of his philosophy of life and the material he chose from which to weave his songs. It is in his whole point of view that Walt Whitman stands so much alone. No one else has ever looked on the universe and life as this man did. If religion 45means devotion to that great unseen power that is ever manifest in all of nature’s works, then Walt Whitman was the most reverent soul that ever lived. This man alone of all the world dared defend the Creator in every part and parcel of his work. ”

“ I entertain no doubt as to the response which in due course of time will be returned to these questions and such as these, in America, in England, and elsewhere—or to the further question, "Is Whitman then indeed a true and a great poet?" Lincoln's verdict bespeaks the ultimate decision upon him, in his books as in his habit as he lives—"Well, he looks like a man."
Walt Whitman occupies at the present moment a unique position on the globe, and one which, even in past time, can have been occupied by only an infinitesimally small number of men. ”

“ To a Common Prostitute Be composed—be at ease with me—I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature, Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you, Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you make preparation to be worthy to meet me, And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come. ”

“ Walt Whitman still waits for his own generation. The modern schools of American poetry, curious of all winds of fashion, working for the day rather than for the times, have not yet fully grasped, I do not say the spirit of his message, but even, for all their free-versifying, the mystery of his magnificent rhythms. His successors are rather among some of the younger novelists, and in a few men, spiritually related to them, who approach the study of American conditions from a combined economic and psychological point of view. ”

“ To Walt Whitman's credit be it said, he [Pg 33] never spoke an unkind word to Mrs. Davis; never was arrogant or overbearing to her; never belittled her or put her down before others; always treated her as an equal; relied upon her judgment and often sought her advice;—but he would have his own way, and she with her yielding nature soon gave in; the struggle was only a short one; before winter commenced, confusion once more reigned.
In due time piles of periodicals were stacked on the table and on chairs; newspapers, letters, envelopes and bundles of manuscript were in the corners ”

“ Keller uses her pen as if she were twenty or thirty years younger. Her letters are simple but cheery, her outlook on life contented but in no way obscured. Not deliberately, but through a natural gift, she conveys vivid impressions of the world as it now appears to her, just as she conveys so unpretentiously but unforgettably in her book the whole atmosphere of Walt Whitman's world, when it had been narrowed to the little frame house in Mickle Street, and finally to a bed of suffering in one room of that little house. ”

“ But I am far from thinking Walt Whitman a humbug. He was a man of genius whose work had a very solid core of genuine meaning. It is good to read him in spots—he is so big and friendly and wholesome; he feels so good, like a man who has just had a cold bath and tingles with the joy of existence. ”

“ WHITMAN'S LAST NURSE DEAD
Woman Who Cared for Poet Succumbs Too.
Mrs. Mary L. Davis, who nursed Walt Whitman, the "Good Gray Poet," during his last illness, and was with him at his death, at No. 328 Mickle street, Camden, died last night in Cooper Hospital of intestinal troubles. She was the widow of Levin J. Davis.
After the death of Whitman Mrs. Davis resided for a short time at No. 432 Clinton street, Camden, and then she went to live with a wealthy family in New York City. About a year ago she developed intestinal troubles. ”

“ But it is a deadly thing to rest in them. How infinitely wiser is Walt Whitman, in his address to a brook he loved, than the man who coldly analyses, with learned formulae to help him, and sees and feels nothing beyond. ”

“ Even the least religious of men must have felt with Walt Whitman, when loafing on the grass on some transparent summer morning, that "swiftly arose and spread round him the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth." ”

“ 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. ”

“ From behind the screen where I hid, I advance personally, solely to you.
Camerado! This is no book;
Who touches this touches a man.
(Is it night? Are we here alone?)
It is I you hold, and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.
O how your fingers drowse me!
Your breath falls around me like dew—your pulse lulls the tympans of my
ears,
I feel immerged from head to foot,
Delicious—enough.
Enough, O deed impromptu and secret!
Enough, O gliding present! Enough, O summed-up past! ”

“ Walt Whitman and Mrs. Davis were not personally acquainted. To be sure, he had seen her innumerable times leading Captain Fritzinger past his brother's house, but he had never spoken to her. As for her, the poor old man had long been a secret pensioner upon her tender heart, drawing a full bounty of pity therefrom. ”

“ This attendant was Mary Oakes Davis.
With but one exception (Thomas Donaldson, in "Walt Whitman the Man") , all writers who have touched upon Whitman's domestic life seem to have failed to mention the interval between his two Camden homes. Fortunately it was of short duration, but in it came the great turning point in his career.
[Pg 9]
Of his early habits something may be learned from his brother George, who says: "Wait was always a trying person to live with." ("In Re Walt Whitman.") Then he goes on to relate some of the poet's peculiarities, irregularities and eccentricities. ”

“ Who touches this touches a man."
Walt Whitman's relation to his work was more personal than that of most poets. He was, in a larger sense, a man of one book, and this book, issued and reissued at various periods of the poet's life, was, at each issuance, the latest expression of his development. The infinite care he gave to his work; the continual study of each poem resulted in changes in each edition. The book literally grew with the man and in the present authorized edition of today we have his final and complete utterance. ”

“ Whitman's friends, especially his literary executors, were more than he could combat. But with all outward signs of contentment, the confinement soon left visible marks upon him; a second pair of rosy cheeks faded, and from handling the icy wood in the cellar a lasting cold was contracted.
He purchased a writing desk—one that fitted the niche between the chimney and the window in the anteroom—and here he wrote, studied and read when not actively employed; always busy, always within call. When the monotony and confinement became too pressing, he purchased a violin and took music lessons. ”

“ In the meantime Lincoln could only stand a spectator of the wholly ineffective measures which were being taken to frustrate the active aggression of the slave power. But towards the end of February he set out for Washington. Passing on his way through Indiana and Ohio, he was received by an enormous crowd in New York; and here Whitman first saw him, not from his favourite seat upon a stage-coach, for the streets were too densely packed for traffic, but as one of the thirty or forty thousand silent pedestrian onlookers collected in the city’s heart, where now the post-office stands. ”

“ The rowdy and the Negro truck-driver were closer to his sympathy than the gentleman and the scholar. "I loaf and invite my soul," he writes; "I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." His poem Walt Whitman, frankly egotistic, simply describes himself as a typical, average man—the same as any other man, and therefore not individual but universal. He has great tenderness and heartiness—"the good gray poet;" and during the civil war he devoted himself unreservedly to the wounded soldiers in the Washington hospitals—an experience which he has related in the Dresser and elsewhere. ”