With Walt Whitman in Camden vol. 1 (1906)

     WITH WALT WHITMAN IN CAMDEN

     (March 28-July 14, 1888)

     Horace Traubel

     BOSTON

     SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY

     1906

     Copyright, 1906, 1906, by Horace Traubel

     Copyright, 1905, by The Century Company

     Entered at Stationers' Hall

     Published February, 1906

To Readers

     My story is left as it was originally written. I have made no attempt to improve it. I have taken nothing off and put nothing on. I know that it has defects. I am not ashamed of defects. I know that it has virtues. I am not proud of virtues. Here is the record as it virginally came from my hands in the quick of the struggle it describes. It might have been made more literary. It might have been made more precise. Its loose joints might have been tightened. Some commas might have been put where colons are. Phrases might have been swung about. The formal grace of the recital might have been improved. I have preferred to respect its integrity. To let it remain untouched by a censorship. To let it continue, for good or bad, in its then native atmosphere. I do not want to reshape those years. I want them left as they were. I keep them forever contemporary. I trust in the spontaneity of their first inspirations.

     Did Whitman know I was keeping such a record? No. Yet he knew I would write of our experiences together. Every now and then he charged me with immortal commissions. He would say: "I want you to speak for me when I am dead." On several occasions I read him my reports. They were very satisfactory. "You do the thing just as I should wish it to be done." He always imposed it upon me to tell the truth about him. The worst truth no less than the best truth. He did

WITH WALT WHITMAN IN CAMDEN

Wednesday, March 28, 1888.

     At Walt's this evening. Called my attention to an old letter in the Philadelphia Press describing a visit to Emerson with Louisa Alcott, and Emerson's senility.  [See note p001.1] "The fact is pitiful enough but the narrative is more so: the letter is so uselessly literal, so much mathematical: has to tell it all and let it run over." He had himself seen Emerson "after the shadow." And he "saw nothing tragic or startling" in Emerson's condition. "The senile Emerson is the old Emerson in all that goes to make Emerson notable: this shadow is a part of him—a necessary feature of his nearly rounded life: it gives him a statuesqueness—throws him, so it seems to me, impressively as a definite figure in a background of mist."

     W. handed me a leaf from The Christian Union containing an article by Munger on Personal Purity, in which this is said:   [See note p001.2] "Do not suffer yourself to be caught by the Walt Whitman fallacy that all nature and all processes of nature are sacred and may therefore be talked about. Walt Whitman is not a true poet in this respect, or he would have scanned nature more accurately. Nature is silent and shy where he is loud and bold." "Now," W. quietly remarked, "Munger is all right, but he is also all wrong. If Munger had written Leaves of Grass that's what nature would have written through Munger. But nature was writing through Walt Whitman. And that is where

     W. watched me as I read the letter and when he saw I was through resumed: "Children of Adam stumps the worst and the best: I have even tried hard to see if it might not as I grow older or experience new moods stump me: I have even almost deliberately tried to retreat.   [See note p003.1] But it would not do. When I tried to take those pieces out of the scheme the whole scheme came down about my ears. I turned Buchanan's letter up today in a heap of nothings and somethings. I guess Buchanan and Munger would not agree about lots of the subsidiary things but here the preacher and the radical come together: though as for that there is a difference between them even in this thing: for while Munger talks of the 'fallacy' as though it was fundamental to Buchanan I am only guilty of a lack of taste.   [See note p003.2] Well—there are the pieces, to sink or swim with the book: and here is Walt Whitman to sink or swim likewise."

Thursday, March 29, 1888.

       [See note p004.3] In speaking on the subject today W. said to me that "the radical element in Lincoln was sadness bordering on melancholy, touched by a philosophy, and that philosophy touched again by a humor, which saved him from the logical wreck of his powers."

Friday, March 30, 1888.

       [See note p004.4] Happening to refer to something Ellen Terry had said about him in Chicago, which had been repeated to me in a letter, W. laughingly exclaimed: "We have heard from her

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direct on that point. Let me see—where is that letter? Oh, yes! I know!" He reached to the floor and picked up a book. "I remembered I had used it for a bookmark. It came several months ago. Here it is." This is the letter:

Sunday, April 1, 1888.

     At Harned's. A crowded table. W. in fine fettle. Felix Adler there: also Tom Dudley, once consul at Liverpool and now retired. Dudley is among high-tariff apostles as high as any.   [See note p006.3] W. is a free trader. The talk went hot, hit and miss, on the tariff. W. declared: "I am for getting all the walls down—all of them." "So I suppose," said Dudley, sarcastically: "even the walls between the planets, if you could." "If I could, yes," retorted Walt, with spirit: "that's what the astronomers are working all their days and nights, especially nights, to do!" He was even more explicit as the argument proceeded: "While I seem to love America, and wish to see America prosperous, I do not seem able to bring myself to love America, to desire American prosperity, at the expense of some other nation or even of all other nations."  [See note p006.4] "But must we not take care of home first of all?" asked Dudley. "Perhaps," replied W.: "but what is home—to the humanitarian what is home?"

     At the table Dudley toasted Lincoln. Opposite Whitman, on the wall, was a portrait of Lincoln.  [See note p007.1] When Dudley offered the toast, W. lifted his glass, turned his eyes up to the picture and exclaimed: "Here's to you! Here's to you!" Adler cried: "I shall always wish to remember Whitman as he looked at that moment." And to the table in general Adler remarked: "I feel honored in having three things in common with Mr. Whitman—I like coffee, I admire Millet and I love the lilac!"

     W. caught at the name of Millet.  [See note p007.2] "Yes, there's Millet—he's a whole religion in himself: the best of democracy, the best of all well-bottomed faith, is in his pictures. The man who knows his Millet needs no creed." Harned interjected this question: "If Millet is enough and to spare what's the use of Leaves of Grass?" "That's what I say," replied W.: "If I had stopped to ask what's the use I never would have written the Leaves: who knows, Millet would not have painted picture! The Leaves are really only Millet in another form—they are the Millet that Walt Whitman has succeeded in putting into words."  [See note p007.3] Dudley broke in: "But what about the Constitution of the United States while all the rest is going on?" W. laughed: "Good for you, Dudley. After Millet and Whitman we seem to have left little room for anything else. What about the Constitution? What about last year's almanac, the weeds back there on the lot, the ash heap down the street? I guess these things crowd into the scheme after all; and after all Millet and Whitman need not feel so lonely."

     W. is often described as lacking humor.  [See note p007.4] But this quiet play of pros with cons enters more or less into all his conversation. One of Harned's little boys slid himself off his high chair, after being thoroughly bored with our tiresome sallies in economics and philosophy, and remarked, to nobody in particular: "There's too much old folk here for

Monday, April 2, 1888.

     Mousing among some old papers on his table today, looking for something else, W. spilled out a letter which he first scanned himself and then passed over to me, saying: "If ever a fighter lived, Boyle O'Reilly is that fighter: he writes me fiery letters, he tells me fiery stories. Have you never met him? No? I shall never forget the first time he spoke to me about his prison life. He was all alive with the most vivid indignation—he was a great storm out somewhere, a great sea pushing up the shore. Read this letter. It is mild for him. Then read the letter he enclosed."

The Pilot Editorial Rooms,
Boston, Feb. 11, 1885.

Dear Mr. Whitman,

  [See note p008.3]

     I have received the enclosed letter today from one of the ablest men I have ever known; and I send it to you as another little proof that Irishmen understand and honor you. I hope you are well. Somebody told me lately that you had been in Boston within a month; but I could not believe that you would have gone away without letting me have the pleasure of seeing you.

       [See note p008.4] Bartlett is happy, and busy; but he has no more money than he had two years ago. His son is now with him, and they are finishing two portrait busts of rich men.

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     Mrs. Fairchild, whom you will remember, is never done preaching you and your work.  [See note p009.1]

     Good-bye.

Faithfully yours,

Boyle O'Reilly

     The enclosed letter follows:

39 Bowdoin Street [Boston]
10, 2, '85.

My Dear Boy,

     I am very grateful to you for inducing me to read Walt Whitman. He is to me that which he claims to be to all his readers, a Revelation and a Revealer. He has marshaled facts and sentiments before my mind's eye which have been floating, vaguely and transiently, through my consciousness since I commenced to be untrammeled in thought: he has given me views which help to render my 'dark days' endurable and my nights teem with companions.  [See note p009.2] When I read Walt Whitman nature speaks to me: when I read nature Walt Whitman speaks to me. He travels with me and he points out the goodness of men and things and he intensifies my pleasures by his presence and sympathy. Leaves of Grass! so like "the handkerchief of the Lord"! covering the face of creation with love and pity and admiration for "man and bird and beast" and thing! How sad that for a few 'bare' expressions it should be kept out of the hands of the multitude and the women and the children!

     I thought I knew the greatest American in my dear friend Henry George, but no!  [See note p009.3] Walt Whitman (whom he admires) is still greater, as a philanthropist, a democrat and a philosopher. He also excels your greatest theologians, naturalists, scientists and poets. He is an intellectual colossus or individuality, which admits of no comparison. He is not a poet and still he is greater than any—no dramatist and yet his characters breathe and strive and even smite you at his will: he knows little of the names of plants and animals,

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but he makes nature a domestic panorama: he can hardly be termed a religious man, yet he overflows with Faith and Hope and Love: he has no rank as a politician, yet his principles, if grasped, would revolutionize the world.  [See note p010.1] Thus, he is everything and yet—nothing but Walt Whitman, a distinction which should satisfy the most craving ambition.

I am your friend and debtor

I. G. Kelly.

     W. had pencilled this on the note: "Sent me by Boyle O'Reilly Feb. 85."  [See note p010.2] When he saw I had got through with the second letter he asked: "What do you think of that for a broad summing up? Barring any extreme statement, he seems to hit several real proper nails on their heads—gets pretty close to my ribs. The man with eyes to see that substance in my work must first of all have had it all in himself: we know that so well, so indubitably, so without disposition to quarrel or doubt, that it saves us from vanity. That man Kelly must be of the most real kind of real stuff. I like especially what he says about religion.  [See note p010.3] I claim everything for religion: after the claims of my religion are satisfied nothing is left for anything else: yet I have been called irreligious—an infidel (God help me!): as if I could have written a word of the Leaves without its religious root-ground. I am not traditionally religious—I know it: but even traditionally I am not anti: I take all the old forms and faiths and remake them in conformity with the modern spirit, not rejecting a single item of the earlier programs."

Tuesday, April 3d, 1888.

     He gave me some books to deliver to two or three persons in Philadelphia to whom he felt indebted for courtesies. He is always giving away books. He sent copies of the two volumes 1876 edition by me to Adler.   [See note p011.2] "Adler," he says, "is first rate soil. He is all gone on ethics. Worse things might happen to him, though ethics is bad enough. I do not see how these Ethical fellows can expect to do much as an opposition to the church: they may stir the church up, plague it into reforms, changes, even revolutions—but the church is bound to continue to be the church imminent—imminent, imperative.  [See note p011.3] People have thought I was powerful 'set agin' the church: but the church has not bothered me—I do not bother the church: that is a clean cut bargain. I am done with the letter of the church—with its hands and knees: but that part of the church which is not jailed in church buildings is all mine too, as well as anybody's—all of it, all of it!"

     My mother had sent W. some cookies. "The best part of every man is his mother," said W.  [See note p011.4] I told him of one of his girl friends who had just given birth to a boy baby. "She will be too proud to go with us when she gets up," he jocularly remarked—adding: "But any mother of any baby has a right to be proud."

     Back of him on the wall was a pencilled figure of a rather ragged looking nondescript. "Where did you get that?" I asked. "Would you believe it—the tramp himself was here this morning."  [See note p011.5] He was a curious character—an itinerant poet: and he read me some of his poems: Lord pass him, what stuff! But it was his own, written on the road. It made me feel bad to think that he could go along in the

Wednesday, April 4, 1888.

     W. not so well.  [See note p012.2] "I am not down in the mouth about it," he explained, "but I am still jealous of that tramp: I suppose he's bummin' along somewhere on the road eatin' apples and feelin' drowsy and doin' as he pleases—and here am I in this room growlin' with a bellyache. What is the use of poetry or anything else if a man must have a bellyache with it?"

     W. gave me an old letter from Linton. "This stuck its head out from a bunch over there this morning and I grabbed it. Take it along—put it among your souvenirs. That bunch of your souvenirs must be getting a bay window on it."

New Haven, Conn., May 19, 1875.

My Dear Whitman:

       [See note p012.3] Why have I not written to you? Why has not spring come? I have waited for that, waiting a little also till I could get through some work which would have made me uncompanionable.

     Now—I go to New York on Saturday June 5 to the Century meeting and remain in New York till Tuesday or Wednesday after. Can not you meet me so as to return

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home with me? Apple blossoms surely will be out by then, and some summer warmth to enable you to enjoy your hammock (did I tell you I have one?) on the piazza.  [See note p013.1] I want you here and to set you to rights. Can you come then (not for a night or two but to stay indefinitely ) or will you rather come later?

     Do which may best suit you; but come; and let me know as near as you can when I may look for you.

Affectionately yours

W. J. Linton.

     I want a copy of your Mystic Trumpeter for England.

Thursday, April 5, 1888.

     "I feel so good again today," W. assures me, "that I no longer envy the tramp.  [See note p013.2] I think that dusty cuss did me lots of good: he left me temporarily in a quarrelsome mood: I hated the room here, and my lame leg, and my dizzy head: I got hungry for the sun again, for the hills: and though Mary brought me up a good supper she didn't bring the sort of food required to satisfy a fellow with my appetite. She didn't bring the sun and the stars and offer them to me on a plate: she brought muffins, a little jelly, a cup of tea: and I could have cried from disappointment.  [See note p013.3] But later, next day, yesterday, the tramp's gift got into my veins—it was a slow process, but got there: and that has made me happy. I thought he had taken everything he had brought away with him again: but I was mistaken. He shook some of his dust off on me: that dust has taken effect."

Friday, April 6, 1888.

Saturday, April 7, 1888.

     W. is always a good deal interested in public discussions of the college.   [See note p015.1] How much freedom could be expected in the atmosphere and teaching of the schools? "To what extent can professors and editors, scholars tied up with institutions and writers writing for their daily bread (and writing under the severest conditions) be expected to talk out and defy the formal monitors of speech?" W. says the college is "of necessity an aristocracy." We have often gone over that same ground.   [See note p015.2] Today he revived the subject by producing a letter from Lathrop written to Burroughs in 1877. "This," W. contended, "shows how serious such difficulties are—how far they crawl serpent-like out from the college walls into the general world." To him Lathrop's letter was "touched with spiritual tragedy." "Hope deferred makes the heart sick—so does speech deferred." But what can a man do when he finds himself driven up against that wall?  [See note p015.3] "Come forward and make a peaceful surrender, be dragged out and grudgingly capitulate or stand where he is and be shot." This confession from Lathrop, W. contended, served to show why it would "be impossible for such a man, fine as he is, fine as his letter is, to really build up and round out a capacious career": there was a "lesion somewhere in his marrow." He looked at me and seemed to see some distrust in my face. "You think I am condemning Lathrop? Thousands from it! I love him—honor him: if there's anything comes short it excites my regret: I judge no one." This is the letter:

Sunday, April 8, 1888.

Monday, April 9, 1888.

       [See note p022.1] "Tucker," said W., "has been giving me the very devil in Liberty for calling the Emperor William a 'faithful shepherd' in my poem. In fact, Tucker is not alone: I have got a whole batch of letters of protest—one, two, three, a dozen; but too many of the fellows forget that I include emperors, lords, kingdoms, as well as presidents, workmen, republics." We talked the matter over for some time. W. was good natured about it all. Yet he was disposed to regard the criticism rather seriously. As he said: "It is all from my friends. Take William O'Connor—take Tucker himself—they deserve to be listened to." In winding up our chat he said: "I see I must be careful in such things or maybe the boys will think I am apostate.  [See note p022.2] Yet they ought to be just to me, too. There was nothing in this little poem to contradict my earlier philosophy. It all comes to the same thing. I am as radical now as ever—just as radical—but I am not asleep to the fact that among radicals as among the others there are hoggishnesses, narrownesses, inhumanities, which at times almost scare me for the future—for the future belongs to the radical and I want to see him do good things with it."

       [See note p022.3] Matthew Arnold was mentioned: "Arnold has been writing new things about the United States. Arnold could know nothing about the States—essentially nothing: the real things here—the real dangers as well as the real promises—a man of his sort would always miss. Arnold knows

     Just as I was about to leave W. reverted to the Emperor William affair: "Do you think I had better write a little note to my friends making that line a little clearer?" "I thought you never explained?" "I never do explain—rather, I never have explained: yet the rule is not arbitrary." "A rule you can't break is no good even as a rule." "That is true—true—if I wrote I would do no more than make it clear that my reference was to the Emperor as a person—that my democracy included him: not the William the tyrant, the aristocrat, but the William the man who lived according to his light: I do not see why a democrat may not say such a thing and remain a democrat."  [See note p023.2]

Tuesday, April 10, 1888.

     I quoted W. that phrase from Swinton's letter: "I have been going toward social radicalism of late years." "Yes," said W., "I remember it. Are we not all going that way or already gone?"

     I picked up a stained piece of paper from under my heel and read it, looking at W. rather quizzically.  [See note p025.2] "What is it?" he asked. I handed it to him. He pushed his glasses down over his eyes and read it. "That's old and kind o' violent—don't you think—for me? Yet I don't know but it still holds good." I took it out of the hand with which he reached it back to me. "Put it among your curios" he said, "you'll have enough curios to start a Walt Whitman museum some day." The note is below:

       [See note p025.3] "Go on, my dear Americans, whip your horses to the utmost—Excitement; money! politics!—open all your valves and let her go—going, whirl with the rest—you will soon get under such momentum you can't stop if you would. Only make provision betimes, old States and new States, for several thousand insane asylums. You are in a fair way to create a nation of lunatics."

     Some neighbor had sent W. a plate of doughnuts.  [See note p025.4] He put four of them in a paper bag and gave them to me for my mother. "Tell her they are not doughnuts—tell her they are love."

Wednesday, April 11, 1888.

       [See note p026.1] A hospital talk with W. led him to speak of a letter he had just recieved from a western man, now prosperous, who had as a soldier been nursed by W. and was offering to send money, "with love and out of my great surplus." W. was visibly touched. We had a fine hour together, W. full of reminiscence. "I got lots of help those days from noble people all over the North—especially from women." He stopped and pushed his forefinger among some papers on the round top, drawing forth an old yellow envelope, unstamped, which he shoved over toward me.  [See note p026.2] "That was a great woman." I saw that the letter was addressed in his hand to "Hannah E. Stevenson 86 Temple st, Boston Mass." This memorandum was made on the envelope: "sent Oct. 8, '63." "That," he explained, "was the rough draft. Take it along: it will give you a little look in on the sort of work I had to do those days." The letter is given in full.

Washington October 8 1863

Dear friend

       [See note p026.3] Your letter was recieved, enclosing one from Mary Wigglesworth with $30 from herself and her sisters Jane and Anne—As I happened stopping at one of the hospitals last night Miss Lowe just from Boston came to me and handed me the letters—My friend you must convey the blessings of the poor young men around me here, many amid deepest afflictions not of body only but of soul, to your friends Mary, Jane, and Anne Wigglesworth. Their and all contributions shall be sacredly used among them. I find more and more how a little money rightly directed, the exact thing at the exact moment, goes a great ways.  [See note p026.4] To make gifts comfort and truly nourish these American soldiers, so full of manly independence, is required the spirit of love and boundless brotherly tenderness, hand in hand with greatest tact. I do not find any lack in the store houses, nor eager willingness of the North to unlock them for the

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soldiers—but sadly everywhere a lack of fittest hands to apply, and of just the right thing in just the right measure, and of all being vivified by the spirit I have mentioned—Say to the sisters Mary and Jane and Anne Wigglesworth, and to your own sister Margaret, that as I feel it a privilege myself to be doing a part among these things, I know well enough the like privilege must be sweet to them, to their compassionate and sisterly souls, and need indeed few thanks, and only ask its being put to best use, what they feel to give among sick and wounded.  [See note p027.1] —I have recieved L. B. Russell's letter and contribution by same hand, and shall try to write to him to-morrow—

Walt Whitman

     Address Care Major Hapgood Paymaster U S A
cor 15th and F St Washington D C

Thursday, April 12, 1888.

Friday, April 13, 1888.