A Day with Walt Whitman Part 1

A Day with Walt Whitman.

by Maurice Clare.

A DAY WITH WALT WHITMAN.

About six o'clock on a midsummer morning in 1877, a tall old man awoke, and was out of bed next moment,--but he moved with a certain slow leisureliness, as one who will not be hurried. The reason of this deliberate movement was obvious,--he had to drag a paralysed leg, which was only gradually recovering its ability and would always be slightly lame. Seen more closely, he was not by any means so old as at first sight one might imagine. His snow-white hair and almost-white grey beard indicated some eighty years: but he was vigorous, erect and rosy: his clear grey-blue eyes were bright with a "wild-hawk look,"--his face was firm and without a line. An air of splendid vital force, despite his infirmity, was diffused from his whole person, and defied the fact of his actual age, which was two years short of sixty.

Dressing with the same large, leisurely gestures as characterized him in everything, Walt Whitman was presently attired in his invariable suit of grey: and by the time the clock touched half-past seven, he was seated in the verandah, comfortably inhaling the sweet, fresh morning air, and quite ready for his simple breakfast.

In this old farmhouse, in the New Jersey hamlet of White Horse, Walt Whitman had been long an inmate. He was recovering by almost imperceptible degrees from the breakdown induced by over-strain, mental and physical, which had culminated in intermittent paralytic seizures for the last eight years, and had left his robust physique a mere wreck of its former magnificence. Here, in the absolute peace and seclusion of the little wooden house, with its few fields and fruit-trees, he lived in lovable companions.h.i.+p with the farmer-folk, man, wife and sons: and here, the level, faintly undulated country, "neither attractive nor unattractive," supplied all the needs of his strenuous nature and healed him with its calm, curative influences. He steeped himself, month by month, season after season, in "primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs and all the charms that birds, gra.s.s, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut-trees, etc., can bring." Simple fare, these charms might seem to a townsman: to the "good grey poet" they were not only sufficient but inexhaustible. Dearly as he loved the "swarming and tumultuous" life of cities, the tops of Broadway omnibuses, the Brooklyn ferry-boats, the eternal panorama of the mult.i.tude, his true delight was in the vast expanses, the illimitable s.p.a.ces, the very earth from which, Antaeus-like, he drew his vital strength. Out here, in the country solitudes, alone could he observe how--in a way undreamed of by the street-dweller,--

Ever upon this stage Is acted G.o.d's calm annual drama, Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, The heaving sea, the waves upon the sh.o.r.e, the musical, strong waves, The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees, The lilliput countless armies of the gra.s.s.

(_The Return of the Heroes._)

It may be doubted whether any other poet who has been inspired by outdoor Nature, has approximated so closely as Whitman to the "shows of all variety," which nature presents,--from the infinite gradations of microscopic detail, to the enormous range and sweep of dim vast.i.tudes.

His poetry has a huge elemental quality, akin to that of winds and clouds and seas. "To speak with the perfect rect.i.tude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and gra.s.s by the roadside,"--this was the standard he had set himself: and, in pursuance of this ideal, he had given his first and most typically unconventional volume the t.i.tle "_Leaves of Gra.s.s_."

No name could better convey and sum up his meaning in art,--a commixture of the minute and the universal, the simple and the inexplicable, the particular and the all-pervading,--the commonplace which is also the miracle: for to Whitman leaves of gra.s.s were this and more. "To me," he declared, "as I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer gra.s.s,"

Every hour of the light and dark is a miracle-- Every cubic inch of s.p.a.ce is a miracle,

the gra.s.s-blades no less so than the "gentle soft-born measureless light." And, avowedly, from these external expressions of nature he derived all power of song--

I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven-- O suns--O gra.s.s of graves--O perpetual transfers and promotions,-- If you do not say anything, how can I say anything?

Thus he had arrived at declaring, with august arrogance: "Let others finish specimens--I never finish specimens: I shower them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern continually."

Nor are you to suppose that this was a late development of nature-wors.h.i.+p in a man suddenly confronted with teeming glories and wonderments. All through his life he had been soaking himself in the mysterious loveliness of the world around. "Even as a boy," he wrote, "I had the fancy, the wish, to write a poem about the seash.o.r.e--that suggesting dividing line, contact, junction, the solid marrying the liquid--that curious, lurking something (as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the subjective spirit) which means far more than its mere first sight, grand as that is.... I felt that I must one day write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme. Afterward ... it came to me that instead of any special lyrical or epical or literary attempt, the seash.o.r.e should be an invisible _influence_, a pervading gauge and tally for me in my composition." Even as a child, upon the desolate beaches of Long Island, he had, "leaving his bed, wandered alone, bare-headed, barefoot," over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, and explored the secret sources of tragedy that are hidden at the roots of love.

Once Paumanok, When the snows had melted--when the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month gra.s.s was growing, Up this seash.o.r.e, in some briers, Two guests from Alabama--two together, And their nest, and four light-green eggs, spotted with brown, And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand, And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.

Till of a sudden, May-be kill'd, unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest, Nor return'd that afternoon, nor the next, Nor ever appear'd again.

And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea, And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather....

Yes, when the stars glisten'd, All night long on the p.r.o.ng of a moss-scallop'd stake, Down, almost amid the slapping waves, Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears

I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, Listen'd long and long....

(_Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking_).

But now the Stafford family were a.s.sembled at breakfast and Walt limped in to join them. Courteously and simply he greeted the various members of the household,--the dark, silent, diligent Methodist father,--the spiritually-minded yet busy-handed mother,--the two young fellows, the married daughter and her little ones. He was the most domesticated, least troublesome of inmates, and his "large sweet presence" imparted something to the homely breakfast-table, something of benignity and tranquillity, which it had lacked before his entrance. "The best man I ever knew," Mrs. Stafford called him. Her sons adored him; and her grandchildren were almost like his own, in the love and confidence with which they curled themselves upon his great grey knee when the meal was over. For his affection for children, his sense of fatherhood, was a predominant trait of Whitman's character. Lonely, since his mother's death, he had lived as regards the closer human relations.h.i.+ps: lonely, in this sense, he was doomed to remain. A veil of secrecy hung over his past life, which none had ever ventured to lift. Rumours of a lost mate, as in the song of the Alabama bird upon the sh.o.r.e,--of children whom he never could claim,--hints of harsh fates and imperious destinies, occasionally penetrated that close-woven curtain of silence which covered his most intimate self. But only in his poems had he voiced his loneliness, and that with the tenderest poignancy of yearning for "better, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife, the sweet, eternal, perfect comrade"....

That woman who pa.s.sionately clung to me.

Again we wander, we love, we separate again, Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go, I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

(Be not impatient--a little s.p.a.ce--Know you, I salute the air, the ocean and the land, Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.)

And this was the man who had been blamed for his utter lack of "the romantic att.i.tude towards women!" But Whitman was no light singer of casual empty love-lyrics; he was of sterner stuff than that.

No dainty dolce affettuoso I, Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived.

As breakfast pa.s.sed, he spoke but little to his companions. His ordinary mood of "quiet yet cheerful serenity," lay gently on him, and he was content to sit almost silent, emanating that radiant power, that "effluence and inclusiveness as of the sun," which none could fail to note in him. When addressed, he only replied with the brief monosyllable "Ay? Ay?" (which he p.r.o.nounced _Oy? Oy?_), and which, slightly inflected to answer various purposes, served him for all response.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, Listen'd long and long....

(_Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking_).]

The meal was not yet over, for most of the family, when Whitman, rising abruptly with that startling _brusquerie_ which occasionally offended his friends, observed "Ta-ta!" to everybody in general and departed--"as if he didn't care if he never saw us again!" remarked one of the young men. He left the house and strolled down the green lane, to a wide wooded hollow, where the stream called Timber Creek went winding among its lily-leaves beneath the trees. Here Whitman had found, a year before, "a particularly secluded little dell off one side by my creek ... filled with bushes, trees, gra.s.s, a group of willows, a straggling bank and a spring of delicious water running right through the middle of it, with two or three little cascades. Here (he) retreated every hot day" (_Specimen Days_),--and here, while the summer sun drew sweet aromatic odours from the tangled water-mints and cresses, he proceeded slowly now, carrying a portable chair, and with his pockets filled with note-books; for, as he truly avowed, "Wherever I go, winter or summer, city or country, alone at home or travelling, I _must_ take notes." He was about to make sure of a morning's unmitigated delight,--in the spot where he sought, "every day, seclusion--every day at least two or three hours of freedom, bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no manners."

And each step of the way was a pure joy to him. "What a day!" he murmured, "what an hour just pa.s.sing! the luxury of riant gra.s.s and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sun and sky and perfect temperature, never before so filling me body and soul!" So rhapsodizing inwardly and drinking in the beauty of sight and sound, he proceeded, "still sauntering on, to the spring under the willows--musical as soft clinking gla.s.ses--pouring a sizeable stream, pure and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over like a great brown s.h.a.ggy eyebrow or mouth-roof--gurgling, gurgling ceaselessly; meaning, saying something, of course (if one could only translate it.)" (_Specimen Days._)

Here he sat down awhile and revelled in sheer joy of summer opulence. He enumerated to himself,--laying a store of lovely recollections for future reference in darker days,--"The fervent heat, but so much more endurable in this pure air--the white and pink pond-blossoms, with great heart-shaped leaves, the gla.s.sy waters of the creek, the banks, with dense bushery and the picturesque beeches and shade and turf; the tremulous, reedy call of some bird from recesses, breaking the warm, indolent, half-voluptuous silence: the prevailing delicate, yet palpable, spicy, gra.s.sy, clovery perfume to my nostrils,--and over all, encircling all, to my sight and soul, the free s.p.a.ce of the sky, transparent and blue," (_Specimen Days_,) and, "from old habit, pencilled down from time to time, almost automatically, moods, sights, hours, tints and outlines, on the spot." Minutes like these were the seed time of his art, if that can be called art which was almost one with Nature. For Walt Whitman had, from the very outset, striven to obtain that fusion of ident.i.ty with _Natura Benigna_, which, even if only momentary, bequeathes a lasting impression on the mind. He had always felt, with regard to his productions, that "There is a humiliating lesson one learns, in serene hours, of a fine day or night.

Nature seems to look on all fixed-up poetry and art as something almost impertinent.... If I could indirectly show that we have met and fused, even if but only once, but enough--that we have really absorbed each other and understood each other,"--it sufficed him. Nothing less did: for he recognised that "after you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love and so on--have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear--what remains? Nature remains: to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, changes of seasons--the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night." And, while confessing, "I cannot divest my appet.i.te of literature, yet I find myself eventually trying it all by Nature--_first premises_ many call it, but really the crowning results of all, laws, tallies and proofs....

I have fancied the ocean and the daylight, the mountain and the forest, putting their spirit in a judgment on our books. I have fancied some disembodied soul giving its verdict." (_Specimen Days._) He was "so afraid," as he phrased it, "of dropping what smack of outdoors or sun or starlight might cling to the lines--I dared not try to meddle with or smooth them." To be "made one with Nature," in a deeper sense than ever any man yet had known, was, in short, his ideal,--and, one may say, his achievement. For the verdict of the average person, vacant of _his_ glorious gains, he did not care. Regardless of ridicule, calumny, contumely, he had pursued his own way to his own goal: till he was able at last to realize his dream of--

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all, or mistress of all--aplomb in the midst of irrational things.

And now he was an old man, to look upon,--yet a man surcharged with electric vigour and daily renewing his physical strength from the fountains of eternal youth. He was just as full of _elan_, of enterprise, of the glorious hunger for adventure, as when first he had proclaimed,--

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Allons! to that which is endless, as it was beginningless, To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights, To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to, Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys; To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pa.s.s it, To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you--however long, but it stretches and waits for you; To see no being, not G.o.d's or any, but you also go thither.

(_Song of the Open Road._)

The big grey man expanded almost visibly in the sun-steeped air, as he absorbed the exquisite minutiae of the green dell into his mind, and a.s.similated the music of the wind and stream. Sound of any sort had a powerfully emotional effect upon him. It was not mere fancy on Whitman's part that "he and Wagner made one music." With music on the most colossal scale his poems are fraught from end to end: and while their technical form may be less finished, less perfected, than those of other authors,--while they have less melody, they have the mult.i.tudinous harmony, the superb architectonics, the choral and symphonic movement of the n.o.blest masters. "Such poems as _The Mystic Trumpeter_, _Out of the Cradle_, _Pa.s.sage to India_, have the genesis and exodus of great musical compositions." And to many auditors, the "vast elemental sympathy" of this unique personality can only be compared to that of Beethoven, whom he said he had "discovered as a new meaning in music:"

Beethoven, by whom he allowed he "had been carried out of himself, seeing, hearing wonders:" Beethoven, who, like himself, sought inspiration continuously in the magic and mystery of Nature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LUMBERMEN'S CAMP.

Lumbermen in their winter camp, day-break in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping, The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work, The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the bear-skin.

(_Song of the Broad-Axe_).]

And thus, all Whitman's finest poems have a processional air, like the evolution of some great symphony--a pageantry of sound, so to speak, which whirls one forward like a leaf upon a resistless stream. Sometimes he is superbly triumphant, as in his inaugural _Song of Myself_: