Complete Prose Works

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If it is worth while I might add that there was a small but
well-appointed amateur-theatre up Broadway, with the usual stage,
orchestra, pit, boxes, &c., and that I was myself a member for some
time, and acted parts in it several times--"second parts" as they were
call'd. Perhaps it too was a lesson, or help'd that way; at any rate
it was full of fun and enjoyment.

And so let us turn off the gas. Out in the brilliancy of the
foot-lights--filling the attention of perhaps a crowded audience, and
making many a breath and pulse swell and rise--O so much passion and
imparted life!--over and over again, the season through--walking,
gesticulating, singing, reciting his or her part--But then sooner or
later inevitably wending to the flies or exit door--vanishing to
sight and ear--and never materializing on this earth's stage again!

SOME PERSONAL AND OLD-AGE JOTTINGS

Anything like unmitigated acceptance of my "Leaves of Grass" book, and
heart-felt response to it, in a popular however faint degree, bubbled
forth as a fresh spring from the ground in England in 1876. The time
was a critical and turning point in my personal and literary life. Let
me revert to my memorandum book, Camden, New Jersey, that year, fill'd
with addresses, receipts, purchases, &c., of the two volumes pub'd
then by myself--the "Leaves," and the "Two Rivulets"--some home
customers, for them, but mostly from the British Islands. I was
seriously paralyzed from the Secession war, poor, in debt, was
expecting death, (the doctors put four chances out of five against
me,)--and I had the books printed during the lingering interim to
occupy the tediousness of glum days and nights. Curiously, the sale
abroad proved prompt, and what one might call copious: the names came
in lists and the money with them, by foreign mail. The price was $10 a
set. Both the cash and the emotional cheer were deep medicines; many
paid double or treble price, (Tennyson and Ruskin did,) and many
sent kind and eulogistic letters; ladies, clergymen, social leaders,
persons of rank, and high officials. Those blessed gales from the
British Islands probably (certainly) saved me. Here are some of the
names, for I w'd like to preserve them: Wm. M. and D.G. Rossetti, Lord
Houghton, Edwd. Dowden, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, Keningale Cook, Edwd.
Carpenter, Therese Simpson, Rob't Buchanan, Alfred Tennyson, John
Ruskin, C.G. Gates, E.T. Wilkinson, T.L. Warren, C.W. Reynell, W.B.
Scott, A.G. Dew Smith, E.W. Gosse, T.W. Rolleston, Geo. Wallis, Rafe
Leicester, Thos. Dixon, N. MacColl, Mrs. Matthews, R. Hannah, Geo.
Saintsbury, R.S. Watson, Godfrey and Vernon Lushington, G.H. Lewes,
G.H. Boughton, Geo. Fraser, W.T. Arnold, A. Ireland, Mrs. M. Taylor,
M.D. Conway, Benj. Eyre, E. Dannreather, Rev. T.E. Brown, C.W.
Sheppard, E.J.A. Balfour, P.B. Marston, A.C. De Burgh, J.H. McCarthy,
J.H. Ingram, Rev. R.P. Graves, Lady Mount-temple, F.S. Ellis, W.
Brockie, Rev. A.B. Grosart, Lady Hardy, Hubert Herkomer, Francis
Hueffer, H.G. Dakyns, R.L. Nettleship, W.J. Stillman, Miss Blind,
Madox Brown, H.R. Ricardo, Messrs. O'Grady and Tyrrel; and many, many
more.

Severely scann'd, it was perhaps no very great or vehement success;
but the tide had palpably shifted at any rate, and the sluices were
turn'd into my own veins and pockets. That emotional, audacious,
open-handed, friendly-mouth'd just-opportune English action, I say,
pluck'd me like a brand from the burning, and gave me life again, to
finish my book, since ab't completed. I do not forget it, and shall
not; and if I ever have a biographer I charge him to put it in the
narrative. I have had the noblest friends and backers in America; Wm.
O'Connor, Dr. R.M. Bucke, John Burroughs, Geo.W. Childs, good ones
in Boston, and Carnegie and R.G. Ingersoll in New York; and yet
perhaps the tenderest and gratefulest breath of my heart has gone, and
ever goes, over the sea-gales across the big pond.

About myself at present. I will soon enter upon my 73d year, if I
live--have pass'd an active life, as country school-teacher, gardener,
printer, carpenter, author and journalist, domicil'd in nearly all the
United States and principal cities, North and South--went to the front
(moving about and occupied as army nurse and missionary) during the
secession war, 1861 to '65, and in the Virginia hospitals and after
the battles of that time, tending the Northern and Southern wounded
alike--work'd down South and in Washington city arduously three
years--contracted the paralysis which I have suffer'd ever since--and
now live in a little cottage of my own, near the Delaware in New
Jersey. My chief book, unrhym'd and unmetrical (it has taken thirty
years, peace and war, "a borning") has its aim, as once said, "to
utter the same old human _critter_--but now in Democratic American
modern and scientific conditions." Then I have publish'd two prose
works, "Specimen Days," and a late one, "November Boughs." (A little
volume, "Good-Bye my Fancy," is soon to be out, wh' will finish the
matter.) I do not propose here to enter the much-fought field of the
literary criticism of any of those works.

But for a few portraiture or descriptive bits. To-day in the upper
story of a little wooden house of two stories near the Delaware river,
east shore, sixty miles up from the sea, is a rather large 20-by-20
low ceiling'd room something like a big old ship's cabin. The floor,
three quarters of it with an ingrain carpet, is half cover'd by a deep
litter of books, papers, magazines, thrown-down letters and circulars,
rejected manuscripts, memoranda, bits of light or strong twine, a
bundle to be "express'd," and two or three venerable scrap books. In
the room stand two large tables (one of ancient St. Domingo mahogany
with immense leaves) cover'd by a jumble of more papers, a varied and
copious array of writing materials, several glass and china vessels
or jars, some with cologne-water, others with real honey, granulated
sugar, a large bunch of beautiful fresh yellow chrysanthemums,
some letters and envelopt papers ready for the post office, many
photographs, and a hundred indescribable things besides. There are all
around many books, some quite handsome editions, some half cover'd by
dust, some within reach, evidently used, (good-sized print, no type
less than long primer,) some maps, the Bible, (the strong cheap
edition of the English crown,) Homer, Shakspere, Walter Scott,
Emerson, Ticknor's "Spanish Literature," John Carlyle's Dante,
Felton's "Greece," George Sand's "Consuelo," avery choice little
Epictetus, some novels, the latest foreign and American monthlies,
quarterlies, and so on. There being quite a strew of printer's proofs
and slips, and the daily papers, the place with its quaint old
fashion'd calmness has also a smack of something alert and of current
work. There are several trunks and depositaries back' d up at the
walls; (one well-bound and big box came by express lately from
Washington city, after storage there for nearly twenty years.) Indeed
the whole room is a sort of result and storage collection of my own
past life. I have here various editions of my own writings, and sell
them upon request; one is a big volume of complete poems and prose,
1000 pages, autograph, essays, speeches, portraits from life, &c.
Another is a little "Leaves of Grass," latest date, six portraits,
morocco bound, in pocket-book form.

Fortunately the apartment is quite roomy. There are three windows in
front. At one side is the stove, with a cheerful fire of oak wood,
near by a good supply of fresh sticks, whose faint aroma is plain.
On another side is the bed with white coverlid and woollen blankets.
Toward the windows is a huge arm-chair, (a Christmas present from
Thomas Donaldson's young daughter and son, Philadelphia) timber'd as
by some stout ship's spars, yellow polish'd, ample, with rattan-woven
seat and back, and over the latter a great wide wolf-skin of hairy
black and silver, spread to guard against cold and draught. A
time-worn look and scent of old oak attach both to the chair and the
person occupying it.

But probably (even at the charge of parrot talk) I can give no more
authentic brief sketch than "from an old remembrance copy," where I
have lately put myself on record as follows: Was born May 31, 1819,
in my father's farm-house, at West Hills, L.I., New York State. My
parents' folks mostly farmers and sailors--on my father's side, of
English--on my mother's (Van Velsor's), from Hollandic immigration.
There was, first and last, a large family of children; (I was the
second.) We moved to Brooklyn while I was still a little one in
frocks--and there in B. I grew up out of frocks--then as child and boy
went to the public schools--then to work in a printing office. When
only sixteen or seventeen years old, and for three years afterward, I
went to teaching country schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties,
Long Island, and "boarded round." Then, returning to New York, work'd
as printer and writer, (with an occasional shy at "poetry.")

1848-'9.--About this time--after ten or twelve years of experiences
and work and lots of fun in New York and Brooklyn--went off on a
leisurely journey and working expedition (my brother Jeff with me)
through all the Middle States, and down the Ohio and Mississippi
rivers. Lived a while in New Orleans, and work'd there. (Have lived
quite a good deal in the Southern States.) After a time, plodded back
northward, up the Mississippi, the Missouri, &c., and around to, and
by way of, the great lakes, Michigan, Huron and Erie, to Niagara Falls
and Lower Canada--finally returning through Central New York, and down
the Hudson. 1852-'54--Occupied in house-building in Brooklyn. (For a
little while of the first part of that time in printing a daily and
weekly paper.)

1855.--Lost my dear father this year by death.... Commenced putting
"Leaves of Grass" to press, for good--after many MSS. doings and
undoings--(I had great trouble in leaving out the stock "poetical"
touches--but succeeded at last.) The book has since had some eight
hitches or stages of growth, with one annex, (and another to come out
in 1891, which will complete it.)

1862.--In December of this year went down to the field of war
in Virginia. My brother George reported badly wounded in the
Fredericksburg fight. (For 1863 and '64, see "Specimen Days.") 1865 to
'71--Had a place as clerk (till well on in '73) in the Attorney.

General's Office, Washington. (New York and Brooklyn seem more like
_home_, as I was born near, and brought up in them, and lived, man
and boy, for 30 years. But I lived some years in Washington, and have
visited, and partially lived, in most of the Western and Eastern
cities.)

1873.--This year lost, by death, my dear dear mother--and, just
before, my sister Martha--the two best and sweetest women I have ever
seen or known, or ever expect to see. Same year, February, a sudden
climax and prostration from paralysis. Had been simmering inside for
several years; broke out during those times temporarily, and then
went over. But now a serious attack, beyond cure. Dr. Drinkard, my
Washington physician, (and a first-rate one,) said it was the result
of too extreme bodily and emotional strain continued at Washington and
"down in front," in 1863, '4 and '5. I doubt if a heartier, stronger,
healthier physique, more balanced upon itself, or more unconscious,
more sound, ever lived, from 1835 to '72. My greatest call (Quaker) to
go around and do what I could there in those war-scenes where I had
fallen, among the sick and wounded, was, that I seem'd to be _so
strong and well_. (I consider'd myself invulnerable.) But this last
attack shatter'd me completely. Quit work at Washington, and moved to
Camden, New Jersey--where I have lived since, receiving many buffets
and some precious caresses--and now write these lines. Since then,
(1874-'91) a long stretch of illness, or half-illness, with occasional
lulls. During these latter, have revised and printed over all my
books--bro't out "November Boughs"--and at intervals leisurely and
exploringly travel'd to the Prairie States, the Rocky Mountains,
Canada, to New York, to my birthplace in Long Island, and to Boston.
But physical disability and the war-paralysis above alluded to to
have settled upon me more and more the last year or so. Am now (1891)
domicil'd, and have been for some years, in this little old cottage
and lot in Mickle street, Camden, with a house-keeper and man nurse.
Bodily I am completely disabled, but still write for publication. I
keep generally buoyant spirits, write often as there comes any lull in
physical sufferings, get in the sun and down to the river whenever I
can, retain fair appetite, assimilation and digestion, sensibilities
acute as ever, the strength and volition of my right arm good,
eyesight dimming, but brain normal, and retain my heart's and soul's
unmitigated faith not only in their own original literary plans, but
in the essential bulk of American humanity east and west, north and
south, city and country, through thick and thin, to the last. Nor must
I forget, in conclusion, a special, prayerful, thankful God's blessing
to my dear firm friends and personal helpers, men and women, home and
foreign, old and young.

OUT IN THE OPEN AGAIN

_From the Camden Post, April 16, '91_.

Walt Whitman got out in the mid-April sun and warmth of yesterday,
propelled in his wheel chair, the first time after four months of
imprisonment in his sick room. He has had the worst winter yet, mainly
from grippe and gastric troubles, and threaten'd blindness; but keeps
good spirits, and has a new little forthcoming book in the printer's
hands.

AMERICA'S BULK AVERAGE

If I were ask'd _persona_ to specify the one point of America's people
on which I mainly rely, I should say the final average or bulk quality
of the whole.

Happy indeed w'd I consider myself to give a fair reflection and
representation of even a portion of shows, questions, humanity,
events, unfoldings, thoughts, &c. &c., my age in these States.

The great social, political, historic function of my time has been of
course the attempted secession war.

And was there not something grand, and an inside proof of perennial
grandeur, in that war! We talk of our age's and the States'
materialism--and it is too true. But how amid the whole
sordidness--the entire devotion of America, at any price, to pecuniary
success, merchandise--disregarding all but business and profit--this
war for a bare idea and abstraction--a mere, at bottom, heroic dream
and reminiscence--burst forth in its great devouring flame and
conflagration quickly and fiercely spreading and raging, and
enveloping all, defining in two conflicting ideas--first the Union
cause--second _the other_, a strange deadly interrogation point, hard
to define--Can we not now safely confess it?--with magnificent
rays, streaks of noblest heroism, fortitude, perseverance, and even
conscientiousness, through its pervadingly malignant darkness. What an
area and rounded field, upon the whole--the spirit, arrogance, grim
tenacity of the South--the long stretches of murky gloom--the general
National Will below and behind and comprehending all--not once really
wavering, not a day, not an hour--What could be, or even can be,
grander?

As in that war, its four years--as through the whole history and
development of the New World--these States through all trials,
processes, eruptions, deepest dilemmas, (often straining, tugging at
society's heart-strings, as if some divine curiosity would find out
how much this democracy could stand,) have so far finally and for more
than a century best justified themselves by the average impalpable
quality and personality of the bulk, the People _en masse_.... I am
not sure but my main and chief however indefinite claim for any page
of mine w'd be its derivation, or seeking to derive itself, f'm that
average quality of the American bulk, the people, and getting back to
it again.

LAST SAVED ITEMS

_I'm a vast batch left to oblivion_.

In its highest aspect, and striking its grandest average, essential
Poetry expresses and goes along with essential Religion--has been and
is more the adjunct, and more serviceable to that true religion (for
of course there is a false one and plenty of it) than all the priests
and creeds and churches that now exist or have ever existed--even
while the temporary prevalent theory and practice of poetry is merely
one-side and ornamental and dainty--a love-sigh, a bit of jewelry, a
feudal conceit, an ingenious tale or intellectual _finesse_, adjusted
to the low taste and calibre that will always sufficiently generally
prevail--(ranges of stairs necessary to ascend the higher.)

The sectarian, church and doctrinal, follies, crimes, fanaticisms,
aggregate and individual, so rife all thro' history, are proofs of
the radicalness and universality of the indestructible element of
humanity's Religion, just as much as any, and are the other side of
it. Just as disease proves health, and is the other side of it....
The philosophy of Greece taught normality and the beauty of life.
Christianity teaches how to endure illness and death. I have wonder'd
whether a third philosophy fusing both, and doing full justice to
both, might not be outlined.

It will not be enough to say that no Nation ever achiev'd
materialistic, political and money-making successes, with general
physical comfort, as fully as the United States of America are to-day
achieving them. I know very well that those are the indispensable
foundations--the _sine qua non_ of moral and heroic (poetic) fruitions
to come. For if those pre-successes were all--if they ended at
that--if nothing more were yielded than so far appears--a gross
materialistic prosperity only--America, tried by subtlest tests, were
a failure--has not advanced the standard of humanity a bit further
than other nations. Or, in plain terms, has but inherited and enjoy'd
the results of ordinary claims and preceding ages.

Nature seem'd to use me a long while--myself all well, able, strong
and happy--to portray power, freedom, health. But after a while she
seems to fancy, may-be I can see and understand it all better by being
deprived of most of those.

How difficult it is to add anything more to literature--and how
unsatisfactory for any earnest spirit to serve merely the amusement of
the multitude! (It even seems to me, said H. Heine, more invigorating
to accomplish something bad than something empty.)

The Highest said: Don't let us begin so low--isn't our range too
coarse--too gross?... The Soul answer'd: No, not when we consider what
it is all for--the end involved in Time and Space,

Essentially my own printed records, all my volumes, are doubtless but
off-hand utterances f'm Personality spontaneous, following implicitly
the inscrutable command, dominated by that Personality, vaguely even
if decidedly, and with little or nothing of plan, art, erudition, &c.
If I have chosen to hold the reins, the mastery, it has mainly been to
give the way, the power, the road, to the invisible steeds. (I wanted
to see how a Person of America, the last half of the 19th century, w'd
appear, but quite freely and fairly in honest type.)

Haven't I given specimen clues, if no more? At any rate I have written
enough to weary myself--and I will dispatch it to the printers,
and cease. But how much--how many topics, of the greatest pointand
cogency, I am leaving untouch'd!

WALT WHITMAN'S LAST [49]

_Good-Bye my Fancy_.--concluding Annex to _Leaves of Grass_.

"The Highest said: Don't let us begin so low--isn't our range too
coarse--too gross?... The Soul answer'd: No, not when we consider what
it is all for--the end involved in Time and Space."--_An item from
last page of "Good-Bye."_

H. Heine's first principle of criticising a book was, What motive is
the author trying to carry out, or express or accomplish? and the
second, Has he achiev'd it?

The theory of my _Leaves of Grass_ as a composition of verses has been
from first to last, (if I am to give impromptu a hint of the spinal
marrow of the business, and sign it with my name,) to thoroughly
possess the mind, memory, cognizance of the author himself, with
everything beforehand--a full armory of concrete actualities,
observations, humanity, past poems, ballads, facts, technique, war and
peace, politics, North and South, East and West, nothing too large or
too small, the sciences as far as possible--and above all America and
the present--after and out of which the subject of the poem, long
or short, has been invariably turned over to his Emotionality, even
Personality, to be shaped thence; and emerges strictly therefrom, with
all its merits and demerits on its head. Every page of my poetic or
attempt at poetic utterance therefore smacks of the living physical
identity, date, environment, individuality, probably beyond anything
known, and in style often offensive to the conventions.

This new last cluster, _Good-By my Fancy_ follows suit, and yet with
a difference. The clef is here changed to its lowest, and the little
book is a lot of tremolos about old age, death, and faith. The
physical just lingers, but almost vanishes. The book is garrulous,
irascible (like old Lear) and has various breaks and even tricks to
avoid monotony. It will have to be ciphered and ciphered out long--and
is probably in some respects the most curious part of its author's
baffling works.

_Walt Whitman_.

Note:

[49] Published in _Lippincott's Magazine_, August, 1891, with the
following note added by the editor of the magazine: "With _Good-Bye my
Fancy_, Walt Whitman has rounded out his life-work. This book is his
last message, and of course a great deal will be said about it by
critics all over the world, both in praise and dispraise; but probably
nothing that the critics will say will be as interesting as this
characteristic utterance upon the book by the poet himself. It is the
subjective view as opposed to the objective views of the critics.
Briefly, Whitman gives, as he puts it, 'a hint of the spinal marrow
of the business,' not only of _Good-Bye my Fancy_, but also of the
_Leaves of Grass_

"It was only after considerable persuasion on the editor's part that
Mr. Whitman consented to write the above. As a concise explanation
of the poet's life-work it must have great value to his readers and
admirers. After the critics 'have ciphered and ciphered out long,'
they will probably have nothing better to say."