The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman Part 4

"Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!

These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you; These immense meadows--these interminable rivers-- You are immense and interminable as they; These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution--you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, pa.s.sion, dissolution.

"The hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency; Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance and ennui, what you are picks its way."

This is indeed a pride that is "calming and excellent to the soul"; that "dissolves poverty from its need and riches from its conceit."

And humility? Is there, then, no place for that virtue so much praised by the haughty? Humility is the sweet spontaneous grace of an aspiring, finely developed nature which sees always heights ahead still unclimbed, which outstrips itself in eager longing for excellence still unattained.

Genuine humility takes good care of itself as men rise in the scale of being; for every height climbed discloses still new heights beyond. Or it is a wise caution in fortune's favourites lest they themselves should mistake, as the unthinking crowd around do, the glitter reflected back upon them by their surroundings for some superiority inherent in themselves. It befits them well if there be also due pride, pride of humanity behind. But to say to a man, 'Be humble' is like saying to one who has a battle to fight, a race to run, 'You are a poor, feeble creature; you are not likely to win and you do not deserve to.' Say rather to him, 'Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made for victory: go forward with a joyful confidence in that result sooner or later, and the sooner or the later depends mainly on yourself.'

"What Christ appeared for in the moral-spiritual field for humankind, namely, that in respect to the absolute soul there is in the possession of such by each single individual something so transcendent, so incapable of gradations (like life) that to that extent it places all being on a common level, utterly regardless of the distinctions of intellect, virtue, station, or any height or lowliness whatever" is the secret source of that deathless sentiment of Equality which how many able heads imagine themselves to have slain with ridicule and contempt as Johnson, kicking a stone, imagined he had demolished Idealism when he had simply attributed to the word an impossible meaning. True, _In_equality is one of Nature's words: she moves forward always by means of the exceptional. But the moment the move is accomplished, then all her efforts are toward equality, toward bringing up the rear to that standpoint. But social inequalities, cla.s.s distinctions, do not stand for or represent Nature's inequalities.

Precisely the contrary in the long run. They are devices for holding up many that would else gravitate down and keeping down many who would else rise up; for providing that some should reap who have not sown, and many sow without reaping. But literature tallies the ways of Nature; for though itself the product of the exceptional, its aim is to draw all men up to its own level. The great writer is "hungry for equals day and night," for so only can he be fully understood. "The meal is equally set"; all are invited. Therefore is literature, whether consciously or not, the greatest of all forces on the side of Democracy.

Carlyle has said there is no grand poem in the world but is at bottom a biography--the life of a man. Walt Whitman's poems are not the biography of a man, but they are his actual presence. It is no vain boast when he exclaims,

"Camerado! this is no book; Who touches this touches a man."

He has infused himself into words in a way that had not before seemed possible; and he causes each reader to feel that he himself or herself has an actual relationship to him, is a reality full of inexhaustible significance and interest to the poet. The power of his book, beyond even its great intellectual force, is the power with which he makes this felt; his words lay more hold than the grasp of a hand, strike deeper than the gaze or the flash of an eye; to those who comprehend him he stands "nigher than the nighest."

America has had the shaping of Walt Whitman, and he repays the filial debt with a love that knows no stint. Her vast lands with their varied, brilliant climes and rich products, her political scheme, her achievements and her failures, all have contributed to make these poems what they are both directly and indirectly. Above all has that great conflict, the Secession War, found voice in him. And if the reader would understand the true causes and nature of that war, ostensibly waged between North and South, but underneath a tussle for supremacy between the good and the evil genius of America (for there were just as many secret sympathizers with the secession-slave-power in the North as in the South) he will find the clue in the pages of Walt Whitman. Rarely has he risen to a loftier height than in the poem which heralds that volcanic upheaval:--

"Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier and fiercer sweep!

Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour'd what the earth gave me; Long I roam'd the woods of the north--long I watch'd Niagara pouring; I travel'd the prairies over, and slept on their breast-- I cross'd the Nevadas, I cross'd the plateaus; I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail'd out to sea; I sail'd through the storm, I was refresh'd by the storm; I watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves; I mark'd the white combs where they career'd so high, curling over; I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds; Saw from below what arose and mounted (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!) Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellow'd after the lightning; Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky; --These, and such as these, I, elate, saw--saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful; All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me; Yet there with my soul I fed--I fed content, supercilious.

"'Twas well, O soul! 'twas a good preparation you gave me!

Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill; Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us; Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities; Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring; Torrents of men (sources and rills of the Northwest, are you indeed inexhaustible?) What, to pavements and homesteads here--what were those storms of the mountains and sea?

What, to pa.s.sions I witness around me to-day? Was the sea risen?

Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?

Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage; Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front--Cincinnati, Chicago, unchain'd; --What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here!

How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes!

How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes of lightning!

How DEMOCRACY, with desperate, vengeful port strides on, shown through the dark by those flashes of lightning!

(Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark, In a lull of the deafening confusion.)

"Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! stride with vengeful stroke!

And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities!

Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good; My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong nutriment, --Long had I walk'd my cities, my country roads, through farms, only half satisfied; One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the ground before me, Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low; --The cities I loved so well, I abandon'd and left--I sped to the certainties suitable to me; Hungering, hungering, hungering for primal energies, and nature's dauntlessness; I refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish it only; I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire--on the water and air I waited long; --But now I no longer wait--I am fully satisfied--I am glutted; I have witness'd the true lightning--I have witness'd my cities electric; I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise; Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds, No more on the mountain roam, or sail the stormy sea."

But not for the poet a soldier's career. "To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead" was the part he chose. During the whole war he remained with the army, but only to spend the days and nights, saddest, happiest of his life, in the hospital tents. It was a beautiful destiny for this lover of men, and a proud triumph for this believer in the People; for it was the People that he beheld, tried by severest tests.

He saw them "of their own choice, fighting, dying for their own idea, insolently attacked by the secession-slave-power." From the workshop, the farm, the store, the desk, they poured forth, officered by men who had to blunder into knowledge at the cost of the wholesale slaughter of their troops. He saw them "tried long and long by hopelessness, mismanagement, defeat; advancing unhesitatingly through incredible slaughter; sinewy with unconquerable resolution. He saw them by tens of thousands in the hospitals tried by yet drearier, more fearful tests--the wound, the amputation, the shattered face, the slow hot fever, the long impatient anchorage in bed; he marked their fort.i.tude, decorum, their religious nature and sweet affection." Finally, newest, most significant sight of all, victory achieved, the cause, the Union safe, he saw them return back to the workshop, the farm, the desk, the store, instantly reabsorbed into the peaceful industries of the land:--

"A pause--the armies wait.

A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait.

The world, too, waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn They melt, they disappear."

"Plentifully supplied, last-needed proof of Democracy in its personalities!" ratifying on the broadest scale Wordsworth's haughty claim for average man--"Such is the inherent dignity of human nature that there belong to it sublimities of virtue which all men may attain, and which no man can transcend."

But, aware that peace and prosperity may be even still severer tests of national as of individual virtue and greatness of mind, Walt Whitman scans with anxious, questioning eye the America of to-day. He is no smooth-tongued prophet of easy greatness.

"I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue questioning every one I meet; Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before?

Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?"

He sees clearly as any the incredible flippancy, the blind fury of parties, the lack of great leaders, the plentiful meanness and vulgarity; the labour question beginning to open like a yawning gulf.... "We sail a dangerous sea of seething currents, all so dark and untried.... It seems as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep intestine difficulty, and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection saying lo! the roads! The only plans of development, long and varied, with all terrible balks and ebullitions! You said in your soul, I will be empire of empires, putting the history of old-world dynasties, conquests, behind me as of no account--making a new history, a history of democracy ... I alone inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of America, are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your soul, be it so. But behold the cost, and already specimens of the cost. Thought you greatness was to ripen for you like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that you must conquer it through ages ... must pay for it with proportionate price. For you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the h.e.l.l of pa.s.sion, the decay of faith, the long postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions, prophets, thunderstorms, deaths, new projections and invigorations of ideas and men."

"Yet I have dreamed, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our fate, whose long unravelling stretches mysteriously through time--dreamed, portrayed, hinted already--a little or a larger band, a band of brave and true, unprecedented yet, arm'd and equipt at every point, the members separated, it may be by different dates and states, or south or north, or east or west, a year, a century here, and other centuries there, but always one, compact in soul, conscience-conserving, G.o.d-inculcating, inspired achievers not only in literature, the greatest art, but achievers in all art--a new undying order, dynasty from age to age transmitted, a band, a cla.s.s at least as fit to cope with current years, our dangers, needs, as those who, for their time, so long, so well, in armour or in cowl, upheld and made ill.u.s.trious that far-back-feudal, priestly world."

Of that band, is not Walt Whitman the pioneer? Of that New World literature, say, are not his poems the beginning? A rude beginning if you will. He claims no more and no less. But whatever else they may lack they do not lack vitality, initiative, sublimity. They do not lack that which makes life great and death, with its "transfers and promotions, its superb vistas," exhilarating--a resplendent faith in G.o.d and man which will kindle anew the faith of the world:--

"Poets to come! Orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,

"Arouse! Arouse--for you must justify me--you must answer.

"I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

"I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you."

ANNE GILCHRIST.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANNE GILCHRIST

Photogravure from a painting by her son, made in 1882]

LETTER I[3]

WALT WHITMAN TO W. M. ROSSETTI AND ANNE GILCHRIST

_Washington, December 9, 1869._

DEAR MR. ROSSETTI:

Your letter of last summer to William O'Connor with the pa.s.sages transcribed from a lady's correspondence, had been shown me by him, and copy lately furnished me, which I have just been rereading. I am deeply touched by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from England, and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to me to get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them to Mr.

O'Connor but approve that action. I realize indeed of this emphatic and smiling _well done_ from the heart and conscience of a true wife and mother, and one too whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your letter, after flowing through the heart and conscience, must also move through and satisfy science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto received no eulogium so magnificent.

I send by same mail with this, same address as this letter, two photographs, taken within a few months. One is intended for the lady (if I may be permitted to send it her)--and will you please accept the other, with my respects and love? The picture is by some criticised very severely indeed, but I hope you will not dislike it, for I confess to myself a perhaps capricious fondness for it, as my own portrait, over some scores that have been made or taken at one time or another.

I am still employed in the Attorney General's office. My p. o. address remains the same. I am quite well and hearty. My new editions, considerably expanded, with what suggestions &c. I have to offer, presented I hope in more definite form, will probably get printed the coming spring. I shall forward you early copies. I send my love to Moncur Conway, if you see him. I wish he would write to me. If the pictures don't come, or get injured on the way, I will try again by express. I want you to loan this letter to the lady, or if she wishes it, give it to her to keep.

WALT WHITMAN.

LETTER II