Walt's - The Walt Whitman Archive

353 Pages·2002·1.53 MB·English

Intimate with Walt
the iowa whitman
series
Ed Folsom
series editor
Horace Traubel at about the time he was transcribing
his conversations with Whitman.
Courtesy Library of Congress.
Intimate with
Walt
selections from
Whitman’s
Conversations
with
Horace Traubel,
1888–1892
edited by
Gary
Schmidgall
University of Iowa Press
iowa city
University of Iowa Press,
Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 2001
by the University of Iowa Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Cameron Poulter
http://www.uiowa.edu/(cid:1)uipress
No part of this book may be reproduced or used
in any form or by any means
without permission in writing from the publisher.
All reasonable steps have been taken
to contact copyright holders of material used in this book.
The publisher would be pleased to make suitable arrangements
with any whom it has not been possible to reach.
The publication of this book
was generously supported by
the University of Iowa Foundation.
Printed on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Traubel, Horace, 1858–1919
[With Walt Whitman in Camden. Selections]
Intimate with Walt: selections from Whitman’s conversations
with Horace Traubel, 1888–1892 / edited by Gary Schmidgall.
p. cm. — (The Iowa Whitman series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn0-87745-766-2 (cloth), isbn0-87745-767-0 (pbk.)
1. Whitman, Walt, 1819–1892—Interviews. 2. Poets, American—
19th century—Interviews. 3. United States—Intellectual life—19th century.
4. Poetry—Authorship. I. Schmidgall, Gary, 1945– II. Title. III. Series.
ps3231.t68 2001
811(cid:1).3—dc21
[b] 2001018116
01 02 03 04 05 c5 4 3 2 1
01 02 03 04 05 p5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction vii
I
The Mickle Street Ménage 3
Serendipity: Visitors and Vignettes 11
Walt on Walt 23
Walt on the Whitman Family 33
Walt on Images of Himself 39
Memories of Long Island, Brooklyn, and Manhattan 44
II
Credos 51
Walt on the Literary Life 62
BeforeLeaves of Grass 69
About Leaves of Grass 71
Individual Poems and Sequences 83
PrintingLeaves of Grass 89
Leaves of Grass and the Critics 97
Advice 110
Expurgation 113
Waning Powers 116
III
Avowal Letters 123
Walt and His Inner Circle 132
A Flaminger Soul: William Douglas O’Connor 141
Magnificent Potencies: Robert Green Ingersoll 144
Walt and His Boys 147
Walt’s “Big Secret” 154
IV
Views of America 161
Affection, Love, and Sex 171
The Woman Sex 175
Memories of Washington and the Secession War 179
Turned to a Generous Key: Abraham Lincoln 189
Race 193
Famous Authors 198
Walt and the Bard 211
Sweet Magnetic Man: Ralph Waldo Emerson 216
Oxygenated Men and Women: Walt’s Pantheon 222
Scoundrel Time 228
Ecclesiastic 233
Music, Opera, and Marietta 238
Bottoms Up 243
Walt’s Way with Words 247
Peeves 250
Pleasures 254
Walt on Various and Sundry 256
V
“A Frightful Gone-ness”—The Physical Decline 269
“A Voice from Death”—The Last Months 276
“The Last Mile Driven”—The End 281
“The Touch of Peace”—Mortuary 284
The Burial House at Harleigh Cemetery 290
The Last Hurrah: May1919 293
Citations 297
Bibliographical Note 311
Index 313
Introduction
I am disposed to trust myself more and more to your younger
body and spirit, knowing, as I do, that you love me, that you
will not betray me—more than that (and in a way better than
that), that you understand me and can be depended upon to rep-
resent me not only vehemently but with authority.
—Walt Whitman to Horace Traubel
On a “rainy & dark & raw” March day in 1888, Walt Whitman wrote
somewhat forlornly to his journalist friend William Sloane Kennedy
from Camden, the rather gritty New Jersey town across the Delaware
River from Philadelphia: “Nothing new in particular with me—more
or less evidences of gradual physical deterioration—but spirits good—
appetite &c fair—& you know I begin my 70th year now in ab’t two
months—thank God indeed that things are as well as they are.”
Little could Whitman have imagined that, two days later, something
new and remarkable would happen to change the four remaining years
of his life—and cause him many times to thank God that “things are as
well as they are”—for on March28 commenced the most astonishing
oral history project in all of American letters. On that day twenty-nine-
year-old Horace Traubel began to record, in a personal form of short-
hand, what he thought were the salient portions of his almost daily con-
versations with the most famous resident of Camden—and, one might
venture, of America. Traubel, indeed, tells us that one day a letter ar-
rived from Great Britain at 328 Mickle Street addressed simply “Walt
Whitman, America,” and the old poet was delighted at how smartly it
had reachedhim.
The very first of the more than 1.9 million words transcribed were a
simple “At Walt’s this evening.” Titled With Walt Whitman in Camden,
the first volume of these conversations was published under Traubel’s
supervision in 1906. He brought out two more volumes before he died in
1919; only in 1996 did the final eighth and ninth volumes appear.
Inevitably, much in these nearly 5,000 pages is mundane and
ephemeral: Horace’s daily eyeball on Walt’s look and mood, housekeep-
ing affairs, and the inconsequential comings and goings of friends and
strangers. The intrepid reader can be forgiven for thinking certain topics
vii
become beaten like the proverbial dead horse. Several in Walt’s circle
(though not Walt himself), for instance, were keen on the debate over
authorship of the plays of Shakespeare; this subject frequently surfaces
at Mickle Street. Then one thinks of the extended lucubrations over the
goodness or badness of photographic, painterly, and sculptural images
of the poet, not to mention page upon page of jawboning about the
design and printing of Whitman’s books that only a bibliographical
scholar could dote on. And many of the hot political and cultural issues
of Whitman’s day, chewed over at length, are of small interest now.
That said, With Walt Whitman in Camdenmust still be accounted a
uniquely rich resource, for running through it are veins of pure gold. It
is laced with so many passages crucial for a full, rounded, and, finally,
humane understanding of America’s first great national poet. Whitman
made much of the charisma of the individual human voice, and nothing
on the wide shelf of Whitman’s own writings and all the commentary on
him gives a more vivid sense of the poet’s actual, personal voice than
Traubel’s nine volumes. They also give us much of more specific import,
that is, observations and assertions that Whitman (being America’s
“Good Gray Poet”) would never have dared to voice in public or in print:
candid views about himself; revealing retrospects on his purposes and
methods in composing his poems; superbly philosophical or trenchant
squelches of his critics; poignant memories of his past life and friend-
ships; provocative, often coruscating comments on American society;
and rousing views, both hostile and honeyed, on literary celebrities and
public figures.
Perhaps most valuable are the many remarks Whitman threw off
en passant that resonate as credos fundamental to our understanding
of Leaves of Grass. Nor of small price is the wonderful window provided
here on Whitman’s sense of humor (there was a theory abroad in his
day that he had none) and on just how the “critter” Whitman actually
existed in the America he so enthusiastically celebrated. There is much
serendipitous hilarity in these pages but also, at the other extreme,
many a wrenching, deeply moving, or epiphanic passage. These veins
of critical gold are mined in the following pages—but not exhaustively,
for there is no substitute for the experience of reading all from beginning
to end.
Young Traubel had first met Whitman in 1873, when he was a teen-
agerand the then more-notorious-than-celebrated poet was fifty-four,
gray-bearded, and already seriously incapacitated by various ailments.
Traubel, like Whitman, had left school at the age of twelve and was in
1888 a clerk in the Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Bank on Chestnut Street
in Philadelphia. As the months of daily visits passed by, he became Whit-
man’s alter ego, factotum, and liaison with the local press and many a
visiting stranger, as well as his increasingly overworked amanuensis
and, crucially, a manager of the poet’s financial and printing affairs.
Introduction viii
Traubel’s loyalty and the regularity of his visits to the little, ram-
shackle two-story house were staggering. A passing remark he made to-
ward the end of his four years of service—“Never miss a morning”—
was almost true: the days he records not appearing or being out of town
are extremely rare. When he did miss a day, it was usually a Sunday. Af-
ter one Sunday in which he had been absent, Traubel notes that Whit-
man “greeted me as ‘a stranger.’” Once, when he missed two consecu-
tive days, Traubel records that Whitman “called out ‘Horace’ with great
cordiality—took and held my hand—said, ‘I had wondered what had
become of you: was going to send up to ask tomorrow.’ I explained my
absence—he assenting, ‘I know—it was all right—I am not disposed to
question it. But we missed you.’”
Traubel’s daily visits were frequently multiple. “Four times there to-
day—8a.m.—5:30p.m.—8p.m.and again on return from Philadelphia
at midnight,” he records; then, a week later: “The fourth time at W.’s at
12:40.” Gradually, however, he concluded there was an ideal time to ac-
cost and record: “Eight o’clock is his good hour invariably if there is a
good hour in the day. For that reason I have mostly made it the hour for
consultation.” Rarely did he arrive after 9p.m.In the event that Walt
was not in a consulting mood, Traubel knew well enough to beat a hasty
retreat: “I did not prolong my stay,” he notes of one April day, “W. not in
good talking mood. In such cases I never linger.”
ThepracticalresponsibilitiesTraubelbegantoshouldergrewsteadily
as Whitman’s health continued to deteriorate. Especially onerous was
the correspondence he undertook on the poet’s behalf. In the days after
the first serious health scare of June 1888, Traubel records, “Wrote
a dozen replies. Sometime W.’s correspondence gets voluminous and
keeps me working steadily until daybreak.” In the last months this task
made heavy demands: “I suppose 25 or 30 letters in all today.” Soon it
was encroaching on his break time at work (“Wrote 12 or 20 letters be-
tween times at the Bank”) and on his home life: “Up home then and the
whole evening spent writing letters to W’s friends, Europe and home.”
A couple of weeks later an aghast Traubel remarks, doubtless with a
cramped writing hand, “My letter-writing is assuming enormous pro-
portions, but I must stick to it.” Sometimes the “news” at Mickle Street
would change even before Traubel could get a batch of letters into the
mail: “Striking change in W. My many exuberant letters of forenoon
already knocked off their feet.”
The help of most lasting significance that Traubel offered Whitman,
of course, concerned the major publications of these last years: Novem-
ber Boughs (1888), the nine hundred–page Complete Poetry and Prose
of Walt Whitman (1888), and the final, or so-called deathbed, edition
of Leaves of Grass (1892). The day Whitman formally announced his
intention to hand over the November Boughs manuscript to a printer,
he warned Traubel, “I shall need to enlist you as my co-worker. I am
physically helpless. I could not do this work alone: I seem every day to be
Introduction ix