WHITMAN AND EMERSON

THE relations between Whitman and Emerson form an interesting subject. There is little doubt that the two men had a deep mutual respect and admiration for each other; and however any chance expression dropped at any time, on either side, might seem to belie this, I believe it lasted to the end. It is quite likely that Whitman owed something in the inception of “Leaves of Grass” to Emerson’s writings. This does not mean of course that, without Emerson, Whitman would have failed of his work; but, as so often happens in such cases, when a mass of material is forming somewhat undefinedly, and seeking outlet, the work of the predecessor comes to give it a decisive touch, and bring it to birth.

In his very interesting “Reminiscences of Walt Whitman” (originally printed in the Atlantic Monthly, February 1902[20]), John Townsend Trowbridge touches on this subject; and without endorsing his remarks in every particular, it may be interesting to quote them. Relating a conversation he had with Whitman one Sunday at Boston, in the spring of 1860, when Whitman had come over to Boston to see his third edition through the press, Trowbridge says:—

“I was extremely interested to know how far the influence of our greatest writer (Emerson) had been felt in the making of a book which, without being at all imitative, was pitched in the very highest key of self-reliance. In his letter to Emerson, printed in the second edition of ‘Leaves of Grass,’ speaking of ‘Individuality, that new moral American continent,’ Whitman had averred: ‘Those shores you found; I say, you led the States there—have led me there.’ And it seemed hardly possible that the first determined attempt to cast into literature a complete man, with all his pride and passions, should have been made by one whose feet were not already firmly planted on ‘those shores.’ Then there was the significant fact of his having mailed a copy of his first edition to Emerson.

“Whitman talked frankly on the subject, that day on Prospect Hill, and told how he became acquainted with Emerson’s writings. He was at work as a carpenter (his father’s trade before him) in Brooklyn, building with his own hands and on his own account small and very plain houses for laboring men; as soon as one was finished and sold, beginning another,—houses of two or three rooms. This was in 1854; he was then thirty-five years old. He lived at home with his mother; going off to his work in the morning and returning at night, carrying his dinner-pail like any common laborer. Along with his pail he usually carried a book, between which and his solitary meal he would divide his nooning. Once the book chanced to be a volume of Emerson; and from that time he took with him no other writer. His half-formed purpose, his vague aspirations, all that had lain smouldering so long within him, waiting to be fired, rushed into flame at the touch of those electric words,—the words that burn in the prose-poem ‘Nature,’ and in the essays on ‘Spiritual Laws,’ the ‘Oversoul,’ ‘Self-reliance.’ The sturdy carpenter in his working-day garb, seated on his pile of boards; a poet in that rude disguise, as yet but dimly conscious of his powers; in one hand the sandwich put up for him by his good mother, his other hand holding open the volume that revealed to him his greatness and his destiny—this is the picture which his simple narrative called up, that Sunday so long ago, and which has never faded from my memory.

“He freely admitted that he could never have written his poems if he had not first ‘come to himself,’ and that Emerson helped him to ‘find himself.’ I asked if he thought that he would have come to himself without that help. He said, ‘Yes, but it would have taken longer.’ And he used this characteristic expression: ‘I was simmering, simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil.’

“It was in that summer of 1854, while he was still at work upon his houses, that he began the ‘Leaves of Grass,’ which he wrote, and rewrote, and re-rewrote (to quote again his own words), and afterwards set in type with his own hand.

“I make this statement thus explicit because a question of profound personal and literary interest is involved, and because it is claimed by some of the later friends of Whitman that he wrote his first ‘Leaves of Grass’ before he had read Emerson. When they urge his own authority for their contention, I can only reply that he told me distinctly the contrary, when his memory was fresher.

“The Emersonian influence is often clearly traceable in Whitman’s early poems; seldom in the later. It is in the first line of the very first poem in which he struck the keynote of his defiant chant: ‘I celebrate myself.’ Yet the form Whitman chose for his message was as independent of Emerson’s as of all other literary forms whatsoever.”

One of the “later friends” to whom Trowbridge refers is no doubt John Burroughs, who on page 16 of his “Walt Whitman as Poet and Person” (New York, 1867) says, speaking of the first edition of “Leaves of Grass”:—

“I take occasion to say that Whitman, up to the time he published the quarto edition, here mentioned, had never read the ‘Essays’ or ‘Poems’ of Mr. Emerson at all. This is positively true. In the summer following that publication, he first became acquainted with the ‘Essays’ in this wise: He was frequently in the habit of going down to the sea-shore at Coney Island, and spending the day bathing in the surf and rambling along the shore, or lounging on the sand; and on one of these excursions he put a volume of Emerson into the little basket containing his dinner and his towel. There, for the first, he read ‘Nature,’ &c. Soon, on similar excursions, the two other volumes followed. Two years still elapsed, however, and after his second edition was issued, before he read Mr. Emerson’s poems.”

It is interesting, in these two quotations, to find the incident of the Emerson volume in the dinner-basket repeated, yet placed by one writer in the year 1854, and by the other, equally decisively in 1856! The matter is not extremely important; but it illustrates the extreme and eternal difficulty of getting reliable historical evidence. In this case there are three memories, either of which may be at fault, and one of which must be—Whitman’s, Trowbridge’s, and Burroughs’. Did Whitman, in forgetfulness, give to Burroughs, sometime between ’63 and ’67, a different account from what he gave to Trowbridge in ’60? or did either Burroughs or Trowbridge only imperfectly remember the account he heard? It is difficult to say. Whitman in his quite late years seems to have adopted the Burroughs views; but Whitman’s memory in his later years became very unreliable. In his “Backward Glance o’er Travel’d Roads” (published in 1888) he says, speaking of the importance of the Secession War in his own life and thought, that “ Without those three or four years and the experiences they gave, ‘Leaves of Grass’ would not now be existing”; and that although he had “made a start before,” the beginnings of “Leaves of Grass” might—except for this—have come to naught,” almost positively would have come to naught.” This, considering that far the larger and more important part of “Leaves of Grass” was already printed and published in the 1860 edition, a year or more before the war broke out, is rather disconcerting; and suggests that his memory may have been equally at fault with regard to Emerson’s part in “Leaves of Grass,” as it was with regard to the part played by the war.

I say the matter is not very important; because it is obvious that whatever part Emerson’s teaching played it was only a small part and of brief duration. It may very possibly only have come in after a start of some kind had already been made on “Leaves of Grass” (see letter quoted, infra, p. 186); it certainly had nothing to do with the long “foreground” of Whitman’s early life on farms, in cities, and by the sea-shore, where the book was really prepared; nor anything to do with the special developments of the poems, as in Children of Adam, or their literary style—things which Emerson distinctly disapproved of. At the same time it seems to me quite likely that at some moment the magnificent intellectual intuitive outlook of Emerson, as of an eagle in high-soaring vision of seas and continents, sweeping the whole world into the compass of his thought, did give to Whitman just what he might have been waiting for (though probably in any case it would have come to him some time), the magic touch and inspiration which set his kosmos in order. No doubt an outside push of some kind is often required for the launching of a big ship. On the whole the evidence brought forward by Trowbridge seems to me to favour his case—the fact of Whitman’s sending a copy of his first edition to Emerson (showing that he already thought something of Emerson’s opinion), his printed letter to Emerson in the second edition, “those shores you found ... have led me there,” his addressing Emerson as “Master” in the same letter, and so on. In the “Notes left over” of “Specimen Days” (p. 321) Whitman himself says: “The reminiscence that years ago I began like most youngsters to have a touch (though it came late, and was only on the surface) of Emerson on the brain—that I read his writings, and addressed him in print as ‘Master,’ and for a month or so thought of him as such—I retain not only with composure, but positive satisfaction. I have noticed that most young people of eager minds pass through this stage of exercise.”

With regard to Emerson’s opinion about the new poems at this period, it is clear from his letter of July 21, 1855, to Whitman: “Dear Sir,—I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of ‘Leaves of Grass.’ I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed,” &c.,—it is very clear, I say, that Emerson was greatly impressed, and indeed delighted, with the volume. With his clear and piercing vision he seems to have at once (or in a wonderfully brief time) reached through the odd rough husk to the sweet and precious kernel of the book; and for this as well as for his hearty expressions of appreciation the world must ever be grateful to him. Nevertheless the book, as was inevitable, roused in him queer doubts and heart-searchings. Either in 1855 or in the early part of 1856 Emerson called twice upon Whitman; and though in these visits the foundation of a personal friendship was laid, it is clear that they revealed also great gulfs of difference. Emerson could not quite stomach Walt Whitman, the rough, with his invasively democratic ways, nor see anything particularly interesting in his working-folk chums and pals; while Whitman, on the other hand, found his visitor too literary and intellectual. On the occasion of my own visit to the States in 1877, I stayed a night at Emerson’s house at Concord—most pleasantly and hospitably received—and enjoyed greatly his talk as we walked up and down the old-fashioned garden, or sat in his book-lined study. When I spoke of Whitman, and asked what he thought of him, he laughed (a little nervously, I thought) and said, “Well, I thought he had some merit at one time: there was a good deal of promise in his first edition—but he is a wayward, fanciful man.[21] I saw him in New York, and asked him to dine at my hotel. He shouted for a ‘tin mug’ for his beer. Then he had a noisy fire-engine society. And he took me there, and was like a boy over it, as if there had never been such a thing before!” He went on, in words which I do not recall, to object to the absence of metre in “Leaves of Grass”; and ended, I remember, by taking down a volume of Tennyson from the shelf—handling it affectionately and showing me the author’s autograph on the fly-leaf—and dwelling on the beauty of the Tennysonian diction and metre.[22]

These few words about Whitman, spoken by Emerson to a casual visitor, must of course not be given too much weight, or supposed to represent his total and final estimate. But I insert them here, as they probably represent pretty fairly certain points of difference and even disagreement which he discovered on personal acquaintance. On further reading, too, doubtless Emerson felt that he could not corroborate or justify a great deal of the matter, as well as the metre, of “Leaves of Grass.” He was probably swayed to and fro by various currents of feeling with regard to it, and could not settle clearly in his mind what he did think. This is illustrated by a letter he wrote to Thomas Carlyle in 1856, to accompany a copy of the book, which he was sending:—

“One book, last summer, came out in New York, a nondescript monster, which yet had terrible eyes and buffalo strength, and was indisputably American—which I thought to send you; but the book throve so badly with the few to whom I showed it, and wanted good morals so much, that I never did. Yet I believe now again, I shall. It is called ‘Leaves of Grass,’—was written and printed by a journeyman printer in Brooklyn, New York, named Walter Whitman; and after you have looked into it, if you think, as you may, that it is only an auctioneer’s inventory of a warehouse, you can light your pipe with it.”

It could only have been a few weeks after the above letter had been written to Carlyle about the first “Leaves of Grass,” that—quite unexpectedly to Emerson—a second edition of the book appeared, with Emerson’s complete letter of 21st July 1855, printed in an Appendix, and an extract from the same letter, “I greet you at the beginning of a great career,” in gold upon the cover! Besides this, there was a long reply-letter from Whitman to Emerson, addressing the latter as “Master,” and containing the above-quoted passages about “those shores you found,” &c.

Whitman has been often blamed for this quite unauthorised use of Emerson’s letter—and certainly according to our Cis-Atlantic literary codes it was a cool thing to do: very cool—considering of course that in this second edition were many pieces that Emerson had never even seen! But though the act may be difficult to defend, it must be remembered that public opinion and practice on the other side of the water was and is decidedly more lax and easy-going in such matters than on this side. Whitman probably failed to realise (it was hardly his nature to do so), the reaction this advertisement might have upon Emerson and his interests. He was thinking of his own bantling first edition, flouted, scorned, neglected, and like to perish, and of the splendid testimony from one of the greatest of living names in letters, which would suddenly lift it into fields of life and light. “I supposed the letter was meant to be blazoned,”—he said one day to Trowbridge—“I regarded it as the chart of an emperor.” It did not occur to him that its blazoning might possibly cost the emperor his throne!

But indeed the matter was serious, comically serious. Here was Emerson, the imperial one, whose finger laid on a book was like a lighthouse beam to all the coteries of Boston, actually recommending some new poems to the whole world in terms of unstinted praise. The whole world, of course, went to buy them. A hundred parlors of mildly literary folk or primly polite Unitarian and Congregational circles beheld scenes over which kind history has drawn a veil!—the good husband or head of the house, after tea or supper, settling down in his chair, “Now for the new book, so warmly spoken of!” The ladies taking their knitting and sewing, their dresses rustling slightly as they arrange themselves to listen, the general atmosphere of propriety and selectness; and then the reading! Oh, the reading! The odd words, the unusual phrases, the jumbled sequences, the stumbling uncertainty of the reader, the wonderment on the faces of the listeners, and finally—confusion and the pit! the book closed, and hasty flight and dispersion of the meeting. Then, later, timid glances again at the dreadful volume, only to find, amid quagmires and swamps, the reptilian author addressing the belovèd Emerson as “Master,” and saying, “these shores you found!” Was it a nightmare? Had the emperor gone mad? or was his printed letter merely a fraud and a forgery?

One can imagine the annoyance all this caused to Emerson himself—the deluge of letters and inquiries, the whirlpools of controversy among his myriad followers, the would-be champions who gaged their word and everlasting destiny on his entire innocence, &c. Truly the throne rocked for a season. But it was too well based to be upset. Indeed I cannot but think that Emerson, with his sterling good sense and mental solidity, rather enjoyed it all at bottom—the uproar, the searchings of heart, and the confusion of his congregations and coteries (whose narrowness and provincialism were often a trial to him). In his heart of hearts—though doubtless he thought Whitman had played him unfair, and though certainly he did not think Whitman’s manner of speech on sexual questions either wise or gracious—still I believe he must have recognised and did at that time recognise that the book, “Leaves of Grass,” was a tremendous gain to the world, and that it was even going to do pioneer work for him, Emerson, along his own line.

I think I am right in saying that there was no public retaliation by Emerson against the author of the offending book. I have, at any rate, not heard of any. There was, however, considerable public stir against it. It was savagely criticised, and “so extreme was the feeling excited by it, that some good people in New York seriously contemplated having the author indicted and tried for publishing an obscene book.”[23] The publishers, Fowler & Wells, fearing injury to their business, threw the book up; and so after a brief career its publication ceased, and for the next four years it remained as a thing dead.

It was in 1860 that Emerson and Whitman met again. Whitman had come to Boston to superintend the printing of a third edition, to be issued by Thayer and Eldridge. Heroic, calm, and undaunted, unresentful even of neglect, he simply went on his way. If the first and second editions of “Leaves of Grass” had aroused opposition, the third was still more likely to do so. It gathered together many of the most offending poems, with new ones of the same character, in two groups, Children of Adam, and Calamus, which were certain to attract attention. It was bold indeed of Thayer and Eldridge to undertake the publication. Whether by any chance one of the firm may have persuaded Emerson to intervene with the author, in favour of a general toning down of the book, I know not. But it is certain that Emerson came to see him, and taking him out onto Boston Common, walked with him for two hours discussing this very subject. Of that memorable conversation Whitman must speak for himself. In “Specimen Days,” p. 191, under date 10-13 Oct. 1881, he says: “Up and down this breadth by Beacon Street, between these same old elms, I walked for two hours, of a bright sharp February midday twenty-one years ago, with Emerson, then in his prime, keen, physically and morally magnetic, arm’d at every point, and when he chose wielding the emotional just as well as the intellectual. During those two hours he was the talker and I the listener. It was an argument, statement, reconnoitring, review, attack, and pressing home (like an army corps in order, artillery, cavalry, infantry), of all that could be said against that part (and a main part) in the construction of my poems, Children of Adam. More precious than gold to me that dissertation. It afforded me, ever after, this strange and paradoxical lesson; each point of Emerson’s statement was unanswerable, no judge’s charge ever more complete or convincing, I could never hear the points better put—and then I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way. ‘What have you to say then to such things?’ said Emerson, pausing in conclusion. ‘Only that while I can’t answer them at all, I feel more settled than ever to adhere to my own theory, and exemplify it,’ was my candid response. Whereupon we went and had a good dinner at the American House. And thenceforward I never wavered or was touched with qualms (as I confess I had been two or three times before).”

Very fine is this scene between the two men. Emerson bearing no grudge against the buffalo poet, candidly doing his best to give “Leaves of Grass” its proper scope, and save it (as he thought) from its own indiscretions—Whitman, loyal to himself and to Emerson, equally candidly refusing to budge. A hearty dinner afterwards, and separation with mutual respect.[24]

It is probable that for the next twenty years the two friends did not see each other. I find no evidence of their meeting. The war broke out; Whitman went south and remained at Washington, and afterwards at Camden, New Jersey, with only occasional and brief visits to New York. There was not much chance or likelihood of their meeting. Nevertheless their communications were not broken, and the elder man had not ceased to be interested in the younger; for we find, according to Trowbridge, that in November 1863, Whitman (who was then looking about for some official work or post at Washington) had by him two letters of recommendation written by Emerson—the one to Senator Sumner, and the other to Secretary Chase. Of what other correspondence or meetings there may have been between them for the next twenty years, we do not hear much.[25] Emerson’s respect for “Leaves of Grass” as a feasible contribution to literature seems to have waned. He respected of course much of the matter of it, but could not stomach the manner. He told his friend Sanborn once that the book read like “a mixture of the Bhagvat-Gita and the New York Herald.”[26] He included no specimen of it in his collection “Parnassus” (1874); and detested its metre or want of metre.[27] [Whitman says somewhere—“Specimen Days,” p. 321—“I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbal polish, or something old or odd—Waller’s ‘Go, lovely rose,’ or Lovelace’s lines ‘To Lucasta’—and the like.”] Yet for the Man, as well as I think for his Message in its real essence, Emerson had a great and enduring respect.

In 1881 Walt came once more to Boston to superintend a new edition of his poems. Since 1860 much had happened. The first two editions (1855 and 1856) had been scouted by the public and hastily dropped by the publishers; the 1860 edition fell almost dead through the War. Walt Whitman went to Washington. It was not till 1867 that he printed a fourth edition (New York), including “Drum Taps.” The fifth came in 1871 (Washington). The sixth in 1876 (centennial and author’s edition, Camden) in two volumes, including prose. And the seventh is the one of which we are speaking (Osgood & Co. Boston, 1881-2). Hardly was the book out, and selling well, when the Society for the Suppression of Vice in Boston pounced. The Attorney-general for Massachusetts, through the District Attorney, served a notice on Osgoods (early in ’82). Osgoods appealed to Whitman to withdraw some of the poems. Whitman absolutely refused; and once more the publishers threw the book up and left the edition on his hands!

But to return to our subject. Emerson of course was not ignorant of the stir that was being made. Indeed there can be little doubt that both by his own family and from outside he was urged to dissociate himself from the book and its author. But he was not going to do anything of the kind.[28] In September 1881, Whitman came over from Boston (from his proof-reading) to stay a night with Sanborn at Concord. Emerson (now quite an old man, seventy-eight) and other friends came in for the evening—“a long and blessed evening” Walt calls it (“Specimen Days,” p. 189). He describes in fact how, without being rude, he was able to take a good look at Emerson most of the time, and speaks of “the well-known expression of sweetness in his face, and the old clear-peering aspect quite the same.” Then the next day, Sunday, the Emersons asked him to dinner. “Several hours at Emerson’s house, and dinner there. An old familiar house (he has been in it thirty-five years), with surroundings, furnishments, roominess, and plain elegance and fulness, signifying democratic ease, sufficient opulence, and an admirable old-fashioned simplicity: modern luxury, with its mere sumptuousness and affectation, either touched lightly upon or ignored altogether. Dinner the same. Of course the best of the occasion (Sunday, Sept. 18, ’81) was the sight of Emerson himself.”

This dinner and hearty reception by Emerson Whitman looked back upon with something like pride, as a “victor-event” in his life. (See letter of 1887 to W. S. Kennedy, p. 76 of his book.) The next year, May 6, 1882, he stood by Emerson’s grave. “How shall I henceforth dwell on the blessed hours when, not long since, I saw that benignant face, the clear eyes, the silently smiling mouth, the form yet upright in its great age—to the very last, with so much spring and cheeriness, and such an absence of decrepitude that even the term venerable hardly seemed fitting.... We can say, as Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, It is not we who come to consecrate the dead—we reverently come to receive, if so it may be, some consecration to ourselves and daily work from him.” (“Specimen Days,” p. 197.)

With these words we may leave the personal relation between the two men. The nobility of them both, the grandeur, sincerity, and simplicity of their relation, the hearty accord, affection, and admiration, beneath grave and acknowledged differences of habit and opinion—all make up a picture of deep and lasting significance, and one which future ages can hardly fail to cherish. On the purely literary side, however, it was perhaps only natural that, as time went on, they should distinctly drift apart. Emerson was less and less able to adapt himself to Whitman’s strange new departures. Whitman more and more avowedly separated his respect for the man from his respect for the writer. In latest years he seemed almost anxious that he should not be thought to have learnt anything from Emerson’s books. In the letter already alluded to, of 1887, to W. S. Kennedy, he says: “It is of no importance whether I had read Emerson before starting ‘Leaves of Grass’ or not. The fact happens to be positively that I had not;”[29] and later in the same letter: “If I were to unbosom to you in the matter I should say that I never cared so very much for Emerson’s writings, prose or poems, but from his first personal visit and two hours with me ... I had a strange attachment and love for him and his contact, talk, company, magnetism.” In Whitman’s “Specimen Days,” also (pp. 321-2) he has some keen criticisms of the “bloodless intellectuality” and other defects of Emerson’s style—criticisms which, though decidedly good on the whole, seem to me needlessly stringent, and even a bit captious in parts.

THE END Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. Edinburgh & London