the outguards of the king’s army at Kingsbridge, and proceeded to Westchester. We afterwards attended meetings at Harrison’s Purchase, and Oblong, having the concurrence of our monthly meeting to take some meetings in our way, a concern leading thereto having for some time previously attended my mind. We pass’d from thence to Nine Partners, and attended their monthly meeting, and then turn’d our faces towards Philadelphia, being join’d by several others of the Committee. We attended New Marlborough, Hardwick, and Kingswood meetings on our journey, and arriv’d at Philadelphia on the 7th day of the week, and 25th of 9th month, on which day we attended the yearly meeting of Ministers and Elders, which began at the eleventh hour. I also attended all the sittings of the yearly meeting until the 4th day of the next week, and was then so indispos’d with a fever, which had been increasing on me for several days, that I was not able to attend after that time. I was therefore not present when the subject was discuss’ d, which came from our yearly meeting but I was inform’d by my companion, that it was a very solemn opportunity, and the matter was resulted in advising that the money should be return’d into the office from whence it was receiv’d, accompanied with our reasons for so doing: and this was accordingly done by the direction of our yearly meeting the next year.
Then, season after season, when peace and Independence reign’d, year following year, this remains to be (1791) a specimen of his personal labors:
I was from home on this journey four months and eleven days; rode about one thousand five hundred miles, and attended forty-nine particular meetings among Friends, three quarterly meetings, six monthly meetings, and forty meetings among other people.
And again another experience:
In the forepart of this meeting, my mind was reduc’d into such a state of great weakness and depression, that my faith was almost ready to fail, which produc’d great searchings of heart, so that I was led to call in question all that I had ever before experienc’d. In this state of doubting, I was ready to wish myself at home, from an apprehension that I should only expose myself to reproach, and wound the cause I was embark’d in; for the heavens seem’d like brass, and the earth as iron; such coldness and hardness, I thought, could scarcely have ever been experienc’d before by any creature, so great was the depth of my baptism at this time; nevertheless, as I endeavor’d to quiet my mind, in this conflicting dispensation, and be resign’d to my allotment, however distressing, towards the latter part of the meeting a ray of light broke through the surrounding darkness, in which the Shepherd of Israel was pleas’d to arise, and by the light of his glorious countenance, to scatter those clouds of opposition. Then ability was receiv’d, and utterance given, to speak of his marvellous works in the redemption of souls, and to op the way of life and salvation, and the mysteries of his glorious kingdom, which are hid from the wise and prudent of this world, and reveal’d only unto those who are reduc’d into the state of little children and babes in Christ.
And concluding another jaunt in 1794:
I was from home in this journey about five months, and travell by land and water about two thousand two hundred and eighty-three miles; having visited all the meetings of Friends in the New England states, and many meetings amongst those of other professions; and also visited many meetings, among Friends and others, in the upper part of our own yearly meeting; and found real peace in my labors.
Another ‘tramp’ in 1798:
I was absent from home in this journey about five months and two weeks, and rode about sixteen hundred miles, and attended about one hundred and forty-three meetings.
Here are some memoranda of 1813, near home:
First day. Our meeting this day pass’d in silent labor. The cloud rested on the tabernacle; and, although it was a day of much rain outwardly, yet very little of the dew of Hermon appear’d to distil among us. Nevertheless, a comfortable calm was witness’d towards the close, which we must render to the account of unmerited mercy and love.
Second day. Most of this day was occupied in a visit to a sick friend, who appeared comforted therewith. Spent part of the evening in reading part of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.
Third day. I was busied most of this day in my common vocations. Spent the evening principally in reading Paul. Found considerable satisfaction in his first epistle to the Corinthians; in which he shows the danger of some in setting too high a value on those who were instrumental in bringing them to the knowledge of the truth, without looking through and beyond the instrument, to the great first cause and Author of every blessing, to whom all the praise and honor are due.
Fifth day, 1st of 4th month. At our meeting to-day found it, as usual, a very close steady exercise to keep the mind center’ where it ought to be. What a multitude of intruding thoughts imperceptibly, as it were, steal into the mind, and turn it from its proper object, whenever it relaxes its vigilance in watching against them. Felt a little strength, just at the close, to remind Friends of the necessity of a steady perseverance, by a recapitulation of the parable of the unjust judge, showing how men ought always to pray, and not to faint.
Sixth day. Nothing material occurr’d, but a fear lest the cares of the world should engross too much of my time.
Seventh day. Had an agreeable visit from two ancient friends, which I have long lov’d. The rest of the day I employ’d in manual labor, mostly in gardening.
But we find if we attend to records and details, we shall lay out an endless task. We can briefly say, summarily, that his whole life was a long religious missionary life of method, practicality, sincerity, earnestness, and pure piety–as near to his time here, as one in Judea, far back–or in any life, any age. The reader who feels interested must get–with all its dryness and mere dates, absence of emotionality or literary quality, and whatever abstract attraction (with even a suspicion of cant, sniffling,) the “Journal of the Life and Religious Labours of Elias Hicks, written by himself,” at some Quaker book-store. (It is from this headquarters I have extracted the preceding quotations.) During E. H.’s matured life, continued from fifty to sixty years–while working steadily, earning his living and paying his way without intermission–he makes, as previously memorandized, several hundred preaching visits, not only through Long Island, but some of them away into the Middle or Southern States, or north into Canada, or the then far West–extending to thousands of miles, or filling several weeks and sometimes months. These religious journeys–scrupulously accepting in payment only his transportation from place to place, with his own food and shelter, and never receiving a dollar of money for “salary” or preaching–Elias, through good bodily health and strength, continues till quite the age of eighty. It was thus at one of his latest jaunts in Brooklyn city I saw and heard him. This sight and hearing shall now be described.
Elias Hicks was at this period in the latter part (November or December) of 1829. It was the last tour of the many missions of the old man’s life. He was in the 8lst year of his age, and a few months before he had lost by death a beloved wife with whom he had lived in unalloyed affection and esteem for 58 years. (But a few months after this meeting Elias was paralyzed and died.) Though it is sixty years ago since–and I a little boy at the time in Brooklyn, New York–I can remember my father coming home toward sunset from his day’s work as carpenter, and saying briefly, as he throws down his armful of kindling-blocks with a bounce on the kitchen floor, “Come, mother, Elias preaches to-night.” Then my mother, hastening the supper and the table-cleaning afterward, gets a neighboring young woman, a friend of the family, to step in and keep house for an hour or so–puts the two little ones to bed–and as I had been behaving well that day, as a special reward I was allow’d to go also.
We start for the meeting. Though, as I said, the stretch of more than half a century has pass’d over me since then, with its war and peace, and all its joys and sins and deaths (and what a half century! how it comes up sometimes for an instant, like the lightning flash in a storm at night!) I can recall that meeting yet. It is a strange place for religious devotions. Elias preaches anywhere–no respect to buildings–private or public houses, school-rooms, barns, even theatres–anything that will accommodate. This time it is in a handsome ball-room, on Brooklyn Heights, overlooking New York, and in full sight of that great city, and its North and East rivers fill’d with ships–is (to specify more particularly) the second story of “Morrison’s Hotel,” used for the most genteel concerts, balls, and assemblies–a large, cheerful, gay-color’d room, with glass chandeliers bearing myriads of sparkling pendants, plenty of settees and chairs, and a sort of velvet divan running all round the side-walls. Before long the divan and all the settees and chairs are fill’d; many fashionables out of curiosity; all the principal dignitaries of the town, Gen. Jeremiah Johnson, Judge Furman, George Hall, Mr. Willoughby, Mr. Pierrepont, N.B. Morse, Cyrus P. Smith, and F.C. Tucker. Many young folks too; some richly dress’d women; I remember I noticed with one party of ladies a group of uniform’d officers, either from the U.S. Navy Yard, or some ship in the stream, or some adjacent fort. On a slightly elevated platform at the head of the room, facing the audience, sit a dozen or more Friends, most of them elderly, grim, and with their broad-brimm’d hats on their heads. Three or four women, too, in their characteristic Quaker costumes and bonnets. All still as the grave.
At length after a pause and stillness becoming almost painful, Elias rises and stands for a moment or two without a word. A tall, straight figure, neither stout nor very thin, dress’d in drab cloth, clean-shaved face, forehead of great expanse, and large and clear black eyes,[42] long or middling-long white hair; he was at this time between 80 and 81 years of age, his head still wearing the broad-brim. A moment looking around the audience with those piercing eyes, amid the perfect stillness. (I can almost see him and the whole scene now.) Then the words come from his lips, very emphatically and slowly pronounc’d, in a resonant, grave, melodious voice, _What is the chief end of man? I was told in my early youth, it was to glorify God, and seek and enjoy him forever._
I cannot follow the discourse. It presently becomes very fervid, and in the midst of its fervor he takes the broad-brim hat from his head, and almost dashing it down with violence on the seat behind, continues with uninterrupted earnestness. But, I say, I cannot repeat, hardly suggest his sermon. Though the differences and disputes of the formal division of the Society of Friends were even then under way, he did not allude to them at all. A pleading, tender, nearly agonizing conviction, and magnetic stream of natural eloquence, before which all minds and natures, all emotions, high or low, gentle or simple, yielded entirely without exception, was its cause, method, and effect. Many, very many were in tears. Years afterward in Boston, I heard Father Taylor, the sailor’s preacher, and found in his passionate unstudied oratory the resemblance to Elias Hicks’s–not argumentative or intellectual, but so penetrating–so different from anything in the books–(different as the fresh air of a May morning or sea-shore breeze from the atmosphere of a perfumer’s shop.)
While he goes on he falls into the nasality and sing-song tone sometimes heard in such meetings; but in a moment or two more as if recollecting himself, he breaks off, stops, and resumes in a natural tone. This occurs three or four times during the talk of the evening, till all concludes.
Now and then, at the many scores and hundreds–even thousands–of his discourses–as at this one–he was very mystical and radical,[43] and had much to say of “the light within.” Very likely this same inner light, (so dwelt upon by newer men, as by Fox and Barclay at the beginning, and all Friends and deep thinkers since and now,) is perhaps only another name for the religious conscience. In my opinion they have all diagnos’d, like superior doctors, the real in-most disease of our times, probably any times. Amid the huge inflammation call’d society, and that other inflammation call’d politics, what is there to-day of moral power and ethic sanity as antiseptic to them and all? Though I think the essential elements of the moral nature exist latent in the good average people of the United States of to-day, and sometimes break out strongly, it is certain that any mark’d or dominating National Morality (if I may use the phrase) has not only not yet been develop’d, but that–at any rate when the point of view is turn’d on business, politics, competition, practical life, and in character and manners in our New World–there seems to be a hideous depletion, almost absence, of such moral nature. Elias taught throughout, as George Fox began it, or rather reiterated and verified it, the Platonic doctrine that the ideals of character, of justice, of religious action, whenever the highest is at stake, are to be conform’d to no outside doctrine of creeds, Bibles, legislative enactments, conventionalities, or even decorums, but are to follow the inward Deity-planted law of the emotional soul. In this only the true Quaker, or Friend, has faith; and it is from rigidly, perhaps strainingly carrying it out, that both the Old and New England records of Quakerdom show some unseemly and insane acts.
In one of the lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a list of lessons or instructions, (“seal’d orders” the biographer calls them,) prepar’d by the sage himself for his own guidance. Here is one:
Go forth with thy message among thy fellow-creatures; teach them that they must trust themselves as guided by that inner light which dwells with the pure in heart, to whom it was promis’d of old that they shall see God.
How thoroughly it fits the life and theory of Elias Hicks. Then in Omar Khayyam:
I sent my soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that after-life to spell, And by-and-by my soul return’d to me,
And answer’d, “I myself am Heaven and Hell.”
Indeed, of this important element of the theory and practice of Quakerism, the difficult-to-describe “Light within” or “Inward Law, by which all must be either justified or condemn’d,” I will not undertake where so many have fail’d–the task of making the statement of it for the average comprehension. We will give, partly for the matter and partly as specimen of his speaking and writing style, what Elias Hicks himself says in allusion to it–one or two of very many passages. Most of his discourses, like those of Epictetus and the ancient peripatetics, have left no record remaining–they were extempore, and those were not the times of reporters. Of one, however, deliver’d in Chester, Pa., toward the latter part of his career, there is a careful transcript; and from it (even if presenting you a sheaf of hidden wheat that may need to be pick’d and thrash’d out several times before you get the grain,) we give the following extract:
I don’t want to express a great many words; but I want you to be call’d home to the substance. For the Scriptures, and all the books in the world, can do no more; Jesus could do no more than to recommend to this Comforter, which was the light in him. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all; and if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.” Because the light is one in all, and therefore it binds us together in the bonds of love; for it is not only light, but love–that love which casts out all fear. So that they who dwell in God dwell in love, and they are constrain’d to walk in it; and if they “walk in it, they have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
But what blood, my friends? Did Jesus Christ, the Saviour, ever have any material blood? Not a drop of it, my friends–not a drop of it. That blood which cleanseth from the life of all sin, was the life of the soul of Jesus. The soul of man has no material blood; but as the outward material blood, created from the dust of the earth, is the life of these bodies of flesh, so with respect to the soul, the immortal and invisible spirit, its blood is that life which God breath’d into it.
As we read, in the beginning, that “God form’d man of the dust of the ground, and breath’d into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” He breath’d into that soul, and it became alive to God.
Then, from one of his many letters, for he seems to have delighted in correspondence:
Some may query, What is the cross of Christ? To these I answer, It is the perfect law of God, written on the tablet of the hear and in the heart of every rational creature, in such indelible characters that all the power of mortals cannot erase nor obliterate it. Neither is there any power or means given or dispens’d to the children of men, but this inward law and light, by which the true and saving knowledge of God can be obtain’ d. And by this inward law and light, all will be either justified or condemn’d, and all made to know God for themselves, and be left without excuse, agreeably to the prophecy of Jeremiah, and the corroborating testimony of Jesus in his last counsel and command to his disciples, not to depart from Jerusalem till they should receive power from on high; assuring them that they should receive power, when they had receiv’d the pouring forth of the spirit upon them, which would qualify them to bear witness of him in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth; which was verified in a marvellous manner on the day of Pentecost, when thousands were converted to the Christian faith in one day.
By which it is evident that nothing but this inward light and law, as it is heeded and obey’d, ever did, or ever can, make a true and real Christian and child of God. And until the professors of Christianity agree to lay aside all their non-essentials in religion, and rally to this unchangeable foundation and standard of truth, wars and fightings, confusion and error, will prevail, and the angelic song cannot be heard in our land–that of “glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men.”
But when all nations are made willing to make this inward law and light the rule and standard of all their faith and works, then we shall be brought to know and believe alike, that there is but one Lord, one faith, and but one baptism; one God and Father, that is above all, through all, and in all.
And then will all those glorious and consoling prophecies recorded in the scriptures of truth be fulfill’d–“He,” the Lord, “shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb; and the cow and the bear shall feed; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and the sucking child shall play the hole of the asp, and the wean’d child put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth,” that is our earthly tabernacle, “shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
The exposition in the last sentence, that the terms of the texts are not to be taken in their literal meaning, but in their spiritual one, and allude to a certain wondrous exaltation of the body, through religious influences, is significant, and is but one of a great number of instances of much that is obscure, to “the world’s people,” in the preachings of this remarkable man.
Then a word about his physical oratory, connected with the preceding. If there is, as doubtless there is, an unnameable something behind oratory, a fund within or atmosphere without, deeper than art, deeper even than proof, that unnameable constitutional something Elias Hicks emanated from his very heart to the hearts of his audience, or carried with him, or probed into, and shook and arous’d in them–a sympathetic germ, probably rapport, lurking in every human eligibility, which no book, no rule, no statement has given or can give inherent knowledge, intuition–not even the best speech, or best put forth, but launch’d out only by powerful human magnetism:
Unheard by sharpest ear–unformed in clearest eye, or cunningest mind,
Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world, incessantly,
Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss; Open, but still a secret–the real of the real–an illusion; Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner; Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme—-historians in prose; Which sculptor never chisel’d yet, nor painter painted; Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter’ d.
That remorse, too, for a mere worldly life–that aspiration towards the ideal, which, however overlaid, lies folded latent, hidden, in perhaps every character. More definitely, as near as I remember (aided by my dear mother long afterward,) Elias Hicks’s discourse there in the Brooklyn ball-room, was one of his old never-remitted appeals to that moral mystical portion of human nature, the inner light. But it is mainly for the scene itself, and Elias’s personnel, that I recall the incident.
Soon afterward the old man died:
On first day morning, the 14th of 2d month (February, 1830,) he was engaged in his room, writing to a friend, until a little after ten o’clock, when he return’d to that occupied by the family, apparently just attack’d by a paralytic affection, which nearly deprived h of the use of his right side, and of the power of speech. Being assisted to a chair near the fire, he manifested by signs, that the letter which he had just finish’d, and which had been dropp’d the way, should be taken care of; and on its being brought to him, appear’d satisfied, and manifested a desire that all should sit down and be still, seemingly sensible that his labours were brought to a close, and only desirous of quietly waiting the final change. The solemn composure at this time manifest in his countenance, w very impressive, indicating that he was sensible the time of his departure was at hand, and that the prospect of death brought no terrors with it. During his last illness, his mental faculti were occasionally obscured, yet he was at times enabled to give satisfactory evidence to those around him, that all was well, and that he felt nothing in his way.
His funeral took place on fourth day, the 3rd of 3rd month. It was attended by a large concourse of Friends and others, and a solid meeting was held on the occasion; after which, his remains were interr’d in Friends’ burial-ground at this place (Jericho, Queens county, New York.)
I have thought (even presented so incompletely, with such fearful hiatuses, and in my own feebleness and waning life) one might well memorize this life of Elias Hicks. Though not eminent in literature or politics or inventions or business, it is a token of not a few, and is significant. Such men do not cope with statesmen or soldiers–but I have thought they deserve to be recorded and kept up as a sample–that this one specially does. I have already compared it to a little flowing liquid rill of Nature’s life, maintaining freshness. As if, indeed, under the smoke of battles, the blare of trumpets, and the madness of contending hosts–the screams of passion, the groans of the suffering, the parching of struggles of money and politics, and all hell’s heat and noise and competition above and around–should come melting down from the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, far up there in God’s hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling along among us low in the ground, at men’s very feet, a curious little brook of clear and cool, and ever-healthy, ever-living water.
_Note.–The Separation_.–The division vulgarly call’d between Orthodox and Hicksites in the Society of Friends took place in 1827, ‘8 and ‘9. Probably it had been preparing some time. One who was present has since described to me the climax, at a meeting of Friends in Philadelphia crowded by a great attendance of both sexes, with Elias as principal speaker. In the course of his utterance or argument he made use of these words: “The blood of Christ–the blood of Christ–why, my friends, the actual blood of Christ in itself was no more effectual than the blood of bulls and goats–not a bit more–not a bit.” At these words, after a momentary hush, commenced a great tumult. Hundreds rose to their feet…. Canes were thump’d upon the floor. From all parts of the house angry mutterings. Some left the place, but more remain’d, with exclamations, flush’d faces and eyes. This was the definite utterance, the overt act, which led to the separation. Families diverg’d–even husbands and wives, parents and children, were separated.
Of course what Elias promulg’d spread a great commotion among the Friends. Sometimes when he presented himself to speak in the meeting, there would be opposition–this led to angry words, gestures, unseemly noises, recriminations. Elias, at such times, was deeply affected–the tears roll’d in streams down his cheeks–he silently waited the close of the dispute. “Let the Friend speak; let the Friend speak!” he would say when his supporters in the meeting tried to bluff off some violent orthodox person objecting to the new doctrinaire. But he never recanted.
A reviewer of the old dispute and separation made the following comments on them in a paper ten years ago: “It was in America, where there had been no persecution worth mentioning since Mary Dyer was hang’d on Boston Common, that about fifty years ago differences arose, singularly enough upon doctrinal points of the divinity of Christ and the nature of the atonement. Whoever would know how bitter was the controversy, and how much of human infirmity was found to be still lurking under broad-brim hats and drab coats, must seek for the information in the Lives of Elias Hicks and of Thomas Shillitoe, the latter an English Friend, who visited us at this unfortunate time, and who exercised his gifts as a peace-maker with but little success. The meetings, according to his testimony, were sometimes turn’d into mobs. The disruption was wide, and seems to have been final. Six of the ten yearly meetings were divided; and since that time various sub-divisions have come, four or five in number. There has never, however, been anything like a repetition of the excitement of the Hicksite controversy; and Friends of all kinds at present appear to have settled down into a solid, steady, comfortable state, and to be working in their own way without troubling other Friends whose ways are different.”
_Note_.–Old persons, who heard this man in his day, and who glean’d impressions from what they saw of him, (judg’d from their own points of views,) have, in their conversation with me, dwelt on another point. They think Elias Hicks had a large element of personal ambition, the pride of leadership, of establishing perhaps a sect that should reflect his own name, and to which he should give especial form and character. Very likely. Such indeed seems the means, all through progress and civilization, by which strong men and strong convictions achieve anything definite. But the basic foundation of Elias was undoubtedly genuine religious fervor. He was like an old Hebrew prophet. He had the spirit of one, and in his later years look’d like one. What Carlyle says of John Knox will apply to him:
He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic; it is the grand gift he has. We find in him a good, honest, intellectual talent, no transcendent one;–a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in _sincerity_ as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. “He lies there,” said the Earl of Morton at Knox’s grave, “who never fear’d the face of man.” He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God’s truth.
_A Note yet. The United States to-day_.–While under all previous conditions (even convictions) of society, Oriental, Feudal, Ecclesiastical, and in all past (or present) Despotisms, through the entire past, there existed, and exists yet, in ally and fusion with them, and frequently forming the main part of them, certain churches, institutes, priesthoods, fervid beliefs, &c., practically promoting religious and moral action to the fullest degrees of which humanity there under circumstances was capable, and often conserving all there was of justice, art, literature, and good manners–it is clear I say, that, under the Democratic Institutes of the United States, now and henceforth, there are no equally genuine fountains of fervid beliefs, adapted to produce similar moral and religious results, according to our circumstances. I consider that the churches, sects, pulpits, of the present day, in the United States, exist not by any solid convictions, but by a sort of tacit, supercilious, scornful suffrance. Few speak openly–none officially–against them. But the ostent continuously imposing, who is not aware that any such living fountains of belief in them are now utterly ceas’d and departed from the minds of men?
_A Lingering Note_.–In the making of a full man, all the other consciences, (the emotional, courageous, intellectual, esthetic, &c.,) are to be crown’d and effused by the religious conscience. In the higher structure of a human self, or of community, the Moral, the Religious, the Spiritual, is strictly analogous to the subtle vitalization and antiseptic play call’d Health in the physiologic structure. To person or State, the main verteber (or rather _the_ verteber) is Morality.
That is indeed the only real vitalization of character, and of all the supersensual, even heroic and artistic portions of man or nationality. It is to run through and knit the superior parts, and keep man or State vital and upright, as health keeps the body straight and blooming. Of course a really grand and strong and beautiful character is probably to be slowly grown, and adjusted strictly with reference to itself, its own personal and social sphere–with (paradox though it may be) the clear understanding that the conventional theories of life, worldly ambition, wealth, office, fame, &c., are essentially but glittering mayas, delusions.
Doubtless the greatest scientists and theologians will sometimes find themselves saying, It isn’t only those who know most, who contribute most to God’s glory. Doubtless these very scientists at times stand with bared heads before the humblest lives and personalities. For there is something greater (is there not?) than all the science and poems of the world–above all else, like the stars shining eternal–above Shakspere’s plays, or Concord philosophy, or art of Angelo or Raphael–something that shines elusive, like beams of Hesperus at evening–high above all the vaunted wealth and pride–prov’d by its practical outcropping in life, each case after its own concomitants–the intuitive blending of divine love and faith in a human emotional character–blending for all, for the unlearn’d, the common, and the poor.
I don’t know in what book I once read, (possibly the remark has been made in books, all ages,) that no life ever lived, even the most uneventful, but, probed to its centre, would be found in itself as subtle a drama as any that poets have ever sung, or playwrights fabled. Often, too, in size and weight, that life suppos’d obscure. For it isn’t only the palpable stars; astronomers say there are dark, or almost dark, unnotic’d orbs and suns, (like the dusky companions of Sirius, seven times as large as our own sun,) rolling through space, real and potent as any–perhaps the most real and potent. Yet none recks of them. In the bright lexicon we give the spreading heavens, they have not even names. Amid ceaseless sophistications all times, the soul would seem to glance yearningly around for such contrasts–such cool, still offsets.
Notes:
[42]In Walter Scott’s reminiscences he speaks of Burns as having the most eloquent, glowing, flashing, illuminated dark-orbed eyes he ever beheld in a human face; and I think Elias Hicks’s must have been like them.
[43] The true Christian religion, (such was the teaching of Elias Hicks,) consists neither in rites or Bibles or sermons or Sundays–but in noiseless secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in purity, in a good practical life, in charity to the poor and toleration to all. He said, “A man may keep the Sabbath, may belong to a church and attend all the observances, have regular family prayer, keep a well-bound copy of the Hebrew Scriptures in a conspicuous place in his house, and yet not be a truly religious person at all.” E. believ’d little in a church as organiz’d-even his own–with houses, ministers, or with salaries, creeds, Sundays, saints, Bibles, holy festivals, &c. But he believ’ d always in the universal church, in the soul of man, invisibly rapt, ever-waiting, ever-responding to universal truths.–He was fond of pithy proverbs. He said, “It matters not where you live, but how you live.” He said once to my father, “They talk of the devil–I tell thee, Walter, there is no worse devil than man.”
GEORGE FOX (AND SHAKSPERE)
While we are about it, we must almost Inevitably go back to the origin of the Society of which Elias Hicks has so far prov’d to be the most mark’d individual result. We must revert to the latter part of the 16th, and all, or nearly all of that 17th century, crowded with so many important historical events, changes, and personages. Throughout Europe, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were unusually arous’d–(some would say demented.) It was a special age of the insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were hung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an age of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only to think of it–that age! its events, persons–Shakspere just dead, (his folios publish’d, complete)–Charles 1st, the shadowy spirit and the solid block! To sum up all, it was the age of Cromwell!
As indispensable foreground, indeed, for Elias Hicks, and perhaps sine qua non to an estimate of the kind of man, we must briefly transport ourselves back to the England of that period. As I say, it is the time of tremendous moral and political agitation; ideas of conflicting forms, governments, theologies, seethe and dash like ocean storms, and ebb and flow like mighty tides. It was, or had been, the time of the long feud between the Parliament and the Crown. In the midst of the sprouts, began George Fox–born eight years after the death of Shakspere. He was the son of a weaver, himself a shoemaker, and was “converted” before the age of 20. But O the sufferings, mental and physical, through which those years of the strange youth pass’d! He claim’d to be sent by God to fulfill a mission. “I come,” he said, “to direct people to the spirit that gave forth the Scriptures.” The range of his thought, even then, cover’d almost every important subject of after times, anti-slavery, women’s rights, &c. Though in a low sphere, and among the masses, he forms a mark’d feature in the age.
And how, indeed, beyond all any, that stormy and perturb’d age! The foundations of the old, the superstitious, the conventionally poetic, the credulous, all breaking–the light of the new, and of science and democracy, definitely beginning–a mad, fierce, almost crazy age! The political struggles of the reigns of the Charleses, and of the Protectorate of Cromwell, heated to frenzy by theological struggles. Those were the years following the advent and practical working of the Reformation–but Catholicism is yet strong, and yet seeks supremacy. We think our age full of the flush of men and doings, and culminations of war and peace; and so it is. But there could hardly be a grander and more picturesque and varied age than that.
Born out of and in this age, when Milton, Bunyan, Dryden and John Locke were still living–amid the memories of Queen Elizabeth and James First, and the events of their reigns–when the radiance of that galaxy of poets, warriors, statesmen, captains, lords, explorers, wits and gentlemen, that crowded the courts and times of those sovereigns still fill’d the atmosphere–when America commencing to be explor’d and settled commenc’d also to be suspected as destin’d to overthrow the old standards and calculations–when Feudalism, like a sunset, seem’d to gather all its glories, reminiscences, personalisms, in one last gorgeous effort, before the advance of a new day, a new incipient genius–amid the social and domestic circles of that period–indifferent to reverberations that seem’d enough to wake the dead, and in a sphere far from the pageants of the court, the awe of any personal rank or charm of intellect, or literature, or the varying excitement of Parliamentarian or Royalist fortunes–this curious young rustic goes wandering up and down England.
George Fox, born 1624, was of decent stock, in ordinary lower life–as he grew along toward manhood, work’d at shoemaking, also at farm labors–loved to be much by himself, half-hidden in the woods, reading the Bible–went about from town to town, dress’d in leather clothes–walk’d much at night, solitary, deeply troubled (“the inward divine teaching of the Lord”)–sometimes goes among the ecclesiastical gatherings of the great professors, and though a mere youth bears bold testimony–goes to and fro disputing–(must have had great personality)–heard the voice of the Lord speaking articulately to him, as he walk’d in the fields–feels resistless commands not to be explain’d, but follow’d, to abstain from taking off his hat, to say _Thee_ and _Thou_, and not bid others Good morning or Good evening-was illiterate, could just read and write-testifies against shows, games, and frivolous pleasures–enters the courts and warns the judges that they see to doing justice–goes into public houses and market-places, with denunciations of drunkenness and money-making–rises in the midst of the church-services, and gives his own explanations of the ministers’ explanations, and of Bible passages and texts–sometimes for such things put in prison, sometimes struck fiercely on the mouth on the spot, or knock’d down, and lying there beaten and bloody–was of keen wit, ready to any question with the most apropos of answers–was sometimes press’d for a soldier, (_him_ for a soldier!)–was indeed terribly buffeted; but goes, goes, goes–often sleeping out-doors, under hedges, or hay stacks–forever taken before justices–improving such, and all occasions, to _bear testimony_, and give good advice–still enters the “steeple-houses,” (as he calls churches,) and though often dragg’d out and whipt till he faints away, and lies like one dead, when he comes-to–stands up again, and offering himself all bruis’d and bloody, cries out to his tormenters, “Strike–strike again, here where you have not yet touch’d! my arms, my head, my cheeks,”–Is at length arrested and sent up to London, confers with the Protector, Cromwell,–is set at liberty, and holds great meetings in London.
Thus going on, there is something in him that fascinates one or two here, and three or four there, until gradually there were others who went about in the same spirit, and by degrees the Society of Friends took shape, and stood among the thousand religious sects of the world. Women also catch the contagion, and go round, often shamefully misused. By such contagion these ministerings, by scores, almost hundreds of poor travelling men and women, keep on year after year, through ridicule, whipping, imprisonment, &c.–some of the Friend-ministers emigrate to New England–where their treatment makes the blackest part of the early annals of the New World. Some were executed, others maim’d, par-burnt, and scourg’d–two hundred die in prison–some on the gallows, or at the stake.
George Fox himself visited America, and found a refuge and hearers, and preach’d many times on Long Island, New York State. In the village of Oysterbay they will show you the rock on which he stood, (1672,) addressing the multitude, in the open air–thus rigidly following the fashion of apostolic times.–(I have heard myself many reminiscences of him.) Flushing also contains (or contain’d–I have seen them) memorials of Fox, and his son, in two aged white-oak trees, that shaded him while he bore his testimony to people gather’d in the highway.–Yes, the American Quakers were much persecuted–almost as much, by a sort of consent of all the other sects, as the Jews were in Europe in the middle ages. In New England, the cruelest laws were pass’d, and put in execution against them. As said, some were whipt–women the same as men. Some had their ears cut off–others their tongues pierc’d with hot irons–others their faces branded. Worse still, a woman and three men had been hang’d, (1660.)–Public opinion, and the statutes, join’d together, in an odious union, Quakers, Baptists, Roman Catholics and Witches.–Such a fragmentary sketch of George Fox and his time–and the advent of “the Society of Friends” in America.
Strange as it may sound, Shakspere and George Fox, (think of them! compare them!) were born and bred of similar stock, in much the same surroundings and station in life–from the same England–and at a similar period. One to radiate all of art’s, all literature’s splendor–a splendor so dazzling that he himself is almost lost in it, and his contemporaries the same–his fictitious Othello, Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, as real as any lords of England or Europe then and there–more real to us, the mind sometimes thinks, than the man Shakspere himself. Then the other–may we indeed name him the same day? What is poor plain George Fox compared to William Shakspere–to fancy’s lord, imagination’s heir? Yet George Fox stands for something too–a thought–the thought that wakes in silent hours–perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought latent in the human soul. This is the thought of God, merged in the thoughts of moral right and the immortality of identity. Great, great is this thought–aye, greater than all else. When the gorgeous pageant of Art, refulgent in the sunshine, color’d with roses and gold–with all the richest mere poetry, old or new, (even Shakespere’s) with all that statue, play, painting, music, architecture, oratory, can effect, ceases to satisfy and please–When the eager chase after wealth flags, and beauty itself becomes a loathing–and when all worldly or carnal or esthetic, or even scientific values, having done their office to the human character, and minister’d their part to its development–then, if not before, comes forward this over-arching thought, and brings its eligibilities, germinations. Most neglected in life of all humanity’s attributes, easily cover’d with crust, deluded and abused, rejected, yet the only certain source of what all are seeking, but few or none finding it I for myself clearly see the first, the last, the deepest depths and highest heights of art, of literature, and of the purposes of life. I say whoever labors here, makes contributions here, or best of all sets an incarnated example here, of life or death, is dearest to humanity–remains after the rest are gone. And here, for these purposes, and up to the light that was in him, the man Elias Hicks–as the man George Fox had done years before him–lived long, and died, faithful in life, and faithful in death.
GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
AN OLD MAN’S REJOINDER
In the domain of Literature loftily consider’d (an accomplish’d and veteran critic in his just out work[44] now says,) ‘the kingdom of the Father has pass’d; the kingdom of the Son is passing; the kingdom of the Spirit begins.’ Leaving the reader to chew on and extract the juice and meaning of this, I will proceed to say in melanged form what I have had brought out by the English author’s essay (he discusses the poetic art mostly) on my own, real, or by him supposed, views and purports. If I give any answers to him, or explanations of what my books intend, they will be not direct but indirect and derivative. Of course this brief jotting is personal. Something very like querulous egotism and growling may break through the narrative (for I have been and am rejected by all the great magazines, carry now my 72d annual burden, and have been a paralytic for 18 years.)
No great poem or other literary or artistic work of any scope, old or new, can be essentially consider’d without weighing first the age, politics (or want of politics) and aim, visible forms, unseen soul, and current times, out of the midst of which it rises and is formulated: as the Biblic canticles and their days and spirit–as the Homeric, or Dante’s utterance, or Shakspere’s, or the old Scotch or Irish ballads, or Ossian, or Omar Khayyam. So I have conceiv’d and launch’d, and work’d for years at, my ‘Leaves of Grass’–personal emanations only at best, but with specialty of emergence and background–the ripening of the nineteenth century, the thought and fact and radiation of individuality, of America, the secession war, and showing the democratic conditions supplanting everything that insults them or impedes their aggregate way. Doubtless my poems illustrate (one of novel thousands to come for a long period) those conditions; but “democratic art” will have to wait long before it is satisfactorily formulated and defined–if it ever is.
I will now for one indicative moment lock horns with what many Think the greatest thing, the question of _art_, so-call’d. I have not seen without learning something therefrom, how, with hardly an exception, the poets of this age devote themselves, always mainly, sometimes altogether, to fine rhyme, spicy verbalism, the fabric and cut of the garment, jewelry, _concetti_, style, art. To-day these adjuncts are certainly the effort, beyond all else, yet the lesson of Nature undoubtedly is, to proceed with single purpose toward the result necessitated, and for which the time has arrived, utterly regardless of the outputs of shape, appearance or criticism, which are always left to settle themselves. I have not only not bother’d much about style, form, art, etc., but confess to more or less apathy (I believe I have sometimes caught myself in decided aversion) toward them throughout, asking nothing of them but negative advantages–that they should never impede me, and never under any circumstances, or for their own purposes only, assume any mastery over me.
From the beginning I have watch’d the sharp and sometimes heavy and deep-penetrating objections and reviews against my work, and I hope entertain’d and audited them; (for I have probably had an advantage in constructing from a central and unitary principle since the first, but at long intervals and stages–sometimes lapses of five or six years, or peace or war.) Ruskin, the Englishman, charges as a fearful and serious lack that my poems have no humor. A profound German critic complains that, compared with the luxuriant and well-accepted songs of the world, there is about my verse a certain coldness, severity, absence of spice, polish, or of consecutive meaning and plot. (The book is autobiographic at bottom, and may-be I do not exhibit and make ado about the stock passions: I am partly of Quaker stock.) Then E.C. Stedman finds (or found) mark’d fault with me because while celebrating the common people _en masse_, I do not allow enough heroism and moral merit and good intentions to the choicer classes, the college-bred, the _etat-major_. It is quite probable that S. is right in the matter. In the main I myself look, and have from the first look’d, to the bulky democratic _torso_ of the United States even for esthetic and moral attributes of serious account–and refused to aim at or accept anything less. If America is only for the rule and fashion and small typicality of other lands (the rule of the _etat-major_) it is not the land I take it for, and should to-day feel that my literary aim and theory had been blanks and misdirections. Strictly judged, most modern poems are but larger or smaller lumps of sugar, or slices of toothsome sweet cake–even the banqueters dwelling on those glucose flavors as a main part of the dish. Which perhaps leads to something: to have great heroic poetry we need great readers–a heroic appetite and audience. Have we at present any such?
Then the thought at the centre, never too often repeated. Boundless material wealth, free political organization, immense geographic area, and unprecedented “business” and products–even the most active intellect and “culture”–will not place this Commonwealth of ours on the topmost range of history and humanity–or any eminence of “democratic art”–to say nothing of its pinnacle. Only the production (and on the most copious scale) of loftiest moral, spiritual and heroic personal illustrations–a great native Literature headed with a Poetry stronger and sweeter than any yet. If there can be any such thing as a kosmic modern and original song, America needs it, and is worthy of it.
In my opinion to-day (bitter as it is to say so) the outputs through civilized nations everywhere from the great words Literature, Art, Religion, &c., with their conventional administerers, stand squarely in the way of what the vitalities of those great words signify, more than they really prepare the soil for them–or plant the seeds, or cultivate or garner the crop. My own opinion has long been, that for New World service our ideas of beauty (inherited from the Greeks, and so on to Shakspere–_query_–perverted from them?) need to be radically changed, and made anew for to-day’s purposes and finer standards. But if so, it will all come in due time–the real change will be an autochthonic, interior, constitutional, even local one, from which our notions of beauty (lines and colors are wondrous lovely, but character is lovelier) will branch or offshoot.
So much have I now rattled off (old age’s garrulity,) that there is not space for explaining the most important and pregnant principle of all, viz., that Art is one, is not partial, but includes all times and forms and sorts–is not exclusively aristocratic or democratic, or oriental or occidental. My favorite symbol would be a good font of type, where the impeccable long-primer rejects nothing. Or the old Dutch flour-miller who said, “I never bother myself what road the folks come–I only want good wheat and rye.”
The font is about the same forever. Democratic art results of democratic development, from tinge, true nationality, belief, in the one setting up from it.
Note:
[44] Two new volumes, “Essays Speculative and Suggestive,” by John Addington Symonds. One of the Essays is on “Democratic Art,” in which I and my books are largely alluded to and cited and dissected. It is this part of the vols. that has caused the off-hand lines above–(first thanking Mr. S. for his invariable courtesy of personal treatment).
OLD POETS
Poetry (I am clear) is eligible of something far more ripen’d and ample, our lands and pending days, than it has yet produced from any utterance old or new. Modern or new poetry, too, (viewing or challenging it with severe criticism,) is largely a-void–while the very cognizance, or even suspicion of that void, and the need of filling it, proves a certainty of the hidden and waiting supply. Leaving other lands and languages to speak for themselves, we can abruptly but deeply suggest it best from our own–going first to oversea illustrations, and standing on them. Think of Byron, Burns, Shelley, Keats, (even first-raters, “the brothers of the radiant summit,” as William O’Connor calls them,) as having done only their precursory and ‘prentice work, and all their best and real poems being left yet unwrought, untouch’d. Is it difficult to imagine ahead of us and them, evolv’d from them, poesy completer far than any they themselves fulfill’d? One has in his eye and mind some very large, very old, entirely sound and vital tree or vine, like certain hardy, ever-fruitful specimens in California and Canada, or down in Mexico, (and indeed in all lands) beyond the chronological records–illustrations of growth, continuity, power, amplitude and _exploitation_, almost beyond statement, but proving fact and possibility, outside of argument.
Perhaps, indeed, the rarest and most blessed quality of transcendent noble poetry–as of law, and of the profoundest wisdom and estheticism–is, (I would suggest,) from sane, completed, vital, capable old age.
The final proof of song or personality is a sort of matured, accreted, superb, evoluted, almost divine, impalpable diffuseness and atmosphere or invisible magnetism, dissolving and embracing all–and not any special achievement of passion, pride, metrical form, epigram, plot, thought, or what is call’d beauty. The bud of the rose or the half-blown flower is beautiful, of course, but only the perfected bloom or apple or finish’d wheat-head is beyond the rest. Completed fruitage like this comes (in my opinion) to a grand age, in man or woman, through an essentially sound continuated physiology and psychology (both important) and is the culminating glorious aureole of all and several preceding. Like the tree or vine just mention’d, it stands at last in a beauty, power and productiveness of its own, above all others, and of a sort and style uniting all criticisms, proofs and adherences.
Let us diversify the matter a little by portraying some of the American poets from our own point of view.
Longfellow, reminiscent, polish’d, elegant, with the air of finest conventional library, picture-gallery or parlor, with ladies and gentlemen in them, and plush and rosewood, and ground-glass lamps, and mahogany and ebony furniture, and a silver inkstand and scented satin paper to write on.
Whittier stands for morality (not in any all-accepting philosophic or Hegelian sense, but) filter’d through a Puritanical or Quaker filter–is incalculably valuable as a genuine utterance, (and the finest,)–with many local and Yankee and _genre_ bits–all hued with anti-slavery coloring–(the _genre_ and anti-slavery contributions all precious–all help.) Whittier’s is rather a grand figure, but pretty lean and ascetic–no Greek-not universal and composite enough (don’t try–don’t wish to be) for ideal Americanism. Ideal Americanism would take the Greek spirit and law, and democratize and scientize and (thence) truly Christianize them for the whole, the globe, all history, all ranks and lands, all facts, all good and bad. (Ah this _bad_–this nineteen-twentieths of us all! What a stumbling-block it remains for poets and metaphysicians–what a chance (the strange, clear-as-ever inscription on the old dug-up tablet) it offers yet for being translated–what can be its purpose in the God-scheme of this universe, and all?)
Then William Cullen Bryant–meditative, serious, from first to last tending to threnodies–his genius mainly lyrical–when reading his pieces who could expect or ask for more magnificent ones than such as “The Battle-Field,” and “A Forest Hymn”? Bryant, unrolling, prairie-like, notwithstanding his mountains and lakes–moral enough (yet worldly and conventional)–a naturalist, pedestrian, gardener and fruiter–well aware of books, but mixing to the last in cities and society. I am not sure but his name ought to lead the list of American bards. Years ago I thought Emerson pre eminent (and as to the last polish and intellectual cuteness may-be I think so still)–but, for reasons, I have been gradually tending to give the file-leading place for American native poesy to W. C. B.
Of Emerson I have to confirm my already avow’d opinion regarding his highest bardic and personal attitude. Of the galaxy of the past–of Poe, Halleck, Mrs. Sigourney, Allston, Willis, Dana,
John Pierpont, W. G. Simms, Robert Sands, Drake, Hillhouse, Theodore Fay, Margaret Fuller, Epes Sargent, Boker, Paul Hayne, Lanier, and others, I fitly in essaying such a theme as this, and reverence for their memories, may at least give a heart-benison on the list of their names.
Time and New World humanity having the venerable resemblances more than anything else, and being “the same subject continued,” just here in 1890, one gets a curious nourishment and lift (I do) from all those grand old veterans, Bancroft, Kossuth, von Moltke–and such typical specimen-reminiscences as Sophocles and Goethe, genius, health, beauty of person, riches, rank, renown and length of days, all combining and centering in one case.
Above everything, what could humanity and literature do without the mellow, last-justifying, averaging, bringing-up of many, many years–a great old age amplified? Every really first-class production has likely to pass through the crucial tests of a generation, perhaps several generations. Lord Bacon says the first sight of any work really new and first-rate in beauty and originality always arouses something disagreeable and repulsive. Voltaire term’d the Shaksperean works “a huge dunghill”; Hamlet he described (to the Academy, whose members listen’d with approbation) as “the dream of a drunken savage, with a few flashes of beautiful thoughts.” And not the Ferney sage alone; the orthodox judges and law-givers of France, such as La Harpe, J. L. Geoffrey, and Chateaubriand, either join’d in Voltaire’s verdict, or went further. Indeed the classicists and regulars there still hold to it. The lesson is very significant in all departments. People resent anything new as a personal insult. When umbrellas were first used in England, those who carried them were hooted and pelted so furiously that their lives were endanger’d. The same rage encounter’d the attempt in theatricals to perform women’s parts by real women, which was publicly consider’d disgusting and outrageous. Byron thought Pope’s verse incomparably ahead of Homer and Shakspere. One of the prevalent objections, in the days of Columbus was, the learn’d men boldly asserted that if a ship should reach India she would never get back again, because the rotundity of the globe would present a kind of mountain, up which it would be impossible to sail even with the most favorable wind.
“Modern poets,” says a leading Boston journal, “enjoy longevity. Browning lived to be seventy-seven. Wordsworth, Bryant, Emerson, and Longfellow were old men. Whittier, Tennyson, and Walt Whitman still live.”
Started out by that item on Old Poets and Poetry for chyle to inner American sustenance–I have thus gossipp’d about it all, and treated it from my own point of view, taking the privilege of rambling wherever the talk carried me. Browning is lately dead; Bryant, Emerson and Longfellow have not long pass’d away; and yes, Whittier and Tennyson remain, over eighty years old–the latter having sent out not long since a fresh volume, which the English-speaking Old and New Worlds are yet reading. I have already put on record my notions of T. and his effusions: they are very attractive and flowery to me–but flowers, too, are at least as profound as anything; and by common consent T. is settled as the poetic cream-skimmer of our age’s melody, _ennui_ and polish–a verdict in which I agree, and should say that nobody (not even Shakspere) goes deeper in those exquisitely touch’d and half-hidden hints and indirections left like faint perfumes in the crevices of his lines. Of Browning I don’t know enough to say much; he must be studied deeply out, too, and quite certainly repays the trouble–but I am old and indolent, and cannot study (and never did.)
Grand as to-day’s accumulative fund of poetry is, there is certainly something unborn, not yet come forth, different from anything now formulated in any verse, or contributed by the past in any land– something waited for, craved, hitherto non-express’d. What it will be, and how, no one knows. It will probably have to prove itself by itself and its readers. One thing, it must run through entire humanity (this new word and meaning Solidarity has arisen to us moderns) twining all lands like a divine thread, stringing all beads, pebbles or gold, from God and the soul, and like God’s dynamics and sunshine illustrating all and having reference to all. From anything like a cosmical point of view, the entirety of imaginative literature’s themes and results as we get them to-day seems painfully narrow. All that has been put in statement, tremendous as it is, what is it compared with the vast fields and values and varieties left unreap’d? Of our own country, the splendid races North or South, and especially of the Western and Pacific regions, it sometimes seems to me their myriad noblest Homeric and Biblic elements are all untouch’d, left as if ashamed of, and only certain very minor occasional _delirium tremens_ glints studiously sought and put in print, in short tales, “poetry” or books.
I give these speculations, or notions, in all their audacity, for the comfort of thousands–perhaps a majority of ardent minds, women’s and young men’s–who stand in awe and despair before the immensity of suns and stars already in the firmament. Even in the Iliad and Shakspere there is (is there not?) a certain humiliation produced to us by the absorption of them, unless we sound in equality, or above them, the songs due our own democratic era and surroundings, and the full assertion of ourselves. And in vain (such is my opinion) will America seek successfully to tune any superb national song unless the heart-strings of the people start it from their own breasts–to be return’d and echoed there again.
SHIP AHOY
In dreams I was a ship, and sail’d the boundless seas, Sailing and ever sailing–all seas and into every port, or out upon the offing,
Saluting, cheerily hailing each mate, met or pass’d, little or big, “Ship ahoy!” thro’ trumpet or by voice–if nothing more, some friendly merry word at least,
For companionship and good will for ever to all and each.
FOR QUEEN VICTORIA’S BIRTHDAY
_An American arbutus bunch to be put in a little vase on the royal breakfast table May 24th, 1890_.
Lady, accept a birth-day thought–haply an idle gift and token, Right from the scented soil’s May-utterance here, (Smelling of countless blessings, prayers, and old-time thanks,)[45] A bunch of white and pink arbutus, silent, spicy, shy, From Hudson’s, Delaware’s, or Potomac’s woody banks.
Note:
[45] NOTE.–Very little, as we Americans stand this day, with our sixty-five or seventy millions of population, an immense surplus in the treasury, and all that actual power or reserve power (land and sea) so dear to nations–very little I say do we realize that curious crawling national shudder when the “Trent affair” promis’d to bring upon us a war with Great Britain–follow’d unquestionably, as that war would have, by recognition of the Southern Confederacy from all the leading European nations. It is now certain that all this then inevitable train of calamity hung on arrogant and peremptory phrases in the prepared and written missive of the British Minister, to America, which the Queen (and Prince Albert latent) positively and promptly cancell’d; and which her firm attitude did alone actually erase and leave out, against all the other official prestige and Court of St. James’s. On such minor and personal incidents (so to call them,) often depend the great growths and turns of civilization. This moment of a woman and a queen surely swung the grandest oscillation of modern history’s pendulum. Many sayings and doings of that period, from foreign potentates and powers, might well be dropt in oblivion by America–but never _this_, if I could have my way. W. W.
AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE
_Is there any such thing–or can there ever be?_
So you want an essay about American National Literature, (tremendous and fearful subject!) do you?[46] Well, if you will let me put down some melanged cogitations regarding the matter, hap-hazard, and from my own points of view, I will try. Horace Greeley wrote a book named “Hints toward Reforms,” and the title-line was consider’d the best part of all. In the present case I will give a few thoughts and suggestions, of good and ambitious intent enough anyhow–first reiterating the question right out plainly: American National Literature–is there distinctively any such thing, or can there ever be? First to me comes an almost indescribably august form, the People, with varied typical shapes and attitudes-then the divine mirror, Literature.
As things are, probably no more puzzling question ever offer’d itself than (going back to old Nile for a trope,) What bread-seeds of printed mentality shall we cast upon America’s waters, to grow and return after many days? Is there for the future authorship of the United States any better way than submission to the teeming facts, events, activities, and importations already vital through and beneath them all? I have often ponder’d it, and felt myself disposed to let it go at that. Indeed, are not those facts and activities and importations potent and certain to fulfil themselves all through our Commonwealth, irrespective of any attempt from individual guidance? But allowing all, and even at that, a good part of the matter being honest discussion, examination, and earnest personal presentation, we may even for sanitary exercise and contact plunge boldly into the spread of the many waves and cross-tides, as follows. Or, to change the figure, I will present my varied little collation (what is our Country itself but an infinitely vast and varied collation?) in the hope that the show itself indicates a duty getting more and more incumbent every day.
In general, civilization’s totality or real representative National Literature formates itself (like language, or “the weather”) not from two or three influences, however important, nor from any learned syllabus, or criticism, or what ought to be, nor from any minds or advice of toploftical quarters–and indeed not at all from the influences and ways ostensibly supposed (though they too are adopted, after a sort)–but slowly, slowly, curiously, from many more and more, deeper mixings and siftings (especially in America) and generations and years and races, and what largely appears to be chance–but is not chance at all. First of all, for future National Literature in America, New England (the technically moral and schoolmaster region, as a cynical fellow I know calls it) and the three or four great Atlantic-coast cities, highly as they to-day suppose they dominate the whole, will have to haul in their horns. _Ensemble_ is the tap-root of National Literature. America is become already a huge world of peoples, rounded and orbic climates, idiocrasies, and geographies–forty-four Nations curiously and irresistibly blent and aggregated in ONE NATION, with one imperial language, and one unitary set of social and legal standards over all–and (I predict) a yet to be National Literature. (In my mind this last, if it ever comes, is to prove grander and more important for the Commonwealth than its politics and material wealth and trade, vast and indispensable as those are.)
Think a moment what must, beyond peradventure, be the real permanent sub-bases, or lack of them. Books profoundly considered show a great nation more than anything else–more than laws or manners. (This is, of course, probably the deep-down meaning of that well-buried but ever-vital platitude, Let me sing the people’s songs, and I don’t care who makes their laws.) Books too reflect humanity _en masse_, and surely show them splendidly, or the reverse, and prove or celebrate their prevalent traits (these last the main things.) Homer grew out of and has held the ages, and holds to-day, by the universal admiration for personal prowess, courage, rankness, _amour propre_, leadership, inherent in the whole human race. Shakspere concentrates the brilliancy of the centuries of feudalism on the proud personalities they produced, and paints the amorous passion. The books of the Bible stand for the final superiority of devout emotions over the rest, and of religious adoration, and ultimate absolute justice, more powerful than haughtiest kings or millionaires or majorities.
What the United States are working out and establishing needs imperatively the connivance of something subtler than ballots and legislators. The Goethean theory and lesson (if I may briefly state it so) of the exclusive sufficiency of artistic, scientific, literary equipment to the character, irrespective of any strong claims of the political ties of nation, state, or city, could have answer’d under the conventionality and pettiness of Weimar, or the Germany, or even Europe, of those times; but it will not do for America to-day at all. We have not only to exploit our own theory above any that has preceded us, but we have entirely different, and deeper-rooted, and infinitely broader themes.
When I have had a chance to see and observe a sufficient crowd of American boys or maturer youths or well-grown men, all the States, as in my experiences in the secession war among the soldiers, or west, east, north, or south, or my wanderings and loiterings through cities (especially New York and in Washington,) I have invariably found coming to the front three prevailing personal traits, to be named here for brevity’s sake under the heads Good-Nature, Decorum, and Intelligence. (I make Good-Nature first, as it deserves to be–it is a splendid resultant of all the rest, like health or fine weather.) Essentially these lead the inherent list of the high average personal born and bred qualities of the young fellows everywhere through the United States, as any sharp observer can find out for himself. Surely these make the vertebral stock of superbest and noblest nations! May the destinies show it so forthcoming. I mainly confide the whole future of our Commonwealth to the fact of these three bases. Need I say I demand the same in the elements and spirit and fruitage of National Literature?
Another, perhaps a born root or branch, comes under the words _Noblesse Oblige_, even for a national rule or motto. My opinion is that this foregoing phrase, and its spirit, should influence and permeate official America and its representatives in Congress, the Executive Departments, the Presidency, and the individual States–should be one of their chiefest mottoes, and be carried out practically. (I got the idea from my dear friend the democratic Englishwoman, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, now dead. “The beautiful words _Noblesse Oblige_,” said she to me once, “are not best for some develop’d gentleman or lord, but some rich and develop’d nation–and especially for your America.”)
Then another and very grave point (for this discussion is deep, deep–not for trifles, or pretty seemings.) I am not sure but the establish’d and old (and superb and profound, and, one may say, needed as old) conception of Deity as mainly of moral constituency (goodness, purity, sinlessness, &c.) has been undermined by nineteenth-century ideas and science. What does this immense and almost abnormal development of Philanthropy mean among the moderns? One doubts if there ever will come a day when the moral laws and moral standards will be supplanted as over all: while time proceeds (I find it so myself) they will probably be intrench’d deeper and expanded wider. Then the expanded scientific and democratic and truly philosophic and poetic quality of modernism demands a Deific identity and scope superior to all limitations, and essentially including just as well the so-call’d evil and crime and criminals–all the malformations, the defective and abortions of the universe.
Sometimes the bulk of the common people (who are far more ‘cute than the critics suppose) relish a well-hidden allusion or hint carelessly dropt, faintly indicated, and left to be disinterr’d or not. Some of the very old ballads have delicious morsels of this kind. Greek Aristophanes and Pindar abounded in them. (I sometimes fancy the old Hellenic audiences must have been as generally keen and knowing as any of their poets.) Shakspere is full of them. Tennyson has them. It is always a capital compliment from author to reader, and worthy the peering brains of America. The mere smartness of the common folks, however, does not need encouraging, but qualities more solid and opportune.
What are now deepest wanted in the States as roots for their literature are Patriotism, Nationality, Ensemble, or the ideas of these, and the uncompromising genesis and saturation of these. Not the mere bawling and braggadocio of them, but the radical emotion-facts, the fervor and perennial fructifying spirit at fountain-head. And at the risk of being misunderstood I should dwell on and repeat that a great imaginative _literatus_ for America can never be merely good and moral in the conventional method. Puritanism and what radiates from it must always be mention’d by me with respect; then I should say, for this vast and varied Commonwealth, geographically and artistically, the puritanical standards are constipated, narrow, and non-philosophic.
In the main I adhere to my positions in “Democratic Vistas,” and especially to my summing-up of American literature as far as to-day is concern’d. In Scientism, the Medical Profession, Practical Inventions, and Journalism, the United States have press’d forward to the glorious front rank of advanced civilized lands, as also in the popular dissemination of printed matter (of a superficial nature perhaps, but that is an indispensable preparatory stage,) and have gone in common education, so-call’d, far beyond any other land or age. Yet the high-pitch’d taunt of Margaret Fuller, forty years ago, still sounds in the air: “It does not follow, because the United States print and read more books, magazines, and newspapers than all the rest of the world, that they really have therefore a literature.” For perhaps it is not alone the free schools and newspapers, nor railroads and factories, nor all the iron, cotton, wheat, pork, and petroleum, nor the gold and silver, nor the surplus of a hundred or several hundred millions, nor the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, nor the last national census, that can put this Commonweal high or highest on the cosmical scale of history. Something else is indispensable. All that record is lofty, but there is a loftier.
The great current points are perhaps simple, after all: first, that the highest developments of the New World and Democracy, and probably the best society of the civilized world all over, are to be only reach’d and spinally nourish’d (in my notion) by a new evolutionary sense and treatment; and, secondly, that the evolution-principle, which is the greatest law through nature, and of course in these States, has now reach’d us markedly for and in our literature.
In other writings I have tried to show how vital to any aspiring Nationality must ever be its autochthonic song, and how for a really great people there can be no complete and glorious Name, short of emerging out of and even rais’d on such born poetic expression, coming from its own soil and soul, its area, spread, idiosyncrasies, and (like showers of rain, originally rising impalpably, distill’d from land and sea,) duly returning there again. Nor do I forget what we all owe to our ancestry; though perhaps we are apt to forgive and bear too much for that alone.
One part of the national American literatus’s task is (and it is not an easy one) to treat the old hereditaments, legends, poems, theologies, and even customs, with fitting respect and toleration, and at the same time clearly understand and justify, and be devoted to and exploit our own day, its diffused light, freedom, responsibilities, with all it necessitates, and that our New-World circumstances and stages of development demand and make proper. For American literature we want mighty authors, _not_ even Carlyle- and Heine-like, born and brought up in (and more or less essentially partaking and giving out) that vast abnormal ward or hysterical sick-chamber which in many respects Europe, with all its glories, would seem to be. The greatest feature in current poetry (perhaps in literature anyhow) is the almost total lack of first-class power, and simple, natural health, flourishing and produced at first hand, typifying our own era. Modern verse generally lacks quite altogether the modern, and is oftener possess’d in spirit with the past and feudal, dressed may-be in late fashions. For novels and plays often the plots and surfaces are contemporary–but the spirit, even the fun, is morbid and effete.
There is an essential difference between the Old and New. The poems of Asia and Europe are rooted in the long past. They celebrate man and his intellections and relativenesses as they have been. But America, in as high a strain as ever, is to sing them all as they are and are to be. (I know, of course, that the past is probably a main factor in what we are and know and must be.) At present the States are absorb’d in business, money-making, politics, agriculture, the development of mines, intercommunications, and other material attents–which all shove forward and appear at their height–as, consistently with modern civilization, they must be and should be. Then even these are but the inevitable precedents and providers for home-born, transcendent, democratic literature–to be shown in superior, more heroic, more spiritual, more emotional, personalities and songs. A national literature is, of course, in one sense, a great mirror or reflector. There must however be something before–something to reflect. I should say now, since the secession war, there has been, and to-day unquestionably exists, that something.
Certainly, anyhow, the United States do not so far utter poetry, first-rate literature, or any of the so-call’d arts, to any lofty admiration or advantage–are not dominated or penetrated from actual inherence or plain bent to the said poetry and arts. Other work, other needs, current inventions, productions, have occupied and to-day mainly occupy them. They are very ‘cute and imitative and proud–can’t bear being left too glaringly away far behind the other high-class nations–and so we set up some home “poets,” “artists,” painters, musicians, _literati_, and so forth, all our own (thus claim’d.) The whole matter has gone on, and exists to-day, probably as it should have been, and should be; as, for the present, it must be. To all which we conclude, and repeat the terrible query: American National Literature–is there distinctively any such thing, or can there ever be?
Note:
[46] The essay was for the _North American Review_, in answer to the formal request of the editor. It appear’d in March, 1891.
GATHERING THE CORN
_Last of October_.–Now mellow, crisp, Autumn days, bright moonlight nights, and gathering the corn–“cutting up,” as the farmers call it. Now, or of late, all over the country, a certain green and brown-drab eloquence seeming to call out, “You that pretend to give the news, and all that’s going, why not give us a notice?” Truly, O fields, as for the notice,
“Take, we give it willingly.”
Only we must do it our own way. Leaving the domestic, dietary, and commercial parts of the question (which are enormous, in fact, hardly second to those of any other of our great soil-products), we will just saunter down a lane we know, on an average West Jersey farm, and let the fancy of the hour itemize America’s most typical agricultural show and specialty.
Gathering the Corn–the British call it Maize, the old Yankee farmer Indian Corn. The great plumes, the ears well-envelop’d in their husks, the long and pointed leaves, in summer, like green or purple ribands, with a yellow stem line in the middle, all now turn’d dingy; the sturdy stalks, and the rustling in the breeze–the breeze itself well tempering the sunny noon–The varied reminiscences recall’d–the ploughing and planting in spring–(the whole family in the field, even the little girls and boys dropping seed in the hill)–the gorgeous sight through July and August–the walk and observation early in the day–the cheery call of the robin, and the low whirr of insects in the grass–the Western husking party, when ripe–the November moonlight gathering, and the calls, songs, laughter of the young fellows.
Not to forget, hereabouts, in the Middle States, the old worm fences, with the gray rails and their scabs of moss and lichen–those old rails, weather beaten, but strong yet. Why not come down from literary dignity, and confess we are sitting on one now, under the shade of a great walnut tree? Why not confide that these lines are pencill’d on the edge of a woody bank, with a glistening pond and creek seen through the trees south, and the corn we are writing about close at hand on the north? Why not put in the delicious scent of the “life everlasting” that yet lingers so profusely in every direction–the chromatic song of the one persevering locust (the insect is scarcer this fall and the past summer than for many years) beginning slowly, rising and swelling to much emphasis, and then abruptly falling–so appropriate to the scene, so quaint, so racy and suggestive in the warm sunbeams, we could sit here and look and listen for an hour? Why not even the tiny, turtle-shaped, yellow-back’d, black-spotted lady-bug that has lit on the shirt-sleeve of the arm inditing this? Ending our list with the fall-drying grass, the Autumn days themselves,
Sweet days; so cool, so calm, so bright,
(yet not so cool either, about noon)–the horse-mint, the wild carrot, the mullein, and the bumble-bee.
How the half-mad vision of William Blake–how the far freer, far firmer fantasy that wrote “Midsummer Night’s Dream”–would have revell’d night or day, and beyond stint, in one of our American corn fields! Truly, in color, outline, material and spiritual suggestiveness, where any more inclosing theme for idealist, poet, literary artist?
What we have written has been at noon day–but perhaps better still (for this collation,) to steal off by yourself these fine nights, and go slowly, musingly down the lane, when the dry and green-gray frost-touch’d leaves seem whisper-gossipping all over the field in low tones, as if every hill had something to say–and you sit or lean recluse near by, and inhale that rare, rich, ripe and peculiar odor of the gather’d plant which comes out best only to the night air. The complex impressions of the far-spread fields and woods in the night, are blended mystically, soothingly, indefinitely, and yet palpably to you (appealing curiously, perhaps mostly, to the sense of smell.) All is comparative silence and clear-shadow below, and the stars are up there with Jupiter lording it over westward; sulky Saturn in the east, and over head the moon. A rare well-shadow’d hour! By no means the least of the eligibilities of the gather’d corn!
A DEATH-BOUQUET
_Pick’d Noontime, early January, 1890_
Death–too great a subject to be treated so–indeed the greatest subject–and yet I am giving you but a few random lines about it–as one writes hurriedly the last part of a letter to catch the closing mail. Only I trust the lines, especially the poetic bits quoted, may leave a lingering odor of spiritual heroism afterward. For I am probably fond of viewing all really great themes indirectly, and by side-ways and suggestions. Certain music from wondrous voices or skilful players–then poetic glints still more–put the soul in rapport with death, or toward it. Hear a strain from Tennyson’s late “Crossing the Bar”:
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place The floods may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar.
Am I starting the sail-craft of poets in line? Here then a quatrain of Phrynichus long ago to one of old Athens’ favorites:
Thrice-happy Sophocles! in good old age, Bless’d as a man, and as a craftsman bless’d, He died; his many tragedies were fair, And fair his end, nor knew he any sorrow.
Certain music, indeed, especially voluntaries by a good player, at twilight–or idle rambles alone by the shore, or over prairie or on mountain road, for that matter–favor the right mood. Words are difficult–even impossible. No doubt any one will recall ballads or songs or hymns (may-be instrumental performances) that have arous’d so curiously, yet definitely, the thought of death, the mystic, the after-realm, as no statement or sermon could–and brought it hovering near. A happy (to call it so) and easy death is at least as much a physiological result as a pyschological one. The foundation of it really begins before birth, and is thence directly or indirectly shaped and affected, even constituted, (the base stomachic) by every thing from that minute till the time of its occurrence. And yet here is something (Whittier’s “Burning Driftwood”) of an opposite coloring:
I know the solemn monotone
Of waters calling unto me;
I know from whence the airs have blown, That whisper of the Eternal Sea;
As low my fires of driftwood burn, I hear that sea’s deep sounds increase, And, fair in sunset light, discern
Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.
Like an invisible breeze after a long and sultry day, death sometimes sets in at last, soothingly and refreshingly, almost vitally. In not a few cases the termination even appears to be a sort of ecstasy. Of course there are painful deaths, but I do not believe such is at all the general rule. Of the many hundreds I myself saw die in the fields and hospitals during the secession war the cases of mark’ d suffering or agony _in extremis_ were very rare. (It is a curious suggestion of immortality that the mental and emotional powers remain to their clearest through all, while the senses of pain and flesh volition are blunted or even gone.)
Then to give the following, and cease before the thought gets threadbare:
Now, land and life, finale, and farewell! Now Voyager depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store;) Often enough hast thou adventur’d o’er the seas, Cautiously cruising, studying the charts, Duly again to port and hawser’s tie returning. –But now obey thy cherish’d, secret wish, Embrace thy friends–leave all in order; To port and hawser’s tie no more returning, Depart upon thy endless cruise, old Sailor!
SOME LAGGARDS YET
THE PERFECT HUMAN VOICE
Stating it briefly and pointedly I should suggest that the human voice is a cultivation or form’d growth on a fair native foundation. This foundation probably exists in nine cases out of ten. Sometimes nature affords the vocal organ in perfection, or rather I would say near enough to whet one’s appreciation and appetite for a voice that might be truly call’d perfection. To me the grand voice is mainly physiological–(by which I by no means ignore the mental help, but wish to keep the emphasis where it belongs.) Emerson says _manners_ form the representative apex and final charm and captivation of humanity: but he might as well have changed the typicality to voice.
Of course there is much taught and written about elocution, the best reading, speaking, &c., but it finally settles down to _best_ human vocalization. Beyond all other power and beauty, there is something in the quality and power of the right voice (_timbre_ the schools call it) that touches the soul, the abysms. It was not for nothing that the Greeks depended, at their highest, on poetry’s and wisdom’s vocal utterance by _tete-a-tete_ lectures–(indeed all the ancients did.)
Of celebrated people possessing this wonderful vocal power, patent to me, in former days, I should specify the contralto Alboni, Elias Hicks, Father Taylor, the tenor Bettini, Fanny Kemble, and the old actor Booth, and in private life many cases, often women. I sometimes wonder whether the best philosophy and poetry, or something like the best, after all these centuries, perhaps waits to be rous’d out yet, or suggested, by the perfect physiological human voice.
SHAKSPERE FOR AMERICA
Let me send you a supplementary word to that “view” of Shakspere attributed to me, publish’d in your July number,[47] and so courteously worded by the reviewer (thanks! dear friend.) But you have left out what, perhaps, is the main point, as follows:
“Even the one who at present reigns unquestion’d–of Shakspere–for all he stands for so much in modern literature, he stands entirely for the mighty esthetic sceptres of the past, not for the spiritual and democratic, the sceptres of the future.” (See pp. 55-58 in “November Boughs,” and also some of my further notions on Shakspere.)
The Old World (Europe and Asia) is the region of the poetry of concrete and real things,–the past, the esthetic, palaces, etiquette, the literature of war and love, the mythological gods, and the myths anyhow. But the New World (America) is the region of the future, and its poetry must be spiritual and democratic. Evolution is not the rule in Nature, in Politics, and Inventions only, but in Verse. I know our age is greatly materialistic, but it is greatly spiritual, too, and the future will be, too. Even what we moderns have come to mean by _spirituality_ (while including what the Hebraic utterers, and mainly perhaps all the Greek and other old typical poets, and also the later ones, meant) has so expanded and color’d and vivified the comprehension of the term, that it is quite a different one from the past. Then science, the final critic of all, has the casting vote for future poetry.
Note:
[47] This bit was in “Poet-lore” monthly for September, 1890.
“UNASSAIL’D RENOWN”
The N. Y. _Critic_, Nov. 24, 1889, propounded a circular to several persons, and giving the responses, says, “Walt Whitman’s views [as follow] are, naturally, more radical than those of any other contributor to the discussion”:
Briefly to answer impromptu your request of Oct. 19–the question whether I think any American poet not now living deserves a place among the thirteen “English inheritors of unassail’d renown” (Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats,)–and which American poets would be truly worthy, &c. Though to me the _deep_ of the matter goes down, down beneath. I remember the London _Times_ at the time, in opportune, profound and friendly articles on Bryant’s and Longfellow’s deaths, spoke of the embarrassment, warping effect, and confusion on America (her poets and poetic students) “coming in possession of a great estate they had never lifted a hand to form or earn”; and the further contingency of “the English language ever having annex’d to it a lot of first-class Poetry that would be American, not European”–proving then something precious over all, and beyond valuation. But perhaps that is venturing outside the question. Of the thirteen British immortals mention’d–after placing Shakspere on a sort of pre-eminence of fame not to be invaded yet–the names of Bryant, Emerson, Whittier and Longfellow (with even added names, sometimes Southerners, sometimes Western or other writers of only one or two pieces,) deserve in my opinion an equally high niche of renown as belongs to any on the dozen of that glorious list.
INSCRIPTION FOR A LITTLE BOOK ON GIORDANO BRUNO
As America’s mental courage (the thought comes to me to-day) is so indebted, above all current lands and peoples, to the noble army of Old-World martyrs past, how incumbent on us that we clear those martyrs’ lives and names, and hold them up for reverent admiration, as well as beacons. And typical of this, and standing for it and all perhaps, Giordano Bruno may well be put, to-day and to come, in our New World’s thankfulest heart and memory.
W.W. CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _February 24th, 1890_.
SPLINTERS
While I stand in reverence before the fact of Humanity, the People, I will confess, in writing my L. of G., the least consideration out of all that has had to do with it has been the consideration of “the public”–at any rate as it now exists. Strange as it may sound for a democrat to say so, I am clear that no free and original and lofty-soaring poem, or one ambitious of those achievements, can possibly be fulfill’d by any writer who has largely in his thought _the public_–or the question, What will establish’d literature–What will the current authorities say about it?
As far as I have sought any, not the best laid out garden or parterre has been my model–but Nature has been. I know that in a sense the garden is nature too, but I had to choose–I could not give both. Besides the gardens are well represented in poetry; while Nature (in letter and in spirit, in the divine essence,) little if at all.
Certainly, (while I have not hit it by a long shot,) I have aim’d at the most ambitious, the best–and sometimes feel to advance that aim (even with all its arrogance) as the most redeeming part of my books. I have never so much cared to feed the esthetic or intellectual palates–but if I could arouse from its slumbers that eligibility in every soul for its own true exercise! if I could only wield that lever!
Out from the well-tended concrete and the physical–and in them and from them only–radiate the spiritual and heroic.
Undoubtedly many points belonging to this essay–perhaps of the greatest necessity, fitness and importance to it–have been left out or forgotten. But the amount of the whole matter–poems, preface and everything–is merely to make one of those little punctures or eyelets the actors possess in the theatre-curtains to look out upon “the house”–one brief, honest, living glance.
HEALTH, (OLD STYLE)
In that condition the whole body is elevated to a state by others unknown–inwardly and outwardly illuminated, purified, made solid, strong, yet buoyant. A singular charm, more than beauty, flickers out of, and over, the face–a curious transparency beams in the eyes, both in the iris and the white–the temper partakes also. Nothing that happens–no event, rencontre, weather, &c–but it is confronted–nothing but is subdued into sustenance–such is the marvellous transformation from the old timorousness and the old process of causes and effects. Sorrows and disappointments cease–there is no more borrowing trouble in advance. A man realizes the venerable myth–he is a god walking the earth, he sees new eligibilities, powers and beauties everywhere; he himself has a new eyesight and hearing. The play of the body in motion takes a previously unknown grace. Merely _to move_ is then a happiness, a pleasure–to breathe, to see, is also. All the beforehand gratifications, drink, spirits, coffee, grease, stimulants, mixtures, late hours, luxuries, deeds of the night, seem as vexatious dreams, and now the awakening;–many fall into their natural places, whole-some, conveying diviner joys.
What I append–Health, old style–I have long treasur’d–found originally in some scrap-book fifty years ago–a favorite of mine (but quite a glaring contrast to my present bodily state:)
On a high rock above the vast abyss, Whose solid base tumultuous waters lave; Whose airy high-top balmy breezes kiss, Fresh from the white foam of the circling wave–
There ruddy HEALTH, in rude majestic state, His clust’ring forelock combatting the winds– Bares to each season’s change his breast elate, And still fresh vigor from th’ encounter finds;
With mighty mind to every fortune braced, To every climate each corporeal power, And high-proof heart, impenetrably cased, He mocks the quick transitions of the hour.
Now could he hug bleak Zembla’s bolted snow, Now to Arabia’s heated deserts turn,
Yet bids the biting blast more fiercely blow, The scorching sun without abatement burn.
There this bold Outlaw, rising with the morn, His sinewy functions fitted for the toil, Pursues, with tireless steps, the rapturous horn, And bears in triumph back the shaggy spoil.
Or, on his rugged range of towering hills, Turns the stiff glebe behind his hardy team; His wide-spread heaths to blithest measures tills, And boasts the joys of life are not a dream!
Then to his airy hut, at eve, retires, Clasps to his open breast his buxom spouse, Basks in his faggot’s blaze, his passions fires, And strait supine to rest unbroken bows.
On his smooth forehead, Time’s old annual score, Tho’ left to furrow, yet disdains to lie; He bids weak sorrow tantalize no more, And puts the cup of care contemptuous by.
If, from some inland height, that, skirting, bears Its rude encroachments far into the vale, He views where poor dishonor’d nature wears On her soft cheek alone the lily pale;
How will he scorn alliance with the race, Those aspen shoots that shiver at a breath; Children of sloth, that danger dare not face, And find in life but an extended death:
Then from the silken reptiles will he fly, To the bold cliff in bounding transports run, And stretch’d o’er many a wave his ardent eye, Embrace the enduring Sea-Boy as his son!
Yes! thine alone–from pain, from sorrow free, The lengthen’d life with peerless joys replete; Then let me, Lord of Mountains, share with thee The hard, the early toil–the relaxation sweet.
GAY-HEARTEDNESS
Walking on the old Navy Yard bridge, Washington, D. C., once with a companion, Mr. Marshall, from England, a great traveler and observer, as a squad of laughing young black girls pass’d us–then two copper- color’d boys, one good-looking lad 15 or 16, barefoot, running after –“What _gay creatures_ they all appear to be,” said Mr. M. Then we fell to talking about the general lack of buoyant animal spirits. “I think,” said Mr. M., “that in all my travels, and all my intercourse with people of every and any class, especially the cultivated ones, (the literary and fashionable folks,) I have never yet come across what I should call a really GAY-HEARTED MAN.”
It was a terrible criticism–cut into me like a surgeon’s lance. Made me silent the whole walk home.
AS IN A SWOON.
As in a swoon, one instant,
Another sun, ineffable, full-dazzles me, And all the orbs I knew–and brighter, unknown orbs; One instant of the future land, Heaven’s land.
L. OF G.
Thoughts, suggestions, aspirations, pictures, Cities and farms–by day and night–book of peace and war, Of platitudes and of the commonplace.
For out-door health, the land and sea–for good will, For America–for all the earth, all nations, the common people, (Not of one nation only–not America only.)
In it each claim, ideal, line, by all lines, claims, ideals, temper’d;
Each right and wish by other wishes, rights.
AFTER THE ARGUMENT.
A group of little children with their ways and chatter flow in, Like welcome rippling water o’er my heated nerves and flesh.
FOR US TWO, READER DEAR.
Simple, spontaneous, curious, two souls interchanging, With the original testimony for us continued to the last.
MEMORANDA
[Let me indeed turn upon myself a little of the light I have been so fond of casting on others.
Of course these few exceptional later mems are far, far short of one’s concluding history or thoughts or life-giving–only a hap-hazard pinch of all. But the old Greek proverb put it, “Anybody who really has a good quality” (or bad one either, I guess) “has _all_.” There’s something in the proverb; but you mustn’t carry it too far.
I will not reject any theme or subject because the treatment is too personal.
As my stuff settles into shape, I am told (and sometimes myself discover, uneasily, but feel all right about it in calmer moments) it is mainly autobiographic, and even egotistic after all–which I finally accept, and am contented so.
If this little volume betrays, as it doubtless does, a weakening hand, and decrepitude, remember it is knit together out of accumulated sickness, inertia, physical disablement, acute pain, and listlessness. My fear will be that at last my pieces show indooredness, and being chain’d to a chair–as never before. Only the resolve to keep up, and on, and to add a remnant, and even perhaps obstinately see what failing powers and decay may contribute too, have produced it.
And now as from some fisherman’s net hauling all sorts, and disbursing the same.]
A WORLD’S SHOW
_New York, Great Exposition open’d in 1853._–I went a long time (nearly a year)–days and nights–especially the latter–as it was finely lighted, and had a very large and copious exhibition gallery of paintings (shown at best at night, I tho’t)–hundreds of pictures from Europe, many masterpieces–all an exhaustless study–and, scatter’d thro’ the building, sculptures, single figures or groups–among the rest, Thorwaldsen’s “Apostles,” colossal in size–and very many fine bronzes, pieces of plate from English silversmiths, and curios from everywhere abroad–with woods from all lands of the earth–all sorts of fabrics and products and handiwork from the workers of all nations.
NEW YORK–THE BAY–THE OLD NAME
_Commencement of a gossipy travelling letter in a New York city paper, May 10, 1879_.–My month’s visit is about up; but before I get back to Camden let me print some jottings of the last four weeks. Have you not, reader dear, among your intimate friends, some one, temporarily absent, whose letters to you, avoiding all the big topics and disquisitions, give only minor, gossipy sights and scenes–just as they come–subjects disdain’d by solid writers, but interesting to you because they were such as happen to everybody, and were the moving entourage to your friend–to his or her steps, eyes, mentality? Well, with an idea something of that kind, I suppose, I set out on the following hurrygraphs of a breezy early-summer visit to New York city and up the North river–especially at present of some hours along Broadway.
_What I came to New York for_.–To try the experiment of a lecture–to see whether I could stand it, and whether an audience could–was my specific object. Some friends had invited me–it was by no means clear how it would end–I stipulated that they should get only a third-rate hall, and not sound the advertising trumpets a bit–and so I started. I much wanted something to do for occupation, consistent with my limping and paralyzed state. And now, since it came off, and since neither my hearers nor I myself really collaps’d at the aforesaid lecture, I intend to go up and down the land (in moderation,) seeking whom I may devour, with lectures, and reading of my own poems–short pulls, however–never exceeding an hour.
_Crossing from Jersey city, 5 to 6 P.M._–The city part of the North river with its life, breadth, peculiarities–the amplitude of sea and wharf, cargo and commerce–one don’t realize them till one has been away a long time and, as now returning, (crossing from Jersey city to Desbrosses-st.,) gazes on the unrivall’d panorama, and far down the thin-vapor’d vistas of the bay, toward the Narrows–or northward up the Hudson–or on the ample spread and infinite variety, free and floating, of the more immediate views–a countless river series–everything moving, yet so easy, and such plenty of room! Little, I say, do folks here appreciate the most ample, eligible, picturesque bay and estuary surroundings in the world! This is the third time such a conviction has come to me after absence, returning to New York, dwelling on its magnificent entrances–approaching the city by them from any point.
More and more, too, the _old name_ absorbs into me–MANNAHATTA, “the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.” How fit a name for America’s great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!
A SICK SPELL
_Christmas Day, 25th Dec., 1888_.–Am somewhat easier and freer to-day and the last three days–sit up most of the time–read and write, and receive my visitors. Have now been in-doors sick for seven months –half of the time bad, bad, vertigo, indigestion, bladder, gastric, head trouble, inertia–Dr. Bucke, Dr. Osler, Drs. Wharton and Walsh–now Edward Wilkins my help and nurse. A fine, splendid, sunny day. My “November Boughs” is printed and out; and my “Complete Works, Poems and Prose,” a big volume, 900 pages, also. It is ab’t noon, and I sit here pretty comfortable.
TO BE PRESENT ONLY
_At the Complimentary Dinner, Camden, New Jersey, May 31, 1889_.–Walt Whitman said: My friends, though announced to give an address, there is no such intention. Following the impulse of the spirit, (for I am at least half of Quaker stock) I have obey’d the command to come and look at you, for a minute, and show myself, face to face; which is probably the best I can do. But I have felt no command to make a speech; and shall not therefore attempt any. All I have felt the imperative conviction to say I have already printed in my books of poems or prose; to which I refer any who may be curious. And so, hail and farewell. Deeply acknowledging this deep compliment, with my best respects and love to you personally–to Camden–to New-Jersey, and to all represented here–you must excuse me from any word further.
“INTESTINAL AGITATION”
_From Pall-Mall Gazette, London, England, Feb 8, 1890_ Mr. Ernest Rhys has just receiv’d an interesting letter from Walt Whitman, dated “Camden, January 22, 1890.” The following is an extract from it:
I am still here–no very mark’d or significant change or happening–fairly buoyant spirits, &c.–but surely, slowly ebbing. At this moment sitting here, in my den, Mickle street, by the oakwood fire, in the same big strong old chair with wolf-skin spread over back–bright sun, cold, dry winter day. America continues–is generally busy enough all over her vast demesnes (intestinal agitation I call it,) talking, plodding, making money, every one trying to get on–perhaps to get towards the top–but no special individual signalism–(just as well, I guess.)
“WALT WHITMAN’S LAST ‘PUBLIC'”
The gay and crowded audience at the Art Rooms, Philadelphia, Tuesday night, April 15, 1890, says a correspondent of the Boston _Transcript_, April 19, might not have thought that W. W. crawl’d out of a sick bed a few hours before, crying,
Dangers retreat when boldly they’re confronted,
and went over, hoarse and half blind, to deliver his memoranda and essay on the death of Abraham Lincoln, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of that tragedy. He led off with the following new paragraph: