the sherry or the sherry the stewed eels, to eke out Mrs. A. B.’s parlor-tableaux with monk, Jew, lover, Puck, Prospero, Caliban, or what not, and to generally contribute and gracefully adapt their flexibilities and talents, in those ranges, to the world’s service. But for real crises, great needs and pulls, moral or physical, they might as well have never been born.
Or the accepted notion of a poet would appear to be a sort of male odalisque, singing or piano-playing a kind of spiced ideas, second-hand reminiscences, or toying late hours at entertainments, in rooms stifling with fashionable scent. I think I haven’t seen a new-published, healthy, bracing, simple lyric in ten years. Not long ago, there were verses in each of three fresh monthlies, from leading authors, and in every one the whole central _motif_ (perfectly serious) was the melancholiness of a marriageable young woman who didn’t get a rich husband, but a poor one!
Besides its tonic and _al fresco_ physiology, relieving such as this, the poetry of the future will take on character in a more important respect. Science, having extirpated the old stock-fables and superstitions, is clearing a field for verse, for all the arts, and even for romance, a hundred-fold ampler and more wonderful, with the new principles behind. Republicanism advances over the whole world. Liberty, with Law by her side, will one day be paramount–will at any rate be the central idea. Then only–for all the splendor and beauty of what has been, or the polish of what is–then only will the true poets appear, and the true poems. Not the satin and patchouly of today, not the glorification of the butcheries and wars of the past, nor any fight between Deity on one side and somebody else on the other–not Milton, not even Shakspere’s plays, grand as they are. Entirely different and hitherto unknown Classes of men, being authoritatively called for in imaginative literature, will certainly appear. What is hitherto most lacking, perhaps most absolutely indicates the future. Democracy has been hurried on through time by measureless tides and winds, resistless as the revolution of the globe, and as far-reaching and rapid. But in the highest walks of art it has not yet had a single representative worthy of it anywhere upon the earth.
Never had real bard a task more fit for sublime ardor and genius than to sing worthily the songs these States have already indicated. Their origin, Washington, ’76, the picturesqueness of old times, the war of 1812 and the sea-fights; the incredible rapidity of movement and breadth of area–to fuse and compact the South and North, the East and West, to express the native forms, situations, scenes, from Montauk to California, and from the Saguenay to the Rio Grande–the working out on such gigantic scales, and with such a swift and mighty play of changing light and shade, of the great problems of man and freedom,–how far ahead of the stereotyped plots, or gem-cutting, or tales of love, or wars of mere ambition! Our history is so full of spinal, modern, germinal subjects–one above all. What the ancient siege of Illium, and the puissance of Hector’s and Agamemnon’s warriors proved to Hellenic art and literature, and all art and literature since, may prove the war of attempted secession of 1861-’65 to the future esthetics, drama, romance, poems of the United States.
Nor could utility itself provide anything more practically serviceable to the hundred millions who, a couple of generations hence, will inhabit within the limits just named, than the permeation of a sane, sweet, autochthonous national poetry–must I say of a kind that does not now exist? but which, I fully believe, will in time be supplied on scales as free as Nature’s elements. (It is acknowledged that we of the States are the most materialistic and money-making people ever known. My own theory, while fully accepting this, is that we are the most emotional, spiritualistic, and poetry-loving people also.)
Infinite are the new and orbic traits waiting to be launch’d forth in the firmament that is, and is to be, America. Lately, I have wonder’d whether the last meaning of this cluster of thirty-eight States is not only practical fraternity among themselves–the only real union, (much nearer its accomplishment, too, than appears on the surface)–but for fraternity over the whole globe–that dazzling, pensive dream of ages! Indeed, the peculiar glory of our lands, I have come to see, or expect to see, not in their geographical or republican greatness, nor wealth or products, nor military or naval power, nor special, eminent names in any department, to shine with, or outshine, foreign special names in similar departments,–but more and more in a vaster, saner, more surrounding Comradeship, uniting closer and closer not only the American States, but all nations, and all humanity. That, O poets! is not that a theme worth chanting, striving for? Why not fix your verses henceforth to the gauge of the round globe? the whole race? Perhaps the most illustrious culmination of the modern may thus prove to be a signal growth of joyous, more exalted bards of adhesiveness, identically one in soul, but contributed by every nation, each after its distinctive kind. Let us, audacious, start it. Let the diplomats, as ever, still deeply plan, seeking advantages, proposing treaties between governments, and to bind them, on paper: what I seek is different, simpler. I would inaugurate from America, for this purpose, new formulas–international poems. I have thought that the invisible root out of which the poetry deepest in, and dearest to, humanity grows, is Friendship. I have thought that both in patriotism and song (even amid their grandest shows past) we have adhered too long to petty limits, and that the time has come to enfold the world.
Not only is the human and artificial world we have establish’d in the West a radical departure from anything hitherto known–not only men and politics, and all that goes with them–but Nature itself, in the main sense, its construction, is different. The same old font of type, of course, but set up to a text never composed or issued before. For Nature consists not only in itself, objectively, but at least just as much in its subjective reflection from the person, spirit, age, looking at it, in the midst of it, and absorbing it–faithfully sends back the characteristic beliefs of the time or individual–takes, and readily gives again, the physiognomy of any nation or literature–falls like a great elastic veil on a face, or like the molding plaster on a statue.
What is Nature? What were the elements, the invisible backgrounds and eidolons of it, to Homer’s heroes, voyagers, gods? What all through the wanderings of Virgil’s Aeneas? Then to Shakspere’s characters–Hamlet, Lear, the English-Norman kings, the Romans? What was Nature to Rousseau, to Voltaire, to the German Goethe in his little classical court gardens? In those presentments in Tennyson (see the “Idylls of the King”–what sumptuous, perfumed, arras-and-gold Nature, inimitably described, better than any, fit for princes and knights and peerless ladies–wrathful or peaceful, just the same–Vivien and Merlin in their strange dalliance, or the death-float of Elaine, or Geraint and the long journey of his disgraced Enid and himself through the wood, and the wife all day driving the horses,) as in all the great imported art-works, treatises systems, from Lucretius down, there is a constantly lurking often pervading something, that will have to be eliminated, as not only unsuited to modern democracy and science in America, but insulting to them, and disproved by them.[37]
Still, the rule and demesne of poetry will always be not the exterior, but interior; not the macrocosm, but microcosm; not Nature, but Man. I haven’t said anything about the imperative need of a race of giant bards in the future, to hold up high to eyes of land and race the eternal antiseptic models, and to dauntlessly confront greed, injustice, and all forms of that wiliness and tyranny whose roots never die–(my opinion is, that after all the rest is advanced, _that_ is what first-class poets are for; as, to their days and occasions, the Hebrew lyrists, Roman Juvenal, and doubtless the old singers of India, and the British Druids)–to counteract dangers, immensest ones, already looming in America–measureless corruption in politics–what we call religion, a mere mask of wax or lace;–for _ensemble_, that most cankerous, offensive of all earth’s shows–a vast and varied community, prosperous and fat with wealth of money and products and business ventures–plenty of mere intellectuality too–and then utterly without the sound, prevailing, moral and esthetic health-action beyond all the money and mere intellect of the world.
Is it a dream of mine that, in times to come, west, south, east, north, will silently, surely arise a race of such poets, varied, yet one in soul–nor only poets, and of the best, but newer, larger prophets–larger than Judea’s, and more passionate–to meet and penetrate those woes, as shafts of light the darkness?
As I write, the last fifth of the nineteenth century is enter’d upon, and will soon be waning. Now, and for a long time to come, what the United States most need, to give purport, definiteness, reason why, to their unprecedented material wealth, industrial products, education by rote merely, great populousness and intellectual activity, is the central, spinal reality, (or even the idea of it,) of such a democratic band of-native-born-and-bred teachers, artists, _litterateurs_, tolerant and receptive of importations, but entirely adjusted to the West, to ourselves, to our own days, combinations, differences, superiorities. Indeed, I am fond of thinking that the whole series of concrete and political triumphs of the Republic are mainly as bases and preparations for half a dozen future poets, ideal personalities, referring not to a special class, but to the entire people, four or five millions of square miles.
Long, long are the processes of the development of a nationality Only to the rapt vision does the seen become the prophecy of the unseen.[38] Democracy, so far attending only to the real, is not for the real only, but the grandest ideal–to justify the modern by that, and not only to equal, but to become by that superior to the past.
On a comprehensive summing up of the processes and present and hitherto condition of the United States, with reference to their future, and the indispensable precedents to it, my point, below all surfaces, and subsoiling them, is, that the bases and prerequisites of a leading nationality are, first, at all hazards, freedom, worldly wealth and products on the largest and most varied scale, common education and intercommunication, and, in general, the passing through of just the stages and crudities we have passed or are passing through in the United States.
Then, perhaps, as weightiest factor of the whole business, and of the main outgrowths of the future, it remains to be definitely avow’d that the native-born middle-class population of quite all the United States–the average of farmers and mechanics everywhere–the real, though latent and silent bulk of America, city or country, presents a magnificent mass of material, never before equal’d on earth. It is this material, quite unexpress’d by literature or art, that in every respect insures the future of the republic. During the secession war I was with the armies, and saw the rank and file, north and south, and studied them for four years. I have never had the least doubt about the country in its essential future since.
Meantime, we can (perhaps) do no better than to saturate ourselves with, and continue to give imitations, yet awhile, of the esthetic models, supplies, of that past and of those lands we spring from. Those wondrous stores, reminiscences, floods, currents! Let them flow on, flow hither freely. And let the sources be enlarged, to include not only the works of British origin, as now, but stately and devout Spain, courteous France, profound Germany, the manly Scandinavian lands, Italy’s art race, and always the mystic Orient. Remembering that at present, and doubtless long ahead, a certain humility would well become us. The course through time of highest civilization, does it not wait the first glimpse of our contribution to its kosmic train of poems, bibles, first-class structures, perpetuities–Egypt and Palestine and India–Greece and Rome and mediaeval Europe–and so onward? The shadowy procession is not a meagre one, and the standard not a low one. All that is mighty in our kind seems to have already trod the road. Ah, never may America forget her thanks and reverence for samples, treasures such as these–that other life-blood, inspiration, sunshine, hourly in use to-day, all days, forever, through her broad demesne!
All serves our New World progress, even the bafflers, head-winds, cross-tides. Through many perturbations and squalls, and much backing and filling, the ship, upon the whole, makes unmistakably for her destination. Shakspere has served, and serves, may-be, the best of any.
For conclusion, a passing thought, a contrast, of him who, in my opinion, continues and stands for the Shaksperean cultus at the present day among all English-writing peoples–of Tennyson, his poetry. I find it impossible, as I taste the sweetness of those lines, to escape the flavor, the conviction, the lush-ripening culmination, and last honey of decay (I dare not call it rottenness) of that feudalism which the mighty English dramatist painted in all the splendors of its noon and afternoon. And how they are chanted–both poets! Happy those kings and nobles to be so sung, so told! To run their course–to get their deeds and shapes in lasting pigments–the very pomp and dazzle of the sunset!
Meanwhile, democracy waits the coming of its bards in silence and in twilight–but ’tis the twilight of the dawn.
Notes:
[35] A few years ago I saw the question, “Has America produced any great poem?” announced as prize-subject for the competition of some university in Northern Europe. I saw the item in a foreign paper and made a note of it; but being taken down with paralysis, and prostrated for a long season, the matter slipp’d away, and I have never been able since to get hold of any essay presented for the prize, or report of the discussion, nor to learn for certain whether there was any essay or discussion, nor can I now remember the place. It may have been Upsala, or possibly Heidelberg. Perhaps some German or Scandinavian can give particulars. I think it was in 1872.
[36] In a long and prominent editorial, at the time, on the death of William Cullen Bryant.
[37] Whatever may be said of the few principal poems–or their best passages–it is certain that the overwhelming mass of poetic works, as now absorb’d into human character, exerts a certain constipating, repressing, indoor, and artificial influence, impossible to elude–seldom or never that freeing, dilating, joyous one, with which uncramp’d Nature works on every individual without exception.
[38] Is there not such a thing as the philosophy of American history and politics? And if so, what is it?… Wise men say there are two sets of wills to nations and to persons–one set that acts and works from explainable motives–from teaching, intelligence, judgment, circumstance, caprice, emulation, greed, etc.–and then another set, perhaps deep, hidden, unsuspected, yet often more potent than the first, refusing to be argued with, rising as it were out of abysses, resistlessly urging on speakers, doers, communities, unwitting to themselves–the poet to his fieriest words–the race to pursue its loftiest ideal. Indeed, the paradox of a nation’s life and career, with all its wondrous contradictions, can probably only be explain’d from these two wills, sometimes conflicting, each operating in its sphere, combining in races or in persons, and producing strangest results.
Let us hope there is (indeed, can there be any doubt there is?) this great unconscious and abysmic second will also running through the average nationality and career of America. Let us hope that, amid all the dangers and defections of the present, and through all the processes of the conscious will, it alone is the permanent and sovereign force, destined to carry on the New World to fulfil its destinies in the future–to resolutely pursue those destinies, age upon age; to build, far, far beyond its past vision, present thought; to form and fashion, and for the general type, men and women more noble, more athletic than the world has yet seen; to gradually, firmly blend, from all the States, with all varieties, a friendly, happy, free, religious nationality–a nationality not only the richest, most inventive, most productive and materialistic the world has yet known, but compacted indissolubly, and out of whose ample and solid bulk, and giving purpose and finish to it, conscience, morals, and all the spiritual attributes, shall surely rise, like spires above some group of edifices, firm-footed on the earth, yet scaling space and heaven.
Great as they are, and greater far to be, the United States, too, are but a series of steps in the eternal process of creative thought. And here is, to my mind, their final justification, and certain perpetuity. There is in that sublime process, in the laws of the universe–and, above all, in the moral law–something that would make unsatisfactory, and even vain and contemptible, all the triumphs of war, the gains of peace, and the proudest worldly grandeur of all the nations that have ever existed, or that (ours included) now exist, except that we constantly see, through all their worldly career, however struggling and blind and lame, attempts, by all ages, all peoples, according to their development, to reach, to press, to progress on, and ever farther on, to more and more advanced ideals.
The glory of the republic of the United States, in my opinion, is to be that, emerging in the light of the modern and the splendor of science, and solidly based on the past, it is to cheerfully range itself, and its politics are henceforth to come, under those universal laws, and embody them, and carry them out, to serve them. And as only that individual becomes truly great who understands well that, while complete in himself in a certain sense, he is but a part of the divine, eternal scheme, and whose special life and laws are adjusted to move in harmonious relations with the general laws of Nature, and especially with the moral law, the deepest and highest of all, and the last vitality of man or state–so the United States may only become the greatest and the most continuous, by understanding well their harmonious relations with entire humanity and history, and all their laws and progress, sublimed with the creative thought of Deity, through all time, past, present, and future. Thus will they expand to the amplitude of their destiny, and become illustrations and culminating parts of the kosmos, and of civilization.
No more considering the States as an incident, or series of incidents, however vast, coming accidentally along the path of time, and shaped by casual emergencies as they happen to arise, and the mere result of modern improvements, vulgar and lucky, ahead of other nations and times, I would finally plant, as seeds, these thoughts or speculations in the growth of our republic–that it is the deliberate culmination and result of all the past–that here, too, as in all departments of the universe, regular laws (slow and sure in planting, slow and sure in ripening) have controll’d and govern’d, and will yet control and govern; and that those laws can no more be baffled or steer’d clear of, or vitiated, by chance, or any fortune or opposition, than the laws of winter and summer, or darkness and light.
The summing up of the tremendous moral and military perturbations of 1861-’65, and their results–and indeed of the entire hundred years of the past of our national experiment, from its inchoate movement down to the present day (1780-1881)–is, that they all now launch the United States fairly forth, consistently with the entirety of civilization and humanity, and in main sort the representative of them, leading the van, leading the fleet of the modern and democratic, on the seas and voyages of the future.
And the real history of the United States–starting from that great convulsive struggle for unity, the secession war, triumphantly concluded, and _the South_ victorious after all–is only to be written at the remove of hundreds, perhaps a thousand, years hence.
A MEMORANDUM AT A VENTURE
“All is proper to be express’d, provided our aim is only high enough.” –_J. F. Millet._
“The candor of science is the glory of the modern. It does not hide and repress; it confronts, turns on the light. It alone has perfect faith–faith not in a part only, but all. Does it not undermine the old religious standards? Yes, in God’s truth, by excluding the devil from the theory of the universe–by showing that evil is not a law in itself, but a sickness, a perversion of the good, and the other side of the good–that in fact all of humanity, and of everything, is divine in its bases, its eligibilities.”
Shall the mention of such topics as I have briefly but plainly and resolutely broach’d in the “Children of Adam” section of “Leaves of Grass” be admitted in poetry and literature? Ought not the innovation to be put down by opinion and criticism? and, if those fail, by the District Attorney? True, I could not construct a poem which declaredly took, as never before, the complete human identity, physical, moral, emotional, and intellectual, (giving precedence and compass in a certain sense to the first,) nor fulfil that _bona fide_ candor and entirety of treatment which was a part of my purpose, without comprehending this section also. But I would entrench myself more deeply and widely than that. And while I do not ask any man to indorse my theory, I confess myself anxious that what I sought to write and express, and the ground I built on, shall be at least partially understood, from its own platform. The best way seems to me to confront the question with entire frankness.
There are, generally speaking, two points of view, two conditions of the world’s attitude toward these matters; the first, the conventional one of good folks and good print everywhere, repressing any direct statement of them, and making allusions only at second or third hand–(as the Greeks did of death, which, in Hellenic social culture, was not mention’d point-blank, but by euphemisms.) In the civilization of to-day, this condition–without stopping to elaborate the arguments and facts, which are many and varied and perplexing–has led to states of ignorance, repressal, and cover’d over disease and depletion, forming certainly a main factor in the world’s woe. A nonscientific, non-esthetic, and eminently non-religious condition, bequeath’d to us from the past, (its origins diverse, one of them the far-back lessons of benevolent and wise men to restrain the prevalent coarseness and animality of the tribal ages–with Puritanism, or perhaps Protestantism itself for another, and still another specified in the latter part of this memorandum)–to it is probably due most of the ill births, inefficient maturity, snickering pruriency, and of that human pathologic evil and morbidity which is, in my opinion, the keel and reason-why of every evil and morbidity. Its scent, as of something sneaking, furtive, mephitic, seems to lingeringly pervade all modern literature, conversation, and manners.
The second point of view, and by far the largest–as the world in working-day dress vastly exceeds the world in parlor toilette–is the one of common life, from the oldest times down, and especially in England, (see the earlier chapters of “Taine’s English Literature,” and see Shakspere almost anywhere,) and which our age to-day inherits from riant stock, in the wit, or what passes for wit, of masculine circles, and in erotic stories and talk, to excite, express, and dwell on, that merely sensual voluptuousness which, according to Victor Hugo, is the most universal trait of all ages, all lands. This second condition, however bad, is at any rate like a disease which comes to the surface, and therefore less dangerous than a conceal’d one.
The time seems to me to have arrived, and America to be the place, for a new departure–a third point of view. The same freedom and faith and earnestness which, after centuries of denial, struggle, repression, and martyrdom, the present day brings to the treatment of politics and religion, must work out a plan and standard on this subject, not so much for what is call’d society, as for thoughtfulest men and women, and thoughtfulest literature. The same spirit that marks the physiological author and demonstrator on these topics in his important field, I have thought necessary to be exemplified, for once, in another certainly not less important field.
In the present memorandum I only venture to indicate that plan and view–decided upon more than twenty years ago, for my own literary action, and formulated tangibly in my printed poems–(as Bacon says an abstract thought or theory is of no moment unless it leads to a deed or work done, exemplifying it in the concrete)–that the sexual passion in itself, while normal and unperverted, is inherently legitimate, creditable, not necessarily an improper theme for poet, as confessedly not for scientist–that, with reference to the whole construction, organism, and intentions of “Leaves of Grass,” anything short of confronting that theme, and making myself clear upon it as the enclosing basis of everything, (as the sanity of everything was to be the atmosphere of the poems,) I should beg the question in its most momentous aspect, and the superstructure that follow’d, pretensive as it might assume to be, would all rest on a poor foundation, or no foundation at all. In short, as the assumption of the sanity of birth, Nature and humanity, is the key to any true theory of life and the universe–at any rate, the only theory out of which I wrote–it is, and must inevitably be, the only key to “Leaves of Grass,” and every part of it. _That_, (and not a vain consistency or weak pride, as a late “Springfield Republican” charges,) is the reason that I have stood out for these particular verses uncompromisingly for over twenty years, and maintain them to this day. _That_ is what I felt in my inmost brain and heart, when I only answer’d Emerson’s vehement arguments with silence, under the old elms of Boston Common.
Indeed, might not every physiologist and every good physician pray for the redeeming of this subject from its hitherto relegation to the tongues and pens of blackguards, and boldly putting it for once at least, if no more, in the demesne of poetry and sanity–as something not in itself gross or impure, but entirely consistent with highest manhood and womanhood, and indispensable to both? Might not only every wife and every mother–not only every babe that comes into the world, if that were possible–not only all marriage, the foundation and _sine qua non_ of the civilized state–bless and thank the showing, or taking for granted, that motherhood, fatherhood, sexuality, and all that belongs to them, can be asserted, where it comes to question, openly, joyously, proudly, “without shame or the need of shame,” from the highest artistic and human considerations–but, with reverence be it written, on such attempt to justify the base and start of the whole divine scheme in humanity, might not the Creative Power itself deign a smile of approval?
To the movement for the eligibility and entrance of women amid new spheres of business, politics, and the suffrage, the current prurient, conventional treatment of sex is the main formidable obstacle. The rising tide of “woman’s rights,” swelling and every year advancing farther and farther, recoils from it with dismay. There will in my opinion be no general progress in such eligibility till a sensible, philosophic, democratic method is substituted.
The whole question–which strikes far, very far deeper than most people have supposed, (and doubtless, too, something is to be said on all sides,) is peculiarly an important one in art–is first an ethic, and then still more an esthetic one. I condense from a paper read not long since at Cheltenham, England, before the “Social Science Congress,” to the Art Department, by P. H. Rathbone of Liverpool, on the “Undraped Figure in Art,” and the discussion that follow’d:
“When coward Europe suffer’d the unclean Turk to soil the sacred shores of Greece by his polluting presence, civilization and morality receiv’d a blow from which they have never entirely recover’ d, and the trail of the serpent has been over European art and European society ever since. The Turk regarded and regards women as animals without soul, toys to be play’d with or broken at pleasure, and to be hidden, partly from shame, but chiefly for the purpose of stimulating exhausted passion. Such is the unholy origin of the objection to the nude as a fit subject for art; it is purely Asiatic, and though not introduced for the first time in the fifteenth century, is yet to be traced to the source of all impurity–the East. Although the source of the prejudice is thoroughly unhealthy and impure, yet it is now shared by many pure-minded and honest, if somewhat uneducated, people. But I am prepared to maintain that it is necessary for the future of English art and of English morality that the right of the nude to a place in our galleries should be boldly asserted; it must, however, be the nude as represented by thoroughly trained artists, and with a pure and noble ethic purpose. The human form, male and female, is the type and standard of all beauty of form and proportion, and it is necessary to be thoroughly familiar with it in order safely to judge of all beauty which consists of form and proportion. To women it is most necessary that they should become thoroughly imbued with the knowledge of the ideal female form, in order that they should recognize the perfection of it at once, and without effort, and so far as possible avoid deviations from the ideal. Had this been the case in times past, we should not have had to deplore the distortions effected by tight-lacing, which destroy’d the figure and ruin’d the health of so many of the last generation. Nor should we have had the scandalous dresses alike of society and the stage. The extreme development of the low dresses which obtain’d some years ago, when the stays crush’d up the breasts into suggestive prominence, would surely have been check’d, had the eye of the public been properly educated by familiarity with the exquisite beauty of line of a well-shaped bust. I might show how thorough acquaintance with the ideal nude foot would probably have much modified the foot-torturing boots and high heels, which wring the foot out of all beauty of line, and throw the body forward into an awkward and ungainly attitude.
It is argued that the effect of nude representation of women upon young men is unwholesome, but it would not be so if such works were admitted without question into our galleries, and became thoroughly familiar to them. On the contrary, it would do much to clear away from healthy-hearted lads one of their sorest trials–that prurient curiosity which is bred of prudish concealment. Where there is mystery there is the suggestion of evil, and to go to a theatre, where you have only to look at the stalls to see one-half of the female form, and to the stage to see the other half undraped, is far more pregnant with evil imaginings than the most objectionable of totally undraped figures. In French art there have been questionable nude figures exhibited; but the fault was not that they were nude, but that they were the portraits of ugly immodest women. Some discussion follow’d. There was a general concurrence in the principle contended for by the reader of the paper. Sir Walter Stirling maintain’d that the perfect male figure, rather than the female, was the model of beauty. After a few remarks from Rev. Mr. Roberts and Colonel Oldfield, the Chairman regretted that no opponent of nude figures had taken part in the discussion. He agreed with Sir Walter Stirling as to the male figure being the most perfect model of proportion. He join’d in defending the exhibition of nude figures, but thought considerable supervision should be exercis’d over such exhibitions.
No, it is not the picture or nude statue or text, with clear aim, that is indecent; it is the beholder’s own thought, inference, distorted construction. True modesty is one of the most precious of attributes, even virtues, but in nothing is there more pretense, more falsity, than the needless assumption of it. Through precept and consciousness, man has long enough realized how bad he is. I would not so much disturb or demolish that conviction, only to resume and keep unerringly with it the spinal meaning of the Scriptural text, _God overlook’d all that He had made_, (including the apex of the whole–humanity–with its elements, passions, appetites,) _and behold, it was very good_.”
Does not anything short of that third point of view, when you come to think of it profoundly and with amplitude, impugn Creation from the outset? In fact, however overlaid, or unaware of itself, does not the conviction involv’d in it perennially exist at the centre of all society, and of the sexes, and of marriage? Is it not really an intuition of the human race? For, old as the world is, and beyond statement as are the countless and splendid results of its culture and evolution, perhaps the best and earliest and purest intuitions of the human race have yet to be develop’d.
DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN LECTURE
_deliver’d in New York, April 14, 1879–in Philadelphia, ’80–in Boston, ’81_
How often since that dark and dripping Saturday–that chilly April day, now fifteen years bygone–my heart has entertain’d the dream, the wish, to give of Abraham Lincoln’s death, its own special thought and memorial. Yet now the sought-for opportunity offers, I find my notes incompetent, (why, for truly profound themes, is statement so idle? why does the right phrase never offer?) and the fit tribute I dream’d of, waits unprepared as ever. My talk here indeed is less because of itself or anything in it, and nearly altogether because I feel a desire, apart from any talk, to specify the day, the martyrdom. It is for this, my friends, I have call’d you together. Oft as the rolling years bring back this hour, let it again, however briefly, be dwelt upon. For my own part, I hope and desire, till my own dying day, whenever the 14th or 15th of April comes, to annually gather a few friends, and hold its tragic reminiscence. No narrow or sectional reminiscence. It belongs to these States in their entirety–not the North only, but the South–perhaps belongs most tenderly and devoutly to the South, of all; for there, really, this man’s birth-stock. There and thence his antecedent stamp. Why should I not say that thence his manliest traits–his universality–his canny, easy ways and words upon the surface–his inflexible determination and courage at heart? Have you never realized it, my friends, that Lincoln, though grafted on the West, is essentially, in personnel and character, a Southern contribution?
And though by no means proposing to resume the secession war to-night, I would briefly remind you of the public conditions preceding that contest. For twenty years, and especially during the four or five before the war actually began, the aspect of affairs in the United States, though without the flash of military excitement, presents more than the survey of a battle, or any extended campaign, or series, even of Nature’s convulsions. The hot passions of the South–the strange mixture at the North of inertia, incredulity, and conscious power–the incendiarism of the abolitionists–the rascality and grip of the politicians, unparallel’d in any land, any age. To these I must not omit adding the honesty of the essential bulk of the people everywhere–yet with all the seething fury and contradiction of their natures more arous’d than the Atlantic’s waves in wildest equinox. In politics, what can be more ominous, (though generally unappreciated then)–what more significant than the Presidentiads of Fillmore and Buchanan? proving conclusively that the weakness and wickedness of elected rulers are just as likely to afflict us here, as in the countries of the Old World, under their monarchies, emperors, and aristocracies. In that Old World were everywhere heard underground rumblings, that died out, only to again surely return. While in America the volcano, though civic yet, continued to grow more and more convulsive–more and more stormy and threatening.
In the height of all this excitement and chaos, hovering on the edge at first, and then merged in its very midst, and destined to play a leading part, appears a strange and awkward figure. I shall not easily forget the first time I ever saw Abraham Lincoln. It must have been about the 18th or 19th of February, 1861. It was rather a pleasant afternoon, in New York city, as he arrived there from the West, to remain a few hours, and then pass on to Washington, to prepare for his inauguration. I saw him in Broadway, near the site of the present Post-office. He came down, I think from Canal street, to stop at the Astor House. The broad spaces, sidewalks, and street in the neighborhood, and for some distance, were crowded with solid masses of people, many thousands. The omnibuses and other vehicles had all been turn’d off, leaving an unusual hush in that busy part of the city. Presently two or three shabby hack barouches made their way with some difficulty through the crowd, and drew up at the Astor House entrance. A tall figure stepp’d out of the centre of these barouches, paus’d leisurely on the sidewalk, look’d up at the granite walls and looming architecture of the grand old hotel–then, after a relieving stretch of arms and legs, turn’d round for over a minute to slowly and good-humoredly scan the appearance of the vast and silent crowds. There were no speeches–no compliments–no welcome–as far as I could hear, not a word said. Still much anxiety was conceal’d in that quiet. Cautious persons had fear’d some mark’d insult or indignity to the President-elect–for he possess’d no personal popularity at all in New York city, and very little political. But it was evidently tacitly agreed that if the few political supporters of Mr. Lincoln present would entirely abstain from any demonstration on their side, the immense majority, who were anything but supporters, would abstain on their side also. The result was a sulky, unbroken silence, such as certainly never before characterized so great a New York crowd.
Almost in the same neighborhood I distinctly remember’d seeing Lafayette on his visit to America in 1825. I had also personally seen and heard, various years afterward, how Andrew Jackson, Clay, Webster, Hungarian Kossuth, Filibuster Walker, the Prince of Wales on his visit, and other celebres, native and foreign, had been welcom’d there–all that indescribable human roar and magnetism, unlike any other sound in the universe–the glad exulting thunder-shouts of countless unloos’d throats of men! But on this occasion, not a voice–not a sound. From the top of an omnibus, (driven up one side, close by, and block’d by the curbstone and the crowds,) I had, I say, a capital view of it all, and especially of Mr. Lincoln, his look and gait–his perfect composure and coolness–his unusual and uncouth height, his dress of complete black, stovepipe hat push’d back on the head, dark-brown complexion, seam’d and wrinkled yet canny-looking face, black, bushy head of hair, disproportionately long neck, and his hands held behind as he stood observing the people. He look’d with curiosity upon that immense sea of faces, and the sea of faces return’d the look with similar curiosity. In both there was a dash of comedy, almost farce, such as Shakspere puts in his blackest tragedies. The crowd that hemm’d around consisted I should think of thirty to forty thousand men, not a single one his personal friend–while I have no doubt, (so frenzied were the ferments of the time,) many an assassin’s knife and pistol lurk’d in hip or breast-pocket there, ready, soon as break and riot came.
But no break or riot came. The tall figure gave another relieving stretch or two of arms and legs; then with moderate pace, and accompanied by a few unknown-looking persons, ascended the portico-steps of the Astor House, disappear’d through its broad entrance–and the dumb-show ended.
I saw Abraham Lincoln often the four years following that date. He changed rapidly and much during his Presidency–but this scene, and him in it, are indelibly stamp’d upon my recollection. As I sat on the top of my omnibus, and had a good view of him, the thought, dim and inchoate then, has since come out clear enough, that four sorts of genius, four mighty and primal hands, will be needed to the complete limning of this man’s future portrait–the eyes and brains and finger-touch of Plutarch and Eschylus and Michel Angelo, assisted by Rabelais.
And now–(Mr. Lincoln passing on from this scene to Washington, where he was inaugurated, amid armed cavalry, and sharpshooters at every point–the first instance of the kind in our history–and I hope it will be the last)–now the rapid succession of well-known events, (too well known–I believe, these days, we almost hate to hear them mention’d)–the national flag fired on at Sumter–the uprising of the North, in paroxysms of astonishment and rage–the chaos of divided councils–the call for troops–the first Bull Run–the stunning cast-down, shock, and dismay of the North–and so in full flood the secession war. Four years of lurid, bleeding, murky, murderous war. Who paint those years, with all their scenes?–the hard-fought engagements–the defeats, plans, failures–the gloomy hours, days, when our Nationality seem’d hung in pall of doubt, perhaps death–the Mephistophelean sneers of foreign lands and attaches–the dreaded Scylla of European interference, and the Charybdis of the tremendously dangerous latent strata of secession sympathizers throughout the free States, (far more numerous than is supposed)–the long marches in summer–the hot sweat, and many a sunstroke, as on the rush to Gettysburg in ’63–the night battles in the woods, as under Hooker at Chancellorsville–the camps in winter–the military prisons–the hospitals–(alas! alas! the hospitals.)
The secession war? Nay, let me call it the Union war. Though whatever call’d, it is even yet too near us–too vast and too closely overshadowing–its branches unform’d yet, (but certain,) shooting too far into the future–and the most indicative and mightiest of them yet ungrown. A great literature will yet arise out of the era of those four years, those scenes–era compressing centuries of native passion, first-class pictures, tempests of life and death–an inexhaustible mine for the histories, drama, romance, and even philosophy, of peoples to come–indeed the verteber of poetry and art, (of personal character too,) for all future America–far more grand, in my opinion, to the hands capable of it, than Homer’s siege of Troy, or the French wars to Shakspere.
But I must leave these speculations, and come to the theme I have assign’d and limited myself to. Of the actual murder of President Lincoln, though so much has been written, probably the facts are yet very indefinite in most persons’ minds. I read from my memoranda, written at the time, and revised frequently and finally since.
The day, April 14, 1865, seems to have been a pleasant one throughout the whole land–the moral atmosphere pleasant too–the long storm, so dark, so fratricidal, full of blood and doubt and gloom, over and ended at last by the sun-rise of such an absolute National victory, and utter break-down of Secessionism–we almost doubted our own senses! Lee had capitulated beneath the apple-tree of Appomattox. The other armies, the flanges of the revolt, swiftly follow’d. And could it really be, then? Out of all the affairs of this world of woe and failure and disorder, was there really come the confirm’d, unerring sign of plan, like a shaft of pure light–of rightful rule–of God? So the day, as I say, was propitious. Early herbage, early flowers, were out. (I remember where I was stopping at the time, the season being advanced, there were many lilacs in full bloom. By one of those caprices that enter and give tinge to events without being at all a part of them, I find myself always reminded of the great tragedy of that day by the sight and odor of these blossoms. It never fails.)
But I must not dwell on accessories. The deed hastens. The popular afternoon paper of Washington, the little “Evening Star,” had spatter’d all over its third page, divided among the advertisements in a sensational manner, in a hundred different places, _The President and his Lady will be at the Theatre this evening_…. (Lincoln was fond of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. I remember thinking how funny it was that he, in some respects the leading actor in the stormiest drama known to real history’s stage through centuries, should sit there and be so completely interested and absorb’d in those human jack-straws, moving about with their silly little gestures, foreign spirit, and flatulent text.)
On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young folks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism of so many people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins and flutes–(and over all, and saturating all, that vast, vague wonder, _Victory_, the nation’s victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all music and perfumes.)
The President came betimes, and, with his wife, witness’d the play from the large stage-boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely drap’d with the national flag. The acts and scenes of the piece–one of those singularly written compositions which have at least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic, or spiritual nature–a piece, (“Our American Cousin,”) in which, among other characters, so call’d, a Yankee, certainly such a one as was never seen, or the least like it ever seen, in North America, is introduced in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama–had progress’d through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of this comedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be call’d, and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature’s and the great Muse’s mockery of those poor mimes, came interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be described at all, (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems to this hour to have left a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)–and yet partially to be described as I now proceed to give it. There is a scene in the play representing a modern parlor in which two unprecedented English ladies are inform’d by the impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage-catching purposes; after which, the comments being finish’d, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment. At this period came the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
Great as all its manifold train, circling round it, and stretching into the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, &c., of the New World, in point of fact the main thing, the actual murder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonest occurrence–the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation, for instance. Through the general hum following the stage pause, with the change of positions, came the muffled sound of a pistol-shot, which not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time–and yet a moment’s hush–somehow, surely, a vague startled thrill–and then, through the ornamented, draperied, starr’d and striped space-way of the President’s box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage, (a distance of perhaps fourteen or fifteen feet,) falls out of position, catching his boot-heel in the copious drapery, (the American flag,) falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had happen’d, (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt then)–and so the figure, Booth, the murderer, dress’d in plain black broadcloth, bare-headed, with full, glossy, raven hair, and his eyes like some mad animal’s flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness, holds aloft in one hand a large knife–walks along not much back from the footlights–turns fully toward the audience his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity–launches out in a firm and steady voice the words _Sic semper tyrannis_–and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears. (Had not all this terrible scene–making the mimic ones preposterous–had it not all been rehears’d, in blank, by Booth, beforehand?)
A moment’s hush–a scream–the cry of _murder_–Mrs. Lincoln leaning out of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing to the retreating figure, _He has kill’d the President._ And still a moment’s strange, incredulous suspense–and then the deluge!–then that mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty–(the sound, somewhere back, of a horse’s hoofs clattering with speed)–the people burst through chairs and railings, and break them up–there is inextricable confusion and terror–women faint–quite feeble persons fall, and are trampl’d on–many cries of agony are heard–the broad stage suddenly fills to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival–the audience rush generally upon it, at least the strong men do–the actors and actresses are all there in their play-costumes and painted faces, with mortal fright showing through the rouge–the screams and calls, confused talk–redoubled, trebled–two or three manage to pass up water from the stage to the President’s box–others try to clamber up–&c., &c.
In the midst of all this, the soldiers of the President’s guard, with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in–(some two hundred altogether)–they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially the upper ones, inflam’d with fury, literally charging the audience with fix’d bayonets, muskets and pistols, snouting _Clear out! clear out! you sons of_—-…. Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of it rather, inside the play-house that night.
Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people, fill’d with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, come near committing murder several times on innocent individuals. One such case was especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got started against one man, either for words he utter’d, or perhaps without any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to actually hang him on a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen, who placed him in their midst, and fought their way slowly and amid great peril toward the station house. It was a fitting episode of the whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro–the night, the yells, the pale faces, many frighten’d people trying in vain to extricate themselves–the attack’d man, not yet freed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse–the silent, resolute, half-dozen policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms–made a fitting side-scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gain’d the station house with the protected man, whom they placed in security for the night, and discharged him in the morning.
And in the midst of that pandemonium, infuriated soldiers, the audience and the crowd, the stage, and all its actors and actresses, its paint-pots, spangles, and gas-lights–the life blood from those veins, the best and sweetest of the land, drips slowly down, and death’s ooze already begins its little bubbles on the lips.
Thus the visible incidents and surroundings of Abraham Lincoln’s murder, as they really occur’d. Thus ended the attempted secession of these States; thus the four years’ war. But the main things come subtly and invisibly afterward, perhaps long afterward–neither military, political, nor (great as those are,) historical. I say, certain secondary and indirect results, out of the tragedy of this death, are, in my opinion, greatest. Not the event of the murder itself. Not that Mr. Lincoln strings the principal points and personages of the period, like beads, upon the single string of his career. Not that his idiosyncrasy, in its sudden appearance and disappearance, stamps this Republic with a stamp more mark’d and enduring than any yet given by any one man–(more even than Washington’s;)–but, join’d with these, the immeasurable value and meaning of that whole tragedy lies, to me, in senses finally dearest to a nation, (and here all our own)–the imaginative and artistic senses–the literary and dramatic ones. Not in any common or low meaning of those terms, but a meaning precious to the race, and to every age. A long and varied series of contradictory events arrives at last at its highest poetic, single, central, pictorial denouement. The whole involved, baffling, multiform whirl of the secession period comes to a head, and is gather’d in one brief flash of lightning-illumination–one simple, fierce deed. Its sharp culmination, and as it were solution, of so many bloody and angry problems, illustrates those climax-moments on the stage of universal Time, where the historic Muse at one entrance, and the tragic Muse at the other, suddenly ringing down the curtain, close an immense act in the long drama of creative thought, and give it radiation, tableau, stranger than fiction. Fit radiation–fit close! How the imagination–how the student loves these things! America, too, is to have them. For not in all great deaths, nor far or near–not Caesar in the Roman senate-house, or Napoleon passing away in the wild night-storm at St. Helena–not Paleologus, falling, desperately fighting, piled over dozens deep with Grecian corpses–not calm old Socrates, drinking the hemlock–outvies that terminus of the secession war, in one man’s life, here in our midst, in our own time–that seal of the emancipation of three million slaves–that parturition and delivery of our at last really free Republic, born again, henceforth to commence its career of genuine homogeneous Union, compact, consistent with itself.
Nor will ever future American Patriots and Unionists, indifferently over the whole land, or North or South, find a better moral to their lesson. The final use of the greatest men of a Nation is, after all, not with reference to their deeds in themselves, or their direct bearing on their times or lands. The final use of a heroic-eminent life–especially of a heroic-eminent death–is its indirect filtering into the nation and the race, and to give, often at many removes, but unerringly, age after age, color and fibre to the personalism of the youth and maturity of that age, and of mankind. Then there is a cement to the whole people, subtler, more underlying, than any thing in written constitution, or courts or armies–namely, the cement of a death identified thoroughly with that people, at its head, and for its sake. Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, agonies, blood, even assassination, should so condense–perhaps only really, lastingly condense–a Nationality.
I repeat it–the grand deaths of the race–the dramatic deaths of every nationality–are its most important inheritance-value–in some respects beyond its literature and art–(as the hero is beyond his finest portrait, and the battle itself beyond its choicest song or epic.) Is not here indeed the point underlying all tragedy? the famous pieces of the Grecian masters–and all masters? Why, if the old Greeks had had this man, what trilogies of plays–what epics–would have been made out of him! How the rhapsodes would have recited him! How quickly that quaint tall form would have enter’d into the region where men vitalize gods, and gods divinify men! But Lincoln, his times, his death–great as any, any age–belong altogether to our own, and our autochthonic. (Sometimes indeed I think our American days, our own stage–the actors we know and have shaken hands, or talk’d with–more fateful than anything in Eschylus–more heroic than the fighters around Troy–afford kings of men for our Democracy prouder than Agamemnon–models of character cute and hardy as Ulysses–deaths more pitiful than Priam’s.)
When, centuries hence, (as it must, in my opinion, be centuries hence before the life of these States, or of Democracy, can be really written and illustrated,) the leading historians and dramatists seek for some personage, some special event, incisive enough to mark with deepest cut, and mnemonize, this turbulent Nineteenth century of ours, (not only these States, but all over the political and social world)–something, perhaps, to close that gorgeous procession of European feudalism, with all its pomp and caste-prejudices, (of whose long train we in America are yet so inextricably the heirs)–something to identify with terrible identification, by far the greatest revolutionary step in the history of the United States, (perhaps the greatest of the world, our century)–the absolute extirpation and erasure of slavery from the States–those historians will seek in vain for any point to serve more thoroughly their purpose, than Abraham Lincoln’s death.
Dear to the Muse–thrice dear to Nationality–to the whole human race–precious to this Union–precious to Democracy–unspeakably and forever precious–their first great Martyr Chief.
TWO LETTERS
I
TO — — — LONDON, ENGLAND
_Camden, N.J., U.S. America, March 17th, 1876._ DEAR FRIEND:–Yours of the 28th Feb. receiv’d, and indeed welcom’d. I am jogging along still about the same in physical condition–still certainly no worse, and I sometimes lately suspect rather better, or at any rate more adjusted to the situation. Even begin to think of making some move, some change of base, &c.: the doctors have been advising it for over two years, but I haven’t felt to do it yet. My paralysis does not lift–I cannot walk any distance–I still have this baffling, obstinate, apparently chronic affection of the stomachic apparatus and liver: yet I get out of doors a little every day–write and read in moderation–appetite sufficiently good–(eat only very plain food, but always did that)–digestion tolerable–spirits unflagging. I have told you most of this before, but suppose you might like to know it all again, up to date. Of course, and pretty darkly coloring the whole, are bad spells, prostrations, some pretty grave ones, intervals–and I have resign’d myself to the certainty of permanent incapacitation from solid work: but things may continue at least in this half-and-half way for months, even years.
My books are out, the new edition; a set of which, immediately on receiving your letter of 28th, I have sent you, (by mail, March 15,) and I suppose you have before this receiv’d them. My dear friend, your offers of help, and those of my other British friends, I think I fully appreciate, in the right spirit, welcome and acceptive–leaving the matter altogether in your and their hands, and to your and their convenience, discretion, leisure, and nicety. Though poor now, even to penury, I have not so far been deprived of any physical thing I need or wish whatever, and I feel confident I shall not in the future. During my employment of seven years or more in Washington after the war (1865-’72) I regularly saved part of my wages: and, though the sum has now become about exhausted by my expenses of the last three years, there are already beginning at present welcome dribbles hitherward from the sales of my new edition, which I just job and sell, myself, (all through this illness, my book-agents for three years in New York successively, badly cheated me,) and shall continue to dispose of the books myself. And that is the way I should prefer to glean my support. In that way I cheerfully accept all the aid my friends find it convenient to proffer.
To repeat a little, and without undertaking details, understand, dear friend, for yourself and all, that I heartily and most affectionately thank my British friends, and that I accept their sympathetic generosity in the same spirit in which I believe (nay, know) it is offer’d–that though poor I am not in want–that I maintain good heart and cheer; and that by far the most satisfaction to me (and I think it can be done, and believe it will be) will be to live, as long as possible, on the sales, by myself, of my own works, and perhaps, if practicable, by further writings for the press.
W. W.
I am prohibited from writing too much, and I must make this candid statement of the situation serve for all my dear friends over there.
II
TO — — — DRESDEN, SAXONY
_Camden, New Jersey, U.S.A., Dec. 20, ’81._ DEAR SIR:–Your letter asking definite endorsement to your translation of my “Leaves of Grass” into Russian is just received, and I hasten to answer it. Most warmly and willingly I consent to the translation, and waft a prayerful God speed to the enterprise.
You Russians and we Americans! Our countries so distant, so unlike at first glance–such a difference in social and political conditions, and our respective methods of moral and practical development the last hundred years;–and yet in certain features, and vastest ones, so resembling each other. The variety of stock-elements and tongues, to be resolutely fused in a common identity and union at all hazards–the idea, perennial through the ages, that they both have their historic and divine mission–the fervent element of manly friendship throughout the whole people, surpass’d by no other races–the grand expanse of territorial limits and boundaries–the unform’d and nebulous state of many things, not yet permanently settled, but agreed on all hands to be the preparations of an infinitely greater future–the fact that both Peoples have their independent and leading positions to hold, keep, and if necessary, fight for, against the rest of the world–the deathless aspirations at the inmost centre of each great community, so vehement, so mysterious, so abysmic–are certainly features you Russians and we Americans possess in common. As my dearest dream is for an internationality of poems and poets binding the lands of the earth closer than all treaties and diplomacy–as the purpose beneath the rest in my book is such hearty comradeship, for individuals to begin with, and for all the nations of the earth as a result–how happy I should be to get the hearing and emotional contact of the great Russian peoples.
To whom, now and here, (addressing you for Russia and Russians and empowering you, should you see fit, to print the present letter, in your book, as a preface,) I waft affectionate salutation from these shores, in America’s name.
W. W.
NOTES LEFT OVER
NATIONALITY–(AND YET) It is more and more clear to me that the main sustenance for highest separate personality, these States, is to come from that general sustenance of the aggregate, (as air, earth, rains, give sustenance to a tree)–and that such personality, by democratic standards, will only be fully coherent, grand and free, through the cohesion, grandeur and freedom of the common aggregate, the Union. Thus the existence of the true American continental solidarity of the future, depending on myriads of superb, large-sized, emotional and physically perfect individualities, of one sex just as much as the other, the supply of such individualities, in my opinion, wholly depends on a compacted imperial ensemble. The theory and practice of both sovereignties, contradictory as they are, are necessary. As the centripetal law were fatal alone, or the centrifugal law deadly and destructive alone, but together forming the law of eternal kosmical action, evolution, preservation, and life–so, by itself alone, the fullness of individuality, even the sanest, would surely destroy itself. This is what makes the importance to the identities of these States of the thoroughly fused, relentless, dominating Union–a moral and spiritual idea, subjecting all the parts with remorseless power, more needed by American democracy than by any of history’s hitherto empires or feudalities, and the _sine qua non_ of carrying out the republican principle to develop itself in the New World through hundreds, thousands of years to come.
Indeed, what most needs fostering through the hundred years to come, in all parts of the United States, north, south, Mississippi valley, and Atlantic and Pacific coasts, is this fused and fervent identity of the individual, whoever he or she may be, and wherever the place, with the idea and fact of AMERICAN TOTALITY, and with what is meant by the Flag, the stars and stripes. We need this conviction of nationality as a faith, to be absorb’d in the blood and belief of the People everywhere, south, north, west, east, to emanate in their life, and in native literature and art. We want the germinal idea that America, inheritor of the past, is the custodian of the future of humanity. Judging from history, it is some such moral and spiritual ideas appropriate to them, (and such ideas only,) that have made the profoundest glory and endurance of nations in the past. The races of Judea, the classic clusters of Greece and Rome, and the feudal and ecclesiastical clusters of the Middle Ages, were each and all vitalized by their separate distinctive ideas, ingrain’d in them, redeeming many sins, and indeed, in a sense, the principal reason-why for their whole career.
Then, in the thought of nationality especially for the United States, and making them original, and different from all other countries, another point ever remains to be considered. There are two distinct principles–aye, paradoxes–at the life-fountain and life-continuation of the States; one, the sacred principle of the Union, the right of ensemble, at whatever sacrifice–and yet another, an equally sacred principle, the right of each State, consider’d as a separate sovereign individual, in its own sphere. Some go zealously for one set of these rights, and some as zealously for the other set. We must have both; or rather, bred out of them, as out of mother and father, a third set, the perennial result and combination of both, and neither jeopardized. I say the loss or abdication of one set, in the future, will be ruin to democracy just as much as the loss of the other set. The problem is, to harmoniously adjust the two, and the play of the two. [Observe the lesson of the divinity of Nature, ever checking the excess of one law, by an opposite, or seemingly opposite law–generally the other side of the same law.] For the theory of this Republic is, not that the General government is the fountain of all life and power, dispensing it forth, around, and to the remotest portions of our territory, but that THE PEOPLE are, represented in both, underlying both the General and State governments, and consider’d just as well in their individualities and in their separate aggregates, or States, as consider’d in one vast aggregate, the Union. This was the original dual theory and foundation of the United States, as distinguish’d from the feudal and ecclesiastical single idea of monarchies and papacies, and the divine right of kings. (Kings have been of use, hitherto, as representing the idea of the identity of nations. But, to American democracy, _both_ ideas must be fulfill’d, and in my opinion the loss of vitality of either one will indeed be the loss of vitality of the other.)
EMERSON’S BOOKS, (THE SHADOWS OF THEM)
In the regions we call Nature, towering beyond all measurement, with infinite spread, infinite depth and height–in those regions, including Man, socially and historically, with his moral-emotional influences–how small a part, (it came in my mind to-day,) has literature really depicted–even summing up all of it, all ages. Seems at its best some little fleet of boats, hugging the shores of a boundless sea, and never venturing, exploring the unmapp’d–never, Columbus-like, sailing out for New Worlds, and to complete the orb’s rondure. Emerson writes frequently in the atmosphere of this thought, and his books report one or two things from that very ocean and air, and more legibly address’d to our age and American polity than by any man yet. But I will begin by scarifying him–thus proving that I am not insensible to his deepest lessons. I will consider his books from a democratic and western point of view. I will specify the shadows on these sunny expanses. Somebody has said of heroic character that “wherever the tallest peaks are present, must inevitably be deep chasms and valleys.” Mine be the ungracious task (for reasons) of leaving unmention’d both sunny expanses and sky-reaching heights, to dwell on the bare spots and darknesses. I have a theory that no artist or work of the very first class may be or can be without them.
First, then, these pages are perhaps too perfect, too concentrated. (How good, for instance, is good butter, good sugar. But to be eating nothing but sugar and butter all the time! even if ever so good.) And though the author has much to say of freedom and wildness and simplicity and spontaneity, no performance was ever more based on artificial scholarships and decorums at third or fourth removes, (he calls it culture,) and built up from them. It is always a _make_, never an unconscious _growth_. It is the porcelain figure or statuette of lion, or stag, or Indian hunter–and a very choice statuette too–appropriate for the rosewood or marble bracket of parlor or library; never the animal itself, or the hunter himself. Indeed, who wants the real animal or hunter? What would that do amid astral and bric-a-brac and tapestry, and ladies and gentlemen talking in subdued tones of Browning and Longfellow and art? The least suspicion of such actual bull, or Indian, or of Nature carrying out itself, would put all those good people to instant terror and flight.
Emerson, in my opinion, is not most eminent as poet or artist or teacher, though valuable in all those. He is best as critic, or diagnoser. Not passion or imagination or warp or weakness, or any pronounced cause or specialty, dominates him. Cold and bloodless intellectuality dominates him. (I know the fires, emotions, love, egotisms, glow deep, perennial, as in all New Englanders–but the facade, hides them well–they give no sign.) He does not see or take one side, one presentation only or mainly, (as all the poets, or most of the fine writers anyhow)–he sees all sides. His final influence is to make his students cease to worship anything–almost cease to believe in anything, outside of themselves. These books will fill, and well fill, certain stretches of life, certain stages of development– are, (like the tenets or theology the author of them preach’d when a young man,) unspeakably serviceable and precious as a stage. But in old or nervous or solemnest or dying hours, when one needs the impalpably soothing and vitalizing influences of abysmic Nature, or its affinities in literature or human society, and the soul resents the keenest mere intellection, they will not be sought for.
For a philosopher, Emerson possesses a singularly dandified theory of manners. He seems to have no notion at all that manners are simply the signs by which the chemist or metallurgist knows his metals. To the profound scientist, all metals are profound, as they really are. The little one, like the conventional world, will make much of gold and silver only. Then to the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all. Suppose these books becoming absorb’d, the permanent chyle of American general and particular character–what a well-wash’d and grammatical, but bloodless and helpless, race we should turn out! No, no, dear friend; though the States want scholars, undoubtedly, and perhaps want ladies and gentlemen who use the bath frequently, and never laugh loud, or talk wrong, they don’t want scholars, or ladies and gentlemen, at the expense of all the rest. They want good farmers, sailors, mechanics, clerks, citizens–perfect business and social relations–perfect fathers and mothers. If we could only have these, or their approximations, plenty of them, fine and large and sane and generous and patriotic, they might make their verbs disagree from their nominatives, and laugh like volleys of musketeers, if they should please. Of course these are not all America wants, but they are first of all to be provided on a large scale. And, with tremendous errors and escapades, this, substantially, is what the States seem to have an intuition of, and to be mainly aiming at. The plan of a select class, superfined, (demarcated from the rest,) the plan of Old World lands and literatures, is not so objectionable in itself, but because it chokes the true plan for us, and indeed is death to it. As to such special class, the United States can never produce any equal to the splendid show, (far, far beyond comparison or competition here,) of the principal European nations, both in the past and at the present day. But an immense and distinctive commonalty over our vast and varied area, west and east, south and north–in fact, for the first time in history, a great, aggregated, real PEOPLE, worthy the name, and made of develop’d heroic individuals, both sexes–is America’s principal, perhaps only, reason for being. If ever accomplish’d, it will be at least as much, (I lately think, doubly as much,) the result of fitting and democratic sociologies, literatures and arts–if we ever get them–as of our democratic politics.
At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feels what Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible, for instance, or Homer or Shakspere. I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbal polish, or something old or odd–Waller’s “Go, lovely rose,” or Lovelace’s lines “to Lucusta”–the quaint conceits of the old French bards, and the like. Of _power_ he seems to have a gentleman’s admiration–but in his inmost heart the grandest attribute of God and Poets is always subordinate to the octaves, conceits, polite kinks, and verbs.
The reminiscence that years ago I began like most youngsters to have a touch (though it came late, and was only on the surface) of Emerson-on-the-brain–that I read his writings reverently, and address’d him in print as “Master,” and for a month or so thought of him as such–I retain not only with composure, but positive satisfaction. I have noticed that most young people of eager minds pass through this stage of exercise.
The best part of Emersonianism is, it breeds the giant that destroys itself. Who wants to be any man’s mere follower? lurks behind every page. No teacher ever taught, that has so provided for his pupil’s setting up independently–no truer evolutionist.
VENTURES, ON AN OLD THEME
A DIALOGUE–
_One party says_–We arrange our lives–even the best and boldest men and women that exist, just as much as the most limited–with reference to what society conventionally rules and makes right. We retire to our rooms for freedom; to undress, bathe, unloose everything in freedom. These, and much else, would not be proper in society.
_Other party answers_–Such is the rule of society. Not always so, and considerable exceptions still exist. However, it must be called the general rule, sanction’d by immemorial usage, and will probably always remain so.
_First party_–Why not, then, respect it in your poems?
_Answer_–One reason, and to me a profound one, is that the soul of a man or woman demands, enjoys compensation in the highest directions for this very restraint of himself or herself, level’d to the average, or rather mean, low, however eternally practical, requirements of society’s intercourse. To balance this indispensable abnegation, the free minds of poets relieve themselves, and strengthen and enrich mankind with free flights in all the directions not tolerated by ordinary society.
_First party_–But must not outrage or give offence to it.
_Answer_–No, not in the deepest sense–and do not, and cannot. The vast averages of time and the race _en masse_ settle these things. Only understand that the conventional standards and laws proper enough for ordinary society apply neither to the action of the soul, nor its poets. In fact the latter know no laws but the laws of themselves, planted in them by God, and are themselves the last standards of the law, and its final exponents–responsible to Him directly, and not at all to mere etiquette. Often the best service that can be done to the race, is to lift the veil, at least for a time, from these rules and fossil-etiquettes.
NEW POETRY–_California, Canada, Texas_.–In my opinion the time has arrived to essentially break down the barriers of form between prose and poetry. I say the latter is henceforth to win and maintain its character regardless of rhyme, and the measurement-rules of iambic, spondee, dactyl, &c., and that even if rhyme and those measurements continue to furnish the medium for inferior writers and themes, (especially for persiflage and the comic, as there seems henceforward, to the perfect taste, something inevitably comic in rhyme, merely in itself, and anyhow,) the truest and greatest _Poetry_, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough,) can never again, in the English language, be express’d in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion. While admitting that the venerable and heavenly forms of chiming versification have in their time play’d great and fitting parts–that the pensive complaint, the ballads, wars, amours, legends of Europe, &c., have, many of them, been inimitably render’d in rhyming verse–that there have been very illustrious poets whose shapes the mantle of such verse has beautifully and appropriately envelopt–and though the mantle has fallen, with perhaps added beauty, on some of our own age–it is, not-withstanding, certain to me, that the day of such conventional rhyme is ended. In America, at any rate, and as a medium of highest esthetic practical or spiritual expression, present or future, it palpably fails, and must fail, to serve. The Muse of the Prairies, of California, Canada, Texas, and of the peaks of Colorado, dismissing the literary, as well as social etiquette of over-sea feudalism and caste, joyfully enlarging, adapting itself to comprehend the size of the whole people, with the free play, emotions, pride, passions, experiences, that belong to them, body and soul–to the general globe, and all its relations in astronomy, as the savans portray them to us–to the modern, the busy Nineteenth century, (as grandly poetic as any, only different,) with steamships, railroads, factories, electric telegraphs, cylinder presses–to the thought of the solidarity of nations, the brotherhood and sisterhood of the entire earth–to the dignity and heroism of the practical labor of farms, factories, foundries, workshops, mines, or on shipboard, or on lakes and rivers–resumes that other medium of expression, more flexible, more eligible–soars to the freer, vast, diviner heaven of prose.
Of poems of the third or fourth class, (perhaps even some of the second,) it makes little or no difference who writes them–they are good enough for what they are; nor is it necessary that they should be actual emanations from the personality and life of the writers. The very reverse sometimes gives piquancy. But poems of the first class, (poems of the depth, as distinguished from those of the surface,) are to be sternly tallied with the poets themselves, and tried by them and their lives. Who wants a glorification of courage and manly defiance from a coward or a sneak?–a ballad of benevolence or chastity from some rhyming hunks, or lascivious, glib _roue_?
In these States, beyond all precedent, poetry will have to do with actual facts, with the concrete States, and–for we have not much more than begun–with the definitive getting into shape of the Union. Indeed I sometimes think _it_ alone is to define the Union, (namely, to give it artistic character, spirituality, dignity.) What American humanity is most in danger of is an overwhelming prosperity, “business” worldliness, materialism: what is most lacking, east, west, north, south, is a fervid and glowing Nationality and patriotism, cohering all the parts into one. Who may fend that danger, and fill that lack in the future, but a class of loftiest poets?
If the United States haven’t grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere–probably more than all the rest of the world combined.
Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations–many rare combinations.
To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too.
BRITISH LITERATURE
To avoid mistake, I would say that I not only commend the study of this literature, but wish our sources of supply and comparison vastly enlarged. American students may well derive from all former lands–from forenoon Greece and Rome, down to the perturb’d mediaeval times, the Crusades, and so to Italy, the German intellect–all the older literatures, and all the newer ones–from witty and warlike France, and markedly, and in many ways, and at many different periods, from the enterprise and soul of the great Spanish race–bearing ourselves always courteous, always deferential, indebted beyond measure to the mother-world, to all its nations dead, as all its nations living–the offspring, this America of ours, the daughter, not by any means of the British isles exclusively, but of the continent, and all continents. Indeed, it is time we should realize and fully fructify those germs we also hold from Italy, France, Spain, especially in the best imaginative productions of those lands, which are, in many ways, loftier and subtler than the English, or British, and indispensable to complete our service, proportions, education, reminiscences, &c…. The British element these States hold, and have always held, enormously beyond its fit proportions. I have already spoken of Shakspere. He seems to me of astral genius, first class, entirely fit for feudalism. His contributions, especially to the literature of the passions, are immense, forever dear to humanity–and his name is always to be reverenced in America. But there is much in him ever offensive to democracy. He is not only the tally of feudalism, but I should say Shakspere is incarnated, uncompromising feudalism, in literature. Then one seems to detect something in him–I hardly know how to describe it–even amid the dazzle of his genius; and, in inferior manifestations, it is found in nearly all leading British authors. (Perhaps we will have to import the words Snob, Snobbish, &c., after all.) While of the great poems of Asian antiquity, the Indian epics, the book of Job, the Ionian Iliad, the unsurpassedly simple, loving, perfect idyls of the life and death of Christ, in the New Testament, (indeed Homer and the Biblical utterances intertwine familiarly with us, in the main,) and along down, of most of the characteristic, imaginative or romantic relics of the continent, as the Cid, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, &c., I should say they substantially adjust themselves to us, and, far off as they are, accord curiously with our bed and board to-day, in New York,
Washington, Canada, Ohio, Texas, California–and with our notions, both of seriousness and of fun, and our standards of heroism, manliness, and even the democratic requirements–those requirements are not only not fulfill’d in the Shaksperean productions, but are insulted on every page.
I add that–while England is among the greatest of lands in political freedom, or the idea of it, and in stalwart personal character, &c.–the spirit of English literature is not great, at least is not greatest–and its products are no models for us. With the exception of Shakspere, there is no first-class genius in that literature–which, with a truly vast amount of value, and of artificial beauty, (largely from the classics,) is almost always material, sensual, not spiritual–almost always congests, makes plethoric, not frees, expands, dilates–is cold, anti-democratic, loves to be sluggish and stately, and shows much of that characteristic of vulgar persons, the dread of saying or doing something not at all improper in itself, but unconventional, and that may be laugh’d at. In its best, the sombre pervades it; it is moody, melancholy, and, to give it its due, expresses, in characters and plots, those qualities, in an unrival’d manner. Yet not as the black thunder-storms, and in great normal, crashing passions, of the Greek dramatists–clearing the air, refreshing afterward, bracing with power; but as in Hamlet, moping, sick, uncertain, and leaving ever after a secret taste for the blues, the morbid fascination, the luxury of wo….
I strongly recommend all the young men and young women of the United States to whom it may be eligible, to overhaul the well-freighted fleets, the literatures of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, so full of those elements of freedom, self-possession, gay-heartedness, subtlety, dilation, needed in preparations for the future of the States. I only wish we could have really good translations. I rejoice at the feeling for Oriental researches and poetry, and hope it will go on.
DARWINISM–(THEN FURTHERMORE)
Running through prehistoric ages–coming down from them into the daybreak of our records, founding theology, suffusing literature, and so brought onward–(a sort of verteber and marrow to all the antique races and lands, Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, the Chinese, the Jews, &c., and giving cast and complexion to their art, poems, and their politics as well as ecclesiasticism, all of which we more or less inherit,) appear those venerable claims to origin from God himself, or from gods and goddesses–ancestry from divine beings of vaster beauty, size, and power than ours. But in current and latest times, the theory of human origin that seems to have most made its mark, (curiously reversing the antique,) is that we have come on, originated, developt, from monkeys, baboons–a theory more significant perhaps in its indirections, or what it necessitates, than it is even in itself. (Of the twain, far apart as they seem, and angrily as their conflicting advocates to-day oppose each other, are not both theories to be possibly reconcil’d, and even blended? Can we, indeed, spare either of them? Better still, out of them is not a third theory, the real one, or suggesting the real one, to arise?)
Of this old theory, evolution, as broach’d anew, trebled, with indeed all-devouring claims, by Darwin, it has so much in it, and is so needed as a counterpoise to yet widely prevailing and unspeakably tenacious, enfeebling superstitions–is fused, by the new man, into such grand, modest, truly scientific accompaniments–that the world of erudition, both moral and physical, cannot but be eventually better’d and broaden’d in its speculations, from the advent of Darwinism. Nevertheless, the problem of origins, human and other, is not the least whit nearer its solution. In due time the Evolution theory will have to abate its vehemence, cannot be allow’d to dominate every thing else, and will have to take its place as a segment of the circle, the cluster–as but one of many theories, many thoughts, of profoundest value–and re-adjusting and differentiating much, yet leaving the divine secrets just as inexplicable and unreachable as before–maybe more so.
_Then furthermore_–What is finally to be done by priest or poet–and by priest or poet only–amid all the stupendous and dazzling novelties of our century, with the advent of America, and of science and democracy–remains just as indispensable, after all the work of the grand astronomers, chemists, linguists, historians, and explorers of the last hundred years–and the wondrous German and other metaphysicians of that time–and will continue to remain, needed, America and here, just the same as in the world of Europe, or Asia, of a hundred, or a thousand, or several thousand years ago. I think indeed _more_ needed, to furnish statements from the present points, the added arriere, and the unspeakably immenser vistas of to-day. Only, the priests and poets of the modern, at least as exalted as any in the past, fully absorbing and appreciating the results of the past, in the commonalty of all humanity, all time, (the main results already, for there is perhaps nothing more, or at any rate not much, strictly new, only more important modern combinations, and new relative adjustments,) must indeed recast the old metal, the already achiev’d material, into and through new moulds, current forms.
Meantime, the highest and subtlest and broadest truths of modern science wait for their true assignment and last vivid flashes of light–as Democracy waits for it’s–through first-class metaphysicians and speculative philosophs–laying the basements and foundations for those new, more expanded, more harmonious, more melodious, freer American poems.
“SOCIETY”
I have myself little or no hope from what is technically called “Society” in our American cities. New York, of which place I have spoken so sharply, still promises something, in time, out of its tremendous and varied materials, with a certain superiority of intuitions, and the advantage of constant agitation, and ever new and rapid dealings of the cards. Of Boston, with its circles of social mummies, swathed in cerements harder than brass–its bloodless religion, (Unitarianism,) its complacent vanity of scientism and literature, lots of grammatical correctness, mere knowledge, (always wearisome, in itself)–its zealous abstractions, ghosts of reforms–I should say, (ever admitting its business powers, its sharp, almost demoniac, intellect, and no lack, in its own way, of courage and generosity)–there is, at present, little of cheering, satisfying sign. In the West, California, &c., “society” is yet unform’d, puerile, seemingly unconscious of anything above a driving business, or to liberally spend the money made by it, in the usual rounds and shows.
Then there is, to the humorous observer of American attempts at fashion, according to the models of foreign courts and saloons, quite a comic side–particularly visible at Washington city–a sort of high-life-below-stairs business. As if any farce could be funnier, for instance, than the scenes of the crowds, winter nights, meandering around our Presidents and their wives, cabinet officers, western or other Senators, Representatives, &c.; born of good laboring mechanic or farmer stock and antecedents, attempting those full-dress receptions, finesse of parlors, foreign ceremonies, etiquettes, &c.
Indeed, consider’d with any sense of propriety, or any sense at all, the whole of this illy-play’d fashionable play and display, with their absorption of the best part of our wealthier citizens’ time, money, energies, &c., is ridiculously out of place in the United States. As if our proper man and woman, (far, far greater words than “gentleman” and “lady,”) could still fail to see, and presently achieve, not this spectral business, but something truly noble, active, sane, American–by modes, perfections of character, manners, costumes, social relations, &c., adjusted to standards, far, far different from those.
Eminent and liberal foreigners, British or continental, must at times have their faith fearfully tried by what they see of our New World personalities. The shallowest and least American persons seem surest to push abroad, and call without fail on well-known foreigners, who are doubtless affected with indescribable qualms by these queer ones. Then, more than half of our authors and writers evidently think it a great thing to be “aristocratic,” and sneer at progress, democracy, revolution, etc. If some international literary snobs’ gallery were establish’d, it is certain that America could contribute at least her full share of the portraits, and some very distinguish’d ones. Observe that the most impudent slanders, low insults, &c., on the great revolutionary authors, leaders, poets, &c., of Europe, have their origin and main circulation in certain circles here. The treatment of Victor Hugo living, and Byron dead, are samples. Both deserving so well of America, and both persistently attempted to be soil’d here by unclean birds, male and female.
Meanwhile I must still offset the like of the foregoing, and all it infers, by the recognition of the fact, that while the surfaces of current society here show so much that is dismal, noisome, and vapory, there are, beyond question, inexhaustible supplies, as of true gold ore, in the mines of America’s general humanity. Let us, not ignoring the dross, give fit stress to these precious immortal values also. Let it be distinctly admitted, that–whatever may be said of our fashionable society, and of any foul fractions and episodes–only here in America, out of the long history and manifold presentations of the ages, has at last arisen, and now stands, what never before took positive form and sway, _the People_–and that view’d en masse, and while fully acknowledging deficiencies, dangers, faults, this people, inchoate, latent, not yet come to majority, nor to its own religious, literary, or esthetic expression, yet affords, to-day, an exultant justification of all the faith, all the hopes and prayers and prophecies of good men through the past–the stablest, solidest-based government of the world–the most assured in a future–the beaming Pharos to whose perennial light all earnest eyes, the world over, are tending–and that already, in and from it, the democratic principle, having been mortally tried by severest tests, fatalities of war and peace, now issues from the trial, unharm’d, trebly-invigorated, perhaps to commence forthwith its finally triumphant march around the globe.
THE TRAMP AND STRIKE QUESTIONS: _Part of a Lecture proposed, (never deliver’d)_
Two grim and spectral dangers–dangerous to peace, to health, to social security, to progress–long known in concrete to the governments of the Old World, and there eventuating, more than once or twice, in dynastic overturns, bloodshed, days, months, of terror–seem of late years to be nearing the New World, nay, to be gradually establishing themselves among us. What mean these phantoms here? (I personify them in fictitious shapes, but they are very real.) Is the fresh and broad demesne of America destined also to give them foothold and lodgment, permanent domicile?
Beneath the whole political world, what most presses and perplexes to-day, sending vastest results affecting the future, is not the abstract question of democracy, but of social and economic organization, the treatment of working-people by employers, and all that goes along with it–not only the wages-payment part, but a certain spirit and principle, to vivify anew these relations; all the questions of progress, strength, tariffs, finance, &c., really evolving themselves more or less directly out of the Poverty Question, (“the Science of Wealth,” and a dozen other names are given it, but I prefer the severe one just used.) I will begin by calling the reader’s attention to a thought upon the matter which may not have struck you before–the wealth of the civilized world, as contrasted with its poverty–what does it derivatively stand for, and represent? A rich person ought to have a strong stomach. As in Europe the wealth of to-day mainly results from, and represents, the rapine, murder, outrages, treachery, hoggishness, of hundreds of years ago, and onward, later, so in America, after the same token–(not yet so bad, perhaps, or at any rate not so palpable–we have not existed long enough–but we seem to be doing our best to make it up.)
Curious as it may seem, it is in what are call’d the poorest, lowest characters you will sometimes, nay generally, find glints of the most sublime virtues, eligibilities, heroisms. Then it is doubtful whether the State is to be saved, either in the monotonous long run, or in tremendous special crises, by its good people only. When the storm is deadliest, and the disease most imminent, help often comes from strange quarters–(the homoeopathic motto, you remember, _cure the bite with a hair of the same dog.)_
The American Revolution of 1776 was simply a great strike, successful for its immediate object–but whether a real success judged by the scale of the centuries, and the long-striking balance of Time, yet remains to be settled. The French Revolution was absolutely a strike, and a very terrible and relentless one, against ages of bad pay, unjust division of wealth-products, and the hoggish monopoly of a few, rolling in superfluity, against the vast bulk of the work-people, living in squalor.
If the United States, like the countries of the Old World, are also to grow vast crops of poor, desperate, dissatisfied, nomadic, miserably-waged populations, such as we see looming upon us of late years–steadily, even if slowly, eating into them like a cancer of lungs or stomach–then our republican experiment, notwithstanding all its surface-successes, is at heart an unhealthy failure.
_Feb. ’79._–I saw to-day a sight I had never seen before–and it amazed, and made me serious; three quite good-looking American men, of respectable personal presence, two of them young, carrying chiffonier-bags on their shoulders, and the usual long iron hooks in their hands, plodding along, their eyes cast down, spying for scraps, rags, bones, &c.
DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW WORLD
estimated and summ’d-up to-day, having thoroughly justified itself the past hundred years, (as far as growth, vitality and power are concern’d,) by severest and most varied trials of peace and war, and having establish’d itself for good, with all its necessities and benefits, for time to come, is now to be seriously consider’d also in its pronounc’d and already developt dangers. While the battle was raging, and the result suspended, all defections and criticisms were to be hush’d, and everything bent with vehemence unmitigated toward the urge of victory. But that victory settled, new responsibilities advance. I can conceive of no better service in the United States, henceforth, by democrats of thorough and heart-felt faith, than boldly exposing the weakness, liabilities and infinite corruptions of democracy. By the unprecedented opening-up of humanity en-masse in the United States, the last hundred years, under our institutions, not only the good qualities of the race, but just as much the bad ones, are prominently brought forward. Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or whether with freedom.
“The ideal form of human society,” Canon Kingsley declares, “is democracy. A nation–and were it even possible, a whole world–of free men, lifting free foreheads to God and Nature; calling no man master, for One is their master, even God; knowing and doing their duties toward the Maker of the universe, and therefore to each other; not from fear, nor calculation of profit or loss, but because they have seen the beauty of righteousness, and trust, and peace; because the law of God is in their hearts. Such a nation–such a society–what nobler conception of moral existence can we form? Would not that, indeed, be the kingdom of God come on earth?”
To this faith, founded in the ideal, let us hold–and never abandon or lose it. Then what a spectacle is _practically_ exhibited by our American democracy to-day!
FOUNDATION STAGES–THEN OTHERS
Though I think I fully comprehend the absence of moral tone in our current politics and business, and the almost entire futility of absolute and simple honor as a counterpoise against the enormous greed for worldly wealth, with the trickeries of gaining it, all through society our day, I still do not share the depression and despair on the subject which I find possessing many good people. The advent of America, the history of the past century, has been the first general aperture and opening-up to the average human commonalty, on the broadest scale, of the eligibilities to wealth and worldly success and eminence, and has been fully taken advantage of; and the example has spread hence, in ripples, to all nations. To these eligibilities–to this limitless aperture, the race has tended, en-masse, roaring and rushing and crude, and fiercely, turbidly hastening–and we have seen the first stages, and are now in the midst of the result of it all, so far. But there will certainly ensue other stages, and entirely different ones. In nothing is there more evolution than the American mind. Soon, it will be fully realized that ostensible wealth and money-making, show, luxury, &c., imperatively necessitate something beyond–namely, the sane, eternal moral and spiritual-esthetic attributes, elements. (We cannot have even that realization on any less terms than the price we are now paying for it.) Soon, it will be understood clearly, that the State cannot flourish, (nay, cannot exist,) without those elements. They will gradually enter into the chyle of sociology and literature. They will finally make the blood and brawn of the best American individualities of both sexes–and thus, with them, to a certainty, (through these very processes of to-day,) dominate the New World.
GENERAL SUFFRAGE, ELECTIONS, ETC.
It still remains doubtful to me whether these will ever secure, officially, the best wit and capacity–whether, through them, the first-class genius of America will ever personally appear in the high political stations, the Presidency, Congress, the leading State offices, &c. Those offices, or the candidacy for them, arranged, won, by caucusing, money, the favoritism or pecuniary interest of rings, the superior manipulation of the ins over the outs, or the outs over the ins, are, indeed, at best, the mere business agencies of the people, are useful as formulating, neither the best and highest, but the average of the public judgment, sense, justice, (or sometimes want of judgment, sense, justice.) We elect Presidents, Congressmen, &c., not so much to have them consider and decide for us, but as surest practical means of expressing the will of majorities on mooted questions, measures, &c.
As to general suffrage, after all, since we have gone so far, the more general it is, the better. I favor the widest opening of the doors. Let the ventilation and area be wide enough, and all is safe. We can never have a born penitentiary-bird, or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell or groggery keeper, for President–though such may not only emulate, but get, high offices from localities–even from the proud and wealthy city of New York.
WHO GETS THE PLUNDER?
The protectionists are fond of flashing to the public eye the glittering delusion of great money-results from manufactures, mines, artificial exports–so many millions from this source, and so many from that–such a seductive, unanswerable show–an immense revenue of annual cash from iron, cotton, woollen, leather goods, and a hundred other things, all bolstered up by “protection.” But the really important point of all is, _into whose pockets does this plunder really go?_ It would be some excuse and satisfaction if even a fair proportion of it went to the masses of laboring-men–resulting in homesteads to such, men, women, children–myriads of actual homes in fee simple, in every State, (not the false glamour of the stunning wealth reported in the census, in the statistics, or tables in the newspapers,) but a fair division and generous average to those workmen and workwomen–_that_ would be something. But the fact itself is nothing of the kind. The profits of “protection” go altogether to a few score select persons–who, by favors of Congress, State legislatures, the banks, and other special advantages, are forming a vulgar aristocracy, full as bad as anything in the British or European castes, of blood, or the dynasties there of the past. As Sismondi pointed out, the true prosperity of a nation is not in the great wealth of a special class, but is only to be really attain’d in having the bulk of the people provided with homes or land in fee simple. This may not be the best show, but it is the best reality.
FRIENDSHIP, (THE REAL ARTICLE)
Though Nature maintains, and must prevail, there will always be plenty of people, and good people, who cannot, or think they cannot, see anything in that last, wisest, most envelop’d of proverbs, “Friendship rules the World.” Modern society, in its largest vein, is essentially intellectual, infidelistic–secretly admires, and depends most on, pure compulsion or science, its rule and sovereignty–is, in short, in “cultivated” quarters, deeply Napoleonic.
“Friendship,” said Bonaparte, in one of his lightning-flashes of candid garrulity, “Friendship is but a name. I love no one–not even my brothers; Joseph perhaps a little. Still, if I do love him, it is from habit, because he is the eldest of us. Duroc? Ay, him, if any one, I love in a sort–but why? He suits me; he is cool, undemonstrative, unfeeling–has no weak affections–never embraces any one–never weeps.”
I am not sure but the same analogy is to be applied, in cases, often seen, where, with an extra development and acuteness of the intellectual faculties, there is a mark’d absence of the spiritual, affectional, and sometimes, though more rarely, the highest esthetic and moral elements of cognition.
LACKS AND WANTS YET
Of most foreign countries, small or large, from the remotest times known, down to our own, each has contributed after its kind, directly or indirectly, at least one great undying song, to help vitalize and increase the valor, wisdom, and elegance of humanity, from the points of view attain’d by it up to date. The stupendous epics of India, the holy Bible itself, the Homeric canticles, the Nibelungen, the Cid Campeador, the Inferno, Shakspere’s dramas of the passions and of the feudal lords, Burns’s songs, Goethe’s in Germany, Tennyson’s poems in England, Victor Hugo’s in France, and many more, are the widely various yet integral signs or land-marks, (in certain respects the highest set up by the human mind and soul, beyond science, invention, political amelioration, &c.,) narrating in subtlest, best ways, the long, long routes of history, and giving identity to the stages arrived at by aggregate humanity, and the conclusions assumed in its progressive and varied civilizations…. Where is America’s art-rendering, in any thing like the spirit worthy of herself and the modern, to these characteristic immortal monuments? So far, our Democratic society, (estimating its various strata, in the mass, as one,) possesses nothing–nor have we contributed any characteristic music, the finest tie of nationality–to make up for that glowing, blood-throbbing, religious, social, emotional, artistic, indefinable, indescribably beautiful charm and hold which fused the separate parts of the old feudal societies together, in their wonderful interpenetration, in Europe and Asia, of love, belief, and loyalty, running one way like a living weft–and picturesque responsibility, duty, and blessedness, running like a warp the other way. (In the Southern States, under slavery, much of the same.)… In coincidence, and as things now exist in the States, what is more terrible, more alarming, than the total want of any such fusion and mutuality of love, belief, and rapport of interest, between the comparatively few successful rich, and the great masses of the unsuccessful, the poor? As a mixed political and social question, is not this full of dark significance? Is it not worth considering as a problem and puzzle in our democracy–an indispensable want to be supplied?
RULERS STRICTLY OUT OF THE MASSES
In the talk (which I welcome) about the need of men of training, thoroughly school’d and experienced men, for statesmen, I would present the following as an offset. It was written by me twenty years ago–and has been curiously verified since:
I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, Judges, and Generals, unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a thousand years. I expect to see the day when the like of the present personnel of the governments, Federal, State, municipal, military, and naval, will be look’d upon with derision, and when qualified mechanics and young men will reach Congress and other official stations, sent in their working costumes, fresh from their benches and tools, and returning to them again with dignity. The young fellows must prepare to do credit to this destiny, for the stuff is in them. Nothing gives place, recollect, and never ought to give place, except to its clean superiors. There is more rude and undevelopt bravery, friendship, conscientiousness, clear-sightedness, and practical genius for any scope of action, even the broadest and highest, now among the American mechanics and young men, than in all the official persons in these States, legislative, executive, judicial, military, and naval, and more than among all the literary persons. I would be much pleas’d to see some heroic, shrewd, fully-inform’d, healthy-bodied, middle-aged, beard-faced American blacksmith or boatman come down from the West across the Alleghanies, and walk into the Presidency, dress’d in a clean suit of working attire, and with the tan all over his face, breast, and arms; I would certainly vote for that sort of man, possessing the due requirements, before any other candidate.
(The facts of rank-and-file workingmen, mechanics, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Garfield, brought forward from the masses and placed in the Presidency, and swaying its mighty powers with firm hand–really with more sway than any king in history, and with better capacity in using that sway–can we not see that these facts have bearings far, far beyond their political or party ones?)
MONUMENTS–THE PAST AND PRESENT
If you go to Europe, (to say nothing of Asia, more ancient and massive still,) you cannot stir without meeting venerable mementos–cathedrals, ruins of temples, castles, monuments of the great, statues and paintings, (far, far beyond anything America can ever expect to produce,) haunts of heroes long dead, saints, poets, divinities, with deepest associations of ages. But here in the New World, while _those_ we can never emulate, we have _more_ than those to build, and far more greatly to build. (I am not sure but the day for conventional monuments, statues, memorials, &c., has pass’d away–and that they are henceforth superfluous and vulgar.) An enlarg’d general superior humanity, (partly indeed resulting from those,) we are to build. European, Asiatic greatness are in the past. Vaster and subtler, America, combining, justifying the past, yet works for a grander future, in living democratic forms. (Here too are indicated the paths for our national bards.) Other times, other lands, have had their missions–Art, War, Ecclesiasticism, Literature, Discovery, Trade, Architecture, &c., &c.–but that grand future is the enclosing purport of the United States.
LITTLE OR NOTHING NEW, AFTER ALL
How small were the best thoughts, poems, conclusions, except for a certain invariable resemblance and uniform standard in the final thoughts, theology, poems, &c., of all nations, all civilizations, all centuries and times. Those precious legacies–accumulations! They come to us from the far-off–from all eras, and all lands–from Egypt, and India, and Greece, and Rome–and along through the middle and later ages, in the grand monarchies of Europe–born under far different institutes and conditions from ours–but out of the insight and inspiration of the same old humanity–the same old heart and brain–the same old countenance yearningly, pensively, looking forth. What we have to do to-day is to receive them cheerfully, and to give them ensemble, and a modern American and democratic physiognomy.
A LINCOLN REMINISCENCE
As is well known, story-telling was often with President Lincoln a weapon which he employ’d with great skill. Very often he could not give a point-blank reply or comment–and these indirections, (sometimes funny, but not always so,) were probably the best responses possible. In the gloomiest period of the war, he had a call from a large delegation of bank presidents. In the talk after business was settled, one of the big Dons asked Mr. Lincoln if his confidence in the permanency of the Union was not beginning to be shaken–whereupon the homely President told a little story: “When I was a young man in Illinois,” said he, “I boarded for a time with a deacon of the Presbyterian church. One night I was roused from my sleep by a rap at the door, and I heard the deacon’s voice exclaiming, ‘Arise, Abraham! the day of judgment has come!’ I sprang from my bed and rushed to the window, and saw the stars falling in great showers; but looking back of them in the heavens I saw the grand old constellations, with which I was so well acquainted, fixed and true in their places. Gentlemen, the world did not come to an end then, nor will the Union now.”
FREEDOM
It is not only true that most people entirely misunderstand Freedom, but I sometimes think I have not yet met one person who rightly understands it. The whole Universe is absolute Law. Freedom only opens entire activity and license _under the law_. To the degraded or undevelopt–and even to too many others–the thought of freedom is a thought of escaping from law–which, of course, is impossible. More precious than all worldly riches is Freedom–freedom from the painful constipation and poor narrowness of ecclesiasticism–freedom in manners, habiliments, furniture, from the silliness and tyranny of local fashions–entire freedom from party rings and mere conventions in Politics–and better than all, a general freedom of One’s-Self from the tyrannic domination of vices, habits, appetites, under which nearly every man of us, (often the greatest brawler for freedom,) is enslav’d. Can we attain such enfranchisement–the true Democracy, and the height of it? While we are from birth to death the subjects of irresistible law, enclosing every movement and minute, we yet escape, by a paradox, into true free will. Strange as it may seem, we only attain to freedom by a knowledge of, and implicit obedience to, Law. Great–unspeakably great–is the Will! the free Soul of man! At its greatest, understanding and obeying the laws, it can then, and then only, maintain true liberty. For there is to the highest, that law as absolute as any–more absolute than any–the Law of Liberty. The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, or partial individual law, with those universal, eternal, unconscious ones, which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immortality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the last dignity to human life.
BOOK-CLASSES–AMERICA’S LITERATURE