APPENDIX TO PART II-CONTEMPORANEOUS CRITICISMS, Etc., 1855-1883. Initials and Outlines, Brooklyn, 1855, 1856, Emerson to Carlyle, . The "Imprints" of 1860, A Boston Critic "At a Loss," Arran Leigh, England, Frank W. Walters, England, Jaunt to the Rocky Mountains, 1879, . A Comment on the 1882 Suppression, . W. Sloane Kennedy's Criticism,. PAGES 195 197 199 201 202 204-206 ILLUSTRATIONS. Frontispiece.-Portrait of Walt Whitman, from Life, in 1864. Photo. Intaglio. Drawn by Herbert H. Gilchrist, England. Facing Page 13.-HOUSE AT WEST HILLS IN WHICH W. W. WAS BORN. Drawn by Joseph Pennell. Eng. by Photo Eng. Co., N. Y. Facing Page 15.—ANCIENT BURIAL GROUND OF THE VAN VELSORS at Cold Spring Harbor, L. I., on the Homestead Farm. Drawn by Pennell. Eng. by P. E. Co., N. Y. Facing Page 17.—ANCIENT BURIAL GROUND OF THE WHITMANS at West Hills, L. I., on the Homestead Farm. Drawn by Pennell. Eng. by P. E. Co., N. Y. Facing Page 26.-PORTRAIT FROM LIFE OF WALTER WHITMAN, the Poet's Father. Facing Page 46.—Portrait from LIFE OF LOUISA (Van Velsor) WhitMAN, the Poet's Mother. Facing Page 48.-PORTRAIT FROM LIFE OF WALT WHITMAN in 1880. Photo by Edy Bro.'s, London, Canada. Facing Page 54.-W. W.'s HANDWRITING. Fac-simile. (6) INTRODUCTION. Now just entering his sixty-fifth year, Walt Whitman has become the object, in America and Europe, of such pronounced attacks, defences, inquiries, and of comments, assumptions, and denials, so various and inconsistent with a certainty of steadily increasing interest, perhaps of still more pronounced attack and defence in the future-that a field may well be presumed to exist for statements about him from observation at first hand. Such contemporaneous statements, executed in their own way, form the purpose of the following pages. To arrest, at the time, some otherwise evanescent facts and features of the man-to sketch him on the spot, in his habit as he lived, and give a few authentic items of his ancestry, youth, middle life, and actual manners and talk, is the primary object of this volume; secondly, to put forth in regard to Leaves of Grass my own deliberate constructions of that work. I make no pretence that they are other than from a friendly point of view. "As it seems to me," might doubtless have served as heading for all I have written. To balance, however, any proclivity, or danger of proclivity, in that direction, I have freely included in my book (Appendix, Part II.) the fullest representation from the enemies and most outspoken fault-findings and denunciations of Leaves of Grass and their author. I know that the poet himself welcomes such searching attacks and trials. He has told me that he considers them the means whereby Nature and Fate try the right of any thing or ambition, book or what-not, to exist. "If my light can't stand such gales," he once said to me, "let it go out-as it will then deserve to go out." In short, and while I have no final authority to speak for Walt Whitman (who has himself more opposed than favored my enterprise), I do not hesitate to send forth the following pages, not only as the bonâ fide results of my own knowledge of the poet and study of his writings for many years past, but as direct testimony from the days and actualities among which he lives, and certainly representing the last feeling and verdict of persons (I have had correspondence or face-to-face meetings with many of them), who have been closest and longest in contact with him. William D. O'Connor's "Good Gray Poet," of 1865-'6, and, after eighteen years, his letter now written (1883), in confirmation and re-statement of that pamphlet, occupy a considerable part of the ensuing volume; but they are both in courteous response to my solicitations, and will prove invaluable contributions to the future. They come from a scholar who has absorbed to its very depths the literature of the Elizabethan age, as illustrated by Shakespeare and Bacon --an ardent familiar of the great geniuses of all times-and a personal knower of Walt Whitman's life for the last twenty-five years. The judgments such a man, after such opportunities, has to announce, deserve, indeed, to be recorded. Walt Whitman said not long since to a friend that he did not want his life written, that he did not care in any way to be differentiated from the common people, of whom he was one. "Then," said his friend, " why did you differentiate yourself from ordinary men by writing Leaves of Grass?" According to the poet himself, he has lived a common life; and this is true, not in the sense that it has been like other lives, but that other lives in future are to be like it, and that his life is to be the common property of humanity. For this man, who has absorbed the whole human race, will, in the future, in turn, be absorbed by each individual member of the race who aspires to attain complete spiritual growth. The claim made throughout the present work, both in that First Part of it which deals with the man Walt Whitman, and in the Second, which deals with the book Leaves of Grass, is, that the leading fact in both, the one as much as the other, is moral elevation; that this is their basic meaning and value to us. The true introduction, therefore, to this volume, is the author's previous work, "Man's Moral Nature."* In that book he has discussed the moral nature in the abstract, pointed out its physical basis, and shown its historic development; while the sole object of the present work is to depict an individual moral nature, perhaps the highest that has yet appeared. And now, before entering on the various subjects attempted and more fully detailed in my volume, it will essentially serve the reader to run his or her eyes over an authentic and brief Chronological forecast of WALT WHITMAN'S life, and the successive publications of Leaves of Grass, 1819. Born at West Hills—(see Specimen Days). 1820, '21, '22, and early half of '23. At West Hills. 1823-24. In Brooklyn, in Front street. 1825-30. In Cranberry, Johnson, Tillary, and Henry streets. public schools. 1831-32. Tended in a lawyer's office; then, a doctor's. 1833-34. In printing offices, learning the trade. Went to 1836-37. Teaching country schools on Long Island. "Boarded round." 1840-'45. In New York city, printing, etc. farm-work. Summers in the country. Some * "Man's Moral Nature, an Essay." G. P. Putnam's Sons: N.Y., 1879. 1846-'47. In Brooklyn, editing daily paper, the “ Eagle." 1851, '52, '53, '54. Carpentering-building houses in Brooklyn, and selling 1855. First issue of Leaves of Grass. Small quarto, 94 pages. Eight or 1856. Second issue of Leaves of Grass. Small 16mo., 384 pages—32 poems— sale. 1860. Third issue of Leaves of Grass, 456 pages, 12mo., published by Thayer 1862. W. W. leaves Brooklyn and New York permanently. Goes down to 1866. Prints "Drum Taps" and "Sequel to Drum Taps," poems written The poems now New York. No 1868, '69, '70. Employed in Attorney-General's Department, Washington. 1871. Fifth issue of Leaves of Grass, 384 pages, and Passage to India, 120 1872. Delivers "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free," at the commencement, "1872. Took a two months' trip through the New England States, up the Connecticut val- 1873. Opening of this year, W. W. prostrated by paralysis, at Washington. |