Walt Whitman as an Editor

SOME years ago there was in the library of the Brooklyn Times a thin quarto entitled Leaves of Grass. It was a commonplace piece of book-making, save that the type was large, and to many of the reporters it was a source of mirth, of puzzle, of disgust, or of admiration, according to temperament and understanding, and they tried to imitate its style for the funny column; yet they had a certain pride in this particular volume, because Walt Whitman, its author, had been the editor of the paper, and again, this was not merely of that first edition for which he had set the type, in Rome Brothers’ shop, on Fulton Street, Brooklyn, but it had been his own copy, bearing his autograph on the flyleaf, and in the back he had pasted letters and criticisms on his work by Emerson and others. A scamp stole it. In the office of the same paper was a piece of shabby, battered furniture with small drawers, pigeon-holes, and a drop front, which was known as Walt Whitman’s desk. It has ere this gone to that limbo where old pianos are, and all the pins.

In that office Whitman is but a tradition. It is remembered only that he was a tall, sturdy fellow, who had a habit of pacing the floor for a long time without speaking, though he could talk enough when he had provocation. His dress was heavy, coarse, but clean, and seemed to belong to a farmer or a miner rather than to an editor. Fancy the director of a daily paper in an American city of to-day dressed for his work in flannel trousers, belted and tucked into boots that reached to the knee, a pea jacket never buttoned, a blue shirt open at the throat, a red kerchief at the neck, and a broad-brimmed hat! Even Horace Greeley, who affected a rustic make-up, was more conventional in his costume. Whitman’s tenure of office on the Times was not long. It is said that certain orthodox deacons of what was then a smug, conventional town, objected to articles that got into the paper, somehow, and that he resigned in consequence of their objections, yet he never showed the least impatience toward his critics, carrying himself with a large, bland dignity to the last.

In a letter written to me in 1885, Whitman says that his connection with the journal was “along in 1856 or just before.” He adds: “I recollect (doubtless I am now going to be egotistical about it) the question of the new Water Works (Magnificently outlined by McAlpine and duly carried out and improved by Kirkwood, first class engineers both.) was still pending, and the works, though well under way, continued to be strongly opposed by many. With the consent of the proprietor I bent the whole weight of the paper steadily in favor of the McAlpine plan, as against a flimsy, cheap and temporary series of works that would long since have broken down and disgraced the city.” Here he begins another sentence with a paragraph mark, as if he were writing for the printers: ¶ “ This, with my course in another matter, the securing to public use of Washington Park (old Fort Greene,) stoutly championed by me some thirty five years ago, against heavy odds, during an editorship of the Brooklyn Eagle, are ' feathers in my wings ’ that I would wish to preserve. ”

These are ancient records, but they throw an unwonted side light on the character of Whitman, revealing him as a citizen of public spirit. We have known him as the dreamer, the rambler, the helper, but not as a man of affairs. In truth, he cared little about these last, as political manifestations, and it was always more important to him to ride on the Broadway stages, or saunter along the wharves, looking up at the noses of ships poked inquiringly into the highway, and into the brown faces of the sailors, than to he urging the election of this, that, or the other patriot in the tumultuous privacy of the editorial room. Yet, it is more than likely that his woi’k for the daily press, and for our simple, early magazines, confirmed him in his frank, ungilded style, his homely figures, his avoidance of buncombe and fustian. Whatever else may be charged against newspaper work, it cannot be accused of literary Nancyism. Those who follow it have to deal as quickly, straitly, sternly, with facts as does a policeman. Without this experience Whitman might possibly have become a maker of the then popular elegancies, a polisher of periods, a literarian without egotism, independence, or Americanism; in a word, a nonentity. He was not much of a journalist. He had too much repose. His employers called it laziness. He was concerned with permanences. The nearer to nature, the more repose. Trees and hills do not dance, except for urging. Whitman, elemental, strong, placid, bovine, did not urge them.

In the Brooklyn Eagle office Whitman is a clearer memory than in the office of its contemporary. Yet it is oddly hard to secure facts. There is a general and joking reference to his serenity as idleness. He was not a typical newspaper man, for he was not to be pressed or hurried, and in our day of precision and speed he would have been impossible. He never felt that stress from which the veriest Bohemian suffers. He did not want money enough to work hard for it. One of the coterie of writers and actors which used to squander its much wit and little wealth at Pfaff’s tells me that of the whole party, Whitman was the only one who was never tipsy and never “broke.” He always had a market, somewhere, for fugitive writings. Editors were friendly to him. He drank his beer, with the rest, but its effect was to make him thoughtful, even sad, while the others were merry. According to that narrator he was an easy borrower, though it does not appear that he asked for large amounts or made needless delays in his repayments.

Apropos, here is an incident which, if not true, is good enough to be. The scene was Fowler & Wells’ office, in New York, where believers in phrenology went to have their bumps examined. Whitman had derided bumps in the Eagle, yet in his poems he shows a half belief in the so-called science, and he familiarly haunted the little shop with its charts, its busts, and its cranks. One day a friend found Whitman there in his slouch hat, corduroy trousers, black silk tie and flannel shirt, leaning against one of the book counters, and looking with a sort of infantile surprise and perplexity after a figure that had just stamped out in a tempest of wrath. “What ’s the matter, Whitman? ” asked the newcomer.

Walt replied, “ Did you notice that fellow who passed you at the door? Well, he was fool enough to lend me $500, and now he is darned fool enough to think I can pay it.”

Whitman had run a paper in Huntington, Long Island, for a little while, — had run it into the ground, in fact, — and, so far as is known, that was his only training for the editorship of the Brooklyn Eagle, albeit that post involved slight labor and responsibility in his day. The last - named journal was then a sheet of four small pages, lean of news and advertising, for Brooklyn, though a town of 100,000 people, was overshadowed by its neighbor, New York, and showed little municipal character and enterprise of its own. Henry Ward Beecher, Greenwood Cemetery, and the navy yard were all that made it known. Whitman lived in a humble house on Myrtle Avenue, a street since grown cheap and noisy, and daily showered with eoal dust by elevated trains. His old home, now a butcher shop, was a mile and a half from the Eagle office at Fulton Ferry, and one may believe that he preferred to be at that distance that he might enjoy the contemplations and observations incident to a daily walk between the two points. Not only did he walk, or saunter, to and from the office, but almost daily he left his desk and took a swim and a stroll, leaving the nations to get on as they might without his comment and advice, and often taking one of the printers from his case for company. He enjoyed the society of young, strong men who worked with their hands and put on no airs, — drivers, mechanics, laborers, soldiers, sailors. I met him once, and for a moment only, but I recall his patriarchal picturesqueness, his gentle dignity, his friendly hand, and his look of interest when his old papers were mentioned.

Walt Whitman’s education was of experience, insight, sympathy; not of books. In running over his editorials one feels not only the lack of special training, but of common schooling. Even his grammar is slippery. But that was while his mind was growing, while he was guessing his vocation, and some years before he — ought one to allow that good and bad old phrase — “burst on the world ” ? with the Leaves of Grass. One thing you find, and it is that when he really has anything to say, his idea is broad, generous, democratic. Rarely is there a poetic turn to his phrase, but invariably when he writes with feeling there are honesty and courage.

Here is one of the first editorials that he wrote for the Eagle. Doesn’t it sound amiable, leisurely, and is it the least bit like the leader in any modern paper ?

“An Hour Among the Shipping. We spent an hour or two yesterday afternoon [this, being on Monday, proclaims him Sabbath breaker,] sauntering along South street in New York and boarding some of the lately arrived packet ships. . . . The Massachusetts we found in apparently fine order notwithstanding her long passage of 44 days and her battles with the ice and wind. She is a handsome, staunch looking vessel, and seems as though she might stand an even stouter tug with old Neptune in his rage. The Roscius was really a pitiful sight. Just before her last voyage we had noticed and admired this beautiful and favorite packet — and the contrast presented by her present appearance with her appearance then, is enough to excite feeling even in the bosom of a cold hearted landsman. She reminds one of a dripping, half drowned Chanticleer. Her spars, sails and rigging are actually drooping — and everything about her has a kind of bob-tailed look. . . . At 1 o’clock the Franconia from Liverpool and the Sartelle, N. O., came up the bay in handsome style. We went on board both of them; and though each had evidently seen blows and hard knocks, they looked like new bonnets compared to the Roscius and Sea. It is a source of gratitude to Him who rules the storm, that so little loss of life and property, after all, has resulted from the late tempests at sea. The most really deplorable thing seems to be the wrecking of the Minturn — that ill fated craft! after she had come quite in sight of her destination. It only needs a half hour’s walk along South street, to convince anyone of the almost miraculous preservation, through the deepest dangers, which has been vouchsafed of late to those who trust themselves on the bosom of the licklest of the elements.”

In another issue appear two advertisements, one informing the public that some malicious person had broken a pictured window in a church, and offering $200 for his arrest, and the second, containing an offer of $50 for the arrest of a man who had robbed another sanctuary. So it appears that some people were as practically opposed to ecclesiastical splendors as Whitman was in theory, for in his column he says: — “Grace church, in New York, was consecrated on Saturday last, according to announcement. The ceremonies are said to have been very imposing. The crowd was fashionable and in numbers sufficient to resemble a rout among the very choicest of the city elegants. We are impelled to say that we do not look with a favorable eye on these splendid churches — on a Christianity which chooses for the method of its development a style that Christ invariably condemned, and the spirit which he must have meant when he told an inquirer that he could not enter the kingdom of heaven. Grace church, inside and out, is a showy piece of architecture, and the furnishing of the pews, the covering of the luxurious cushions, &c,, appear to be unexceptionable, viewed with the eye of an upholsterer. The stainless marble, the columns, and the curiously carved tracery are so attractive that the unsophisticated ones of the congregation may well be pardoned if they pay more attention to the workmanship than to the preaching. Is this good? Is the vulgar ambition that seeks for show, in such matters, to be spoken of with other terms than censure? Ah, who does not remember some little, old, quaint, brown church in the country, surrounded by great trees and plentiful verdure — a church which a property speculator would not own, as an investment, if he had to pay the taxes on it ? Is that to be compared for a moment with the tall spired temples of our great cities, where the pride that apes humility is far more frequent than the genuine spirit of Christ ? And we must say that for such reasons we regret to see every putting up of a gorgeous church. The famous religious buildings of Europe, built without our modern pews, and on a scale of massive simplicity and grandeur, crush in their silent largeness the souls of the supplicants who kneel there, and are no doubt conducive to make one realize a little of his own nothingness compared to God and the universe. But the comfortable pews, the exquisite arrangements, and the very character of the architecture of our modern churches (it may be that Trinity in New York will be an exception,) lift a man into a complacent kind of self satisfaction with himself and his doings. We hope our remarks will be taken with the same feeling of sincerity in which they are written.”

Whitman wrote on anything and everything, after the fashion of editors, sometimes with earnestness, sometimes with undisguised indifference. Here is a sample of an occasional sort: “To cure the tooth ache, plunge your feet in cold water. Strange, but true.” For but most people would read if. The man who must supply a column at a given hour every day cannot make the quality uniform. Whitman discusses public and personal questions; asks if it is right to dance, and answers himself that it is, if one goes to bed in decent season; rates the ferry company for allowing men to smoke and spit on the decks ; and while the United States army is fighting in Mexico, he turns out a restful screed entitled Some Afternoon Gossip, devoted to a rainfall and the lamentations of ice-cream makers on account of the cool weather. Some happenings always drew a lecture from him. He could not abide harshness, unfairness, tyranny, or cruelty. Not an execution of the death sentence occurred anywhere in the Union that he did not inveigh against capital punishment. Indeed, the severities of law seemed to irritate him more than the severities of the criminal. He courts orthodox enmity by caring not a rap for scripture reasons for hanging, and he reprehends lynchings, whippings, and all revenges. His rebellious tone caused one clergyman to break out against him as “a scurrilous infidel.” Life imprisonment, in Whitman’s mind, was the only punishment for murder, if for no other reason, because it was more painful than hanging. He is a bit inconsistent here, but none can doubt him genuine when he exclaims, “Good God! we are almost shocked at our own cruelty -when we argue for such a punishment to any man! Looking only at the criminal in connection with the great outrage through which we know him, we forget that he is still a duplicate of the humanity that stays in us all. He may be seared in vice, but if we could stand invisible by him in prison and look into his soul, how often during those terrible nights might we not see agony compared to which the pains of the slain are but a passing sigh! ”

A duel he denounces as “honorable nonsense,” and even hard words pain him if they reflect on our people or institutions. He expresses, not anger, but a hurt astonishment that Dickens should have spoken of America as he did in his Notes. There were no societies in those days for preventing cruelty to animals, but he helped to make a way for them by appeals like this: “Go to the desert! ye goaders and over workers of the most human and gentle of animals! Learn from the brown skinned savage a lesson in your trade. Look at the obedient fleet courser — herding with his children when they sleep at night — receiving food as choice as he gives his wife — with a step like the wind and elevated almost into a rational being, by such treatment as he sees fit to give him. We confess to a real affection for a fine horse! So strong — so harmonious in limb, shape and sinew — so graceful in movement — with an eye of such thoughtful and almost speaking brightness — the horse is above all other animals in those qualities which demand of civilized nations to do it kindness and fairness. No man with a man’s heart can be brutal to such a creature.”

And here is his task of “Polishing the Common People:” “We love all that ameliorates or softens the feelings and customs. We have often thought, and indeed, it is undeniable, that the great difference in the impressions which various communities make on foreigners traveling among them, is altogether caused by the possession or deficiency of these little graces of action and appearance. It must be confessed that we in America among the general population, have very, very few of these graces. Yet the average intellect and education of the American people is ahead of all other parts of the world. We suggest whether we were not much in fault for entertaining such a contempt toward these ‘ little things ’ as many will call them. Let every family have some flowers, some choice prints and some sculpture casts. And as it is the peculiar province of woman to achieve those graceful and polished adornments of life wre submit our remarks and suggestions especially to them.”

In a few contributions to the Eagle of that day one finds an old-fashioned rhetoric and sentiment that are obviously not Whitman’s, for he has his fling at a literary fashion of the time in this: “The Crushed Heart is the name of a silly sentimental little poem going the rounds of the papers which we particularize, in order to denounce its class. It is full of ‘ wounded hopes, ’ of ‘ deep despair, ’ of ‘ withered affections ’ and all that sort of thing. We have an aversion to stuff of such a sort. It begets a morbid and most unhappy general result on its readers — opposite as it [is] to all wholesome and manly kind of writing.”

Political editorials of an earlier time sound dry and perfunctory; at least, they seem so because they traverse dead issiies; but it is pleasant to discover Whitman’s attitude on slavery, and in a Democratic paper, too, for boldness of speech on that subject was rare in those days: “Public attention, within the last few days has been naturally turned to the slave trade — that most abominable of all man’s schemes for making money, without regard to the character of the means used for the purpose. Four vessels have, in about as many days, been brought to the American territory for being engaged in this monstrous business. It is a disgrace and blot on the character of our republic, and on our boasted humanity. The slave ship! How few of our readers know the beginning of the horrors involved in that term! Imagine a vessel of the fourth or fifth class built more for speed than space, and therefore witli narrow accommodations even for a few passengers; a space between decks divided into two compartments three feet three inches from floor to ceiling — one of these compartments sixteen feet by eighteen, the other forty by twenty one — the first holding 226 children and youths of both sexes — the second 336 men and women — and all this in a latitude where the thermometer is eighty degrees in the shade! Are you sick of the description? O, this is not all by a good sight. Imagine neither food nor water given these hapless prisoners — except a little of the latter at long intervals, which they spill in their mad eagerness to get it; the motion of the sea sickening those who have never before felt it — dozens of the poor wretches dying, and others already dead (and they are most to be envied!) — the very air so thick that the lungs can not perform their office — and all this for filthy lucre! Pah! we are almost a misanthrope to our kind when we think they will do such things! ”

But while he would enforce all laws against this horror, and suppress it by cannon, if need be, he declares in the next column that “you can’t legislate men into virtue.” “Why,” he says, “we wouldn’t give a snap for the aid of the legislature in forwarding a purely moral revolution! It must work its way through individual minds. It must spread from its own beauty, and melt into the hearts of men — not to be forced upon them at the point of the sword, or by the stave of the officer.”

And the aldermen! Were they always the same hapless, misprized patriots that we affect to find them in our day? There is an air of yesterday in this: “That body of honest, intelligent and virtuous men, the Aldermen of New York, held a meeting on Monday evening. They of course went through their tea-room duties first; after which they solemnly resolved that the establishment of such ferries as the public convenience demands is an infraction of their chartered rights. To hear these aldermen talk one would suppose there were no rights in the world but such as are written on parchment. If we mistake not, the citizens of the State in general have some rights.”

He girds at these statesmen also for idling time and for scurrile talk, closing his article with these words: “We want this shoe to fit any foot whose size corresponds to it. And we shall shortly recur to the same theme — hinting at some objects of public usefulness which call loudly for municipal action; but which are left asleeji, while ' words, mere words, ’ and those not of the choicest kind, fill up the time and attention of the potent corporation signors. ”

Though in the following the matter discussed is merely politics, it will not be alleged that the broad view is lacking: “In what we may call the personal of politics there is not any material difference between democracy and the opposition. Both have demagogues — both have office seekers whose first object is loaves and fishes — both contain ignorant, ill bred, passionate men that cause regret among the discreet and refined — both have many good qualities — both have many faults. But if the inquirer after truth will reflect a moment and observe carefully, he will see in this as in all civilized countries, two great currents running counter to one another; or, perhaps we might preferably call it, running side by side, but the one disposed to stagnate, rolling languidly, and rather holding back in permanence —• and the other advancing with a quick life-breathing and life-giving rapidity, fertilizing the soil on its banks, overwhelming every dangerous obstacle, and washing away all the corruption which the monotonous putridity of the other tide leaves in its neighborhood. In each modern nation there is a class who wish to deal liberally with humanity, to treat it in confidence, and give it a chance of expanding through the measured freedom of its own nature and impulses. Also, there is a class who look upon all men as things to be governed — as having evil ways which can not be cheeked better than by law; a class who point to the past and hate innovation, and think that the nineteenth century may learn from the ninth, and a generation of light can be taught by a generation of darkness.”

In a rebuke to one who derided the alleged aspiration of the Long Islanders for statehood, Whitman takes the opportunity to urge that people simplify their living and eat Long Island fare of “poggies, eels, hell divers, coots, thin shelled crabs, old wives, cohaughs, wild geese, periwinkles, and last though not least clams (that queen of the shelly tribe!) Moral. — Let the citizens of New York renounce the highly seasoned soup, and spiced meat of foreign birth — and eat more native clams and poggies.”

It will be noticed that Whitman’s phrasing is occasionally at odds with latter-day usage, that his punctuation is his own, and that, as in the foregoing paragraph, his spelling is not orthodox. The personal point of view is to be expected, when one commands the editorial columns of a paper, but in this bit, in which his fondness for bathing is suggested, he uses the I for the more customary editorial we : “Everybody knows, or ought to know that the skin is a breathing apparatus — and when the legion of its pores are blocked up the lungs must do double duty. I verily believe that consumption would not be, certainly, one quarter part so prevalent as it is now, did people pay more attention to bathing. You weakly, pining young men and women, whom a little cold air sets shivering, shaking and coughing, don’t meddle with the vile quack nostrums of the day; but rouse, rouse ’ere it is too late; go in for the bath — it will wake up your dormant spirits — it will send the blood coursing quickly through the highways, byways, streets, and lanes of your dull carcase, and mantle the cheek with a roseate hue, not to be imitated by carmine or rouge.”

In reverting to this subject later he brings up memories of an obsolete medical practice: “At the opening of the spring a very large number of persons are in the habit of getting bled, or taking physic to prepare for approaching warm weather as it were. Either of these practises is bad. Indeed, the taking of medicine at all, except under the most urgent necessity, never seemed to us advisable. Nature has provided better, safer and more pleasant alternatives. The causes of illness, too, are generally such as those so called remedies can not reach.” He would cure by eating less, exercising more in the air, and bathing oftener, while as to clothing he maintains that a man may accustom himself to almost anything.

There is an outspoken dislike of trades unions, “the most fallacious things in the world, ” and their interference with free labor; but there is a championship of the cause of some dock laborers in Brooklyn who were paid only sixty-four and a half cents for a long day’s work and fined a quarter of that sum if they were three minutes late.

Among public men who come under his reprobation is Daniel Webster, whose excited oratory in the Senate about the Eastern boundary business was more than Whitman could endure. Behold his reproof: “ So as the steam waxed hotter on Tuesday, the excitement of the noble son of Massachusetts burst all bounds. Such names as’ thing, ’ ‘ caricature ’ and ‘ creature ’ with the application of the verb ‘ to lie ’ in the imperative mood, second person — and that a hundred times repeated — thundered through the Senate and frighted the very curtains from their propriety. O, Mr. Webster, Mr. Webster! you shouldn’t have done so ! It was in very bad taste indeed. It might have answered for a low bred whig common councilman — but for a man who has been on ‘ thee and thou ’ terms with English lords — O we quite blush for you.”

Here is a strain of cheerful resignation that is found in the Eagle on the day after a city election: “The whigs ‘ chawed ’ us up pretty handsomely yesterday! As there isn’t any use in crying for spilt milk — and as the pleasant sunshine and fresh dry air this morning, and a fine night’s rest, and a delightful breakfast, have begotten a blissful state of philosophy in our mind — we have concluded to give the devil his due, and acknowledge that our opponents played their cards with adroitness and spirit, very rarely equalled. Their majority is an emphatic one. We don’t feel any disposition in the world to deny that it is a decided expression of Brooklyn in their favor, and that our leading candidates are ' exflunctified ’ men. (There! we think we are doing the thing neatly — and next year we hope our forbearance will be reciprocated by the vanquished then — that’s all.) It is customary among beaten parties, after the election, to discover a variety of causes why they were beaten. We ourselves have been notified of divers good and sufficient reasons — but we beg to be excused from announcing all and any except the first and largest one — and that is that we didn’t get enough votes by a long shot! ”

Trouble with Mexico lowering in the South, he writes, almost prophetically, yet with the sturdy country love that came out in his later poems: “Will not the first taste of conquest — the first sweet stimulating draught of imperious ability to crush — be too much for the young head of America? Ah, when we bethink us of the mighty incalculable energies, the unmatched strength of this nation — how there is in its invisible veins and sinews a surpassing potency which we ourselves do not dream of — how we may be led into those excesses which young and impetuous blood, and an eager heart, are apt to beget — and how the very greatness of our state’s nature will create the difficulty out of which it will be hard to extricate us —— we are filled with apprehension for the honor of America, and her honest action. There is something so seductive about a career of conquest, and about the extension of territory so dazzling to the popular mind, that it is hard for the masses of men to exercise that greatest of virtues the virtue of forbearance. Not that we have any apprehension about the mere increase (to an indefinite extent) of the circle of the United States ; because we think that were our limits thrice as large, or larger still, the simple harmony of our political system would keep everything in proper play. But we fear our unmatched strength may make us insolent. We fear that we shall be too willing (holding the game in our own hands) to revenge our injuries by war — the greatest curse that can befall a people, and the bitterest obstacle to the progress of all those high and true reforms that make the glory of this age above the darkness of ages past and gone.”

Charles M. Skinner.