Chronological Forecast of W. W.'s Life, and the Successive Publi- PART I. Chapter I-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Excerpt from W. W.-Personal History of Authors, List of the Whitman Family, Remote Ancestry of W. W., On the Mother's Side, Immediate Ancestry, Hollandic Elements, M583317 PAGES 7 8--10 Chapter II.-THE POET IN 1880.-PERSONNEL, Etc. Face.--Senses.-Physique, Dress.-Ideal of Life.-Temper, Singing. Reciting Poetry, His Fondness for Children, After the Rest, a Repellent Side, `. Chapter III-HIS CONVERSATION, APPENDIX TO PART I. Excerpt from Letter, Mobile, Ala., "THE GOOD GRAY POET." (1865-'6.) Two Subsequent Letters, PART II. Chapter I-HISTORY OF LEAVES OF GRASS. The Attempted Official Suppression, Completed Works, 1882-'83, Chapter III-ANALYSIS OF POEMS, Continued. Difficulty of Understanding L. of G., The Poems "A Picture of the World as Seen from the Stand- point of the Highest Moral Elevation," The herald of a New Religious Era, "The Bible of Democracy," Exalt the Commonest Life, A Thought, Reading the Biblic Poems, PAGES A Boston Critic "At a Loss," Arran Leigh, England, A Tourist's Interview, Frank W. Walters, England, Jaunt to the Rocky Mountains, 1879, Visit to Long Island Birthplace, 1881, . A Comment on the 1882 Suppression, . W. Sloane Kennedy's Criticism, . 195 197 199 204-206 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. 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 |