Part 4 (1/2)
”Meeter of savage and gentle Whitman's Western tour in 1879 or '80, at some point in Kansas, in coovern held as prisoners The sheriff told the Indians who the distinguished men ere about to see them, but the Indians paid little attention to them as, one after the other, the officials and editors passed by them Behind all came Whitman
The old chief looked at him steadily, then extended his hand and said, ”How!” All the other Indians followed, surrounding Whit the air melodious with their ”Hows” The incident evidently pleased the old poet a good deal
VIII
Whit schee men than of small The first and last impression which his personal presence always entle, tender, and benignant
His culture, his intellect, was completely suffused and doot from him was not that of a learned or a literary person, but of fresh, strong, sympathetic human nature,--such an iot from Walter Scott This was perhaps the secret of the attraction he had, for the common, unlettered people and for children I think that even his literary friends often sought his presence less for conversation than to bask in his physical or psychical sunshi+ne, and to rest upon his boundless charity The great service he rendered to the wounded and ho the war came from his copious endowht father andatmosphere of sie and tall, above six feet, with a breezy, open-air look His teuine; his voice was a tender baritone The do fresh and clean I reton, in the fall of 1863 I was irain and clean, fresh quality of the es in his poe different He always had the look of a ht and clear, and the blood well to the surface His body, as I once noticed ere bathing in the surf, had a peculiar fresh blooy was undoubtedly remarkable, unique The full beauty of his face and head did not appear till he was past sixty After that, I have little doubt, it was the finest head this age or country has seen Every artist who saw him was instantly filled with a keen desire to sketch hih, arching brows; straight, clear-cut nose; heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes; forehead not thrust out and emphasized, but a vital part of a sye, and the most delicately carved I have ever seen; the , white beard It seee Tiht way,--softened his beard and took away the too florid look; subdued the carnal ht out more fully the spiritual h he had been very near death for many days, I am sure I had never seen his face so beautiful There was no breaking-down of the features, or the least sign of decrepitude, such as we usually note in old rand as that of a God I could not think of him as near death, he looked so unconquered
In Washi+ngton I knew Whitman intimately from the fall of 1863 to the time he left in 1873 In Camden I visited him yearly after that date, usually in the late suliust 18, 1887 I reached his house in the , before he was up Presently he careetedbetter than last year With his light-gray suit, and white hair, and fresh pink face, he s, we talked of the Swinburne attack (then recently published) W
did not show the least feeling on the subject, and, I clearly saas absolutely undisturbed by the article I told him I had always been more disturbed by S's admiration for him than I was now by his condemnation
By and by W had his horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale, tenGilchrist, the artist A fine drive through a level far country; warm, but breezy W drives briskly, and salutes every person we , black and white, male and female Nearly all return his salute cordially He said he knew but few of those he spoke to, but that, as he grew older, the old Long Island custo upon hiy responded, 'Why, pap, how d' ye do, pap?' etc We talked ofI had not before thought of, that it was difficult to see what the old feudal world would have come to without Christianity: it would have been like a body acted upon by the centrifugal force without the centripetal Those haughty lords and chieftains needed the force of Christianity to check and curb them, etc W knew the history of many prominent houses on the road: here a crazy man lived, with two coloredthe trees, an old e fortune on her house and lands, and was now destitute, yet she was a woood sense, etc We returned to Caued by the drive of twenty miles”
In death what struck me most about the face was its perfect symmetry It was such a face, said Mr Conway, as Rembrandt would have selected fro child As I looked, it ith the reflection that, during an acquaintance of thirty-six years, I never heard from those lips a word of irritation, or depreciation of any being
I do not believe that Buddha, of whoentle to all s”
IX
For one of the best pen-sketches of Whit Scotch physician of Bolton, England, who visited Whitman in the summer of 1890 I quote from a little pamphlet which the doctor printed on his return ho about hinificent proportions of the man, and, next, the picturesque majesty of his presence as a whole
”He sat quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shi+rt of pure white linen, with a great wide collar edged hite lace, the shi+rt buttoned aboutlapels of the collar thrown open, the points touching his shoulders, and exposing the upper portion of his hirsute chest He wore a vest of gray homespun, but it was unbuttoned almost to the bottom He had no coat on, and his shi+rt sleeves were turned up above the elbows, exposing most beautifully shaped arh it was so hot, he did not perspire visibly, while I had to keep e and ers long, strong, white, and tapering to a blunt end His nails are square, showing about an eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was not a particle of impurity beneath any of them But his majesty is concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon his broad, square shoulders; and it is al hair, silvery and glistening, pure and white as sunlit snow, rather thin on the top of his high, rounded crown, streae but delicately-shaped ears, down the back of his big neck; and, from his pinky-white cheeks and top lip, over the lower part of his face, right down to the listening vapor, giving hih, e, strong, broad, and prominent, but beautifully chiseled and proportioned, alhtly depressed at the tip, and with deep furrows on each side, running down to the angles of the , white hair, very highly arched and standing a long way above the eyes, which are of a light blue with a tinge of gray, s, and revealing unfathomable depths of tenderness, kindness, and sympathy The upper eyelids droop considerably over the eyeballs The lips, which are partly hidden by the thick, white mustache, are full The whole face ith, and intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness, unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness His voice is highly pitched andin an old man
There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in the, and most sweetly musical But it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so netism of his sweet, aromatic presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and exercised overan exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before I felt that I was here face to face with the living eood, noble, and lovable in humanity”
X
British critics have spoken of Whitman's athleticism, his athletic temperament, etc, but he was in no sense a h superb, was curiously the body of a child; one saw this in its form, in its pink color, and in the delicate texture of the skin He took little interest in feats of strength, or in athletic sports He walked with a slow, rolling gait, indeed, moved slowly in all ways; he always had an air of infinite leisure For several years, while a clerk in the Attorney-General's Office in Washi+ngton, his exercise for an hour each day consisted in tossing a few feet into the air, as he walked, a round, s it as it fell Later in life, and after his first paralytic stroke, when in the woods, he liked to bend down the young saplings, and exercise his arms and chest in that way In his poems much emphasis is laid upon health, and upon purity and sweetness of body, but none upon th This is what he says ”To a Pupil:”--
1 Is reforreater the reforreater the PERSONALITY you need to accomplish it
2 You! do you not see hoould serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet?
Do you not see hoould serve to have such a body and Soul, that when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is inet! the flesh over and over!
Go, ive up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness, Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality
It is worthy of note that Whitton physician said he had one of the hly natural physical systems he had ever known,--the freest, probably, from extremes or any disproportion; which answers to the perfect sanity which all his friends o a young English artist stopping in this country made several studies of him In one of them which he showed ure from the head doith much care It was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I looked upon it with no ordinary interest Every wrinkle in the gar of any of one's friends would be nizable portrait, but I doubt if it would speak so eht it all the nificant in this case because Whitman laid such stress upon the human body in his poe it with the soul, and declaring his belief that if he made the poems of his body and of mortality he would thus supply himself with the poems of the soul and of immortality ”Behold,” he says, ”the body includes and is the , the main concern, and includes and is the soul; whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it!” He runs this physiological thread all through his book, and strings upon it many valuable lessons and many noble sentiree with netic, restful, and positive, and that it furnished a curious and suggestive commentary upon much there is in his poetry
The Greeks, who made so much more of the hu, so much history, in their faces as does the modern man; the soul was not concentrated here, but was more evenly distributed over the whole body Their faces expressed repose, harmony, power of command I think Whitman was like the Greeks in this respect His face had none of the eagerness, sharpness, nervousness, of the modern face It had but few lines, and these were Greek From the mouth up, the face was expressive of Greek purity, sie and loose, and expressive of another side of his nature