Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



65 



WHITMAN REVEALING HIMSELF. 

 The December Fcrum contains most interesting 

 reminiscences by Horace Traubel of conversations 

 with Walt Whitman in Camden in 1888 



A PAINFUL MEMORY OF RUSSELL LOWELL. 



Whitman referred to the bitterness of feeling that 

 was expressed against him in his early days. He 

 tells a story of a nobleman whom Lowell turned 

 back : — 



" He came over her.- Willi a letter of intrcKiuclion from some 

 man of liigh standing in England — Ko>sctti — no, not Rosselti : 

 some other. There was the Cambridge dinner : the man I 

 speak of was the principal guest. In the course of their dinner 

 he mentioned his letter to me. Lowell called out : " What ! 

 a letter for Wall Whitman ! Don't deliver it I Do you know 

 who Walt Whitman is? Why— a rowdy, a .Vew York tough, 

 a loafer, a frequenter of low places— friend of cab drivers !— and 

 all that. Words like those," \V. said, when the passion was 

 blown over (he had Iwen powerfully contemptuous in staling 

 himself): "The note was never delivered." He had learned 

 of the incident ' fiom one who was present — was friendly — did 

 not share Lowell's feeling." 



OUT-OF-DOOR AUTHORSHIP. 



When discussing the habits of authors and the 

 advantages d( an out-of-door life, he said: — 



"That has mainly been my method : I have caught much on 

 the fly : things as they come and go — on the spur of the 

 moment, I have 'never forced my mind : never driven it to 

 work : when it tireil, when writing became a task, then I 

 stopped : that was always the case — always my habit.'' M.iny 

 ' f his poems had b)ccn written out of doors. " None of them 



ere study pieces in the usual sense of that word." 



HIS FAITH IN IHE LIFE AFTER DEATH 



Whitman is reported as saying : — , 



The greatest, noblest, farthest-seeing, largest-hoping of 

 modern men do not believe this is an end-up — this life a 

 closing ' : — rather, "With my friend, Mrs. Gilchrist, one of 

 ihc sanest souls that ever blest the earth, I am sure, svhile not 

 formulating anything 'lake Tennyson, Carlyle — the noble 

 Carlyle), that we are, as she puts it, 'going somewhere,' 

 bound for something, following out a purpose, though we may 

 little apprehend its meanings — its inmost suggestions." Some- 

 thing was said aljoiit the survival of identity — that George 

 Kliot, W. K. Clifford, others, questioned it. W.is this not 

 true of the major prf>portior. of the greatest modern men ami 

 women? W. said : " No— no ; I do not think so : indclinitc 

 a-, all may seem, the faith in identity, in purpose, lasts — must 

 la,t." 



".SOMEIlIINi; IN THE III MAN CRITTER." 



Whitman uses strong words about the East 1-nd of 

 I .ondon. He called it " a congregation of human 

 \ermin, the human sewerage ol Lngland, yet a legiti- 

 mate offset to the to[>-loftification from which l-^ngland 

 has sufllred." 



Of his consecration to the war he says, " It was no 

 youthful enthusiasm, but deliberate, radical, funda- 

 mental " : — 



"Deliberate? More than that -it was necessary. I went from 

 the call of something within— soinclhing, I cannot explain what 

 — something I couM not disregard." Whether for good or bad 

 he " could not pan^e I" weigh it." " There's something in the 

 human critter which only ncc<ls to Ix; niiilge<l to reveal ilstif : 

 some'hing inolimably eloijuent, precious : not always otjscrved : 

 il is a folded leaf : not absent because wc fail to sec it : the right 

 man comes, the right hour : the leaf is lifted." 



HIS THANKS TO QUEEN VICTORIA. 



Whitman adds, " I for one feel strongly grateful 

 to \ictoria for the good outcome of that struggle — 

 the war dangers, horrors ; finally, the preservation of 

 our nationality. She saved us then." He had often 

 thought to put this on record, at least for his own 

 satisfaction. It seemed like his duty " to write some- 

 thing to put myself square with the higher obligations 

 all must come in time to acknowledge." 



HIS VIEWS OF PROTECTION. 



Tariff Reformers may read with interest what he 

 said of Protection : — 



The more I think of protection, the more convinced 1 am, 

 the clearer my mind becomes, that it is the most hollow pretence, 

 fraud, humbug, of our political life. I cannot say I have 

 recently been reailing anything on the subject — any serious 

 treatment of it. For two years and more I have not ; yet my 

 conviction against it, my contempt for it, grows stronger and 

 stronger I object to the tarift' primarily because it is not 

 humanitarian — because it is a damnal)le imposition upon the 

 masses. — " Imagine," he exclaimed, "the bottom absurdity of 

 Americi's cry ^for protection. Of all lands — America ! We 

 can conceive of lonely islands, far-away provinces, agitated for 

 such a defence : but for us — why, it would be laughable if it 

 were' not fraught with such serious consequences. With our 

 mines, railroads, agriculture — the richest the world has known : 

 an inventive spirit past parallel ; land without end ; ambition, 

 freedom ; it is madness to reach forth for extreme protection — 

 not madness either, alone : it goes to make a national farce also." 



WHAT HE THOUGHT OF TOLSTOV. 



Whitman said he feared that Tolstoy must be 

 unfortunate in his translators, because he had tried to 

 read through " Anna Karenina," but all his plodding 

 failed to relieve it of its dulness : — 



There's an ascetic side to Tolstoy which I care very little for; 

 I honour it — I know what it comes from : but I find myself 

 getting to my end by another philosophy ; in some ways Tolstoy 

 has cut ihe cord which unites him with us ; has gone back to 

 medi.-Bvalism — to the saturnily of the monkish rites : not a return 

 to nature — no : a return to the sty. But Tolstoy is a world force 

 — an immense vehement first energy driving to the fullilinent of 

 a great purpose. 



FRENCH PROTESTANTISM. 

 ACCORDINU to an article in the Ri~'iie the number 

 ot Protestants in France is decreasing. They now 

 number 700,000. The Lutherans, who numbered 

 more than a (juarter of a million in 1870, can now 

 only boast of a membership of 80,000 in France. 

 The Calvinists are the most numerous sect left, num- 

 bering over half a million. l!ut they are losing 

 ground. At the same lime the jiolilical influence of 

 the French Protestants is out of all proportion to 

 their numbers. This the writer attributes to their 

 sturdy characters, to their superior system of educa- 

 tion, and, above all, to their great wealth. Their 

 wealth has, however, tended to sap their exclusive- 

 ness. They now pay less attention to their religion, 

 and the result is, .says the writer in the Kniif, that 

 Protestantism in France will in the near future be a 

 thing of the past. This is rather a bold conclusion, 

 and it would be interesting to know if this alleged 

 decrease in the Huguenots is correct. 



