The Vagabond in Literature

by Arthur Compton-Rickett

And so on, in a vein of courageous cheer, spoken with the big, obtrusive, genial egotism that always meets us in Whitman’s writings. Whitman’s egotism proves very exasperating to some readers, but I do not think it should trouble us much. After all it is the egotism of a simple, natural, sincere nature; there is no self-satisfied smirk about it, no arrogance. He is conscious of his powers, and is quite frank in letting you know this. Perhaps his boisterous delight in his own prowess may jar occasionally on the nerves; but how much better than the affected humility of some writers. And the more you study his writings the less does this egotism affect even the susceptible. Your ears get attuned to the pitch of the voice, you realize that the big drum is beaten with a purpose. For it must be remembered that it is an egotism entirely emptied of condescension. He is vain certainly, but mainly because he glories in the common heritage, because he feels he is one of the common people. He is proud assuredly, but it is pride that exults in traits that he shares in common with the artist, the soldier, and the sailor. He is no writer who plays down to the masses, who will prophesy fair things—like the mere demagogue—in order to win their favour. And it is a proof of his plain speaking, of his fearless candour, that for the most part the very men for whom he wrote care little for him.

Conventionality rules every class in the community. Whitman’s gospel of social equality is not altogether welcome to the average man. One remembers Mr. Barrie’s pleasant satire of social distinction in The Admirable Crichton, where the butler resents his radical master’s suggestion that no real difference separates employer and employed. He thinks it quite in keeping with the eternal fitness of things that his master should assert the prerogative of “Upper Dog,” and points out how that there are many social grades below stairs, and that an elaborate hierarchy separates the butler at one end from the “odds and ends” at the other.

In like manner the ordinary citizen resents Whitman’s genuine democratic spirit, greatly preferring the sentimental Whiggism of Tennyson.

Whitman reminds us by his treatment of the vulgar, the ordinary, the commonplace, that he signalizes a new departure in literature. Of poets about the people there have been many, but he is the first genuine Poet of the People.

Art is in its essence aristocratic, it strives after selectness, eschews the trivial and the trite. There is, therefore, in literature always a tendency towards conservatism; the literary artist grows more and more fastidious in his choice of words; the cheap and vulgar must be rigorously excluded, and only those words carrying with them stately and beautiful associations are to be countenanced. Thus Classicism in Art constantly needs the freshening, broadening influence of Romanticism.

What Conservatism and Liberalism are to Politics Classicism and Romanticism are to Art. Romantic revolutions have swept over literature before the nineteenth century, and Shakespeare was the first of our great Romantics. Then with the reaction Formalism and Conservatism crept in again. But the Romantic Revival at the beginning of the nineteenth century went much further than previous ones. Out of the throes of the Industrial Revolution had been born a lusty, clamorous infant that demanded recognition—the new Demos. And it claimed not only recognition in politics, but recognition in literature. Wordsworth and Shelley essayed to speak for it with varying success; but Wordsworth was too exclusive, and Shelley—the most sympathetic of all our poets till the coming of Browning—was too ethereal in his manner. Like his own skylark, he sang to us poised midway between earth and heaven; a more emphatically flesh and blood personage was wanted.

Here and there a writer of genuine democratic feeling, like Ebenezer Elliott, voiced the aspirations of the people, but only on one side. Thomas Hood and Mrs. Browning sounded a deeper note; but the huge, clamorous populace needed a yet fuller note, a more penetrating insight, a more forceful utterance. And in America, with its seething democracy—a democracy more urgent, more insistent than our own—it found its spokesman. That it did not recognize him, and is only just beginning to do so, is not remarkable. It did not recognize him, for it had scarcely recognized itself. Only dimly did it realize its wants

and aspirations. Whitman divined them; he is the Demos made articulate.

And not only did he sweep away the Conservative traditions and conventions of literature, he endeavoured to overthrow the aristocratic principle that underlies it. Selectness he would replace with simplicity. No doubt he went too far. That is of small moment. Exaggeration and over-emphasis have their place in the scheme of things. A thunderstorm may be wanted to clear the air, and if it does incidentally some slight damage to crops and trees it is of no use grumbling.

But in the main Whitman’s theory of Art was very true and finely suggestive, and is certainly not the view of a man who cares for nothing but the wild and barbaric.