"Hurt vanity," I thought. How small this man Kettler seemed to me with his petty grievances. Forty years have passed and he couldn't forget your refusal of a poem.
"But what is the worst," Mr. Kettler continued, "Whitman has spoiled the life of Horace Traubel. What an excellent young man he used to be, the son of an honored, upright citizen. Traubel got obsessed with Whitman's greatness. He devoted his whole life to Whitman. He took Whitman's morals for his own standard." And Mr. Kettler proceeded to tell about Traubel's private life. Some stories a policeman's wife, Traubel's next door neighbor, had told him.
Does all this amuse you, Walt Whitman?
The frame-house where you lived is in a dreadful condition. An Italian family is living there. A taxi driver, Thomas Skymer. He has three children and four boarders. The boarders have children, too. A litter of young ones are playing in your back yard, around the broken well. Your front room, where you used to sit near the window and entertain your visitors, is a living and dining room combined. Not even a picture of yours is in this room. Over the mantel hangs a cheap chromo of the Italian King. One of the little boys knew your name. "Do you want to see where the old guy died?" he asked, and led me into the back room on the same floor. There was a big bed there. I never saw a bigger one in my life. "We all sleep in it," said the boy.
I know, Walt Whitman, you are shrugging your shoulders, smiling indifferently. What does it matter to you who is sleeping now in the room where you died, who is living now in the house where you lived, loved and sang? But my heart cramped and ached. The poverty, the bad odor, the utter irreverence! This Italian pays $10 a month rent. The neighborhood is run down, and the property could be easily bought for a few thousand dollars. Is this how the greatest nation honors its greatest literary genius?
Your enthusiastic young physician, Dr. Alexander McAlister, has grown a bit old, but not in spirit. He took me up to his library and here, as well as in his heart, you have found your sanctuary.
"I loved Walt Whitman," Dr. McAlister said, "ever since I was a student in the medical school, and met the old gentleman regularly on the street. We talked occasionally; once he asked me to his house, later on, after my graduation, I had occasion to render him professional services, and for all the years, until Whitman's death, I called on him at least once a day. He was the most clean-minded and kind man I have ever met. I never heard him utter an obscene word. The magnificent personality of Walt Whitman and his general comradeship, inspired by his ingrained feelings and intuitive beliefs concerning the destiny of America, must certainly have impressed all who met him long before he was known as a poet. He lived a life so broad and noble that it will be more studied and emulated, and will sink deeper and deeper into the heart. The social, human world, through his aid, will reach a level hitherto unattained. The new life which he preached has not been even dreamed of yet, has not become yet an object of aspiration to us Americans. He has set the spark to the prepared fuel, the living glow has crept deeply into the dormant mass; even now tongues of flame begin to shoot forth. The longer Whitman is dead the better he will be known. He seems to me the typical American, the typical modern, the source and centre of a new, spiritual aspiration, saner and manlier than any heretofore. Whitman thought that man has within him the element of the Divine, and that this element was capable of indefinite growth and expansion.
"He was the most democratic man that ever lived. Everybody was welcome to his house, everybody his equal, he was everybody's friend. He had many enemies, but also many friends. He thought Ingersoll his best friend. Dr. Longaker and Horace Traubel were almost always present, especially during the last years of his life. Once in a while they got on his nerves because they continually carried paper and pencil, writing down every word he said. Let me tell you a few incidents of his last illness. They all expected him to die. Traubel and Dr. Longaker were constantly in the hall outside of the sick room, eager to catch every one of Whitman's words. Warren Fritzinger, his nurse, was with him.
"'Are those damn fools out there this afternoon?' he remarked when his condition became very weak and the rustling of papers in the hall seemed to annoy him.