With but one exception (Thomas Donaldson, in "Walt Whitman the Man"), all writers who have touched upon Whitman's domestic life seem to have failed to mention the interval between his two Camden homes. Fortunately it was of short duration, but in it came the great turning point in his career.
Of his early habits something may be learned from his brother George, who says: "Wait was always a trying person to live with." ("In Re Walt Whitman.") Then he goes on to relate some of the poet's peculiarities, irregularities and eccentricities. "He had an idea that money was of no consequence.... He would lie abed late, would write a few hours if he took the notion, perhaps would go off for the rest of the day. If we had dinner at one, like as not he would come at three; always late. Just as we were fixing things on the table he would get up and go around the block. He was always so.
"He would come to breakfast when he got ready. If he wished to go out, he would go, go where he was a mind to, and come back in his own time."
It cannot be denied that a person with these traits of character would be an uncomfortable inmate to have in any home, and with Mr. Whitman this disregard for the convenience of others grew more marked as he advanced in years and deteriorated in body. Notwithstanding this, when his good brother and his most excellent sister-in-law retired to their farm in Burlington, New Jersey, they urged him to accompany them.
Their kind offer of a home Mr. Whitman thought best to decline, for although at this time he had but a restricted popularity as an author, he had some staunch friends in his own city, in New York, Philadelphia and abroad, and after twelve years' residence in one locality he thought it unwise to change.
No doubt he did not take into consideration the difficulties he would have to encounter alone, nor realize how unfitted he was to cope with them; but as usual he overruled all opposition and followed his own inclination.
Or he may have had a premonition of the popularity just at hand.
First he rented a room, taking his meals at odd times and in odd places. This he soon found to be a miserable mode of existence, for he was crippled financially as well as physically, and even to this late day, "his medium of circulating his views to the world was through very limited editions, which he himself usually paid for, or which failed to circulate at all." (Thomas Donaldson.)
The old man with his basket of literature upon his arm, plodding his way through the streets of Camden and Philadelphia, had long been a familiar sight, and now with slow sales and lack of former comforts it was doubly hard on him. But at this time his life had settled down to one great desire, that of rewriting his book, Leaves of Grass, and living to see it put before the world in a full, improved and complete form.