Even in the midst of the uncertainty he was determined to complete the work he had in hand. Every day he contrived to get downstairs, and every evening he turned over the proof-sheets of a new volume, which Horace Traubel brought with him from the printer’s on his way back from the city. From this time on, Traubel was his daily visitor, his faithful and assiduous aid.[711]
Slowly the old man began again to improve, but he never regained the lost ground. His friends found him paler than of old, with new lines on his face, and a heavier expression of weariness.[712] The horse and carriage were no longer of service, and had to be sold; in the autumn a nurse and wheel-chair took their place. The increased confinement troubled him most of all, so that he became jealous of the tramp with his outdoor life.
FAC-SIMILES OF POST-CARDS FROM WHITMAN TO MRS. BERENSON, 1887-8
Altogether, as he wrote to his friends, though holding the fort—“sort o’”—he was “a pretty complete physical wreck”.[713] O’Connor, too, was now paralysed and near his end; the two old friends, similarly stricken, were once again exchanging greetings, though separated now by a whole continent. In O’Connor’s case, however, the brain itself was also giving way. Walt followed all the illness of him who had been in some respects his best comrade with pathetic interest, until, returning from California to Washington, the broken flesh gave freedom at last to the man’s fiery spirit.[714]
Whitman grew somewhat more querulous in these later days, with the increase of pain and discomfort;[715] for from this time on one may almost say that he was slowly dying. Not that he complained or was inconsiderate, but little things caused him greater irritation, though only for a moment.
Nothing is more notable in Whitman’s nature than the short duration of his fits of quick-flaming wrath.[716] They flashed out from him in a sudden word, and passed, leaving no trace of bitterness or resentment behind.
An example of this is afforded by his behaviour toward the unexpected and vehement assault upon him by a former admirer, Mr. Swinburne. Having once acclaimed Whitman as the cor cordium of the singers of freedom,[717] he now consigned him to the category of the Tuppers; opining that, with a better education, he might perhaps have attained to a rank above Elliott the Corn-Law rhymer, but below the laureate Southey. According to Mr. Swinburne’s revised estimate, Whitman was in short no true poet; and as for his ideal of beauty, it was not only vulgar but immoral. The attack roused Whitman to snap out, “Isn’t he the damnedest simulacrum?” but that was all.[718] The affair was dismissed, and he only regretted that, for his own sake, Swinburne had not risen higher.