Though often sleepless and suffering, he kept, upon the whole, a cheery business about him, working to the end. But silence now predominated in his days, and his craving for it increased. In the evening, Traubel would come in and sit beside him, watching his face profiled against the evening light. He had grown to feel the old man’s mood, and had learnt to say nothing. After an hour or two he had his reward; Walt would bid him good-bye with a smile, saying, “What a good talk we’ve had”. For neither of them wanted words.
Through the winter and spring of 1888 to 1889 he remained house-tied, anchored in his big chair by the fire; “every month letting the pegs lower,” he wrote to his friends.[729] But in June he got out and about in his wheel-chair, and in August crossed the ferry to be photographed, immensely delighted at the evidences of gaiety and prosperity which met him everywhere. America, he would say, is laying great material foundations; the sky-climbing towers will arise in good time.
WHITMAN AT SEVENTY
The birthday dinner, which he did not altogether approve,[730] became this year a public function, and was held in the largest of the Camden halls.[731] He was seventy, and the day was but doubtfully propitious. However, he would not disappoint his friends, and arrived when the meal was over.
He looked weary, as well he might, but the human contact and the atmosphere of love and fellowship warmed and refreshed him. The messages of congratulation came from far and from many, from William Morris among the rest. Walt wore a black coat, which was almost unprecedented, and hid himself behind a great bowl of flowers, enjoying their colour and scent, sipping at his champagne, and tapping applause with the bottle whenever he approved a sentiment. One remembers how he used to detest and escape from all lionising, and to-night, after the praises and the enthusiasm were concluded, he said laughingly to his nurse that it was very well, but there was too much “gush and taffy”.[732]
That spring he had been too ill to celebrate the Lincoln anniversary, but in the following, after a struggle with influenza, he delivered it for the last—the thirteenth—time.
Hoarse and half-blind, he crossed the river,[733] assisted everywhere by willing hands, and with great difficulty climbed the long stairs to the room on South Broad Street, where Horace Traubel’s Contemporary Club held its meetings. Refusing introduction, he took his seat on the platform, put on his glasses, and got immediately to business, reading with a melodious voice and easy manner.
He was over in the city again for his next birthday celebration, and after the dinner, Colonel Ingersoll made a long, impassioned tribute to his friend.[734] The comradeship between them was strong and satisfying to both; Whitman was always in better spirits after a call from the colonel. “He is full of faults and mistakes,” he said once to an English friend, “but he is an example in literature of natural growth as a tree”; adding, “he gives out always from himself.”[735]
Their attitude toward questions of religion was often antagonistic, and on this occasion, after the speech, Whitman made a sort of rejoinder. While gratefully acknowledging his friend’s appreciation of Leaves of Grass, he pointed out that Ingersoll had stopped short of the main matter, for the book was crammed with allusions to immortality, and was bound together by the idea of purpose, resident in the heart of all and realising itself in the material universe. He turned to Ingersoll, demanding, “Unless there is a definite object for it all, what, in God’s name, is it all for?” And Ingersoll, shaking his head, replied, “I can’t tell. And if there is a purpose, and if there is a God, what is it all for? I can’t tell. It looks like nonsense to me, either way.”