The pious Philadelphians had expressed their disapproval of the lecturer,[737] his iconoclastic fervour and agnosticism, by refusing him the use of the most commodious hall, and their opposition had encouraged Walt to stand at his friend’s side. But apart from this, his presence illustrates some of the characteristics of his nature, his child-like and sometimes terrible love of directness in the relations of life, and his frank eagerness for appreciation.
We have seen already that he could learn from criticism, and there is a story of Dr. Bucke’s which is too good to omit, though it entails a slight digression. It was against the awkwardness, not the severity, of his literary surgeons that he would protest with a quiet humour. After one of their operations, more painful than usual, in his slow, slightly nasal drawl, he related how a Quaker was once set on by a robber in a wood. The fellow knocked his passive victim to the ground, rifled him thoroughly, and “pulling out a long knife proceeded to cut his throat. The knife was dull, the patience of the poor Quaker almost exhausted. ‘Friend,’ said he to the robber, ‘I do not object to thee cutting my throat, but thee haggles.’”[738]
But while accepting blame with serenity, he yet preferred praise; understanding praise above all, though even ignorant praise was hardly unwelcome. Praise not directly of himself, be it understood—that often made him uncomfortable;[739] but of the book, his alter ego, his child. For the book was, besides, a Cause, and that the noblest; and even vain applauding of it sounded, in the old man’s ears, like the tramp of the hosts of progress; in whose ranks there must needs follow, let us admit, a number of enthusiastic fools.
Of such, certainly, Ingersoll was not one. He saw in the book much of what Whitman had put there; and especially he understood how it had been written under the stress of an emotion which finds its symbol in that banner of the blue and stars, which he so happily described as “the flag of Nature”.[740]
Other men have given themselves out to be a Christ, or a John the Baptist, or an Elijah; Whitman, without their fanaticism, but with a profound knowledge of himself, recognised in a peasant-born son of Mannahatta, an average American artisan, the incarnation of America herself. “He is Democracy,” quoth Thoreau;[741] and when he sat with a pleased indifference under the eloquent stream of Ingersoll’s panegyric, he was only testifying anew to his whole-hearted, glad willingness to give himself, body and mind, for the interpretation of America to her children. But none the less, it was a singular situation; and, doubtless, Whitman, who was not by any means obtuse, felt it to be such.
His last birthday dinner was held in the lower room at Mickle Street after a winter of illness—“the main abutments and dykes shattered and threatening to give out”[742]—broken by an occasional saunter in his wheelchair with the welcome sight of some four-masted schooner on the river, and by the visits of his friends.
He was still himself, however. An English admirer had recently been astounded to find the irrepressible attractive power of the old man.[743] He was brought downstairs, weak, after a bad day, to meet some thirty of his friends.
Walt himself started the proceedings with a toast to the memory of Bryant, Emerson and Longfellow, and to Tennyson and Whittier, living yet;[744] for the fact that Whittier strongly disapproved of the Leaves in no way separated him from Whitman’s affectionate esteem. Rejoicing over his big family gathering, he wistfully remembered the absent. Doyle had not been to the house for many months.[745] Perhaps he was a little jealous of new friends, and resented even being thought of as a stranger by Mrs. Davis. O’Connor was dead, and so was Mrs. Gilchrist, and there were many others not less dear. Some who were far away sent their greetings, Tennyson and Symonds among the rest; and there were the usual warm congratulatory speeches.
The host was sometimes absent-minded, and sometimes, according to the record, oddly garrulous. But the talk about the table was often of the deepest interest. Dr. Bucke was present, and Whitman and he had a friendly bout over Leaves of Grass. The poet would not accept the doctor’s interpretation, or indeed, any other’s, saying that the book must have its own way with its readers. It was simply the revelation of the man himself, “the personal critter,” as he would phrase it.