Chapter II: The Growth of a Reputation

Being prejudiced in favor of metre and rhyme, probably from long experience of verse written in the conservative way, an old-fashioned world did not welcome _Leaves of Grass_ with enthusiasm. A few discerning spirits saw in Whitman the promise of mighty things. Emerson greeted him ‘at the beginning of a great career;’ but when the poet had these words from a private letter stamped in gilt capitals on the cover of his next volume, Emerson (it is thought) was a little dismayed.

Not only did the form of the poems offend, but the content as well. There were lines calculated to disconcert even such people as were not, in their own opinion, prudish. The lines were comparatively few in number, but they were there in unabashed nakedness, and _Leaves of Grass_, it may be assumed, often went on a top shelf instead of on the sitting-room table along with innocuous poets like Tennyson and Longfellow.

Neglect and abuse raised up for Whitman in time a small battalion of champions, fierce, determined, uncompromising, militant. Among them were men whose attitude towards literature was catholic and liberal. For the most part they were Whitmanites, hot as lovers, quarrelsome as bullies, biting their thumbs at every passer-by.

Literary championship has one good effect: it keeps the public, gorged with novels of the day, from quite going to sleep. There is always a chance that some open-minded reader will be stirred by the clash of critical arms to look into the affair that is causing so great a pother. Better to be advertised by the crowd of swashbucklers who clattered about wearing Whitman’s colors than not to be advertised at all. The public concluded that a man who could inspire loyalty like this must be worth while. Whitman’s audience and influence grew. The bodyguard pretty much lost the power to see virtue in any poet save its own, but it had succeeded in arresting public attention.

In 1876 a number of English admirers subscribed freely to the new edition of Whitman’s writings and garnished their guineas with comfortable words. The poet was sick, poor, discouraged, and by his own grateful testimony this show of interest put new heart into him--‘saved my life,’ he said. It might well have had that effect, since no less names than those of Tennyson, Ruskin, Rossetti, and Lord Houghton were to be found in the list of subscribers. Even Robert Buchanan, who assailed with virulence the author of ‘Jenny,’ had no scruple in bidding God speed to the author of the ‘Song of Myself’ and ‘Children of Adam.’

A momentary set-back occurred in 1882, when Whitman’s Boston publisher was threatened with prosecution. ‘The official mind’ declared that it would be content if two poems were suppressed, the poems in question resembling in some particulars the stories an English editor omitted from the _Thousand-and-One Nights_, on the ground that they were ‘interesting only to Arabs and old gentlemen.’ Whitman refused to omit so much as a word, and the book was transferred to a Philadelphia publishing house.

After 1882 Whitman found himself able to publish freely and without the fear of the district attorney before his eyes. Since his death he has been accorded a niche in the American literary pantheon, if we may believe the critics, who now treat his work with the confidence which marks their attitude towards Lowell or Longfellow.