Chapter IV: Part 4

A brilliant picture, called "Cologne--Evening," attracted much attention at the Academy Exhibition of Eighteen Hundred Twenty-six. One day the people who so often collected around Turner's work were shocked to see that the beautiful canvas had lost its brilliancy, and evidently had been tampered with by some miscreant. A friend ran to inform Turner of the bad news. "Don't say anything. I only smirched it with lampblack. It was spoiling the effect of Laurence's picture that hung next to it. The black will all wash off after the Exhibition."

And his tender treatment of his aged father shows the gentle side of his nature. The old barber, whose trembling hand could no longer hold a razor, wished to remain under his son's roof in guise of a servant; but the son said, "No; we fought the world together, and now that it seeks to do me honor, you shall share all the benefits." And Turner never smiled when the little, wizened, old man would whisper to some visitor, "Yes, yes; Joseph is the greatest artist in England, and I am his father."

Turner had a way of sending ten-pound notes in blank envelopes to artists in distress, and he did this so frequently that the news got out finally, but never through Turner's telling, and then he had to adopt other methods of doing good by stealth.

I do not contend that Turner's character was immaculate, but still it is very probable that worldlings do not appreciate what a small part of this great genius touched the mire.

To prove the sordidness of the man, one critic tells, with visage awfully solemn, how Turner once gave an engraving to a friend and then, after a year, sent demanding it back. But to a person with a groat's worth of wit the matter is plain: the dreamy, abstracted artist, who bumped into his next-door neighbors on the street and never knew them, forgot he had given the picture and believed he had only loaned it. This is made still more apparent by the fact that, when he sent for the engraving in question, he administered a rebuke to the man for keeping it so long. The poor dullard who received the note flew into a rage--returned the picture--sent his compliments and begged the great artist to "take your picture and go to the devil."

Then certain scribblers, who through mental disease had lost the capacity for mirth, dipped their pen in aqua fortis and wrote of the "innate meanness," the "malice prepense" and the "Old Adam" which dwelt in the heart of Turner. No one laughed except a few Irishmen, and an American or two, who chanced to hear of the story.

Of Turner's many pictures I will mention in detail but two, both of which are to be seen on the walls of the National Gallery. First, "The Old Temeraire." This warship had been sold out of service and was being towed away to be broken up. The scene was photographed on Turner's brain, and he immortalized it on canvas. We can not do better than borrow the words of Mr. Ruskin:

"Of all pictures not visibly involving human pain, this is the most pathetic ever painted.

"The utmost pensiveness which can ordinarily be given to a landscape depends on adjuncts of ruin, but no ruin was ever so affecting as the gliding of this ship to her grave. This particular ship, crowned in the Trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory--surely, if ever anything without a soul deserved honor or affection we owe them here. Surely, some sacred care might have been left in our thoughts for her; some quiet space amid the lapse of English waters! Nay, not so. We have stern keepers to trust her glory to--the fire and the worm. Nevermore shall sunset lay golden robe upon her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding. Perhaps where the low gate opens to some cottage garden, the tired traveler may ask, idly, why the moss grows so green on the rugged wood; and even the sailor's child may not know that the night dew lies deep in the warrents of the old Temeraire."

"The Burial of Sir David Wilkie at Sea" has brought tears to many eyes. Yet there is no burial. The ship is far away in the gloom of the offing; you can not distinguish a single figure on her decks; but you behold her great sails standing out against the leaden blackness of the night and you feel that out there a certain scene is being enacted. And if you listen closely you can hear the solemn voice of the captain as he reads the burial service. Then there is a pause--a swift, sliding sound--a splash, and all is over.

Turner left to the British Nation by his will nineteen thousand pencil and water-color sketches and one hundred large canvases. These pictures are now to be seen in the National Gallery in rooms set apart and sacred to Turner's work. For fear it may be thought that the number of sketches mentioned above is a misprint, let us say that if he had produced one picture a day for fifty years it would not equal the number of pieces bestowed by his will on the Nation.

This of course takes no account of the pictures sold during his lifetime, and, as he left a fortune of one hundred forty-four thousand pounds (seven hundred twenty thousand dollars), we may infer that not all his pictures were given away.

At Chelsea I stood in the little room where he breathed his last, that bleak day in Eighteen-Hundred Fifty-one. The unlettered but motherly old woman who took care of him in those last days never guessed his greatness; none in the house or the neighborhood knew.

To them he was only Mr. Booth, an eccentric old man of moderate means, who liked to muse, read, and play with children. He had no callers, no friends; he went to the city every day and came back at night. He talked but little, he was absent-minded, he smoked and thought and smiled and muttered to himself. He never went to church; but once one of the lodgers asked him what he thought of God.

"God, God--what do I know of God, what does any one! He is our life--He is the All, but we need not fear Him--all we can do is to speak the truth and do our work. Tomorrow we go--where? I know not, but I am not afraid."

Of art, to these strangers he would never speak. Once they urged him to go with them to an exhibition at Kensington, but he smiled feebly as he lit his pipe and said, "An Art Exhibition? No, no; a man can show on a canvas so little of what he feels, it is not worth the while."

At last he died--passed peacefully away--and his attorney came and took charge of his remains.

Many are the hard words that have been flung off by heedless tongues about Turner's taking an assumed name and living in obscurity, but "what you call fault I call accent." Surely, if a great man and world-famous desires to escape the flatterers and the silken mesh of so-called society and live the life of simplicity, he has a right to do so. Again, Turner was a very rich man in his old age; he did much for struggling artists and assisted aspiring merit in many ways. So it came about that his mail was burdened with begging letters, and his life made miserable by appeals from impecunious persons, good and bad, and from churches, societies and associations without number. He decided to flee them all; and he did.

The "Carthage" already mentioned is one of his finest works, and he esteemed it so highly that he requested that when death came, his body should be buried, wrapped in its magnificent folds. But the wish was disregarded.

His remains rest in the crypt of Saint Paul's, beside the dust of Reynolds. His statue, in marble, adorns a niche in the great cathedral, and his name is secure high on the roll of honor.

And if for no other reason, the name and fame of Chelsea should be deathless as the home of Turner.

JONATHAN SWIFT

They are but few and meanspirited that live in peace with all
men.

--_Tale of a Tub_

Birrell, the great English essayist, remarks that, "Of writing books about Dean Swift there is no end." The reason is plain: of no other prominent writer who has lived during the past two hundred years do we know so much. His life lies open to us in many books. Boswell did not write his biography, but Johnson did. Then followed whole schools of little fishes, some of whom wrote like whales. But among the works of genuine worth and merit, with Swift for a subject, we have Sir Walter Scott's nineteen volumes, and lives by Craik, Mitford, Forster, Collins and Leslie Stephen.

The positive elements in Swift's character make him a most interesting subject to men and women who are yet on earth, for he was essentially of the earth, earthy. And until we are shown that the earth is wholly bad, we shall find much to amuse, much to instruct, much to admire--aye, much to pity--in the life of Jonathan Swift.

His father married at twenty. His income matched his years--it was just twenty pounds per annum. His wife was a young girl, bright, animated, intelligent.

In a few short months this girl carried in her arms a baby. This baby was wrapped in a tattered shawl and cried piteously from hunger, for the mother had not enough to eat. She was cold, and sick, and in disgrace. Her husband, too, was ill, and sorely in debt. It was Midwinter.

When Spring came, and the flowers blossomed, and the birds mated, and warm breezes came whispering softly from the South, and all the earth was glad, the husband of this child-wife was in his grave, and she was alone. Alone? No; she carried in her tired arms the hungry babe, and beneath her heart she felt the faint flutter of another life.

But to be in trouble and in Ireland is not so bad after all, for the Irish people have great and tender hearts; and even if they have not much to bestow in a material way, they can give sympathy, and they do.

So the girl was cared for by kind kindred, and on November Thirtieth, Sixteen Hundred Sixty-seven, at Number Seven, Hoey's Court, Dublin, the second baby was born.

Only a little way from Hoey's Court is Saint Patrick's Cathedral. On that November day, as the tones from the clanging chimes fell on the weary senses of the young mother, there in her darkened room, little did she think that the puny bantling she held to her breast would yet be the Dean of the great church whose bells she heard; and how could she anticipate a whisper coming to her from the far-off future: "Of writing books about your babe there is no end!"

* * * * *

The man-child was given to an old woman to care for, and he had the ability, even then, it seems, to win affection. The foster-mother loved him and she stole him away, carrying him off to England.

Charity ministered to his needs; charity gave him his education. When Swift was twenty-one years old he went to see his mother. Her means were scanty to the point of hardship, but so buoyant was her mind that she used to declare that she was both rich and happy--and being happy she was certainly rich. She was a rare woman. Her spirit was independent, her mind cultivated, her manner gentle and refined, and she was endowed with a keen sense of humor.

From her, the son derived those qualities which have made him famous. No man is greater than his mother; but the sons of brave women do not always make brave men. In one quality Swift was lamentably inferior to his mother--he did not have her capacity for happiness. He had wit; she had humor.

We have seen how Swift's father sickened and died. The world was too severe for him, its buffets too abrupt, its burden too heavy, and he gave up the fight before the battle had really begun. This lack of courage and extreme sensitiveness are seen in the son. But so peculiar, complex and wonderful is this web of life, that our very blunders, weaknesses and mistakes are woven in and make the fabric stronger. If Swift had possessed only his mother's merits, without his father's faults, he would never have shaken the world with laughter, and we should never have heard of him.

In her lowliness and simplicity the mother of Swift was content. She did her work in her own little way. She smiled at folly, and each day she thanked Heaven that her lot was no worse. Not so her son. He brooded in sullen silence; he cursed Fate for making him a dependent, and even in his youth he scorned those who benefited him. This was a very human proceeding.

Many hate, but few have a fine capacity for scorn. Their hate is so vehement that when hurled it falls short. Swift's scorn was a beautifully winged arrow, with a poisoned tip. Some who were struck did not at the time know it.

His misanthropy defeated his purpose, thwarted his ambition, ruined his aims, and--made his name illustrious.

Swift wished for churchly preferment, but he had not the patience to wait. He imagined that others were standing in his way, and of course they were; for under the calm exterior of things ecclesiastic, there is often a strife, a jealousy and a competition more rabid than in commerce. To succeed in winning a bishopric requires a sagacity as keen as that required to become a Senator of Massachusetts or the Governor of New York. The man bides his time, makes himself popular, secures advocates, lubricates the way, pulls the wires, and slides noiselessly into place.

Swift lacked diplomacy. When matters did not seem to progress he grew wrathful, seized his pen and stabbed with it. But as he wrote, the ludicrousness of the whole situation came over him and, instead of cursing plain curses, he held his adversary up to ridicule! And this ridicule is so active, the scorn so mixed with wit, the shafts so finely feathered with truth, that it is the admiration of mankind. Vitriol mixed with ink is volatile. Then what? We just run Swift through a coarse sieve to take out the lumps of Seventeenth Century refuse, and then we give him to children to make them laugh. Surely no better use can be made of pessimists. Verily, the author of Gulliver wrote for one purpose, and we use his work for another. He wished for office, he got contempt; he tried to subdue his enemies, they subdued him; he worked for the present, and he won immortality.

Said Heinrich Heine, prone on his bed in Paris: "The wittiest sarcasms of mortals are only an attempt at jesting when compared with those of the great Author of the Universe--the Aristophanes of Heaven!"

Wise men over and over have wasted good ink and paper in bewailing Swift's malice and coarseness. But without these very elements which the wise men bemoan, Swift would be for us a cipher. Yet love is life and hate is death, so how can spite benefit? The answer is that, in certain forms of germination, frost is as necessary as sunshine: so some men have qualities that lie dormant until the coldness of hate bursts the coarse husk of indifference.

But while hate may animate, only love inspires. Swift might have stood at the head of the Church of England; but even so, he would be only a unit in a long list of names, and as it is, there is only one Swift. Mr. Talmage averred that not ten men in America knew the name of the Archbishop of Canterbury until his son wrote a certain book entitled "Dodo." In putting out this volume, young Benson not only gave us the strongest possible argument favoring the celibacy of the clergy, but at the same time, if Talmage's statement is correct, he made known his father's name.

In all Swift's work, save "The Journal to Stella," the animating motive seems to have been to confound his enemies; and according to the well-known line in that hymn sung wherever the Union Jack flies, we must believe this to be a perfectly justifiable ambition. But occasionally on his pages we find gentle words of wisdom that were meant evidently for love's eyes alone. There is much that is pure boyish frolic, and again and again there are clever strokes directed at folly. He has shot certain superstitions through with doubt, and in his manner of dealing with error he has proved to us a thing it were well not to forget: that pleasantry is more efficacious than vehemence.

Let me name one incident by way of proof--the well-known one of Partridge, the almanac-maker. This worthy cobbler was an astrologer of no mean repute. He foretold events with much discretion. The ignorant bought his almanacs, and many believed in them as a Bible--in fact, astrology was enjoying a "boom."

Swift came to London and found that Partridge's predictions were the theme at the coffeehouses. He saw men argue and wax wroth, grow red in the face as they talked loud and long about nothing--just nothing. The whole thing struck Swift as being very funny; and he wrote an announcement of his intention to publish a rival almanac. He explained that he, too, was an astrologer, but an honest one, while Partridge was an impostor and a cheat; in fact, Partridge foretold only things which every one knew would come true. As for himself, he could discern the future with absolute certainty, and to prove to the world his power he would now make a prophecy. In substance, it was as follows: "My first prediction is but a trifle; it relates to Partridge, the almanac-maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity, and find that he will die on the Twenty-ninth day of March, next." This was signed, "Isaac Bickerstaff," and duly issued in pamphlet form. It had such an air of sincerity that both the believers and the scoffers read it with interest.

The Thirtieth of March came, and another pamphlet from "Isaac Bickerstaff" appeared, announcing the fulfilment of the prophecy. It related how toward the end of March Partridge began to languish; how he grew ill and at last took to his bed, and, his conscience then smiting him, he confessed to the world that he was a fraud and a rogue, that all his prophecies were impositions; he then passed away.

Partridge was wild with rage, and immediately replied in a manifesto declaring that he was alive and well, and moreover was alive on March Twenty-ninth.

To this "Bickerstaff" replied in a pamphlet more seriously humorous than ever, reaffirming that Partridge was dead, and closing with the statement that, "If an uninformed carcass still walks about calling itself Partridge, I do not in any way consider myself responsible for that."

The joke set all London on a grin. Wherever Partridge went he was met with smiles and jeers, and astrology became only a jest to a vast number of people who had formerly believed in it seriously.

When Benjamin Franklin started his "Poor Richard's Almanac," twenty-five years later, in the first issue he prophesied the death of one Dart who set the pace at that time as almanac-maker in America. The man was to expire on the afternoon of October Seventeenth, Seventeen Hundred Thirty-eight, at three twenty-nine o'clock.

Dart, being somewhat of a joker himself, came out with an announcement that he, too, had consulted the oracle, and found he would live until October Twenty-sixth, and possibly longer.

On October Eighteenth, Franklin announced Dart's death, and explained that it occurred promptly on time, all as prophesied.

Yet Dart lived to publish many almanacs; but Poor Richard got his advertisement, and many staid, broad-brimmed Philadelphians smiled who had never smiled before--not only smiled but subscribed.

Benjamin Franklin was a great and good man, as any man must be who fathers another's jokes, introducing these orphaned children to the world as his own.

Perhaps no one who has written of Swift knew him so well as Delany. And this writer, who seems to have possessed a judicial quality far beyond most men, has told us that Swift was moral in conduct to the point of asceticism. His deportment was grave and dignified, and his duties as a priest were always performed with exemplary diligence. He visited the sick, regularly administered the sacraments, and was never known to absent himself from morning prayers.

When Harley was Lord Treasurer, Swift seems to have been on the topmost crest of the wave of popularity. Invitations from nobility flowed in upon him, beautiful women deigned to go in search of his society, royalty recognized him. And yet all this time he was only a country priest with a liking for literature.

Collins tells us that the reason for his popularity is plain: "Swift was one of the kings of the earth. Like Pope Innocent the Third, like Chatham, he was one to whom the world involuntarily pays tribute."

His will was a will of adamant; his intellect so keen that it impressed every one who approached him; his temper singularly stern, dauntless and haughty. But his wit was never filled with gaiety: he was never known to laugh. Amid the wildest uproar that his sallies caused, he would sit with face austere--unmoved.

Personally, Swift was a gentleman. When he was scurrilous, abusive, ribald, malicious, it was anonymously. Is this to his credit? I should not say so, but if a man is indecent and he hides behind a "nom de plume," it is at least presumptive proof that he is not dead to shame.

Leslie Stephen tells us that Swift was a Churchman to the backbone. No man who is a "Churchman to the backbone" is ever very pious: the spirit maketh alive, but the letter killeth. One looks in vain for traces of spirituality in the Dean. His sermons are models of churchly commonplace and full of the stock phrases of a formal religion. He never bursts into flame. Yet he most thoroughly and sincerely believed in religion. "I believe in religion, it keeps the masses in check. And then I uphold Christianity because if it is abolished the stability of the Church might be endangered," he said.

Philip asked the eunuch a needless question when he inquired, "Understandest thou what thou readest?" No one so poorly sexed as Swift can comprehend spiritual truth: spirituality and sexuality are elements that are never separated. Swift was as incapable of spirituality as he was of the "grand passion."

The Dean had affection; he was a warm friend; he was capable even of a degree of love, but his sexual and spiritual nature was so cold and calculating that he did not hesitate to sacrifice love to churchly ambition.

He argued that the celibacy of the Catholic clergy is a wise expediency. The bachelor physician and the unmarried priest have an influence among gentle womankind, young or old, married or single, that a benedict can never hope for. Why this is so might be difficult to explain, but discerning men know the fact. In truth, when a priest marries he should at once take a new charge, for if he remains with his old flock a goodly number of his "lady parishioners," in ages varying from seventeen to seventy, will with fierce indignation rend his reputation.

Swift was as wise as a serpent, but not always as harmless as a dove. He was making every effort to secure his miter and crosier: he had many women friends in London and elsewhere who had influence. Rather than run the risk of losing this influence he never acknowledged Stella as his wife. Choosing fame rather than love, he withered at the heart, then died at the top.

The life of every man is a seamless garment--its woof his thoughts, its warp his deeds. When for him the roaring loom of time stops and the thread is broken, foolish people sometimes point to certain spots in the robe and say, "Oh, why did he not leave that out!" not knowing that every action of man is a sequence from off Fate's spindle.

Let us accept the work of genius as we find it; not bemoaning because it is not better, but giving thanks because it is so good.

* * * * *

Well-fed, rollicking priest is Father O'Toole of Dublin, with a big, round face, a double chin, and a brogue that you can cut with a knife.

My letter of introduction from Monseigneur Satolli caused him at once to bring in a large, suspicious, black bottle and two glasses. Then we talked--talked of Ireland's wrongs and woman's rights, and of all the Irishmen in America whom I was supposed to know. We spoke of the illustrious Irishmen who had passed on, and I mentioned a name that caused the holy father to spring from his chair in indignation.

"Shwift is it! Shwift! No, me lad, don't go near him! He was the divil's own, the very worsht that ever followed the swish of a petticoat. No, no; if ye go to his grave it'll bring ye bad luck for a year. It's Tom Moore ye want--Tom was the bye. Arrah! now, and it's meself phat'll go wid ye."

And so the reverend father put on a long, black coat and his Saint Patrick's Day hat, and we started. We were met at the gate by a delegation of "shpalpeens" that had located me on the inside of the house and were lying in wait.

All American travelers in Ireland are supposed to be millionaires, and this may possibly explain the lavish attention that is often tendered them. At any rate, various members of the delegation wished "long life to the iligant 'merican gintleman," and hinted in terms unmistakable that pence would be acceptable. The holy father applied his cane vigorously to the ragged rears of the more presumptuous, and bade them begone, but still they followed and pressed close about.

"Here, I'll show you how to get rid of the dirty gang," said his holiness. "Have ye a penny, I don't know?"

I produced a handful of small change, which the father immediately took and tossed into the street. Instantly there was a heterogeneous mass of young Hibernians piled up in the dirt in a grand struggle for spoils. It reminded me of football incidents I had seen at fair Harvard. In the meantime, we escaped down a convenient alley and crossed the River Liffey to Old Dublin; inside the walls of the old city, through crooked lanes and winding streets that here and there showed signs of departed gentility, where now was only squalor, want and vice, until we came to Number Twelve Angier Street, a quaint, three-story brick building now used as a "public." In the wall above the door is a marble slab with this inscription: "Here was born Thomas Moore, on the Twenty-eighth day of May, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight." Above this in a niche is a bust of the poet.

Tom's father was a worthy greengrocer who, according to the author of "Lalla Rookh," always gave good measure and full count. It was ever a cause of regret to the elder Moore that his son did not show sufficient capacity to be trusted safely with the business.

The upper rooms of the house were shown to us by an obliging landlady. Father O'Toole had been here before, and led the way to a snug little chamber and explained that in this room the future poet of Ireland was found under one of his father's cabbage-leaves.

We descended to the neat little barroom with its sanded floor and polished glassware and shining brass. The holy father ordered 'arf-and-'arf at my expense and recited one of Moore's ballads. The landlady then gave us Byron's "Here's a Health to Thee, Tom Moore." A neighbor came in. Then we had more ballads, more 'arf-and-'arf, a selection from "Lalla Rookh," and various tales of the poet's early life, which possibly would be hard to verify.

And as the tumult raged, the smoke of battle gave me opportunity to slip away. I crossed the street, turned down one block, and entered Saint Patrick's Cathedral.

Great, roomy, gloomy, solemn temple, where the rumble of city traffic is deadened to a faint hum:

"Without, the world's unceasing noises rise,
Turmoil, disquietude and busy fears;
Within, there are the sounds of other years,
Thoughts full of prayer and solemn harmonies
Which imitate on earth the peaceful skies."

Other worshipers were there. Standing beside a great stone pillar I could make them out kneeling on the tiled floor. Gradually, my eyes became accustomed to the subdued light, and right at my feet I saw a large brass plate set in the floor and on it only this:

Swift
Died Oct. 19, 1745
Aged 78

On the wall near is a bronze tablet, the inscription of which, in Latin, was dictated by Swift himself:

"Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral, where fierce indignation can no longer rend his heart. Go! wayfarer, and imitate, if thou canst, one who, as far as in him lay, was an earnest champion of liberty----"

Above this is a fine bust of the Dean, and to the right is another tablet:

"Underneath lie interred the mortal remains of Mrs. Hester Johnson, better known to the world as 'Stella,' under which she is celebrated in the writings of Doctor Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral. She was a person of extraordinary endowments and accomplishments, in body, mind and behavior; justly admired and respected by all who knew her, on account of her eminent virtues as well as for her great natural and acquired perfections."

These were suffering souls and great. Would they have been so great had they not suffered? Who can tell? Were the waters troubled in order that they might heal the people?

Did Swift misuse this excellent woman, is a question that has been asked and answered again and again.

A great author has written:

"A woman, a tender, noble, excellent woman, has a dog's heart. She licks the hand that strikes her. And wrong nor cruelty nor injustice nor disloyalty can cause her to turn."

Death in pity took Stella first; took her in the loyalty of love and the fulness of faith from a world which for love has little recompense, and for faith small fulfilment.

Stella was buried by torchlight, at midnight, on the Thirtieth day of January, Seventeen Hundred Twenty-eight. Swift was sick at the time, and wrote in his journal: "This is the night of her funeral, and I am removed to another apartment that I may not see the light in the church which is just over against my window." But in his imagination he saw the gleaming torches as their dull light shone through the colored windows, and he said, "They will soon do as much for me."

But seventeen years came crawling by before the torches flared, smoked and gleamed as the mourners chanted a requiem, and the clods fell on the coffin, and their echoes intermingled with the solemn voice of the priest as he said, "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes."

In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five, the graves were opened and casts taken of the skulls. The top of Swift's skull had been sawed off at the autopsy, and a bottle in which was a parchment setting forth the facts was inserted in the head that had conceived "Gulliver's Travels."

I examined the casts. The woman's head is square and shapely. Swift's head is a refutation of phrenology, being small, sloping and ordinary.

The bones of Swift and Stella were placed in one coffin, and now rest under three feet of concrete, beneath the floor of Saint Patrick's.

So sleep the lovers joined in death.

WALT WHITMAN

All seems beautiful to me.
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done
such good to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go.
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them.
--_Song of the Open Road_

Max Nordau wrote a book--wrote it with his tongue in his cheek, a dash of vitriol in the ink, and with a pen that scratched.

And the first critic who seemed to place a just estimate on the work was Mr. Zangwill (he who has no Christian name). Mr. Zangwill made an attempt to swear out a "writ de lunatico inquirendo" against his Jewish brother, on the ground that the first symptom of insanity is often the delusion that others are insane; and this being so, Doctor Nordau was not a safe subject to be at large. But the Assize of Public Opinion denied the petition, and the dear people bought the book at from three to five dollars a copy. Printed in several languages, its sales have mounted to a hundred thousand volumes, and the author's net profit is full forty thousand dollars. No wonder is it that, with pockets full to bursting, Doctor Nordau goes out behind the house and laughs uproariously whenever he thinks of how he has worked the world!

If Doctor Talmage is the Barnum of Theology, surely we may call Doctor Nordau the Barnum of Science. His agility in manipulating facts is equal to Hermann's now-you-see-it and now-you-don't, with pocket-handkerchiefs. Yet Hermann's exhibition is worth the admittance fee, and Nordau's book (seemingly written in collaboration with Jules Verne and Mark Twain) would be cheap for a dollar. But what I object to is Professor Hermann's disciples posing as Sure-Enough Materializing Mediums, and Professor Lombroso's followers calling themselves Scientists, when each goes forth without scrip or purse with no other purpose than to supply themselves with both.

Yet it was Barnum himself who said that the public delights in being humbugged, and strange it is that we will not allow ourselves to be thimblerigged without paying for the privilege.

Nordau's success hinged on his audacious assumption that the public knew nothing of the Law of Antithesis. Yet Plato explained that the opposites of things look alike, and sometimes are alike--and that was quite a while ago.

The multitude answered, "Thou hast a devil." Many of them said, "He hath a devil and is mad." Festus said with a loud voice, "Paul, thou art beside thyself." And Nordau shouts in a voice more heady than that of Pilate, more throaty than that of Festus, "Mad--Whitman was--mad beyond the cavil of a doubt!"

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, Lincoln, looking out of a window (before lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed) on one of the streets of Washington, saw a workingman in shirt-sleeves go by. Turning to a friend, the President said, "There goes a MAN!" The exclamation sounds singularly like that of Napoleon on meeting Goethe. But the Corsican's remark was intended for the poet's ear, while Lincoln did not know who his man was, although he came to know him afterward.

Lincoln in his early days was a workingman and an athlete, and he never quite got the idea out of his head (and I am glad) that he was still a hewer of wood. He once told George William Curtis that he more than half expected yet to go back to the farm and earn his daily bread by the work that his hands found to do; he dreamed of it nights, and whenever he saw a splendid toiler, he felt like hailing the man as brother and striking hands with him. When Lincoln saw Whitman strolling majestically past, he took him for a stevedore or possibly the foreman of a construction gang.

Whitman was fifty-one years old then. His long, flowing beard was snow-white, and the shock that covered his Jove-like head was iron-gray. His form was that of an Apollo who had arrived at years of discretion. He weighed an even two hundred pounds and was just six feet high. His plain, check, cotton shirt was open at the throat to the breast; and he had an independence, a self-sufficiency, and withal a cleanliness, a sweetness and a gentleness, that told that, although he had a giant's strength, he did not use it like a giant. Whitman used no tobacco, neither did he apply hot and rebellious liquors to his blood and with unblushing forehead woo the means of debility and disease. Up to his fifty-third year he had never known a sick day, although at thirty his hair had begun to whiten. He had the look of age in his youth and the look of youth in his age that often marks the exceptional man.

But at fifty-three his splendid health was crowded to the breaking strain. How? Through caring for wounded, sick and dying men, hour after hour, day after day, through the long, silent watches of the night. From Eighteen Hundred Sixty-four to the day of his death in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two, he was, physically, a man in ruins. But he did not wither at the top. Through it all he held the healthy optimism of boyhood, carrying with him the perfume of the morning and the lavish heart of youth.

Doctor Bucke, who was superintendent of a hospital for the insane for fifteen years, and the intimate friend of Whitman all the time, has said: "His build, his stature, his exceptional health of mind and body, the size and form of his features, his cleanliness of mind and body, the grace of his movements and gestures, the grandeur, and especially the magnetism, of his presence; the charm of his voice, his genial, kindly humor; the simplicity of his habits and tastes, his freedom from convention, the largeness and the beauty of his manner; his calmness and majesty; his charity and forbearance--his entire unresentfulness under whatever provocation; his liberality, his universal sympathy with humanity in all ages and lands, his broad tolerance, his catholic friendliness, and his unexampled faculty of attracting affection, all prove his perfectly proportioned manliness."

But Whitman differed from the disciple of Lombroso in two notable particulars: He had no quarrel with the world, and he did not wax rich. "One thing thou lackest, O Walt Whitman!" we might have said to the poet; "you are not a financier." He died poor. But this is no proof of degeneracy, save on 'Change. When the children of Count Tolstoy endeavored to have him adjudged insane, the Court denied the application and voiced the wisest decision that ever came out of Russia: A man who gives away his money is not necessarily more foolish than he who saves it.

And with Horace L. Traubel I assert that Whitman was the sanest man I ever saw.

* * * * *

Some men make themselves homes; and others there be who rent rooms. Walt Whitman was essentially a citizen of the world: the world was his home and mankind were his friends. There was a quality in the man peculiarly universal: a strong, virile poise that asked for nothing, but took what it needed.

He loved men as brothers, yet his brothers after the flesh understood him not; he loved children--they turned to him instinctively--but he had no children of his own; he loved women, and yet this strongly sexed and manly man never loved a woman. And I might here say as Philip Gilbert Hamerton said of Turner, "He was lamentably unfortunate in this: throughout his whole life he never came under the ennobling and refining influence of a good woman."

It requires two to make a home. The first home was made when a woman, cradling in her loving arms a baby, crooned a lullaby. All the tender sentimentality we throw around a place is the result of the sacred thought that we live there with some one else. It is "our" home. The home is a tryst--the place where we retire and shut the world out. Lovers make a home, just as birds make a nest, and unless a man knows the spell of the divine passion I hardly see how he can have a home at all. He only rents a room.

Camden is separated from the city of Philadelphia by the Delaware River. Camden lies low and flat--a great, sandy, monotonous waste of straggling buildings. Here and there are straight rows of cheap houses, evidently erected by staid, broad-brimmed speculators from across the river, with eyes on the main chance. But they reckoned ill, for the town did not boom. Some of these houses have marble steps and white, barn-like shutters, that might withstand a siege. When a funeral takes place in one of these houses, the shutters are tied with strips of mournful, black alpaca for a year and a day. Engineers, dockmen, express-drivers and mechanics largely make up the citizens of Camden. Of course, Camden has its smug corner where prosperous merchants most do congregate: where they play croquet in the front yards, and have window-boxes, and a piano and veranda-chairs and terra-cotta statuary; but for the most part the houses of Camden are rented, and rented cheap.

Many of the domiciles are frame and have the happy tumbledown look of the back streets in Charleston or Richmond--those streets where the white trash merges off into prosperous colored aristocracy. Old hats do duty in keeping out the fresh air where Providence has interfered and broken out a pane; blinds hang by a single hinge; bricks on the chimney-tops threaten the passersby; stringers and posts mark the place where proud picket fences once stood--the pickets having gone for kindling long ago. In the warm, Summer evenings, men in shirt-sleeves sit on the front steps and stolidly smoke, while children pile up sand in the streets and play in the gutters.

Parallel with Mickle Street, a block away, are railway-tracks. There noisy switch-engines that never keep Sabbath, puff back and forth, day and night, sending showers of soot and smoke when the wind is right (and it usually is) straight over Number 328, where, according to John Addington Symonds and William Michael Rossetti, lived the mightiest seer of the century--the man whom they rank with Socrates, Epictetus, Saint Paul, Michelangelo and Dante.

It was in August of Eighteen Hundred Eighty-three that I first walked up that little street--a hot, sultry Summer evening. There had been a shower that turned the dust of the unpaved roadway to mud. The air was close and muggy. The houses, built right up to the sidewalks, over which, in little gutters, the steaming sewage ran, seemed to have discharged their occupants into the street to enjoy the cool of the day. Barefooted children by the score paddled in the mud. All the steps were filled with loungers; some of the men had discarded not only coats but shirts as well, and now sat in flaming red underwear, holding babies.

They say that "woman's work is never done," but to the women of Mickle Street this does not apply--but stay! perhaps their work IS never done. Anyway, I remember that women sat on the curbs in calico dresses or leaned out of the windows, and all seemed supremely free from care.

"Can you tell me where Mr. Whitman lives?" I asked a portly dame who was resting her elbows on a windowsill.

"Who?"

"Mr. Whitman!"

"You mean Walt Whitman?"

"Yes."

"Show the gentleman, Molly; he'll give you a nickel, I'm sure!"

I had not seen Molly. She stood behind me, but as her mother spoke she seized tight hold of one of my fingers, claiming me as her lawful prey, and all the other children looked on with envious eyes as little Molly threw at them glances of scorn and marched me off. Molly was five, going on six, she told me. She had bright-red hair, a grimy face and little chapped feet that made not a sound as we walked. She got her nickel and carried it in her mouth, and this made conversation difficult. After going one block she suddenly stopped, squared me around and pointing said, "Them is he!" and disappeared.

In a wheeled rattan chair, in the hallway, a little back from the door of a plain, weather-beaten house, sat the coatless philosopher, his face and head wreathed in a tumult of snow-white hair.

I had a little speech, all prepared weeks before and committed to memory, that I intended to repeat, telling him how I had read his poems and admired them. And further I had stored away in my mind a few blades from "Leaves of Grass" that I purposed to bring out at the right time as a sort of certificate of character. But when that little girl jerked me right-about-face and heartlessly deserted me, I stared dumbly at the man whom I had come a hundred miles to see. I began angling for my little speech, but could not fetch it.

"Hello!" called the philosopher, out of the white aureole. "Hello! come here, boy!"

He held out his hand and as I took it there was a grasp with meaning in it.

"Don't go yet, Joe," he said to a man seated on the step smoking a cob-pipe.

"The old woman's calling me," said the swarthy Joe.

Joe evidently held truth lightly. "So long, Walt!"

"Good-by, Joe. Sit down, lad; sit down!"

I sat in the doorway at his feet.

"Now isn't it queer--that fellow is a regular philosopher and works out some great problems, but he's ashamed to express 'em. He could no more give you his best than he could fly. Ashamed, I s'pose, ashamed of the best that is in him. We are all a little that way--all but me--I try to write my best, regardless of whether the thing sounds ridiculous or not--regardless of what others think or say or have said. Ashamed of our holiest, truest and best! Is it not too bad?

"You are twenty-five now? Well, boy, you may grow until you are thirty and then you will be as wise as you ever will be. Haven't you noticed that men of sixty have no clearer vision than men of forty? One reason is that we have been taught that we know all about life and death and the mysteries of the grave. But the main reason is that we are ashamed to shove out and be ourselves. Jesus expressed His own individuality perhaps more than any other man we know of, and so He wields a wider influence than any other. And this though we only have a record of just twenty-seven days of His life. Now that fellow that just left is an engineer, and he dreams some beautiful dreams; but he never expresses them to any one--only hints them to me, and this only at twilight. He is like a weasel or a mink or a whippoorwill--he comes out only at night.

"'If the weather was like this all the time, people would never learn to read and write,' said Joe to me just as you arrived. And isn't that so? Here we can count a hundred people up and down this street, and not one is reading, not one but that is just lolling about, except the children--and they are happy only when playing in the dirt. Why, if this tropical weather should continue we would all slip back into South Sea Islanders! You can raise good men only in a little strip around the North Temperate Zone--when you get out of the track of a glacier, a tender-hearted, sympathetic man of brains is an accident."

Then the old man suddenly ceased and I imagined that he was following the thought out in his own mind. We sat silent for a space. The twilight fell, and a lamplighter lit the street lamp on the corner. He stopped an instant to salute the poet cheerily as he passed. The man sitting on the doorstep, across the street, smoking, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on his boot-heel and went indoors. Women called their children, who did not respond, but still played on. Then the creepers were carried in, to be fed their bread-and-milk and put to bed; and, shortly, shrill feminine voices ordered the other children indoors, and some obeyed.

The night crept slowly on.

I heard Old Walt chuckle behind me, talking incoherently to himself, and then he said, "You are wondering why I live in such a place as this?"

"Yes; that is exactly what I was thinking of!"

"You think I belong in the country, in some quiet, shady place. But all I have to do is to shut my eyes and go there. No man loves the woods more than I--I was born within sound of the sea--down on Long Island, and I know all the songs that the seashell sings. But this babble and babel of voices pleases me better, especially since my legs went on a strike, for although I can't walk, you see I can still mix with the throng, so I suffer no loss.

"In the woods, a man must be all hands and feet. I like the folks, the plain, ignorant, unpretentious folks; and the youngsters that come and slide on my cellar-door do not disturb me a bit. I'm different from Carlyle--you know he had a noise-proof room where he locked himself in. Now, when a huckster goes by, crying his wares, I open the blinds, and often wrangle with the fellow over the price of things. But the rogues have got into a way lately of leaving truck for me and refusing pay. Today an Irishman passed in three quarts of berries and walked off pretending to be mad because I offered to pay. When he was gone, I beckoned to the babies over the way--they came over and we had a feast.

"Yes, I like the folks around here; I like the women, and I like the men, and I like the babies, and I like the youngsters that play in the alley and make mud pies on my steps. I expect to stay here until I die."

"You speak of death as a matter of course--you are not afraid to die?"

"Oh, no, my boy; death is as natural as life, and a deal kinder. But it is all good--I accept it all and give thanks--you have not forgotten my chant to death?"

"Not I!"

I repeated a few lines from "Drum-Taps."

He followed me, rapping gently with his cane on the floor, and with little interjectory remarks of "That's so!" "Very true!" "Good, good!" And when I faltered and lost the lines he picked them up where "The voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird."

In a strong, clear voice, but a voice full of sublime feeling, he repeated those immortal lines, beginning, "Come, lovely and soothing Death."

"Come, lovely and soothing Death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate Death.
Praised be the fathomless universe
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise
For the sure enwinding arms of cool, enfolding Death.
Dark Mother, always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach, strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them
I joyously sing the death,
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high spread sky are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,
Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves, and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death."

The last playing youngster had silently disappeared from the streets. The doorsteps were deserted--save where across the way a young man and maiden sat in the gloaming, conversing in low monotone.

The clouds had drifted away.

A great, yellow star shone out above the chimney-tops in the East.

I arose to go.

"I wish you'd come oftener--I see you so seldom, lad," said the old man, half-plaintively.