Simplicity

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - where - and who knows - maybe next month is also about Walt Whitman. This is episode 394 - Simplicity. 

In the past few episodes, this podcast has dealt with some very complex issues such as slavery, but in this episode I would like to talk with Mr. Whitman about something that was central to his upbringing, and that quality was simplicity.

Thank you for experiencing Celebrate Poe.

Transcript

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - where - and who knows - maybe next month is also about Walt Whitman. This is episode 394 - Simplicity.

In the past few episodes, this podcast has dealt with some very complex issues such as slavery, but in this episode I would like to talk with Mr. Whitman about something that was central to his upbringing, and that quality was simplicity.

Mr. Whitman - italics

Mr. Bartley - plain text

Greetings, George,

Hello Walt. Would you be so kind as to talk to us about the issue of simplicity when you were growing up in your family.

Certainly, Mr. Bartley. The family life of the Whitmans was characterized by the absolute simplicity common to American rural homes in the early part of the nineteenth century.  Some have said that as a baby, I must have looked like a sturdy, jolly Dutch baby, with singularly fair skin, hair "black as tar," — and blue-gray eyes that early caught the trick of gazing steadily. My own memories of childhood show how deeply the sights and sounds of  my surroundings entered into my being : —

" The early lilacs became part of this child,
Aud grass and white and red morning glories, and white
and red clover and the song of the phebe-bird,

And the third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard or by the mire of
the pond-side."
The picture of his mother, too, is like a Dutch portrait : —
"The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the
supper-table.
The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a
wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes
as she walks by."

The father strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust.
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure.
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart.”

Mr. Whitman, I know that was a simple Quaker influence - a subject that we have touched on earlier, but was the family significantly religious in any way  - in other words they believe in any established religion.

No, There were no religious observances of any sort in the Whitman family.

As I understand it, you moved to Brooklyn when you were quite young. How old were you?   

Ah, Mr. Bartley, when I was only four, my family migrated to Brooklyn, thirty miles away, and forthe next few years we lived in various houses on Front, Cranberry, Johnson, and Tillary Streets. " We occupied them, one after the other, but they were mortgaged and we lost them;" - and this made me exceedingly unhappy.  But I was a child, and for the most part memories of Brooklyn were largely happy, as a boy's should be. The " village," for such it remained legally until 1834, had in 1823, when the Whitmans had moved thither, but seven thousand inhabitants. For every purpose of a boy such as myself, it was like living in the country. The younger Whitmans ourneyed often back to the old home at West Hills, and to other spots in Queens and Suffolk Counties. The ocean side of Long Island, with its Great
South Bay and its atmosphere of storm and shipwreck, made an strong impression upon my pliable But the prevailing spirit was one of healthy sport, mingling with the half-apprehended landscape sentiment dear to boyhood.

Mr. Whitman, such observations sound like something that might have influenced your work Specimen Days.

Ah, Mr. Bartley - I am impressed that you noticed the connection.  Yes, in my prose work Specimen Days, I wrote - Inside the outer bars or beach this south bay is everywhere comparatively shallow; of cold winters all thick ice on the surface. As a boy I often went forth with a chum or two, on those frozen fields, with hand-sled, axe and eel-spear, after messes of eels. We would cut holes in the ice, sometimes striking quite an eel-bonanza, and filling our baskets with great, fat, sweet, white-meated fellows. The scenes, the ice, drawing the hand-sled, cutting holes, spearing the eels, * "Paumanok, the Indian name of Long Island,) over a hundred miles long; shaped like a fish — plenty of sea shore, sandy, stormy, uninviting, the horizon boundless, the air too strong for invalids, the bays a wonderful resort for aquatic birds, the south-side meadows cover'd with salt hay, the soil of the island generally tough, but good for the locust-tree, the apple orchard, and the blackberry, and with numberless springs of the sweetest water in the world.

Yes, Mr. Whitman - those are beautiful images.

Ah, yes, Mr. Bartley - the city, as well as the country, began to furnish beautiful memories that filled my later works.  Now in a future episode, I will describe that most memorable moment when I actually met the esteemed General Lafayette, but one moment that is somewhat less remembered is the brief time when I encountered John Jacob Astor - a man who I later learned was the first millionaire in the United States, and one of the richest men in the world.

Yes, Mr. Whitman - please tell us about that encounter.

Certainly, Mr. Bartley - one might say that this was the first time that I confronted American aristocracy, for a few years after Lafayette’s visit, on a sharp, bright January day, just below Houston street in New York, I saw " a bent, feeble but stout-built very old man, bearded, swathed in rich furs, with a great ermine cap on his head, led and assisted, almost carried, down the steps of his high front stoop (a dozen friends and servants, emulous, carefully holding, guiding him) and then lifted and tuck’d in a gorgeous sleigh, envelop'd in other furs, for a ride. The sleigh was drawn by as fine a team of horses as I ever saw. ... I remember the spirited horses, the driver with his whip, and a fellow-driver by his side, for extra prudence. The old man, the subject of so much attention, I can almost see now. It was John Jacob Astor.

Interesting. Mr. Whitman - would you remark on your schooling in Brooklyn?

Ah, Mr. Bartley, my schooling was but scanty. One must realize that those Brooklyn schools were still in their infancy, and instruction was limited to reading, writing, and arithmetic, — with a little grammar and geography.

Certainly you had a favorite or memorable teacher.

No, Mr. Bartley - none of my teachers made sufficient impression upon me, and I left school forever at the age of thirteen. I  never learned any language except English.

Mr. Whitman - that is most interesting - it seems that later in your life you had a fondness for using words borrowed — or sometimes
invented — from French and Spanish sources.

One must remember that I was extremely fond of reading.  And it happened one day when I was a youth that I entered a lawyer’s office as an errand boy, and found unexpected encouragement from my now employers. I had  a nice desk and window-nook to myself. My employers kindly help'd me at my hand-writing and composition, and (the signal event of my life up to that time with the possible exception of my encounter with General Lafayette) subscribed for me to a big circulating library. For a time I now revel'd in romance-reading of all kinds ; first the Arabian Nights - all the volumes, an amazing treat. Then, with sorties in very many other directions, I took in Walter Scott's novels, one after another, and his poetry." This agreeable berth was exchanged, after a little, for one in a doctor's office. Then, while still early in my teens, I went to work at type-setting in the printing office of the Long Island Patriot - a weekly paper owned by the Brooklyn postmaster. I admit that I grew rapidly, and at fifteen had nearly a man's height and vigor.

Mr. Whitman, It sounds like we are beginning to see the signs of a writer.

Ah yes, Mr. Bartley - after a while I left the Patriot for the Star. Like Benjamin Franklin and many another young printer, I must admit that I had already begun to feel the itch of composition. " The first time I ever wanted to write anything enduring,” I later said during my old age on earth, " was when I saw a ship under full sail, and had the desire to describe it exactly as it seemed to me. I had written some "sentimental bits" for the Patriot and shortly afterwards " had a piece or two in George P. Morris's then celebrated and fashionable Mirror in New York City. I remember with what half -suppressed excitement I used to watch for the big, fat, red-faced, slow-moving, very old English carrier who distributed the Mirror in Brooklyn ; and when I got one, opening and cutting the leaves with trembling fingers. How it made my heart double-beat to see my piece on the pretty white paper in nice type! " At sixteen I became the owner of a stout volume containing all of Scott's poems ; "an inexaustible mine and treasury" which I cherished for fifty years. I also developed a fondness for debating societies, and at seventeen was a member of more than one, in Brooklyn and in near-by villages. The theatre fascinated me, and some casual work as a compositor in New York gave me opportunity to indulge my passion for it.

Mr. Whitman - it also seems like we are beginning to see a writer with many, many interests.

Ah, Mr. Bartley - I admit that I did have what often seemed like ever increasing bouts of restless again - and a desire to attempt new activities.  For example, about my eighteenth year I became what one might call agitated, and tried school-teaching in country villages in Queens and Suffolk Counties. To my surprise, I found his one of the most agreeable experiences of my life.

Mr. Whitman - based on my research, it seems that we don’t really know that much about your life as a school teacher.

Ah, Mr. Bartley - years after my earthly demise - I believe in 1894 - a Mr. Charles A Roe, who was my pupil in Flushing, Long Island, wrote that I was a ruddy-cheeked, clear-eyed, kindly teacher.  He wrote that I had original ideas about teaching mental arithmetic ; was fond of describing objects and incidents to my scholars; had authority without severity ; was decidedly serious in manner ; was diffident with women and " not religious in any way," to the especial regret of a friendly mother of four daughters, with whom he boarded. I was already reputed to have written poetry, and regularly dressed neatly in a black frock coat.  Mr. Roe also wrote that I was of beautiful complexion and rugged health, and spent every possible moment out of doors. In short, Mr. Roe reported me as " a man out of the average, who strangely attracted the respect and affection of his students.

But Mr. Whitman, I know that you seemed to have an inherited restlessness, and a desire to constantly widen your - how should I put it - your circle of experience.

Yes, Mr. Bartley I may have been a calm and self-reliant young schoolmaster with ideas of my own, but I gradually felt again the stirrings of a deeper instinct that impelled me to constantly widen my circle of experience.

Mr. Whitman, I believe that such an attitude leads one to constantly question your existence.

Precisely, Mr. Bartley.  To be candid, I had reached the point where the ancestral life upon a Long Island farm offered nothing that I cared for. Teaching had proved pleasant enough; but what if writing might be better still?

I can understand why you might feel that way. As I understand it, at this point in your life, you had long since mastered the trade of a type-setter.

And I had tasted the first pleasures of authorship; and now what more independent and satisfactory calling could there be for a vigorous young fellow such as myself than that of editor, compositor, and distributor of a country newspaper?

Notable sentiments, Mr. Whitman - but how did you illustrate your aspirations though action?

Mr Bartley, as you may know, my first real venture was the Long Islander in my own beautiful town of Huntington, Long Island, New York, in 1839. I was about twenty years old. I had been teaching country school for two or three years in various parts of Suffolk and Queens Counties, but I especially liked printing. I had been at it while a lad, and learned the trade of compositor, and was encouraged to start a paper in the region where I was born. I went to New York, bought a press and types, hired some little help, but did most of the work myself, including the press-work. Everything seemed turning out well.

So Mr. Whitman, did you establish a permanent property there?

Unfortunately, Mr. Bartley, I must answer in the negative.  And it was only my own restlessness that prevented my gradually establishing a such a permanent property. But I DID buy a good horse, and every week went all around the country serving my papers, devoting one day and night to it.

Mr. Whitman, did all this become tedious?

Far from it - Mr. Bartley. I never had happier jaunts — going over to South Side, to Babylon, down the South Road, across to Smithtown, and back home. The experiences of those jaunts, the dear old-fashioned farmers and their wives, the stops by the hayfields,the hospitality, the nice dinners, occasional evenings, the girls, the rides through the brush and the smell from the salt of the South roads, still come up in my memory to this day.

Mr. Whitman, despite these wonderful memories on your part, you must realize that was a time when childhood was clearly over.

I am certainly cognizant of that fact - but those memories with my impressions of a stout ancestry of mingled st rain, winning a  comfortable living from the soil ; surroundings. of quiet beauty ; a home where there was much affection, but few books and scanty culture ; a family habit of migration, tinged with unsuccess ; a little schooling ; a various apprentice-ship, ending in a trade ; then a taste of teaching, and finally, at twenty, an adventure with running a newspaper. In these external conditions, my life seemed to grow more frankly experimental with each year.

Mr. Whitman, I know this can be a difficult question, but how would you relate your experiences to your personality?

Ah, Mr. Bartley - I strongly believe that my dark-haired, pleasant-faced youth, compacted of Dutch calm and English vigor, had a mind and will of its own. Tremulously sensitive to the beauty of the outdoor world, with a romantic nature which already reveled in the realm of poetry and imagination, I had lived even in boyhood a full emotional life. There were some evidences of actions - probably unsuspected by myself - of a somewhat neurotic tendency.  My mother later said, that I was a very good, but very strange boy.

Mr. Whitman, I know this can be difficult, but could you be more specific.

Certainly, Mr. Bartley, the time of my boyhood was a very restless and unhappy one; though this is perhaps nothing more than the usual restlessness of adolescence.  With something of the innate selfishness of a born sentimentalist, I believe that I was nevertheless a loving son and an affectionate brother. I was fond of persons and places and the wholesome common experiences that we all share. Of formal education and training I had little, but I believe that I had self-command, shrewdness, patience, and many a blind desire in my heart.

Join us for episode 395 where we delve further into the life of Walt Whitman’s family and his early years.

Sources include: The Complete Works of Walt Whitman, especially Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman by Ivan R. Dee, Walt Whitman: A Life by Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself by Jerome Loving, and Walt Whitman by James E. Miller.


Thank you for listening to Celebrate Whitman.