7.45 P.M. W. reading Lippincott's, which he put down on my entrance. Did not look spry though he said he was "about as well as usual." Voice not vigorous. I had seen a box of books in the hall below. From Oldach. W. said: "I know: Mary said they had come." Twelve were for him. I had twelve sent to McKay. Oldach made his charge one twenty-eight. Said he could not do them cheaper. Had W. heard from Bucke? "Not a word, not a word: neither did I write him—though I wrote others yesterday." Again: "My day has been entirely uneventful—but I always might say that. My sister was here: George's wife, I mean—my sister-in-law: she did not stay long: she is a comforting woman." I said: "You get more out of her than out of George." W.: "I get nothing out of George or absolutely nothing: I get much out of her."
His brother Jeff "happened in yesterday." "His visit was quite a short one: he came in the forenoon: then I thought he would come back again before going off but he did not: he goes straight West again, I think." I said: "You must have been overjoyed to see him." His reply was a quiet one: "I don't say overjoyed: but Jeff and I are actual as well as accidental brothers." Then: "You know, he is not connected with the Water Department at St. Louis anymore: he is a topographical engineer: most of his work now lies north of St. Louis—in Milwaukee, Detroit, thereabouts. He is investigating theories of sewage, drainage." But not working by the French plan of running the sewage into the land? "No: Wisconsin, Michigan, have not got as far along as that yet: Wisconsin is not France—nor Michigan—nor any American State: there are individuals, institutions, doing that sort of wise thing this side but not communities,
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not States." But it was "a great subject"—one that seemed to involve investigations, experiments, on a vast scale. He gave Jeff a copy of the big book
I returned W. Pall Mall Gazette and Echo. McKay is through with them. W. still likes the Gazette piece, but says as to the Dante Rossetti quotations in it: "I don't quite understand them myself." Then suddenly broke out: "The nudity business appears to be growing—don't you think?—don't you notice that it is?—with the artists, writers, everywhere? And the artists are getting more bold, daring: more apt to stand by their guns. Did you see that Comstock pounced down on a fellow the other day there in New York: a statue of Hermes seems to have been the basis for Anthony's discontent: but they defied him: they are going to fight it out." I said: "William calls Comstock an unmitigated ass." W. laughed most heartily. "So he does—and so Anthony is: that is true, true, true: and there are back of him more unmitigated asses, if I may so say it." And he continued: "And the worst of it is Comstock exercises a sort of censorship over the mails—occupies an anomalous position that gives him that power." I quoted him a strong paragraph from Julian Hawthorne. But W. said: "I am not afraid of censorship, not afraid that we will be brought to that degradation." He thought Comstock "had an essentially dirty mind: nothing else will explain him." I said: "When you say you are not afraid of the censorship you mean that you don't believe a rigid censorship will ever come to pass not that you are indifferent about such incidents as we have spoken of?" "Yes, that's the lay of the land: why, I hate all censorships, big and little: I'd rather have everything rotten than everything hypocritical or puritanical, if that was the alternative, as it is not. I'd dismiss all monitors, guardians, without any ceremony whatsoever."
Parnell Commission in session investigating the charge of the London Times. W. said: "It's uncannily complicated: I can't make head or tail of it: do you read the story? I skip it." He had been "trying to read" Sartain's Poe article in Lippincott's. "Looking into it, cursorily," he said: "I intend reading it all: it's significant." Any word from O'Connor? "Not a suspicion of a word: I sit here seeing William thousands-wise: he presents himself to me persistently, in all ways, old, new: I can't shake the haunting image
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off—nor can I say I want to. Nellie keeps us in unnecessary suspense: she probably does not realize that it's a sort of dead watch to us as well as to her."
W. still has not decided concerning the halftone. "You will have to give me a day or two more for that." I said: "If it's not Bucke it's you: Bucks puts off: you put off: you are a couple of procrastinators." W. asked: "Is there any reason for hurrying?" Laughed. "There may be reasons for hurrying but I can't hurry anyway: I'm no hurrier: I couldn't hurry if the house was on fire." I asked: "Were you always as stubbornly deliberate over trifles as you are today?" "I'm afraid I was: William said to me more than once: 'Walt, you're as fast as frozen molasses!'" Inquired today about scrap book for photos: eleven by fourteen at three dollars and a half. W. asked: "You have informed yourself of its eligibilities?" I laughed. "Well: now what the hell is it?" he asked. I said: "Eligibilities struck me, that's all." He laughed himself. "It is a rather formidable word: if I had received it instead of giving it I've an idea I'd been struck too." He said he had many pictures. He wished a book that would contain them all. "There's only one thing to do: get one: that's the only thing to do: I shouldn't wonder but I'll have to commission you to proceed." He added: "I am obliged to brush up things to do to ease the monotony of these dilatory days."
He spoke of his visitors. "When they come they question me—pester me: they insist on talking of things about which I care nothing: some about things that I should not worry myself over even if I did care." He went on: "Visitors are a problem: the doctors say, bar them all out: I can't do that: I don't want to do that: but if we begin admitting visitors where will we end? It's not that I don't want them: I do want them: but they wear me out. It never occurs to a visitor to come here, sit down, say nothing: yet these inarticulate visits are often the most precious: certainly we know it: many's the hour we have spent in this room together, Horace—you and I—without saying a word. Mary admitted a man the other day (it wasn't her fault: it was mine), who said as soon as he got into the room: 'I came to have a little debate with you about your Children of Adam poems.' I was scarified: I threw up my hands deprecatingly: I said: 'You'll have to adjourn that little debate, my friend, till you
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can have it with Horace Traubel or Tom Harned or Doctor Bucke: they are the debaters of our household: especially Tom: Tom has the belt!'" I asked: "Did the man leave?" "Yes: he said: 'that's funny': we exchanged a few inane remarks both sides: then he withdrew."
W. said: "Today I told Ed to shut all the visitors out, without exception." Miss Stafford and a newspaper man were turned away. "I have been more on my bed than on my chair today." Little reading. "I only skimmed the papers." Indigestion: headache: still laboring with the cold. No alarming symptoms. W. said he was glad to hear that Gardner had a London agency. "That will put Symonds and others in the way of getting the big book." McKay says that the "great sellers" in London will not handle it. W. said: "You like personal confessions: I've laid aside three of them here: they may be put away among your data: you must be getting quite a pile of stuff between what you collect yourself and what I pass over to you. These letters represent three nations—Scotland, England, the United States. I've always told you it is essential for you to know about Henry Clapp if you want to really know me: he was one of the earlier fellows: he was literary but he was not shackled (except by debts): he gave me more than one lift: contended for me against odds." I asked W. if he felt like hearing the letters or whether I should take them away without reading them. He said: "I'd rather have you read them to me: then if I have any comments to make I can make them without your questions." I said: "Walt: you do hate questions: you'd rather be hung than catechized." He replied very quietly: "Yes, I do hate questions: still, some questions are vital and necessary." I read Clapp's letter first. W. had endorsed the envelope: "Henry Clapp to me in Boston."
W. said: "Henry was always in financial difficulties: the Press never had anything but a hand to mouth existence: it was always at the point of passing in its checks. Henry was my friend: he would have done anything for me: in spite of being mostly academic himself he vehemently espoused my revolt: what he said there about sticking to his guns was true: he knew the difficulties I was laboring under: how but for the merest handful I was ignored or despised: nor was this from pity: there was no maudlin emotionalism in his acceptance of Leaves of Grass: he didn't take me wholesale anyhow: first of all he said he wished me to have a fair show: 'With half a fair show, Walt,' he used to say, 'I know you can take care of yourself.' I felt sorrowful a bit as you were reading: I was reminded of Henry's heroic struggle, how he went confidently on in spite of reverses: how finally he was backed to the wall and slaughtered. There was a woman up there, a marvelous woman, who did some writing for the Press: she wrote about Leaves of Grass: there was quite a stew over it: some day I'll have to unbosom so you may know the ins and outs of the incident." Here W. hauled up and looked at me. "What a lot of blabbing I'm doing: there are other letters: read them."
"He's a surgeon, Horace, you notice: you remember what I've always said: surgeons, mothers, nurses—they should understand me best of all: they do not always do so, but they should: Macdonald, he's Scotch: he thought I forgot him: no indeed—I am not that sort: besides, I'd had too many enemies to forget my friends." He again said before I started the third letter: "Do you feel some subtle psychical difference between the American and the Scotch letter? a little more man to man I'm as good as you are attitude in Henry? the little more deferential tone of Macdonald? It has its own long reasons for being—that difference: it's no accident: after all we've developed a little farther in the direction of personal democracy on this side: that much we have done. When you read Angus you will see still better what I am trying to say." Before I read the third letter I said: "Why, Walt: you said this was from an Englishman: he's Scotch, I think: Angus is his name—he writes from Glasgow: what made you think he was English?" He said: "Let me see it." I handed it to him. He looked it over. Handed it back. "I guess you're right: I wonder how I got the other notion? It's remarkable how stubborn false impressions get to be." And reflectively: "Angus: yes, that's Scotch: I must have had some other letter in mind when I spoke of this: no matter: let me hear it.
I said: "There's your Englishman!" He said: "I don't remember when the letter came but when I picked it up off the table here the other day I said: 'There's that Englishman's letter again.' I was thinking as you read it how many angles I am received from—with what different results. Sumner said to William once: 'Whitman would have been all right if he'd only written Democratic Vistas.' Phillips, too, it seems, told somebody that Leaves of Grass was a mistake. The public seems to look at things the other way about: people buy Leaves of Grass—they don't buy Specimen Days: to many people Specimen Days is the mistake." I asked him. "To most people, Walt, both books are a mistake, and you yourself are the biggest mistake of all!" He nodded: "It's fair to say that, too: I'm not sure it's wrong. I am not prepared to put up an argument against it." I said: "Walt, you never put up an argument against anything: when they growl you say 'yes, yes' when you mean 'no, no,' and go on doing just as you please. Laughed. "I am not prepared to put up an argument against you." Laughed again.