11.15 A.M. W. reading papers—or had been. Talking to Ed, who sat on the sofa. A beautiful day. I said: "The day is very mild: you ought to be out in your chair wheeling along in the sun." W. said: "If I only had the chair! yes: I believe I should make the break, if only to go two or three hundred yards." He asked: "But how about the chair? Isn't there a wheel-chair that you can work with a handle, so and so?"—indicating. Referred to Booth. "Nothing much seems really the matter, after all: Barrett was uselessly alarmed." I asked if he had done anything with the title page. "Yes: I have done this: I guess it will do"—exhibiting a sketch of what he wished the page to be. He had written: "A Backward Glance at Travel'd Roads." I looked at it suspiciously. He asked: "What ails it?" When I showed it to him he laughed: "My forgetter has been very active lately." Asked me: "You haven't the copy with you—the prose to go in here?" I had not. It was in Ferguson's safe. W. then: "Anyhow, let it go: I like to see such a thing en bloc—see how it impresses me: now I can wait for the proof—correct things there if necessary." How about the other matter? "The two pages? oh! I must try to get them up today: I have already started them." Several written sheets on the book piles on his left. "The Epilogue, you may call it: I started with writing that word but dismissed it: it does not express my ideas of the fitness of things. I have finally decided to put A Backward
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Glance last—put it there in spite of Doctor Bucke's vehement protest. I know that what the Doctor says is true—that from time immemorial the preface has been written last and everybody knows it is, even if printed first in order: I cannot, of course, answer his argument: there is in fact nothing to be said against it: yet I must live out my own idea—my whim, it may be called—as I have always been accustomed to doing: it's too late in the day to change me now." As to the prefatory note: "I really don't know that I have anything to say, to add: everything is said in A Backward Glance: yet a word or two more may not hurt." As to title page:
"Let Myrick follow his own taste: I can trust him far in that: we'll see what he brings forth: I have pretty well indicated the relative proportion of the letters." His imprint— "Portraits from Life. Autograph. special ed (200 copies only printed—$5 each)"—had caused him considerable labor.
I asked W. about the corrections of plates. "There are very few," he replied: "I have only one or two: Doctor's were few indeed—none of them amount to much: 'harpooneer' I shall not touch at all: Doctor wants it 'harpooner,' but that does not satisfy me: I have heard the word too often: it is one of my earliest recollections: it has its own sound: 'harpooner' never would give that. Oh! many and many and many's the time I have heard it used—have myself tried to use it: 'the harpooneer poised himself in the boat ready to throw': 'the cast of the harpooneer on the rough seas, skilled and sure': always in that sense: no, no: it would not do to alter that."
He joked a little about his own strange humors. "I delayed that long enough myself: now it is done I'm in a devil of a hurry to see it in type: yes, I would like it today if it can be done—if a man can be put on it at once: there should be a couple of proofs made so we may be sure to get the crooked thing straight." I put in: "You won't get the first proof anyway: the proof you get will be a clean one. Ferguson's man is a dandy." W.: "I believe you: our experience with him has been very comforting." He asked me questions about him. "And what a tribe the tribe of the proofreaders is! I think some men, some writers, owe a great part of their reputations to the excellence of their proofreaders—to their vigilance, their counsel. Who can do justice to the cute, keen intellects of men of this stamp—their considerate patience, far-seeingness? Little credit is done them: they are
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snubbed, quibbled over, made light of: for twenty years I have had it more or less in mind to say my say—tell what I know—about the proofreaders: it is a debt I should long ago have paid." I said: "Don't forget that Kennedy was, is, a proofreader." He said: "I don't forget it: I've had it in mind from the first: he must be a good one: he is wonderfully well equipped: but even Kennedy is not the typical man." He said:
"Age in a man is the quality that gives value to old wine." He asked:
"Who was it who spoke contemptuously of the Herald's literary quality before Walsh went over there? Was it Doctor? Anyhow, it's a false notion: Habberton is on the Herald: isn't he quite a fellow?"
Still no word from Washington. Gave me a letter from Garland, saying: "Harland writes me again." I protested: "You always drop down a letter with his name—make it Harland instead of Garland." He laughed. Talked of Harry Harland— "Sidney Luska." "I have met him: he came to the reception there in New York last year: was quite soft on me: evidently bright: rather young: a spectacled, German student sort of fellow." But W. had not read him. "I don't know his work at all: he had in some ways the journalistic manner." He said: "Robert Louis Stevenson is the man on top these days—most in vogue: popular, sellable, accepted." Did he read Stevenson? "The merest fragment of him here and there: I may say I don't read him at all." He said: "Read Garland's letter (I got it right then, didn't I?): read it to me."
Beautiful last night. Wonderful clarity of atmosphere. I spoke of it to W. Then he asked about it—more questions. I said: "The moon and stars were strangely near." I was down by the river, loafing some. Then went across on the boat. "Ah!" he exclaimed: "I know all that: it is the day after the storm: always the best time: the atmosphere is always fresh then—most delicate, propitiating: after two or three days of disturbance: it always comes round so: peace—such peace!" He asked further: "How is the moon? how far towards full is it?" I called it "a bit of a thumb-nail." He understood: "Yes—it's a sort of a virgin stage." Again: "It must have been a night to remember." Talked of Herschel. "He seems to have lived outdoors." I stood by his chair and read him this, the full text of Clifford's reference to him in Sunday's sermon, which C. had copied off for me. W. said: "Yes: read it while I listen at mine ease: you have no idea how much joy I get out of simply sitting in my chair here, folding my hands on my lap, and having you do my work! It's a selfish, though, I acknowledge, a profound, joy!" I read:
Clifford had not copied the quote. He only indicated what it was. I hunted it up. W. was much moved. "It's so like the beautiful Clifford to go on in that way: I enter into its spirit: tell him, tell him for me, that I respond to it—every word of it: tell him he honors me—
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he does me rare honor: I consider no honor greater than this—that such a man includes me and considers my innocent verses fit for association with the noble words of Bright: for, Horace, they are noble words indeed—foreseeing, farseeing, glowing words: they are words that apply on the earth what I only said in the air: John Bright, immortal man, lover of freedom, comrade of people!" Here he paused. I said: "Bright means Canada and Mexico as well as the States: that we are to be welded into one nation." W. said: "Yes: why not? it is inevitable: Doctor sees it: every man of insight sees it: I would be inclined to distrust the subtlety of the man who came to any other conclusion." "No matter what the pro-Canadians are saying and all that?" He nodded: "Yes: no matter for them all: the thing is being taken care of in the nature of things, not by cabinets, on battlefields, in legislative halls." "You mean evolution is taking care of it?" W. then with great emphasis: "Yes, evolution: evolution is not the created but the creator of governments, systems." Did he think Canada and Mexico would be included in the United States of America eventually? "Nothing can stop it." I said; "Things don't seem to be going that way now." I wanted to get his definitive opinion. "I know: but appearances are deceptive: the underlying forces are at work: they can't be gainsaid: the end may be some distance off but nothing can thwart it."
He got back to Clifford again. "He has done it nobly—but we might have expected him to do that: it was worthy of him." The Bright thing was new to him. "It is a part of the man—it is a thing we ought to engrave here in letters of gold, everywhere—cherish, consider, adopt!" Bright had the universal soul. "The typical Englishman could not have said that: there is a sort of jealousy in some of them which cannot admit success: in America, for instance—territory, possessions, achievements, multifarious wonders: they would be damned rather than see them. And indeed, I do not so much wonder at it: there are reasons for it—some innate, some political: the anti habit is more or less active in all of it: it plays hell with the racial fraternities." As to Gladstone: "He has always been the spokesman for average things: he is not prophetic: he makes no real departures: he's the idol on a certain plane of current English life: in him the national dominates the universal."
7.20 P.M. W. sitting in the dark room with Ed, talking. A clear
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beautiful night—the stars unutterably bright, the moon off towards the west. W. asked of it all—was interested: I went to the window, north—but the merest edge of the moon visible. Ed rose, but before going lighted the gas. W. did not look well. Had not yet succeeded in finishing the copy for the printer. W. advised me: "I have here the Doctor's annual report: he says he has only a limited number—that you should take this if you cared to: show it to others if you think it worthwhile."
Asked me what I had done today. Myrick would not give me proof till tomorrow. Then talk of Ferguson's place—his questions (his hunger for details insatiable) leading me into a full description, so far as I could, of the establishment. I spoke of F.'s big edition of Ladies' Home Journal—over half a million copies per month. W.: "That shows how little a fellow knows of the affairs of the world: the Ladies Home Journal, new, a monthly, printing over half a million copies: yet I don't even know the name of it! So a fellow is passed by—absolutely passed by." Spoke of the big circulation of Youth's Companion. Had he been asked to write for it? "I have often been solicited: solicited at times when I did not feel disposed—was not in the mood: whether for this I could not tell, though I guess not. Isn't this the sheet from which Tennyson got his thousand dollars for a poem? I don't know who edits it: I have always supposed they would have none of me, had no room for me—that they are after big guns who will boost them." Yet this may be an error. How does Garland's letter bear on it? But W. only says again: "If so, then the old word comes in true again"— "more fellows know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows" so often quoted by him. I referred to old copies of The Radical in which I had found a review (favorable) of Drum-Taps, and a Whitman poem. W.: "It has all slipped me—no doubt I saw them at the time: Morse, Tucker, those fellows up there—some of 'em: they knew me from the start—seem at once to have seen me as their own." Critic last week noted Richardson's unfavorable mention of W. W. said to me anent: "Yes, I saw it—read it: he seems to have given us a whack: but what do you know of Richardson? I know nothing—except that he's a professor of something or other." I spoke of my delight in looking over old magazines and papers and seeing early W.W. discussions: finding some who spoke well of him when most spoke ill. He said: "If that is so, then one or two of the
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things in that pocket will interest you." He had given me early in the evening, with the remark:
"I came upon these in looking up something today"—a pamphlet vindicating Paine, by Ingersoll; two O'Connor letters (April and June, 1888); a slip of Going Somewhere; a letter from Ford as to a lecture trip abroad; some old Leaves of Grass loose sheets.
Referred to Bucke's report again. "It is anti-drink: very strong, all, for that—but from the professional standpoint, I have no doubt he is right—entirely right." W. asked me: "Who is this Sherman—is it Bucke's Sherman? Is it Bucke's Sherman? Is he a George man?" Then ensued his many old questions and my answers as to the personnel of the George movement.
W. had me read the Ford and O'Connor letters before I lit out. He interrupted me here and there over Ford but for the most part said nothing to O'Connor. Ford came first.
W said: "That sort of a proposition would horrify me under any conditions: Ford meant it well: it sounds half genuine—half and half real. Think of me as being courted by the lords and ladies of Great Britain!" I put in: "Not the lords and ladies, Walt: the cultured classes." He nodded: "It's all one: the lords and ladies of culture: they're as abhorrent to me as the lords and ladies of titles." Then he said: "Read William's letters: they're more refreshing."
W. was warmed up by W.'s letter. "That Baconian business becomes more and more plausible," he said: "the evidences accumulate: I have never been what you would call a Baconian, but I have gone as far as anti-Shakespeare: there I take my stand: yet I acknowledge that as the new evidences come along, one scholar after another adducing theirs, I am more or less shaken out of my negative attitude—there is a decided Bacon twist given to my thinking." I asked W.: "There was Nicholas Bacon: what part did he perform in the mystery of the plays?" He asked: "Have you the idea that Nicholas was somehow intimately, dynamically, a party to the production of the plays?" I said: "Yes—either as a star or a leading man." He asked on what I "based such a notion." I told him. He said: "You have opened my eyes." He then said: "There's William's other letter: do you intend to read that?" I did.
W. said: "Doctor has been wrestling with Charles Brockden Brown, too: let me read you what he says about it." Put on his glasses. Picked Bucke's letter up from the table. "Doctor says: 'Am just finishing Wieland—Charles Brockden Brown: it's the first of his I ever read: got a set of his books from McKay more than a year ago but never looked at them till now: it is one of the most ghastly books conceivable—old (Castle of Otranto) style. No doubt you have read some of Brown's books if not all of them.'" "No," he said: "not all—though most all: Brown is not a center of interest to me: he only flourishes in reminiscence."