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WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY BY
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WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
I
WALT WHITMAN AND DOYLE From a Washington photograph
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY BY
W.
C.
RIVERS
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, LTD. 44
&
45
RATHBONE PLACE
[All rights reserved]
The Sale of
this
Book
is restricted to
Members
of the Legal and Medical Professions
Presented to the
LIBRARY of the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO from the estate of
ROBERT KENNY
CONTENTS PAGE I.
INTRODUCTORY
II.
THE PRIMA-FACIE CASE
III.
WHITMAN'S FEMININITY
IV.
V. VI.
i
... .
EVIDENCE MAINLY INDIRECT
.
.
14
.20 .
OBJECTIONS
34
46
FURTHER EXAMINATION, AND CONCLUSION
64
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY INTRODUCTORY THE present writer a medical man chanced one day to take up Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and to open it at the Calamus poems. Almost immediately the strong similarity in sentiment to that of confessions of homosexual subjects recorded in text-books on the human became astonishingly evident so evident, indeed, that it seemed fifty chances to one the thing must have been noticed before. However, for some time search proved negaA psychopathical criticism was outside tive. the compass of Whitman's contemporaries,
sex-instinct
because at that time
;
scientific study of sex not exist. did Moreover, most of practically those interested subsequently by this poet
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
2
would naturally be Americans or British, and in both instances, although more so in the latter one, the modern literary attitude towards sexual phenomena is dumbfounded and nihilistic
so.
in the case of inversion
;
Macaulay,
fashions in
who
very markedly
set our present-day literary
when, Frederick against " vices from which the Great, he speaks of History averts her eyes, and which even Satire
many
counsellors there as
far
The
I
is
typical
still
the
in
multitude of
wisdom, and the first hint, comes from a reviewer in
is
see,
Gentleman's
wrote
Yet
name."
blushes to
so
respects,
charges made
referring to
Magazine
for
1875,
who
:
" Elsewhere
he speaks of the sick, sick dread friendship, of the comrade's kiss, the arm round the neck but he speaks to sticks and the emotion does not exist in us, and the stones of returned
;
language of his evangel poems appears simply disgusting."
Then
one passage from the pen of the late J. A. Symonds, who from his study of Whitman and correspondence with him, and from his collaboration with Havelock Ellis in a there
is
work on sexual
inversion,
was well
qualified
INTRODUCTORY give an
to
is
short, "
is
It
The
opinion.
plain
enough
3 1
though
passage,
:
who
obvious that those unenviable mortals
are the inheritors of sexual anomalies, will recognise their
own emotion
exalte",
in
Whitman's superb '
previously unknown.'
.
.
.
Had
friendship, I
not the
strongest proof in Whitman's private correspondence with myself that he repudiated any such deductions
from his Calamus,
I
admit that
I
should have regarded
them as justified;"
but judgment in the end getting the better of loyalty,
" and
I
he adds-:
am
not certain whether his
this delicate topic
may
when Calamus was
own
feelings
upon
not have altered since the time
first
composed."
So, too, a "well-known admirer and corre2 spondent of the poet," who remarked :
"
The real psychology of Walt Whitman would be enormously interesting. I think the keynote to it would be found a staggering ignorance, or perhaps wilful non-perception, of the real physical conditions of his nature. But the truth about him (the inner-
most
who 1
2
truth) escapes from almost every page for those can read."
Walt Whitman: Cit.
by
A
Study, by
Bliss Perry, in
J.
A. Symonds.
appendix to Walt Whitman.
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
4
Meanwhile, from E. Carpenter and perhaps others of that kidney, indications of conscious possession of the secret are to be noted, and also
some
veiled defences from
members of
the poet's personal circle of friends and combut patriots, such as Bucke and Donaldson :
to the consideration of all these
we
shall return
later.
Havelock Ellis, as one might expect from one and only, but home-unhonoured, British authority on sex, shows himself in the book just mentioned well aware of Whitman's the
true nature, although only touching the subject In a separate study of excluin passing. sively literary nature,
is
it
so evident in Whitman's
on the defence
work
of the thesis
naturalia non sunt turpia, as applied especihe dwells and ally to matters of sex, that ;
the degradation of the sex-instinct by Chrisis of course tianity, especially in the past,
a
point
that
has
Ellis
made with
great
cogency.
But all the above references put together amount to very little, and the searcher did not find much until he came to the three valuable works by Eduard Bertz -pereat qui ante nos nostra dixit
!
which are
in
chrono-
INTRODUCTORY
5
Walt Whitman, Ein Charakterbild; Whitman Mysterien, Eine Abrechnung; and Der Yankee Heiland. Of these three, order,
logical
probably familiar enough to a considerable number of those who read these
which are
all
words, only the second is to be found in the This latter library of the British Museum. fact
may
English
help articles
to
explain
the jejuneness
on Whitman
of
(as found, say,
in biographical notices in encyclopaedias),
which
efforts, indeed, are very like a frame without the picture, containing as they do the bald out-
lines of Whitman's career and work, without a hint of that part of his spirit which is on It is rather the whole most characteristic.
as a picture without a frame that the present study, which may help to reveal the size of
the lacuna in such accepted literary criticism, In these days of an over-supplied is presented.
need
for
ciseness
a multiplicity of books, marked cona precious quality, whilst all ordinary
is
biographical details are available already in For the ensuing matter, half a dozen sources. too,
come work
of course,
a popular audience does not
into the question. The meritorious of Bertz introduces a further and more
particular limitation
:
one must not
steal
aught
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
6
of his thunder.
Except, then, for one or two any discussion of
great features essential to the subject,
my remarks will as far as possible be supplemental to this last author's. For his well as it can be case, is, put yet strengthened. As an example
take his argument on grounds
of heredity. He mentions the passage from the poems describing the sudden love of the poet's
mother
for
to
an
might point ascendant, a feature
homosexual
Indian
inverted
known
histories
woman
disposition to occur in
which an
in
some
but omits the account
(by the reliable Burroughs) of the highly masculine character of a paternal ancestress,
who smoked
tobacco and opium, rode astride, managing the most vicious horses, and could swear lustily at her slaves. This is obviously valuable corroboration.
For many reasons a defence of the
scien-
study of the human sex-instinct cannot be attempted here. For one thing, to do so would be an impertinence. It goes on, just tific
as painting from the nude goes on, but there is likewise a considerable prejudice against it.
How
soon that prejudice
will
disappear
depends upon the rapidity of the latter-day growth of the sense of the value of knowledge ;
INTRODUCTORY
7
and a great impetus must have been given of late, as regards sex study, by the discoveries of the Freudian School, which, as has been well said, open a new window on the wonderland of the human mind. Fortunately, howone tribute to scruple may be paid without any loss, and that is to state in advance that ever,
Whitman approved
of the principle of close
We
examination of an author's private life. need not fear to trespass upon his privacy, for
he himself wrote
l :
" If Taine, the French critic, had done no other good, it would be enough that he has brought to the fore the first, last, and all-illuminating point, with respect to any grand production of literature, that the only way to finally understand it, is to minutely study the personality of the one who shaped it his origin, times, surroundings, and his actual fortunes, All this supplies not only the glass life, and ways.
through which to look, but it is the atmosphere, the very light itself. Who can profoundly get at Byron " or Burns without such help ?
But before accepting the
and
challenge,
profoundly getting at this fine artist in his
own
form, but poorest of prose writers, there is a not at all a new fallacy, fallacy to be defined ;
1
The
Critic,
December
3,
1881,
cit.
by R. M. Bucke.
8
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
but one of which, although quite aware of Bertz has perhaps not kept himself clear. All
through
the
ages
by
Aristotle,
it,
by
Dryden, by Pascal it had been observed that men of genius were exceptionally prone to The idea gradually expanded, after insanity. the successive advents of Moreau, Lombroso,
and Nordau,
into the
"
racy
doctrine,
now
familiar
''degene-
which doctrine attributes
to
men more
than their share of insanity, great moral as well as mental, and indeed of almost
any decadent physical or psychical anomaly
;
they geniuses being thus closely akin to the two other special classes of lunatics and criminals, in in
whom, or at any rate certainly of whom, the same stigmata This doctrine, it will be remem-
the former
are found.
was very coldly
and not only in consequence of the extravagance of some The strong flavour of its modern exponents. of determinism and pessimism was sure to
bered,
received,
Few could appreciate well antagonise many. the arguments used, because the outlying parts (everywhere undeveloped, owing to preoccupation with therapeutics) of the domain of medical science,
were particularly undeveloped
at the
INTRODUCTORY
9
in question, namely where medicine marches with ethology. From the literary and philosophical sides, too, the matter seemed to
point
be nobody's business.
It
ran counter alto-
gether, as new subjects for investigation will, and as real investigators therefore must, to the
Beexisting division of intellectual pursuits. there tween the literary and scientific camps is
small communication, and yet, even with the intention and ability, any treatment of
best
the
subject
at
present
must,
owing
the
to
practical difficulties of direct investigation,
be
of a somewhat literary and indirect nature. Faulty attempts in this kind by certain popularisers, in consequence of the unscientific, super-
assumption-making tone they adopted, repelled those with a right to speak as to the scientific method and for this reason and other ones, such as the essentially revoluficial,
uncritical,
;
tionary
spirit
of
Lombroso,
the
degeneracy
events the part of it we are has never had the faintest notice discussing, from orthodox British science, and not much doctrine, or at
from
leading
all
scientific
workers
elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the idea that a strange and fearful price
even
must mostly be paid
for talent, continues to
for genius,
and
be met with
in
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
io
literature
and on the whole
;
is
gaining in
acceptance outside it. George Gissing truly " said Experience offers proof on every hand that vigorous mental life may be but one side :
of a personality, of which the other is moral barbarism." Mr. Bernard Shaw showed that
even he was not immune from what Meredith's Dr. Middleton describes as the general ailment of a bradypepsia of facts, by adding in 1907 a preface toning down some deal his 1895 answer to Nordau's Degeneration ; and more-
over by giving in the interval a picture (Louis Dubedat, in the play The Doctor s Dilemma) of a finely talented but physically unsound and decidedly familiar
non-moral
artist,
and depressing
that
combination
depressing especially
work of continental same theme may no doubt be found more frequently, for with them the obstacle of an optimistic and utilitarian national
to the eugenist.
authors
In the
the
temperament does not exist. More than this, as mention of eugenics reminds one, orthodox science in our country has recently, although not quite consciously, contributed confirma-
Several years ago some degree. 1 Havelock Ellis made his generalisation of a
tion
in
1
A
Study of British Genius, by Havelock
Ellis.
n
INTRODUCTORY
tendency to multiform abnormality of what he calls "variational diathesis" on the part of eldest born children. Lunatics, idiots, criminals, 1 perhaps special classes had
men
of genius
all
these
been found by different
observers to be largely composed of the eldest born, and
it
remained
Some
notable inference. metric school and
for
Ellis
time
to
later,
draw
his
the bio-
medical co-workers added
its
the weight of mathematical authority to these findings,
A
1
and also added another and
definitely
report by Dr. Goring, of the Prison Medical stating that no physical stigmata of degeneration occur in criminals, has been made the text of a good deal
recent
Service,
of
comment unfavourable
had the same
to
Lombroso.
But what has not
the fact that the following figures also rest on the authority of the same author: publicity
Criminals
is
who
Expected number Actual number
are eldest born children
....
.
.
[Karl Pearson
:
58
.120
.
.
Boyle Lecture, 1907.]
Now as
is
and
a similar, but not so great, excess of first born was, stated above, found by the biometricians among lunatics consumptives ; and the report of any asylum will show
that lunatics present a large number of cases of congenital physical defect. As therefore the same had been previously
described
who
also
among
criminals by another medical
too found eldest
born excess,
it
man
(Winter),
seems unfair to
accept at once a simple negative result as cancelling several previous positive ones. Possibly examination of Dr. Goring's criminals by others might have resulted differently.
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
12
The pathological class, that of consumptives. of these results with the central idea harmony of the degeneracy doctrine need elaborating. On the
men
thesis that
of genius,
is
too obvious to
whole,
then, the
men abnormal
in
favourable ways, are also abnormal in unfavourable ways, and ways which, to speak quite objectively,
promote individual and
cadence
this thesis
is
racial de-
not exactly
although demonstrated, it is considered by most judges of the question to be extremely likely to be true.
Hence genius,
is
A
the fallacy aforesaid. third factor, and therefore Bertz's enupresent,
meration (following Hirschfeld's description of the sexual invert) of somatic and psychical stigmata is not strict evidence of homosexuality at all, or at any rate only corroborative evidence of minor value. It is true that
the second greatest poet America has to show was as vain as a peacock, true that he went
grey prematurely but similar traits have been found in men of genius whom there is no ;
reason at
suspect of sexual abnormality. It will clarify the discussion, then, if we admit only such evidence as bears upon inversion, all to
and inversion
only.
INTRODUCTORY
13
And now to business first of all by production of the prima-facie case, the evidence of the poems themselves, without which the :
man's disposition would not be worth considering in any detailed way.
II
THE PRIMA-FACIE CASE IT
is
a matter of coming across passages like
the following "
When
:
wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing, bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise, I
And when
I
was on
how my dear friend, my lover, way coming, O then I was happy
thought his
;
then each breath tasted sweeter
my
food nourished
day passed
And
And
the next
me more
and all that day and the beautiful
well,
came with equal joy
and with the
next, at evening, came my friend ; that night, while all was still, I heard the waters
roll slowly continually up the shores, heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as directed to me, whispering, to congratulate me, For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
1
In the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face
was
And
his
inclined toward me,
arm
night
I
lay lightly around
was happy."
my
breast
and that
THE PRIMA-FACIE CASE "Two
15
sleepers at night lying close together as sleep,
they one with an arm slanting down across and
below the waist of the other,
The
smell of apples, aromas from crush'd sage-plant, mint, birch bark,
The
boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming,
The dead still
The
no-form'd stings that sights,
it
The
sensitive, orbic,
"
I
people,
objects,
me
much
as
as
underlappM brothers, that only may be intimate where they are,
curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the body the bashful withdrawal of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause
The
falling
ever can any one,
privileged feelers
The
and
me
with, hubb'd sting of myself, stinging sting
The
leaf whirling its spiral whirl,
and content to the ground,
limpid liquid within the
mind how once we
lay,
and edge themselves,
young man.
.
.
."
such a transparent summer
morning; you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and
How
And
plung'd your tongue to my bare-stript heart, reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd
you held
my
till
feet."
" Clear to
That the Soul of the man most in comrades ;
I
me
speak
that
my
Soul,
for, feeds, rejoices
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
16
Here, by myself, away from the clank of the world, Tallying and talk'd to here by tongues aromatic,
No
longer abash'd
for in this secluded spot respond as I would not dare elsewhere, Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit
I
can
itself,
yet contains all the rest, Resolv'd to sing no songs to-day but those of manly
attachment, Projecting them along that substantial life, Bequeathing, hence, types of athletic love,
Afternoon, this delicious Ninth-month, in first I
my
forty-
year,
proceed, for all who are, or have been, young men, tell the secret of my nights and days,
To To
celebrate the need of comrades."
" Or
else,
stealth, in
by
some wood,
for trial,
Or back
of a rock, in the open air, (For in any roof d room of a house
nor
And
in
I
emerge not
company,
in libraries
I lie
as one
dumb, a gawk, or unborn,
or dead),
But just possibly with you on a high hill first watching lest any person, for miles around, approach unawares,
Or
possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or some quiet island,
Here With
your lips upon mine I permit you, the comrade's long-dwelling kiss, or the
to put
husband's
For
I
am
the
new
kiss,
new husband, and
I
am
the comrade.
THE PRIMA-FACIE CASE
17
Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing, Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip, Carry me when you go forth over land or sea For thus, merely touching you, is enough is best, And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and ;
be carried eternally." l
[Compare the following confession of an " At the same time I inverted literary man: had an ingrained feeling of my own physical smallness in relation to the limbs whose conthrew
tact
me
into such
paroxysms of
delight.
A
new and sufficiently ludicrous invention took I imagined myself strapped possession of me :
to the thigh (always, of the man on whom
concentrate
my
I
I
desires,
think, the
right one) chose, for the time, to
and so
to
be worn
by him during his day's work, hidden beneath his garments."]
" Publish
The
my name
his lover,
Who
was
less it
1
and hang up
my
the tenderest lover, friend, the lover's portrait, of
picture as that of
whom
his friend,
was
fondest, not proud of his songs, but of the measure-
ocean of love within him
and
freely pour'd
forth,
Sexual Inversion, by Havelock
Ellis.
Case XXVI.
B
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
i8
Who
often walk'd lonesome walks, thinking of his dear friends, his lovers, Who pensive, away from one he lov'd, often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the
Who
one he lov'd might secretly be indifferent to him,
Whose
happiest days were far away, through fields, woods, on hills, he and another, wandering hand in hand, they twain, apart from other
in
men,
Who
oft as
he saunter'd the
arm the shoulder
streets, curv'd
with his
while the
of his friend
arm
of his friend rested upon him also."
My
songs cease
From behind
abandon them where
I
;
I
advance
spring from the pages into your arms
decease
screen
the
hid
I
personally, solely to you.
Camerado
Who (Is
you calls
I
hold,
me
how your Your breath
no book
touches a
we
;
man
here alone
the
Delicious
Enough,
O
;
?)
and who holds you
;
forth.
drowse me around me like dew
fingers falls
!
tympans of my ears immerged from head to foot
lulls 1 feel
is
this,
night ? are
it
It is I
This
!
touches
;
;
enough. deed impromptu and secret
!
your pulse
THE PRIMA-FACIE CASE Enough, past
"
gliding present
!
Enough,
O
summ'd up
!
be allowed that the above passages out a case for investigation.
It will
make
O
19
Ill
WHITMAN'S FEMININITY
WALT
Whitman's personal character
completely
in
is
almost
accordance with the tone of the
and typical of the male invert. If ever one had the woman's soul in the man's body, it was he. In almost everything except outward form he was a woman. As witness a series of traits common in a German Casuistik of male homosexuality. He extracts just
cited,
never smoked, as we know by his own telling and from the accounts of Traubel, his later the latter adding historian, and of Doyle that the poet had a marked aversion to the habit, although it was so common then in Washington as to make people remark upon His brother George said that his singularity. he cared nothing for sport, and an old school pupil of Whitman's that he never played at ball, but associated more with the younger scholars, frolicking with them rather than playIn cooking he delighted, not as ing games. a sportsman sometimes will, but for its own ;
WHITMAN'S FEMININITY "
He
sake.
21
would take pleasure," says E.
Carpenter, "in preparing some little dish of own devising for the evening meal." In
his
Reading and Thought
his Preparatory
the
strange
baking bread
is
how
tion of
"The
note,
found
is
time
regular
for
one hour," and an explana-
a flurried hostess's badly-mixed to "cook to tatters in the
dumplings came
He
pot."
specifies the exact kind of
cake he
Then he can talk gives the invalid soldiers. with a woman's about clothes knowledge here :
a
is
Doyle (he is sending him some which might have been written by the
letter to
shirts)
matron of a boy's home " till
I
hope they
will
last night, is to
Middlesex
first-rate
fit
:
the blue one,
wear over flannel,
I
cost
it
wasn't done
got the
stuff,
it
is
$5 (same as my not intended to be
it is shirts are made of) washed often but can be when necessary must then be washed by someone experienced in washing nice
summer
perhaps you will need a pair of winter boots (or some good cotton flannel for underclothes ." or something).
flannels
.
.
.
.
And
again
.
:
" I like the looks of them, the blue shirt collar turned down low with a nice black silk neck handkerchief,
tied loose
necktie
I
over a clean white shirt without
think they are
working men."
very becoming to young
22
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
For nursing he had a truly feminine devoAll the other nurses of the tion and aptitude. soldiers he tended for three years were women. That Whitman was in his right place in a 1 sick ward was attested to by surgeons themselves,
who
are no fonder than other responIn the section
sible persons of sharing credit.
of his
poems
inspired
by
his
war experience-
Drum Taps, although there is very little of the conventionally martial about them, just " " as in his carol of occupations there is no
called
real craftsman's
enthusiasm
sonal service no
more than
he does his per-
Yet femi-
justice.
nine admiration and feminine pity for military
were undoubtedly his deepest motive " in acting thus. He looks so handsome as he writes he to his mother of a patient, sleeps," "one must needs go nearer to him," 2 and
suffering
records that the
women
nurses pay most atten-
tion to the good-looking ones (likely
enough)
;
admits, indeed, the temptation in his own case, No true man but states that he resists it.
could feel like that, however 1
Compare
full
of compassion " Can
the remark of a Swiss writer on inversion
there ever be a
more
perfect sick-nurse than an
:
Urning ?"
More than one woman upon whom R. L. Stevenson (Familiar Studies of Men and Books) tried the experiment of showing them Whitman's memoranda during this period, immediately claimed the writer for a fellow woman. 2
WHITMAN'S FEMININITY and
work Specimen
In the prose
patriotism.
23
Days there are other references to the physical beauty of the wounded soldiers, while he mentions
it
The
again in a letter to O'Connor.
beauty of men's bodies indeed attracted him strongly, just as it did another invert of genius, Michelangelo, and just as
it
does the common-
place one who frequents swimming baths in order to feast his eyes. Whitman had a picture of the male nude Bacchus in his room,
while
his
poems contain
many voluptuous
images of male bathers one striking passage of / Celebrate Myself} describes a (11. 190-208
woman
spying upon them
ciations like this "
The expression in his face
and several appre-
:
of a well-made
man appears
not only
;
limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the his hips and wrists of joints It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees dress does not hide him ;
It is in his
;
The
strong, sweet, supple quality he has, through the cotton and flannel
strikes
;
To
see him pass conveys as
perhaps more
You
piece
as the best poem,
;
linger to see his back, and shoulder-side."
Of a
much
with
all
and the back of
this
is
his
his
neck
naturally
24
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY women
one might " indeed almost say, other women. I never knew a case," remarked Doyle, "of Walt's unnatural
indifference to
being bothered up by a woman. ... His position
was
Woman
different.
never came into his head." Platt
came
the
to
same
in that
dis-
sense
Drs. Brinton and conclusion,
and so
did his brother and the pupil above quoted. Though fond enough of company and recreation,
he never went
to
dances
"awkward
in
the parlour, neither a dancer nor elegant," as he confirmatively says of himself, mistaking, as
he often
did, his inverted taste for
When
masculine one.
a robustly
a friend offered him a
home, he found attractive the circumstances that the friend was a misogynist and there
were no women nine-tenths
of
in the house.
our
knowledge
All this, like
of
Whitman,
comes from sources crowning inversion
friendly to him, while the his well-nigh complete to testimony
is
out of his
own mouth.
Tennyson's work, he says " This love
romances,
Criticising
:
the old stock love of playwrights and Shakspere the same as the rest. It is is
possessed of the same unnatural and shocking passion for some girl or woman. ..." 1
Italics supplied.
WHITMAN'S FEMININITY warms up here
Indifference
horror femina.
into
25
the true
therefore not surprising to read that the only time his male nurse, the It is
good-looking young man photographed with him on Camden Quay, ever made Whitman
angry with him was by mentioning the of a female acquaintance he had met. old poet
became
furious,
or
rather
name The
furiously
denouncing her in these curious and somewhat feminine terms " a viper, a sneak,
jealous,
and a
hell-cat."
Indeed there can be few
stronger proofs of the changed mental organisation underlying the phenomena of inversion,
than the jealousy and distrust of women that male inverts show, recalling strongly the proverbial attitude of women towards one another. It is
a
loved
much sharper pang to them to see their man attracted by a woman than by
another
man
;
at least, the jealousy
Matters
are
one reads
mostly aroused by a woman. " quite accordingly," to use a
of in such cases
is
commercial phrase,
Whitman's case. Writing to Doyle that the ladies are paying him attention, he hastens to add that it is all platonic, "all on the square," with no passion about it as though Doyle might get uneasy. For he in
;
unconsciously conceives Doyle
to
feel
as in
26
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
similar case he
would have
felt
himself.
Yet
without any such precaution he often, in these same letters, sends messages of affection to other men.
This fervour of feeling towards men, the well-known stigma, when associated as it is here, Freundsschaftsenthusiasmus, is of course The the great feminine feature in Whitman.
of
just-mentioned letters to Peter Doyle are love " But O, I need your letters pure and simple. dear loving face and hand and voice," he cries. loving face and hand and voice ? The object of these protestations, Doyle, was no more than an uneducated young Irishman, a
Whose
begin with, but in the 'sixties a Washington tramcar conductor (the occupations
soldier
to
are the customary ones, although it is not certain that he wore conductor's uniform), who in the
spoke to the poet one evening and made his acquaintance. Some of Whitman's side of the correspondence is extant, and his
latter capacity
The mixture published it. of paternal and of feminine sentiment is like As to the latter, one need only enough.
literary executors
mention the rows of kisses marked upon the paper with crosses, the old question as to whose affection
is
the greater, and the quarrel followed
WHITMAN'S FEMININITY by renewal of love "more than one time Whitman used to send
27
before."
At
youth a
this
Every bouquet of flowers every morning. into the walked out together evening they might be as much as ten miles, although the younger man at any rate, with being on his legs all day, was tired after finishcountry,
it
ing work we read of his waiting sleepily at Whitman's office until the latter was ready. If Doyle was the great affinity he was far from being the only one, as we have just seen, and as George Whitman expressly says. There is, for instance, almost as passionate a letter to a ;
young
soldier
:
" But Douglass,
tell you the truth. You are than any of them that there is no comparison there has never passed so much between them and me as we have (sic) besides there
so
is
much
closer to
I will
me
something that takes down all artificial accomplishis a manly and loving soul."
ments, and this
And
his
desire
to
improve the education
young men is also normal man with a male of these
social
class
because he
likes is
him
just
as
friend
just as he
of is,
A
lower mostly
and therefore But polish him up.
he
never thinks of trying to what a woman
this is just
characteristic.
is,
who
loves beneath
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
28
her does think
These male
of.
friendships,
it
be admitted, go far beyond the normal, and show an altogether feminine warmth of will
emotion.
To some
extent
At
this himself.
Whitman was aware
least,
when he mentions women the
to
glorify himself.
of
all
on the rare occasions at
feminine
all, it is
nature
generally
present
in
He
described Leaves of Grass to Traubel, the devoted disciple of his later years, as essentially a woman's book :
"The women do not know it, but every now and woman shows that she knows it it speaks out
then a
:
the necessities, wrong of the all,
of
the
feminine.
its
woman
facts .
.
cry of
the cry of the right and sex of the woman first of is
creation
of
first
all
of
the
."
The same
thought must inspire his statement to E. Carpenter that "what lies behind Leaves
of Grass is something that few, very few, only one here and there, perhaps oftenest women, are at
all
published
he wrote is
a position to
in
In an un-
seize.''
letter cited in Bliss Perry's " :
I
woman
man
more
eligible
article,
but the
greater than to be a
to greatness real one."
;
biography
think sometimes to be a is
not the ostensible
Again
to
Traubel
" :
Leaves
of
WHITMAN'S FEiMININITY Grass
29
the flower of her [his mother's] temperament active in me." It was probably not is
affectionate
in
merely
mother that he
to
compliment
his
Whitman breed women than men nor per-
told her the
produced better haps was his great love for her he said his loves for his mother and for the wounded :
were the two great loves of his life, and that nothing before in his life had affected him so much as her death, while we learn that to his father he was a mystery entirely soldiers
At any
without special significance.
reminded
rate the
Freudian investigator doctrine that the aversion of homosexual males to women may be due to strong possession by is
the ideas of mother or
of
sister,
infancy onwards, they In the words of Stekel
the
with
associate
whom, from all women.
l
:
" Die Homosexualitat ist nur die gelungene Abwehr des infantilen Inzestgedankens. Homosexuelle Manner haben bei fremden Frauen nie eine erotische Emp-
findung; sie geben an, sie kb'nnten -fur diese Frauen nur wie fiir eine Schwester oder Mutter fiihlen. Das verrat
uns
Begriff
'Weib'
'
Schwester 1
die '
Wurzel der Homosexualitat.
Nervose Angstzustande undihrc Behandlung^ by
1908.
Der
mit den Begriffen 'Mutter' oder unloslich assoziiert. Aus der Abwehr ist
W.
Stekel,
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
30
der Inzestphantasie erfolgt die Flucht in die HomoDiese Transponierung wird natlirlich sexualitat.
durch
ein
kommen
somatisches
entsprechendes
ermoglicht.
Entgegen-
Auch der Homosexuelle
leidet
an den Reminiszenzen der Kindheit."
Or more the
cautiously, as
characteristic of
compared with the words of Freud himself: 1
original
disciple, in
is
discoverer
his
"Although psycho-analysis has not yet given us a explanation for the origin of inversion, it has revealed the psychic mechanism of its genesis and has essentially enriched the problems in question. full
In
all
we have
the cases examined
ascertained that
the later inverts go through in their childhood a phase of very intense but short-lived fixation on the woman (usually on the mother), and after overcoming it they identify themselves with the women and take themselves as the sexual object
sism they look for young
;
that
is,
following narcis-
men resembling
in person,
who
gave origin
to their inversion.
them as
themselves
mother has loved them. We have, moreover, frequently found that alleged inverts are by no means indifferent to the charms of women, but the excitation evoked by the woman is always transferred to a male object. They thus repeat through life the mechanism which shall love
their
Their obsessive striv-
ing for the man proves to be determined by their It must be rerestless flight from the woman. 1 Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, by Authorised translation by A. A. Brill, M.D. 1910.
S.
Freud.
WHITMAN'S FEMININITY
31
membered, however, that until now only one type of inversion has been subjected to psycho-analysis, viz. that of persons with a general stunted sexual activity, the remnant of which manifested itself as inversion.
The problem
of inversion
is
very complex,
and embraces many diverse types of sexual and development."
activity
The point thus seems worth recording. Taken in conjunction with the istic details
especially
revealed,
if it
be
it
many other charactermay have significance,
true, as is said,
that Oscar
Wilde's mother, out of her wish for a girl child instead of a boy, feminised her son for
some years
as regards clothes and general up-
bringing. It will
be noticed that Freud's theory pro-
vides an explanation of the curiously detailed feminine traits of the male invert, who, from self identification
with the woman,
is
said to
copy her subconsciously from early life onwards. If this explanation be rejected the alternative
one is rather startling on full examination. For here is the phenomenon of a man who, like a normal woman, is sexually attracted to males. That entitles us, if we leave out of question early influences like those invoked " " ones by other by Freud or the suggestive
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
32
writers, to say that such attraction in
him
is
innate
because, on the one hand, he has not
:
been brought up, as a woman has, to expect and on the other, the to mate with a man ;
attraction exactly similar to his own found in women is universally allowed to be a dictate
But besides the direction of his
of nature. sexual
predilections
are
there
He
other points of resemblance.
incontestably takes readily
needlework even, disliking manly sports and tobacco, and being unable to whistle, or even, maybe, to spit doing all this, too, not from affectation, not to
cooking,
with
nursing,
intention
deliberate
at
but
all,
to
all
The
percentage of cases showing deliberate, conscious aping is So that, granted all that has been negligible.
appearance by
instinct.
said in the last few sentences,
it
becomes allow-
able to argue the other way, back from the invert to the woman, and to claim that if to be at
home
in
the kitchen
certainly
one,
must
woman
it
a
innate in him,
a
female, even more
be inborn
in
the complete
herself.
Thence, of course, a reaches
is
human
sort of incomplete
long
way
:
line of
the
secondary sexual characters
argument which
list
of
richly
psychical
and
curi-
WHITMAN'S FEMININITY
33
ously enlarged beyond the few ascribed ten" cooking, by Moebius and others; " a definition of and children as clothes, church, woman's sphere not an old-fashioned error but on a firm biological basis more, even a bearing on heredity. For although art is a part of nature
tatively
;
and, as has been well said, a cathedral strictly therefore as much a natural object as a bird's nest,
the most thorough-going would hardly describe the female
nevertheless
teleologist
psyche as organised ab
initio
to all this artificial detail, to
with
reference
have evolved to
these arbitrary and seemingly triflingly particularised ends. If women are to be reckoned natural housewives,
case
of
through
it
inheritance
looks,
of
in
short, like
characters
a
acquired
age-long use.
An
explanation like Freud's, but seemingly nothing else, would knock the bottom out of
and on reflection he would seem near the truth. There must be an element of sub-
all
this,
conscious
imitation.
Nevertheless,
there
is
no doubt, as Freudians elsewhere own, such a thing as a diathesis of inversion. also,
IV
EVIDENCE MAINLY INDIRECT LET us look at the character of some only A part of some of Whitman's admirers. the poet's personal magnetism, described by Burroughs, the ablest of his personal circle, as incredible and exhaustless, must have been due to recognition in some way by others of a common abnormality, even if only a latent
Edward Carpenter
is the author of works Love and its Place in a Homogenic Free Society, and The Urning] very similar to literature not uncommon in Germany, literature and in the frankly apologetic for inversion " first named he says that Whitman's comradeis with the homosexual and a ship" generic his resemblance of to the Greek spirit. point
one.
(such as
:
Carpenter's other ideals are very like those of Whitman. He is a poet of democracy, a revolutionary,
He
and an enthusiast
for friendship.
proved himself a pronounced adherent, 34
for
EVIDENCE MAINLY INDIRECT
35
he visited Whitman twice in America, gave him money, and wrote a book on him visited, ;
Burroughs when
too,
The
land.
Carpenter's
the latter
came
to
Eng-
following discerning criticism
1
is
:
" If you consider Whitman's Love ruled it, that he gave his
life life
will see that
you for
Love ...
it
flame his entire writings after the war it united him in bonds of tender and lifelong friendship with many, both men and women. ... He was a man in whom the power of love was developed
permeates
like a
.
.
to an extraordinary degree.
Yet (thanks
was no attenuated or merely
spiritual love, but
to
.
him) this was a
large and generous passion, spiritual and emotional, of course, but well rooted in the physical and sexual also."
Compare with verse
this
prose
the
following
:
"
.
.
.
Love, a god,
Arrayed in crystal sheen without a flaw, Descends his holy shrine, so long untrod, Once more he paces, summons to his throne " Comrades and lovers !
!
which opened the book In re Walt Whitman,
The edited by Whitman's literary executors. lines are by the late J. A. Symonds, whom we may
surmise to have been of slightly inverted 1
Days with Walt Whitman, by E. Carpenter.
36
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
disposition
because he
honourably restrained, no doubt known to have collaborated with
is
Havelock Ellis in a book on sexual inversion, and the latter author speaks of the assistance of a literary friend who was himself inverted.
On
other
grounds the supposition is quite if it were not true, the signifi-
Even
likely.
cant fact remains that the writer of a book
on Whitman should also have written on inversion generally, and on Michelangelo, 1 an
example of homosexual feeling quoted in textSymonds, although not thinking very highly of the social breeding of Whitman and his circle, yet had a deep admiration for his Leaves of Grass, he said, influenced poetry. him more than any other book he had read With no small literary except the Bible. name of his own, he could yet confess that he knew its only chance of immortality was books.
through association with Whitman perhaps, we may be permitted to add, rather doubtful
amber
to be preserved
that Oscar
who was
in.
One may
note, too,
Wilde
supercilious Oscar Wilde, anything but a democrat or an
The fact that men of extraordinary ability are especially liable to inversion is additional evidence for its presence in 1
Whitman.
EVIDENCE MAINLY INDIRECT
37
and could therefore have been inby only one thing in Whitman addressed in a letter the man he had never seen, or written to more than once or twice, as " Dear, dear Walt." When in America he
altruist,
terested
also visited
Whitman.
Lastly, the work of a writer who could say that one of the things in Whitman he found " that nowhere else but in his own heart, was man for man of and noble love tender your men for and beautiful sympathy large those subtle and wonderful physical affinities you describe" must needs be of interest in That writer was the the present connexion. .
.
.
.
late
Bayard
Taylor.
Taylor's
.
.
honourable
him for present purposes in the same category with Symonds from his poems his original disposition was plainly bi-sexual.
career puts
;
Inordinate admiration for male beauty is seen in Serapion, Hylas, The Picture of St. John,
and
in
many
other passages.
is surely an extravagant way address a youth, even in an ode
"
When And
first,
felt
The for
a
following man to
:
young Persian, I beheld thine eyes, wonder of thy beauty grow brain, as some fair planet's glow
the
Within my Deepens, and
fills
the
summer evening
skies."
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
38
The Poefs Journal'and Love Returned show would
male
for
a
minor poet, the woman's part in lovemaking put with remarkable insight and sympathy in
is
that he
"
Nay, nay
The The
!
kiss
friends, while,
:
the longings tender, marvel, and the mystery,
fear, the
shy, delicious dread, the unreserved surrender,
thou canst, to
Give,
if
For
would
I
me
!
be,
In this expressive languor,
While night conceals, the wooed and not the wooer ; Shaken with supplication, keen as anger Pursued and thou pursuer Plunder my bosom of its hoarded fire, ;
!
And
so assail me,
That coy denial fail me, Slain by the mirrored shape of my desire Though life seem overladen With conquered bliss, it only craves the more Teach me the other half of passion's lore Be thou the man, and I the maiden " !
:
!
Again it happens that Whitman was somewhat aware of his own singularity knew that he could only be thoroughly appreciated by the few, by the differentiated, by the minority to which he himself belonged. There is re;
peated evidence of this throughout Leaves of What but a consciousness of abnorGrass.
EVIDENCE MAINLY INDIRECT
39
mality could inspire passages like these sub?
joined
"As
if
any man
really
knew aught
of
my
life."
" Whoever you are, holding me now in hand, Without one thing, all will be useless. I
give you
fair
warning, before you attempt
me
further,
am
I
"
not what you supposed, but far different.
The whole
past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around you, would have to be abandon'd."
" Yet If
if
blood like mine circle not in your veins
you be not
silently selected silently select lovers,
Of what
use
mine " As
if I
I
at
that
you seek
lovers,
to
;
and do not
become eleve of
at myself never deride myself! (O conscience-struck,
self-convicted
Often his
is it
"
were not puzzled
Or as if
O
?
by
in
!
!)."
conversation
Whitman
insisted that
message would only be understood, at first any rate, by the few. Take such utter-
ances as
:
"I do not look for a vast audience numbers of endorsers, absorbers just now
for
great
perhaps
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
40
not even after a while.
now and
But here and
there, every
then, one, several, will raise the standard."
And: "
I
ought to be very readily understood by young but a few take it in ; just a few. ."
men and women,
.
whom we
have cause to mention again, said, too, that Whitman would only be understood a hundred years after his death and although in another sense than the critic Bucke,
shall
;
intended, this observation seems true enough. At the present rate of progress, it will take
a good
many
years yet before the general
ignorance on the subject of sex disappears. Another great feature calling for notice in the present connexion is Whitman's sexual hyperaesthesia.
This of course often accom-
the cross-sexed are panies sexual inversion often over-sexed as well. Hyperaesthesia I :
take to be the explanation of his so frequent phallic utterances,
more frequent
in this
man
of the nineteenth century than in many a writer of the plain-spoken Middle Ages a point that
O'Connor's long defence does not take note His emotions, as of admiration and affecof. ran over into the physically sexual like an animal's, and his mind could and did form tion,
EVIDENCE MAINLY INDIRECT sexual
associations
in
the
41
most extravagant
With
the male intensity of sex feeling way. he combined the female chronicity. To whom
except to a stark erotomaniac, to what amorist poet in Herrick's or Swinburne's vein even,
would
it
occur,
when
bathing, to
with a lover's enthusiasm
?
Yet
hug the water this is
how an
observer describes him as acting, and some passages in the poems are entirely confirmatory
"You
sea!
I
resign
what you mean I I
myself to you also
I
:
guess
;
behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers; believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me ;
We must have
I undress a turn together hurry out of sight of the land ; Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse ; Dash me with amorous wet I can repay you."
souse upon me of and naked."
"The
my
lover the sea, as
I
me
lie
willing 41
1
will not strip the clothes
my I
lover the sea
will not
touch
flesh, to
my
from
my body
to
meet
;
flesh to the earth, as to other
renew me."
" That
this is no cheat, this transparent green wash of the sea, which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all
over with
its
tongues."
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
42
This
a sexual rage for physical contact with the elements, not only the sea, but earth
and
is
and although these have been poetic subjects since man became what he is, the passages we are quoting are probably a air too
;
in intensity at treatment of them unique any rate in extant world literature. Bayard
The Bath") very but these may have been derivative.
Taylor has a few lines similar,
Hear Whitman again " The atmosphere
(in
:
not a perfume it has no taste it is odorless ; mouth forever I am in love with it ; is
of the distillation
my
It is in I
I
will
am
go
to the
"Winds whose it
As
bank by the wood, and become un-
disguised and naked ; mad for it to be in contact with me."
shall
the
soft tickling genitals
rub against me,
be you."
quotation shows, such contact to cause seminal emission.
first
A
was enough
fortiori, therefore, this could easily follow
momentary contact with human he said
in
important
"To
touch as
/
beings.
mere
As
Celebrate Myself, probably his most
poem my
much
:
person to some one I can stand."
as
else's
is
about
EVIDENCE MAINLY INDIRECT
43
In the lines following this one there is a notable surge of lyric expression, such as the
and particularly the homosexual, always Rarely do his other ideals inspired him with. Again, although carry him to the same height.
sexual,
known
that the popular idea of sensual personal appearance as an index to intensity it
is
of sexual feeling does not generally hold good, yet there might be recalled the mention in Binns' eulogistic Life of
"a good-natured but
loose mouth, a faun-like expression upon its thick lips, which dismisses at once any fancy
of the ascetic saint." trait
of
Whitman
aet.
By looking at the por35, when he wore beard
and moustache trimmed
closely, in contrast to
his highly professional,
bardic tenue in later
life,
anyone may
scription not blind
is
a
fair
satisfy himself that this de-
Binns' discipleship did
one.
him here
even allowing for colossal frankness, his master was distinctly oversexed, ;
distinctly hyperaesthetic.
11
Not those
but,
as
I
pass,
O
Manhattan
!
your
frequent swift flash of eyes offering me love, Offering response to my own these repay me ;
Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me."
WALT WHITMAN'S ANOMALY
44 4'
My
lovers suffocate
me
!
Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin, Jostling me through streets and public halls coming naked
to
me
at night,
Crying by day Ahoy from the rocks of the river singing and chirping over my head, Calling my name from flowerbeds, vines, tangled !
underbush, Lighting on every
moment
of
my
life,
my body
with soft balsamic busses, Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts, and giving them to be mine."
Bussing
4