Part 10

On the opposite side were the two literary executors, George Whitman, and a few others. The oyster man was there to tell of the quantity of oysters he had taken or sent to the house--more than one man, a sick man at that, could possibly consume; the object was to accuse Mrs. Davis by suggestion of getting them for herself in a dishonorable manner; but when on the stand the man could not speak, and after the trial went to her and begged her pardon.

Much interest was manifested in the case, which lasted two days; the court room was crowded at each session, and it was not difficult to tell on which side lay the sympathy. Her opponents could bring no charge against her; they could only try to slur her and belittle what she had done.

The testimony taken, Mrs. Davis's counsel called his client forward, placed a chair for her in the sight of all, and then in touching, eloquent words summed up the case, saying that many among those present had seen Walt Whitman going about the streets of Camden, alone, cold and neglected, that it was a well-remembered sight, just as it was a well-known fact that this good woman's heart and home alone had been opened to him.

As was expected, Mrs. Davis won her case; she received a fair sum of money, and the congratulations, spoken or written, of all who knew her sterling worth and the true story of her years of service.

XX

CONCLUSION

"_Which makes her story true, even to the point of her death._"--SHAKESPEARE (_All's Well That Ends Well_).

"_A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion._"--(_Richard III_).

If, profiting from past experience, Mrs. Davis had learned to realize that into all lives there comes a time when self has the right of consideration, she could have avoided further complications. But the early precepts were too deeply implanted, and before she had left the Mickle Street house a selfish uninteresting woman had in some insidious way fastened upon her. This burden she carried to the end.

Nor were money troubles wanting, grave and crippling, and due of course to the same fatal habit of helping others at her own expense. One day there came to her in great agitation an admirer of her late friend and patient, saying that he was threatened with financial ruin, even defamation of character, unless a certain sum of money was at once forthcoming; simply a loan for a few months; it would be faithfully repaid. Mrs. Davis had long contemplated purchasing a small home; she had the means of doing so, and this money was at once offered and accepted, but never returned. Warren's death followed, and her one strong prop was gone.

Mrs. Davis was not much of a correspondent; but notwithstanding this, she and the nurse, Mrs. Keller, occasionally exchanged letters, and the most friendly relations existed between them. After there had been a longer silence than usual, Mrs. Keller wrote to Dr. McAlister, asking him if their friend still lived in Berkley Street (the house she went to from Mickle Street, and the only one she lived in after that), and if so, requesting him to call and learn why she did not write. He did so, and replied that he had found Mrs. Davis about as usual, that she had sent much love and the promise of writing soon. Another long interval of silence followed, and finally came this letter--the last communication that passed between them.

"434 Berkley Street, CAMDEN, N. J. October 16, 1908.

"DEAR MRS. KELLER,

I am just in receipt of your letter. Yes, Dr. McAlister did call last spring and I told him I would write you in a few days, which I fully intended to do, but it so turned out that I went to France with a friend, where I spent the summer; I have been home about three weeks. My going away was entirely unexpected, and I had but a few hours to get in readiness; left everything at loose ends, and one vexatious oversight was I forgot my address book. I thought about you many times, and would have written to you from over there had I had your address. I was delighted to hear from you--will write to you in a few days. I am wrestling with a bad cold. Hope you are well.

"Lovingly, "M. O. DAVIS."

Mrs. Davis had always wished to see Niagara Falls, and Mrs. Keller, whose home was near that city, hoped that the long looked-for and talked-of visit was at last near at hand; would take place in the following summer. Instead, at the expiration of a month she received a black-edged envelope, the contents reading:

"Yourself and family are respectfully invited to attend the funeral of Mary O. Davis on Monday, November 23, at 3 P. M., from the son's residence--H. M. Fritzinger, 810 State Street, Camden, N. J. Interment at Evergreen Cemetery."

On November 20, 1908, the following notice appeared in several papers.

WHITMAN'S LAST NURSE DEAD

Woman Who Cared for Poet Succumbs Too.

Mrs. Mary L. Davis, who nursed Walt Whitman, the "Good Gray Poet," during his last illness, and was with him at his death, at No. 328 Mickle street, Camden, died last night in Cooper Hospital of intestinal troubles. She was the widow of Levin J. Davis.

After the death of Whitman Mrs. Davis resided for a short time at No. 432 Clinton street, Camden, and then she went to live with a wealthy family in New York City. About a year ago she developed intestinal troubles. The family she was living with took her to Paris for treatment by eminent specialists. She returned a month ago and went to Camden to visit Henry M. Fritzinger, of No. 810 State street. There Mrs. Davis was taken ill with the affliction from which she suffered so much, and was removed to Cooper Hospital.

The nurse who had cared for him in his last illness!--not his "faithful housekeeper, nurse and friend." But the brief report, it will be seen, had more than one error.

Perhaps the best way of giving a clear picture of the concluding stages will be to quote a letter from her son--as he was always called; Warren's brother Harry. It is a very human document.

"DEAR FRIEND,

I am convinced that you think this letter should have been written long before, but on account of how things have gone I can assure you that I was taxed to the utmost. Mother died on the 18th of November; buried on the 23rd. You would be surprised how people who were her friends through money have changed....

"When Mother moved from Mickle Street to 434 Berkley Street she lived there until she died, although I tried for years to get her to come and live with me, as she would have been company for my wife when I was away. She had a party living with her by the name of Mrs. H----, a big lazy impostor. She waited on her, carried coal and water upstairs, ashes and slops downstairs, until she worked herself into the condition which she died from.

"About eighteen months or two years ago, there was a family by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Mailloux, and Dr. Bell of New York, admirers of Walt Whitman, who came on and got acquainted with Mother. They took a great liking to her and offered her a home with them, but she still stayed on in Berkley Street. Mother paid them several visits, and at last was persuaded to accompany Mrs. Mailloux to Paris on their regular trip, as a companion. She left America feeling as well as ever. My wife and I saw her aboard the train at Broad Street, and she was met in Jersey City by her friends.

"While she was in Paris, this woman who was living with her started the devil going, when I was compelled to go down and take charge of the house. It warmed up until I was compelled to write to Mother and ask her to send me authority to protect her interests. This spoiled her visit; she returned to America before the rest of the party. When she arrived she came directly to my house; was suffering with a severe cold. She was with us about six weeks. In the meantime my wife had her fixed up in fairly good shape. She told me that she was going to break up and come to live with us, but could not do it in a day or two.

"After she was home about a week she was sick. She fooled along until I became dissatisfied and sent my doctor down to her. He attended her two days, and ordered her to the hospital, as an operation was the only thing to save her. After she was opened they found the bowels separated, also a cancerous tumor. She lived five days after the operation.

"All this trouble was not felt until two weeks before she died. Where the report came from about her ill health and going to Paris for aid I do not know, but you always find newspaper reports wrong.

"Well, there is one thing that I feel thankful for: that she died before I did. If such had not been the case, she would have been buried in a pauper's grave, or gone to the dissecting table.

"Mother has been a friend to many; they have handled what money she had, amounting to hundreds of dollars. When she died all debts were cancelled as far as they were concerned, and not one would say: 'Here is five cents towards putting a good and faithful servant away.' But Mother was laid away as fine as anybody...."

Little more need be said. Mrs. Davis was comparatively a young woman at the time of Walt Whitman's death,--being then in her fifty-fifth year,--and in the sixteen years that followed, his friends passed away one by one, and she almost passed out of the memory of his life, as though she had never taken part in it. But the part she did take deserves remembrance.

Harry Fritzinger's letter speaks for itself, and I have tried, poorly as I may have done so, to speak for one whom I valued and value as a good woman and a loving friend.

WALT WHITMAN'S MONUMENTS

A LETTER WRITTEN IN CAMDEN ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH

BY GUIDO BRUNO

DEAR WALT WHITMAN:

To-day is the 27th anniversary of your death. I came here to worship at your shrine. I am a European, you must know, and reverence of our great writers and artists is bred in us, is part of our early training. We love to visit the houses where genius lived, to see with our own eyes the places our great men loved. Camden hasn't changed much since you left. The people among whom you lived are to-day the same as they were then: petty, mean, vain, unforgiving. Your friends are few just as in the olden days. Let me tell you about it.

It never entered my mind to make sure of the street number of your old residence. "Any child on the street will direct me," I thought, "to Whitman's house." Getting off the ferry, the same ferry on which you loved to ride back and forth, in spring and autumn, I asked a policeman how to get to your house. "The Whitman House?" he repeated; "it's somewhere out of the way, I'm sure. You had better stop in the Ridgely House. That's the best place in town." He knew nothing of you and thought I was looking for a hotel. A druggist at the nearby corner knew about you. "William Kettler used to be a great friend of his," he told me. "He'll tell you all about him." And he gave me Mr. Kettler's address. Mr. Kettler still lives on North Street, and has become chief city librarian lately. He's very deaf, but extremely kind and friendly. He was in the midst of moving. Mrs. Kettler is ill, you must know, and they will live on the shore for the rest of the season.

"This Whitman cult makes me sick," he commenced. "Who was Whitman anyway? A poet? I dare say that there are hundreds of magazine writers to-day as there were during his lifetime, who write just as good verse as he did. And his prose is abominable. His writings are not fit to be read in a respectable home. They corrupt the mind and are dangerous to the morals. We knew him well, we saw him daily and his disgraceful way of living was open town talk.

"I was a newspaper man and associated with the old Camden _Post_ at the time of Bonsall, when Whitman used to come to see us almost daily. Bonsall used to be a friend of his and did him a great many good turns. But Whitman was an ingrate.

"Shall I tell you what we respectable citizens of Camden think of him? I don't mean the young generation, but the people who actually knew him. It doesn't sound nice to speak badly about dead people. But we knew him as an incorrigible beggar who lived very immorally ... an old loafer.

"Why, only a few months ago, one of the most prominent citizens of our town, John J. Russ, the great real estate dealer, objected to Whitman's name on the Honor Tablet of our new library. Judge Howard Carrot of Merchantville could tell you how that old scoundrel got people into trouble, and if the case had come into court, the scandal would have been so great, that the Judge decided to dispose of it privately.

"I remember, several years after the Civil War, Whitman's last visit to the Camden _Post_. Mr. Bonsall, the chief editor, myself and Whitman were chatting in the office. There was a very young reporter in the room. Mr. Whitman insisted on telling us one of his filthy stories. He knew many of them and would tell them without discriminating who was present. Filth seemed to be always on his mind. Mr. Bonsall was shocked. And I remember distinctly what he told him, before turning him out of the office. 'Look here, Whitman,' he said, 'why don't you become a useful citizen, like every one of us? You never did anything decent and worthy of an American citizen. While we took up our guns and went out to fight the enemy, you stalked about hospitals, posing as a philanthropist. Later on, we returned to civilian life, hunting jobs and pensions, trying to earn a livelihood, while you were preaching Humanitarian principles and talking against the cruelties of warfare on Union Square. _Now_, while we are chained to our jobs, you are writing pornographic pieces that no self-respecting publisher would print, and loaf about most of the time, corrupting our young folk. I will not tolerate loose talk in these offices, therefore, get out and never let me see you again.'"

"But haven't you said," I interjected, "that Mr. Bonsall was a friend of Whitman?"

"They used to be friends," cried Mr. Kettler, "until that treacherous business of the poem came up. Whitman was getting up a little book of poems. Mr. Bonsall, who, in my estimation, was not only an excellent man and writer, but also a poet of no mean ability, sent in a contribution. This particular poem was very beautiful. It was the only one that Whitman did not print. Ever since Mr. Bonsall and myself had not much use for Whitman, who stabbed his friends in the back at the first opportunity."

"Hurt vanity," I thought. How small this man Kettler seemed to me with his petty grievances. Forty years have passed and he couldn't forget your refusal of a poem.

"But what is the worst," Mr. Kettler continued, "Whitman has spoiled the life of Horace Traubel. What an excellent young man he used to be, the son of an honored, upright citizen. Traubel got obsessed with Whitman's greatness. He devoted his whole life to Whitman. He took Whitman's morals for his own standard." And Mr. Kettler proceeded to tell about Traubel's private life. Some stories a policeman's wife, Traubel's next door neighbor, had told him.

Does all this amuse you, Walt Whitman?

The frame-house where you lived is in a dreadful condition. An Italian family is living there. A taxi driver, Thomas Skymer. He has three children and four boarders. The boarders have children, too. A litter of young ones are playing in your back yard, around the broken well. Your front room, where you used to sit near the window and entertain your visitors, is a living and dining room combined. Not even a picture of yours is in this room. Over the mantel hangs a cheap chromo of the Italian King. One of the little boys knew your name. "Do you want to see where the old guy died?" he asked, and led me into the back room on the same floor. There was a big bed there. I never saw a bigger one in my life. "We all sleep in it," said the boy.

I know, Walt Whitman, you are shrugging your shoulders, smiling indifferently. What does it matter to you who is sleeping now in the room where you died, who is living now in the house where you lived, loved and sang? But my heart cramped and ached. The poverty, the bad odor, the utter irreverence! This Italian pays $10 a month rent. The neighborhood is run down, and the property could be easily bought for a few thousand dollars. Is this how the greatest nation honors its greatest literary genius?

Your enthusiastic young physician, Dr. Alexander McAlister, has grown a bit old, but not in spirit. He took me up to his library and here, as well as in his heart, you have found your sanctuary.

"I loved Walt Whitman," Dr. McAlister said, "ever since I was a student in the medical school, and met the old gentleman regularly on the street. We talked occasionally; once he asked me to his house, later on, after my graduation, I had occasion to render him professional services, and for all the years, until Whitman's death, I called on him at least once a day. He was the most clean-minded and kind man I have ever met. I never heard him utter an obscene word. The magnificent personality of Walt Whitman and his general comradeship, inspired by his ingrained feelings and intuitive beliefs concerning the destiny of America, must certainly have impressed all who met him long before he was known as a poet. He lived a life so broad and noble that it will be more studied and emulated, and will sink deeper and deeper into the heart. The social, human world, through his aid, will reach a level hitherto unattained. The new life which he preached has not been even dreamed of yet, has not become yet an object of aspiration to us Americans. He has set the spark to the prepared fuel, the living glow has crept deeply into the dormant mass; even now tongues of flame begin to shoot forth. The longer Whitman is dead the better he will be known. He seems to me the typical American, the typical modern, the source and centre of a new, spiritual aspiration, saner and manlier than any heretofore. Whitman thought that man has within him the element of the Divine, and that this element was capable of indefinite growth and expansion.

"He was the most democratic man that ever lived. Everybody was welcome to his house, everybody his equal, he was everybody's friend. He had many enemies, but also many friends. He thought Ingersoll his best friend. Dr. Longaker and Horace Traubel were almost always present, especially during the last years of his life. Once in a while they got on his nerves because they continually carried paper and pencil, writing down every word he said. Let me tell you a few incidents of his last illness. They all expected him to die. Traubel and Dr. Longaker were constantly in the hall outside of the sick room, eager to catch every one of Whitman's words. Warren Fritzinger, his nurse, was with him.

"'Are those damn fools out there this afternoon?' he remarked when his condition became very weak and the rustling of papers in the hall seemed to annoy him.

"The day before he died I came in the morning and asked him, 'How do you feel?'

"'Well, Doctor,' he answered, 'I am tired of this dreadful monotony of waiting. I am tired of the sword of Damocles suspended over my head.'"

Would it interest you, Walt Whitman, to know about your last minutes on earth, when you lay unconscious in a coma? Dr. McAlister described them to me. "His end was peaceful. He died at 6:43 P. M. At 4:30 he called Mrs. Davis and requested to be shifted from the position he was lying in. The nurse was sent for, and later on they sent me a message. When I reached his bedside, he was lying on his right side, his pulse was very weak and his respiration correspondingly so. I asked him if he suffered pain and if I could do anything for him. He smiled kindly and murmured low. He lay quietly for some time with closed eyes. A little after 5 his eyes opened for a moment, his lips moved slightly, and he succeeded in whispering: '_Warry, Shift._' Warry was his nurse, and these were the last words of Whitman. Then the end came. I bent over him to detect the last sign of the fleeting life. His heart continued to pulsate for fully fifty minutes after he ceased breathing."

Dr. McAlister was a great friend of yours, Walt Whitman, and I feel that you are with him every minute of his life. He showed me letters from your old nurse, Mrs. Keller, who wrote a few articles about you. He treasures the books you inscribed for him, your pictures hang on his walls and he especially loves the little plaster cast you gave him.

Of course, you know that an autopsy was performed shortly after your death. May I tell you about your brain, which is at present in the possession of the Anthropometric Society? I believe it is an honor to have one's brains placed in this society's museum, because this society has been organized for the express purpose of studying high-type brains. The cause of your death was pleurisy of your left side and consumption of the right lung. You had a fatty liver, and a large gall stone in the gall bladder. The good doctors marvelled that you could have carried on respiration for so long a time with the limited amount of useful lung tissue. They ascribed it largely to that indomitable energy "which was so characteristic of everything pertaining to the life of Walt Whitman." They said in their official report that any other man would have died much earlier with one-half of the pathological changes which existed in your body.

In the late afternoon while the sun was setting over an ideal spring day, I walked out to the Harleigh Cemetery, where you built for yourself that magnificent tomb. How wise you were, Walt Whitman, to supervise the cutting of the stones, to watch the workmen while they were preparing your grave. What a beautiful spot you chose for your last resting place. The lake lay still in the warm evening air, the willows swayed gently as if patted by unseen hands. An old working-man, about to leave the cemetery, showed me the spot where you used to sit and watch them work. He told me how you wrote "pieces" on scraps of paper that you borrowed here and there, and how you read them to the stonecutters, who were building your tomb. I asked for the key. They keep it locked lately. I opened the heavy granite door, and stood for quite a while in the semi-darkness of your little house. I thought of you lying there on your bier, peaceful, indifferent, kind. Then I thought of the other monument you had built in words, a temple not made with hands, builded for eternity.

Always self-sufficing, walking your own path towards your own goal. No legend tells of you, of your life or achievement. You live in the hearts of thousands of Americans. Soon, very soon, perhaps, your name and America will be synonymous. Walt Whitman, we here on earth are awakening to your ideals of America.

Affectionately yours, GUIDO BRUNO

WALT WHITMAN SPEAKS

Ever upon this stage Is acted God's calm annual drama, Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves, The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees, The liliput countless armies of the grass, The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra, The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the silvery fringes, The high dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars, The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products.

[_The Return of the Heroes_]