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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
John Townsend Trowbridge, though one of Whitman's earliest and oldest friends, has not received adequate recognition for his loyal yet discriminating service. Passing reference, it is true, is meted out to him in critical biographies of Whitman or in an occasional article. But even the latest Whitman study accords to Trowbridge only a few pages in which he is associated with the English critic, Edward Carpenter. In consequence the following survey is an attempt to throw added light upon the nature and extent of this relationship.
1 Trowbridge (1827-1916) was editor, novelist, poet, and writer of many juvenile stories and serials. His two best known poems, “Darius Green and his Flying-Machine” and “The Vagabonds,” still appear occasionally in anthologies. His novels, Neighbor Jackwood and Cudjo's Cave, met wide acclaim during the 1880's and 1890's, as did his Jack Hazard series for boys. He was editor of Our Young Folks and a leading contributor to St. Nicholas and The Youth's Companion. His short story, “Pendlam,” appeared in the first issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
2 Gay Wilson Allen, Walt Whitman's Handbook (Chicago, 1946), pp. 29–31. With the exception of Perry, Glicksberg, and Allen, biographers and critics of Whitman make little or no reference to Trowbridge. These include Holloway, Murdock, Arvin, Fausett, Canby, and Mark Van Doren.
3 Charles Francis Richardson, American Literature (New York and London, 1886–88), ii, 269.
4 The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834–1872 (Boston and New York, 1884), ii, 251. (Letter dated May 6, 1856.)
5 The father of Trowbridge's second wife.
6 Letter to his sister, Mrs. Phelps, dated November 1, 1856, in the Trowbridge collection, at present in the possession of Mrs. Albert P. Madeira, granddaughter of Trowbridge. Trowbridge letters and notebooks referred to in this article are in this collection.
7 Bliss Perry, Walt Whitman (Boston and New York, 1906), p. 100.
8 My Own Story (Boston and New York, 1903), p. 392. See also Charles Eliot Norton, ed., The Letters of James Russell Lowell (New York, 1894), i, 242.
9 The Fight of a Book for the World (Stonecroft Press: West Yarmouth, Mass., 1926), p. 115.
10 “Whitman Inspired and Uninspired,” Conservator, vii (March, 1896), 4.
11 Kennedy, op. cit., p. 129.
12 Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden (Boston and New York, 1906–14), iii, 506.
13 “J. T. Trowbridge told me that in Washington in the ‘60's he one day saw on Whitman's desk in a government building, a copy of the 1860 edition, in which the line about the honk of the wild gander, and the long episode understand the large heart of heroes,‘ in Song of Myself, as well as A Boston Ballad, had been marked for excision. Mr. Trowbridge argued him into saving all of these....” Kennedy, p. 153.
14 The Chase biography, The Ferry Boy and the Financier, written primarily for juveniles, was published in Boston in 1864.
15 Letter dated December 11, 1863. Since the original is in places hard to decipher, the words enclosed in brackets are an interpolation based on a later and more expanded account in Trowbridge's autobiography, My Own Story, p. 380. The concluding clause after the asterisk is omitted from the autobiography.
16 “Philosophy, history, religion, literature—authors, ancient and modern language, music and every possible question as to the conduct of the Civil War,—everything was discussed, and every side heard.” Ellen M. Calder, “Personal Recollections of Walt Whitman,” Atlantic Monthly, xcix (June, 1907), 826. “In 1871 O'Connor and Whitman became estranged for several years on the negro suffrage question, Walt taking the ground that the negroes were wholly unfit for the ballot, and Mr. O'Connor and others believing that the measure was the only one to adopt.” Ibid., p. 834.
17 Letter dated December 10, 1863. The Howells here referred to was not W. D. Howells, who at this time was in Venice. To a letter of inquiry, Miss Mildred Howells wrote me in part (December 6, 1935) : “He had a cousin, I think, named Thomas Howells who lived in Washington, and my grandfather, William Cooper Howells, or my uncle Joseph A. Howells might have been in Washington in 1863.” Mrs. Calder has this to say about Pantarchism: “The fiercest denunciations that were heard from Whitman were against that which he called ‘free love.‘ He gave it no quarter, said its chief exponent and disciple, Stephen Pearl Andrews, was of the type of Mephistopheles, a man of character without a heart, and there were no terms too strong in which to express his opinions of his damnable teachings and practices.”—Calder, op. cit., p. 829. For Trowbridge's own account of this philosophy see “A Reminiscence of the Pantarch,” The Independent, LV (February 26, 1903), 497–501.
18 Letter dated December 27, 1863.
19 Letter dated January 6, 1865; quoted by Traubel, ii, 292.
20 Mr. Rollo G. Silver sent to the writer (December 14, 1945) a transcript of a Whitman letter, in all likelihood to Trowbridge, which contains the following inquiry : “You sent me word a year or more ago of some Boston publisher or bookseller, who was willing (or perhaps wished) to sell my book—Who was it?” While this letter is directed to “My dear friend,” both external and internal evidence point to Trowbridge as the recipient. On pp. 98–101 of his book, Walt Whitman and the Civil War, Charles I. Glicksberg includes three of Whitman's letters to Trowbridge. All three have to do with soldiers in the Washington hospitals, and in addition one of them makes reference to Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber. Whitman had asked Trowbridge to prepare a favorable notice for The Saturday Gazette of Boston, Shillaber at that time being one of its editors. That Trowbridge was at this period much concerned for Whitman's interest in Boston is further shown by Bliss Perry who wrote: “Whitman had already been reading aloud from his Drum Taps Mss. to Trowbridge, who, upon his return to Boston, tried in vain to find a publisher for the volume.” Wall Whitman, p. 144.
21 Notebook item, January 1, 1868.
22 Whitman and Burroughs, Comrades (Boston and New York, 1933), p. 268.
23 Sylvester Baxter (1850–1927), editor, author, publicist, correspondent of the Boston Herald and the New York Sun. For Baxter's own account see “Walt Whitman in Boston,” New England Magazine, vi (August, 1896), 720–721.
24 Reminiscences of Walt Whitman (London, 1896), p. 11.
25 The Trowbridge letters are headed: “Arlington, May 30, 1887”; “Arlington, June 2”; “Kennebunkport, Me. [Trowbridge's summer home], July 10, 1887.” Letters and subscription list are in the Rare Book Department of Boston Public Library.
26 American Literature, vi (November, 1934), 257. On the other hand, since the rather recent debunking of Whitman as the “cosmic poet,” there has been a tendency to substantiate Trowbridge's preference for the first edition. Malcolm Cowley writes: “The early poems are Whitman's principal contribution to American and world literature. One reads them today with something of the same shock and delight that Emerson felt when opening his presentation copy of the first edition.”—“Walt Whitman Poet of Democracy,” New York Times Book Review, February 27, 1946.
27 Traubel, i, 225.
28 Baxter, p. 716.
29 “Whitman Inspired and Uninspired,” Conservator, vii (March, 1896), 4.
30 Lewis Baxter Monroe (1825?-79), early friend of Trowbridge, teacher at the Boston School of Oratory, author of many school readers and books on speech technique, early American disciple of Delsarte.
31 Notebook item, dated May 30, 1896. Hamlin Garland's reaction to another meeting of this same society is very similar : “Nevertheless, I came away with a bad taste in my mouth. There were so many intellectual comeouters present, each one trying to bend Whitman to his particular theory of life.” My Friendly Contemporaries (New York, 1932), p. 115.
32 “That such a man should have cared about his tomb, anyway, or have hoarded money for it, when he was living on the bounty of others, is something heart-sickening.” (Notebook item, June 9, 1892.)
33 When Mrs. O'Connor, who was preparing an article for the Atlantic Monthly, came to look over some of Whitman's letters in the Trowbridge collection, Trowbridge among other remarks wrote the following: “She takes a very sane view of Walt and his work, much more like mine than Williams....” (Notebook item, July 22, 1903.)
34 There are several statements in the notebooks similar to the following: “By invitation of the . E. Women's Club, I read my paper on Walt Whitman in Chipman Hall this afternoon.” (Item dated February 5,1900.)
35 Roadside Meetings (New York, 1930), p. 130.
36 Published in Philadelphia and running from 1890–1919.
37 Under the caption, “Reminiscences of Walt Whitman,” this chapter appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, LXXXIX (Feb. 1902), 163–175, one year prior to the publication of the autobiography.
38 Conservator, vii, 4.
39 In the Trowbridge collection.
40 My Own Story, pp. 361–362. 41 Ibid., pp. 378–379.
42 Ibid., p. 367.
43 Wall Whitman's Prose (New York, 1938), Bk. i, “The Paradox of Walt Whitman.”
44 See Cleveland Rodgers and John Buck, eds. The Gathering of the Forces (New York and London, 1920), ii, 270.
45 My Own Story, p. 397. Note the modern substantiation of Trowbridge's position: “It is impossible to reread either the early notebooks or the first edition of Leaves of Grass without feeling the presence of Emerson everywhere...” Mark Van Doren, “Whitman,” D. A. B. See also Emory Holloway, The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, I, Introd. LXXIX.
46 My Own Story, p. 397.
47 Ibid., p. 399.
48 Ibid., pp. 226–227.
49 Allen, Walt Whitman Handbook, p. 40.
50 And Gladly Teach (Boston and New York, 1935), p. 195.