Walt Whitman's Secret

by George Fetherling

  This destruction in no way impairs her own pursuit of an answer to what has become for her the central question. Was Horace Traubel the actual spirit-child of his spirit-father Walt Whitman in more than a symbolic way? Or might their two souls have crossed or mingled? Might Walt’s living spirit, after years of wandering, have found another home, inside Horace’s shell?

  She has pursued her research with Canadian mediums but without satisfaction. She has, however, heard of a medium in Buffalo, New York, who is spoken of so highly by seekers and admirers that she invites him to Toronto in the hope he might be able to put her question to the author of the immortal Leaves directly. So it is that two Americans come to her door, a small bald-headed fellow fretting inside his celluloid collar and carrying a flat parcel wrapped in oiled paper, and another one, who is younger, taller and faithful to the gospel of the firm handshake. She shows them into the surprisingly large front room, saying, “Welcome, gentlemen, to 22 Carlton Street. Although both of you are gentlemen, I am sure you won’t be intimidated to know that I have entertained Missus Pankhurst herself in this very room.”

  The short one nods in meek fashion and says little thereafter. The tall one smiles and says, “Ah, the famous Missus Pankhurst. Of course.”

  They look around the square room, whose main furnishing is an oaken table. The walls are papered in a French pattern above the wainscots and there are pillows everywhere, encased in fabrics bearing what appear to be various Oriental designs. The alert one of the pair notices a rod running across the ceiling midway down the room.

  Flora sees him shoot glances at the unusual drapes of rough linen and the tassels used as wall decoration.

  “Do you like my Bohemian style?”

  “Very much so,” he replies.

  She regards her guests again. “Do either of you have any notion why so few of the people with your gift are female?” As she says this, she looks directly at the short man, who says, “No.” The answer collides with the other one’s response.

  “I don’t believe that is the case at all,” he says. “You see …”

  But she is off on a different topic, the persecution, as she calls it, of spiritualism by the church-going officials of Toronto. In a few minutes she winds down, and silence threatens to reassert itself until the taller man rushes to fill the gaps in conversation that his companion has left unclaimed. He compliments his hostess on the cleanliness of Toronto’s streets. She replies by denouncing the city again, as an oligarchy of Capitalists and clergy, dividing her opprobrium equally between the two categories.

  “I cannot abide their ignorance— no, that is the wrong word, their contempt— for Democratic Ideals,” she says. She rants against the misguided fools at moderate length, allowing thin splinters of her own story to poke through the invective. She lets drop that she is no longer married and earns her living doing dressmaking at home. The vocal American thinks: That explains the curtain, which can be drawn to divide the space in two, creating one chamber with only the chairs and the big table, the smaller one with abundant cushions, a clothes tree and a painted screen.

  He politely offers to bring her up to date about the spiritualist progress being made in Buffalo, again trying to compliment the Canadians, going so far as to make mention of the famous Fox sisters, who gave the modern movement its first push by their remarkable communications with the Other World almost a century earlier. “Were they not born in your own state?” he asks unnecessarily. “Or am I thinking of Quebec?” When the hostess does not respond to this attempt to inject the relevant history with female participation, he pushes right into the present and the great regard in which the work of Doctor Albert Durrant Watson is held across the border.

  Missus Denison replies: “One might say that indirectly he is what brings us together at this time. Those of us who have been associated with him in Progressive Thought and Psychical Research Work have such confidence in him, and love for him, that I can barely convey it to you with accuracy. I remember how I gasped when I first read The Twentieth Plane and came upon the words that Walt spoke to him from the Other Side. One sentence in particular is preserved exactly in my memory.” She shuts her eyes for a moment and changes her voice slightly to indicate quotation. “‘What a solemn tread I had when on Earth, as I walked down the corridors of that too short time on the Fifth Plane, but, by God, I sent echoes of Truth flying, which will resound to the end of time.’” Her eyes open. “You will find that on page sixty-four.”

  The tall man is impressed; the short one wears an unfocused gaze as though he were in a trance already, though he suddenly jumps slightly— a shiver suggesting that he expects something to happen. But it is only the sound of the day’s post, bills no doubt, falling to the floor through the letter-slot.

  “Doctor Watson is indeed an asset,” says the talkative one. “I have naturally studied his work with admiration for its voluminousness and sincerity. In short, his messages are lofty, though I confess that I sometimes find them vague and unevidential.”

  “In what way?”

  “In his excessive inclination toward the sheer illustriousness of those made contact with. This avoidance of the spirits of ordinary people greatly disfigures his work.” He can see the remark is somewhat disturbing to his hostess, and adds, “At least, this is my own view. I grant that this may have less to do with the control than with the mediumship being employed.” (The other guest betrays no reaction.)

  “No, you are correct in one quite real sense,” Flora says. “Being himself a poet of such superb sensitivity, Doctor Watson is naturally attracted to his peers who have passed. Thus the transcripts of his communications with Shelley, Coleridge and so on.”

  “I confess it, Madam, I know very little of verse myself.”

  “But you know our beloved Walt?”

  “Certainly the name and the”—he seeks the proper word—“standing. But I cannot claim to have read his work at length.” He fumbles about for other names but trails off amid the sounds in Carlton Street, where motorcars have suddenly grown louder.

  “Then you still have ahead of you the pleasure of the immortal Leaves in its magnificent entirety!”

  The man avoids replying, but asks whether she herself had ever met the poet when he was on Earth.

  “Alas, I did not. But I have had the benefit of knowing many who did, including the one who knew him best: dear Horace Traubel, his spirit-child, chronicler and amanuensis, who died while visiting with our Canadian circle at Bon Echo. You have not asked, however, whether I have met with Walt since his crossing— for I have done so, at the Watson home. It was one of the most profound moments of my life, if not indeed the most meaningful one of all. Ever since then I have reflected on it almost daily, and have concluded that he wished to address me individually, privately you might say, so as to entrust me with information that for some reason he did not feel could be given me in the presence of the particular group gathered at the Watsons’. That is what led me to extend the invitation that you have accepted so kindly.”

  At this, the tall man smiles while the short one, who is beginning to look mighty uncomfortable in his stiff collar, nods in the affirmative. “Within our means, we will go any distance to seek the truth,” says the spokesman of the pair.

  With that, Flora quickly stands up, causing the two men to do likewise. “So, then,” she says heartily. “Let us see if Walt Whitman is receiving callers.”

  She draws the linen window draperies just as a streetcar totters out of sight. Then she extinguishes all the electric lights, puts candles around the room and pulls the curtain closed so as to divide the room in two. The three figures gather their chairs round the table. The taller man, known as the control, says, “The medium will now enter into a trance state.”

  As though on command, his partner immediately shuts his eyes and begins breathing deeply in a slow rhythm. After a minute or two, the sound of his respiration starts to fade until it becomes inaudible and he himself motionless. At that point the cont
rol withdraws his billfold from his inside breast pocket and reveals a piece of card to which four pins are affixed. He extracts one of the pins and jabs the point into the medium’s left hand. The puncture seems to have no effect. Then he sticks in a second pin and finally, switching his attention to the medium’s right hand, does likewise with the two remaining ones, before withdrawing all four. The medium’s eyes remain closed and he makes no move or sound. A thin trickle of blood on the left hand is the only sign that the pins have actually penetrated the flesh.

  The control unties the parcel, revealing a small sheet of ordinary plate glass. “We are ready,” he says. Flora and the outgoing one sit with their palms on the tabletop. The medium for his part rests his fingertips on the glass, to which a Ouija pointer has been affixed, and begins with a sort of incantation that is in effect an attempt to find the correct address. This is the first time so far that he has spoken more than a word or two. His voice is deeper than those brief previews have led Flora to expect, and there is an odd quality about it: not ethereal but certainly distant, as though the sound being received in this room, as on a crystal set perhaps, indeed originates on a different plateau of reality. He speaks of such matters as the love of all beings for one another, and continues speaking until a sudden change comes over him. It is as though someone else whom the others cannot hear has joined in, allowing two spirits to converse with each other through a single mind.

  The medium’s eyes are open now and his finger takes direction from the Other World, making the pointer alight on one letter after another, quickly but in clusters of movement, as though its animating force were pausing normally between words and at the ends of the sentences. The medium utters groups of words aloud as he sees them formed, letter by letter, on the apparatus.

  “To dare is the thing I have always enjoyed most,” the spirit is telling him through the letters— telling them all. “I wrote free verse because I could write no other. Did not have that kind of education. Technique failed me when I desired it most. I am not sorry that I wrote in the pure, native, glistening state as it came from the mine of my mind, and lived as poetry that the world, in some cases justly and in other cases unjustly, has immortalized.”

  Flora is excited the second she recognizes whose spirit is communicating with them, even though she is mildly surprised at the spirit’s point of view with respect to what had been his earthly labor. Coming as it does, character by character, the process allows various levels of meaning to be appreciated.

  She knows that she is expected not to speak during the encounter, but her heart is crying out to learn the great animating answer to her theory about Horace that only Walt can provide, as Horace has never yet responded to her summonses (perhaps it is still too early, as he may not have completed the transition). It is this very secret about the state of Horace’s spirit that she knows must flourish somewhere within Walt’s. The event, however, concludes too soon, after it becomes apparent that either the medium or the subject is not fully open and that some countervailing force might be impeding free transmission of the natural currents.

  To Flora certainly and perhaps to the two men as well, an hour and a half feels like only a few moments. The last utterances that the pointer can signify so haltingly are heavy with melancholy. “I feel the solemnity of the moment greatly, and in parting I will say a few words to the soul of the Universe: Father, lover of all children, though we are encased in physical garments that obstruct the wider, more intense and clear light with which we hear and see, bend a little closer to all of us. Never have I seen, from this pale existence, more serene and worthy souls than those who hear my words at this moment, so beneath the fitful light of yonder star, as it enmeshes itself in the substance of the children who are sons and daughters of Yours, Father, be with them so that they may know that at the helm of life is a Captain whose name is Love. Amen.”

  Then the subject seems to change abruptly, and Flora becomes increasingly aware that the spirit is speaking to her directly, without reference to the others present.

  “I am certain that all you have done thus far is like the music of Niagara …”

  This comes through even more slowly, the letters widely spaced, as though the voice were rapidly losing strength or perhaps even the will. Then comes this: “Good-bye.”

  The medium’s face, which during the trance seemed almost featureless and free of anxiety or worldly attention of any kind, slowly resumes its original appearance.

  There is a moment in which the three people look straight ahead and then glance at one another silently. Then come thanks and other courtesies, and Flora finds herself resenting the reassertion of earthly demands.

  She asks the gentlemen if they wish a taxi to return them to the station, but they have only to walk the few steps to Yonge and board a southbound streetcar. They find places near the back and sit in silence until they are past Dundas Street. Then the outgoing one says, “That was odd, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” his friend replies.

  “She is far from being a reticent woman, but there is much that she is not telling us, don’t you think?”

  The other man says nothing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS BOOK IS THE REVERSE OF A NON-FICTION NOVEL in that it is fiction that exploits some conventions of non-fiction, rather than vice versa. It borrows from With Walt Whitman in Camden by Horace Traubel, published in nine volumes between 1905 and 1996. In a great many instances, the dialogue I attribute to Whitman and Traubel was actually spoken by them, though in many or most places I have changed it either slightly or fundamentally, and of course have tried to match its tone the rest of the time, when writing without benefit of Traubel’s jottings. Anyone seeking to know Whitman owes an incalculable debt to Traubel and his posthumous editors and publishers down through the years, and perhaps none more so than me. But I have re-imagined the whole range of principal characters and given Walt, Horace, Pete, Bucke, Anne and Flora, as well as the group that conspired against Lincoln, new or at least greatly altered personalities.

  As this is indeed a novel, with all such attendant liberties, conjectures, transpositions and imaginative untruths, it will be of no interest or use whatever to Whitman scholars, which I regret, for I found many of their books to be indispensable. I have relied especially on two of the latest biographies, Walt Whitman, A Gay Life by Gary Schmidgall (1997) and Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself by Jerome Loving (1999). Also particularly useful were Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural History by David S. Reynolds (1995) and Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War by Ernest B. Furgurson (2004). With some major exceptions and a number of minor ones, the facts concerning the man whose friends called him Wilkes are much as set out in Michael W. Kauffman’s groundbreaking analytical study American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (2004) and James L. Swanson’s driving narrative Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (2006). I also gained much from Dixie & the Dominion: Canada, the Confederacy and the War for the Union by Adam Mayers (2003).

  When I was at work on this book, many of my literary colleagues were writing essays on the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Walt Whitman’s Secret is my own modest if now somewhat belated contribution to this discourse.

  Walt Whitman’s Secret is George Fetherling’s third novel and fourth book-length fiction. He has also published many works of poetry, travel narrative and memoir. He lives in Vancouver and Toronto.

  Copyright © 2010 George Fetherling

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2010 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.


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  Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Fetherling, George

  Walt Whitman’s secret : a novel / George Fetherling.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-37431-8

  I. Title.

  PS8561.E834W35 2010 C813′.54 C2009-905058-7

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