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Whitman's Estrangement from the Costelloe-Smith Family

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Whitman's Estrangement from the Costelloe-Smith Family Volume 17 Number 3 ( 2000) pps. 91-120 "Don't let us talk of that anymore": Whitman's Estrangement from the Costelloe-Smith Family Joann P. Krieg ISSN 0737-0679 (Print) ISSN 2153-3695 (Online) Copyright © 2000 Joann P Krieg Recommended Citation Krieg, Joann P. ""Don't let us talk of that anymore": Whitman's Estrangement from the Costelloe- Smith Family." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 17 (Winter 2000), 91-120. https://doi.org/ 10.13008/2153-3695.1579 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in Walt Whitman Quarterly Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "DON'T LET US TALK OF THAT ANYMORE": WHITMAN'S ESTRANGEMENT FROM THE COSTELLOE-SMITH FAMILY JOANN P. KruEG IN THE SUMMER of 1891 Dr. Richard M. Bucke visited England on two matters of business: the possible manufacture there of a gas and water meter invented by his brother-in-law, and a volume of essays on Walt Whitman for which he hoped to find a publisher. While there, he made use of a letter of introduction provided by Whitman to meet Alfred Tennyson and visited some of Whitman's English friends. The circle of friends included the family of Robert Pearsall Smith (1827-1898) and his married daughter Mary Costelloe (pronounced with the accent on the first syllable), to whom Whitman had been close when the family lived in Pennsylvania. After visiting the Smiths and Costelloes in Lon­ don, Bucke wrote to Whitman and Horace Traubel. His letters hint darkly at an alteration in their affections for Whitman and promise a fuller explanation to be given in person. 1 Whitman had suspected such an alteration, for there had been no letters from any of the Smiths for four months prior to the doctor's visit. 2 His suspicions gave rise to various speculations: perhaps his in­ advertent omission of their names from a Lippincott's article that men­ tioned some of his ardent supporters, or perhaps evil stories, of the type he insisted had followed him for years, were circulating in England and had caused them to turn away (WWC 8:394-395). But when the doctor told Whitman in person the particulars of his encounters with various members of the family, there was still no definite answer as to why they had changed, only the fact that they had done so. Except for one very friendly letter sUDsequent to Bucke's visit, from the son Logan Smith, there was never again any exchange between the family and the poet.3 Bucke's letters and his report tell us just as much as Whitman ever knew of the matter, and the Smiths have existed for Whitman scholars mainly in footnotes that offer only sketchy outlines of this remarkable family.4 To Whitman, however, they loomed large, and the loss of their friendship hurt him deeply. With the recent publication of the final books of Horace Traubel's record of conversations with Whitman, we can gauge for the first time the depth of that hurt as we trace the poet's recurring references to the matter and his confusion concerning it. Traubel's ac- 91 count ofBucke's report runs for almost four pages, describing Whitman as close to tears and finally bursting out, like Lear bemoaning Cordelia's banishment, "Don't let us talk of that anymore."5 To Traubel he had already admitted that the matter was "painful," but he knew he had to put it behind him without mourning since there was "not a beam of light" by which he could illuminate it: "It is, I suppose, one of the sev­ eral mysteries you fellows will one day, many days, have to clean up for me" (WWC 8:414). Readers of Whitman's correspondence, his daybooks, and his con­ versations with Horace Traubel, can piece together the story of this aborted friendship but are left as bewildered as the poet himself was by its abrupt termination, unable to "clean up" the mystery. Only by ven­ turing beyond the Whitman-related materials does one learn that the members of the Smith family authored at least forty published works and are the subjects of almost a dozen volumes. The attention that has been lavished on them oy biographers is not undeserved for they were, for the most part, remarkable individuals, and the number and extent of their contacts with notable persons in England and on the continent foreshorten the now current adage that only six degrees of separation exist between any two supposed strangers. To enter the world of the Pearsall Smiths is to stumble unawares into the most select literary and political society of the modem period. But since our purpose here is to elucidate the break-up of the relationship between the Smiths and Whit­ man, we shall only tangentially trace Whitman's influence on some in the wide circle of their kindred and friends. As to method, it would seem most useful to follow Dr. Bucke's analytical mode and, using some of his own words, consider the possible motive of each member of the family for the change of heart that ended the friendship between the Smiths and Whitman, before revealing the actual cause. 1. "The truth is, there is little change, except in Mrs. Costelloe."6 Mary Smith (1864-1945)-or, as the family preferred, Mary Whitall Smith-first read Leaves of Grass with no small degree of shock while studying at Smith College. There is a revealing glimpse of the way the book was passed from woman to woman in the 1880s in Mary's admis­ sion that it was one of her tutors who lent her the book, but with the caution not to speak of having read it. Mary piously informed her mother that, having been forewarned, she was able to avoid reading the worst parts. A few months later, however, she read the entire book and in a rush of enthusiasm began to extol its author in letters to her parents. Some years later, after she had married, Mary wrote in a letter to her mother how after reading Whittnan she solemnly took as her motto, "Henceforth I ordain myself loosed of all limits and imaginary lines / Going where I list, my own Master, total and absolute."7 It was a motto she acted upon. 92 Numerous published versions exist of how the first meeting be­ tween Whitman and the Smith family came about. One version, told by one of Mary's great granddaughters, says that Robert Smith had invited Whitman to lunch at their Germantown home in the suburbs of Phila­ delphia because he wished to please his daughter when she came home for a Christmas break.8 Mary's brother Logan, however, writing in 1937, remembers it as an Easter visit in 1882 that lasted a month!9 Henry Bryan Binns's 1905 biography of Whitman pays considerable attention to the friendship between Whitman and the Smith family, which may be the result of a personal acquaintance, since members of the family had by then been living in Binns's native England for some time. Binns claims that at Mary's insistence her father drove her to Camden, where Whitman, in the Stevens Street home of George and Louisa Whitman, received Mary's adulation "with a kindly, affectionate amusement. "10 And, according to Binns, the invitation to come to Germantown that very day for an extended visit was spontaneously offered. Whitman is said to have yielded at least partly because of the handsome horse and carriage the Smiths had left waiting and which he glimpsed from the front window. A letter from Mary to her mother the following March, 1883, expresses her wish "to have W.W. one night with us," and recalls her excitement at going to meet him for the first time: "Theophile Gautier, when he first went to see Victor Hugo, fainted at his front doorstep. I did not faint on the marble steps of the little Camden house, but I shall never forget my feelings" (MB 25). Whatever the circumstances of that first meeting, a short stay in Germantown at Christmas, 1882, followed by another at the arrival of the new year are indicated in Whitman's daybook and in his correspon­ dence. 11 They were the first of many such visits, one for as long as a month (which accounts for Logan Smith's remembrance), most insti­ gated by Mary and her father, as in November of 1884 when Robert asked Mary what he could do to make her Thanksgiving vacation happy, and Mary responded, "Persuade Mr. Whitman to come over!"12 Mary's mother, Hannah Whitall Smith (1832-1911), remained as disapproving of the poet of Leaves of Grass as she had been when she first warned her daughter against reading his work, claiming he "must be perfectly horrid as a man." Hannah's feelings about men-that they were generally "horrid"-led her to further counsel Mary against ad­ mitting to having read Whitman for fear she would incite "impure" thoughts of herself in the minds of "some young men." "If thee knew," she wrote, "more of men and their overpowering passions thee would understand how inflammatory such things as W. W. has written must necessarily be to many men, in fact to most."13 Mary defended her hero's morality by pointing out that "he means that the sexual act should never take place except with direct reference to the child who is to be 93 the result.
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