Walt Whitman in Mickle StreetKeller, Elizabeth Leavitt
General
Walt Whitman in Mickle Street
Keller, Elizabeth Leavitt
Poets, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 -- Homes and haunts
One day Warren told him that his brother Harry's Christmas present was a
little boy that he had named for him: Walt Whitman Fritzinger. This
pleased the sick man, and he expressed a wish to see his little
namesake. The child was kept in readiness for a week; then early one
evening, when Mr. Whitman was feeling better than usual, he was sent
for. His nurse brought him over, carried him into the sick room and laid
him in the arms of the old man, who kissed the little fellow, held him a
few minutes and repeated a number of times: "Well, well, Little Walt
Whitman, Little Walt Whitman." There were present the child's mother and
nurse, Mrs. Davis, Warren, and Mrs. Keller, Mr. Whitman's nurse. He
never saw the child again, but often inquired after him, and added a
codicil to his will bequeathing him two hundred dollars. (My name is on
the codicil as witness to the signature.--E. L. K.)
The invalid had never bought himself a new mattress, and the one given
him by Mrs. Davis seven years before--too wide for the bedstead and
extending several inches beyond it at the back--had from long and
constant usage become hollow in the centre, making it difficult to turn
him from one side to the other, for he would often slip back into the
hollow place. Warren once said: "When I come on this side of the bed
you slip away from me." "Ah, Warry," he replied, "one of these fine
mornings I shall slip away from you forever."
One evening a member of the editorial staff of the New York _Evening
Telegram_ visited him. Mr. Whitman knew that he was coming, and had made
up a little roll of his writings to give him. (Mr. Traubel always made
these engagements, met the parties and accompanied them to the house.)
Upon leaving, the gentleman said that the paper had raised a fund
wherewith to purchase flowers for the poet's room. Afterwards learning
that the defective lung made the fragrance of flowers stifling to him,
the paper requested that the money be applied in some other way. Mrs.
Davis suggested a longer bed and a firm, level mattress. This was agreed
to, the money came duly to hand, and the two nurses went together to
select the bed. The one decided upon was a single one, made of oak and
standing at least three inches higher than the old one; the mattress was
of sea-grass. When the useful gift, which was a surprise to Mr. Whitman,
arrived and was being set up--February 22, 1892--Walt was seated for the
last time in his big chair.
Warren said it would be a pity to have this bedstead battered up as the
old one had been--for the old man still kept his cane within reach and
often pounded upon the footboard; so he rigged up a bell in the
anteroom, and carried the wire over the door and into the sick room,
where a drop string came down to the bed. Mr. Whitman found this an
easier way of summoning aid; it was the "quaint bell" mentioned by two
or three writers.
When the patient was settled on the new bed, he looked at Mrs. Davis and
said: "You can have the old one, Mary."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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