Читать книгу Walt Whitman in Mickle Street - Elizabeth Leavitt Keller - Страница 12

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"The tide turned when he entered the Mickle Street house."—Thomas Donaldson.

"Whitman had great satisfaction in the managing skill of his housekeeper."—Sidney Morse.

ADDED to "managing skill," Mrs. Davis had patience, perseverance, determination, courage and health; furthermore—having accompanied the Fritzinger family upon a number of ocean trips, undertaken in the hope of benefiting Mrs. Fritzinger—she had shipboard experience which enabled her to make available every inch of space in a house smaller than the one she had left. It was an unpretentious brown frame structure, sadly out of repair, and decidedly the poorest tenement in the block. On the right was a brick house whose strong walls seemed to be holding it up, while on the left was an alley—scarcely more than a gutter—closed from the street by a wooden door.

This narrow passage, filled with ice and snow in the winter, often damp and slippery even in warm weather, was unfit for general use; and as the house was not properly drained, the cellar through its one little window was often flooded from dripping eaves.

Three wooden steps without a banister led from the sidewalk to the front door, which had to be closed to allow those who entered to ascend the stairs. This narrow staircase, an equally narrow hall and two connecting rooms called "the parlors" comprised the first floor of the main building. Between the parlors were folding doors, and each room had an exit into the hall. There were two windows in the front parlor and a single one in the back. Between and under the front windows was an entrance to the cellar, with old-fashioned slanting doors.

The rear and smaller portion of the house was divided into but two apartments, the kitchen below and a sleeping room above. At the back of the kitchen was a small shed, and quite a large yard. Some people believed that this yard, with its pear tree and grape vine, had been the main attraction of the place for Mr. Whitman.

On ascending the staircase, a small landing and the back sleeping room were reached; then, turning about, came more stairs, with a larger landing, part of which had been made into a clothespress. Apart from this landing and a little den, sometimes known as "the anteroom," the upper portion of the main building had only one room. But the two doors in it, and a deep rugged scar across the low ceiling, testified to its having formerly been divided by a partition. As one of the doors was permanently fastened, the only access was through the den, anteroom, or "adjoining apartment," as it was also occasionally called.

In the larger room was a fireplace with a mantel shelf above. There were two windows corresponding with the windows below, while the smaller room or den, reduced to one-half its proper width by some pine shelves and an outjutting chimney, had like the room below but one. The outlook from this window, into which the sun made but a few annual peeps, was the brick wall on one side, the back roof on the other, and a glimpse of the sky.

The situation of the house was anything but inviting, and the locality was one that few would choose to live in. It was near both depot and ferry, and as the tracks were but a block away, or scarcely that, being laid in what would have been the centre of the next street, there was an uninterrupted racket day and night. The noise of the passenger and excursion trains—for the excursions to the coast went by way of Camden—was only a minor circumstance compared with that of the freight trains as they thundered by, or passed and re-passed in making up.

Close at hand was a church with a sharp-toned bell, and a "choir of most nerve-unsettling singers" (Thomas Donaldson); and as if this were not enough, there was at times a most disagreeable odor from a guano factory on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware.

Such was the house to which Mary Davis had now come, and where through the strange, busy days of the next seven years she was destined to be Walt Whitman's indispensable "housekeeper, nurse and friend"—or, from the outsider's point of view, his "single attendant."

The spring of 1885 was far advanced before things were fairly in running order, for from the first there had been no intermission in the poet's erratic mode of living, and Mrs. Davis had been obliged to devote much time to his personal wants. Somehow he had a way of demanding attention which she found it impossible to resist.

Truly she had been hampered on all sides, this faithful Martha-Mary; so many things to be seen to, so many things to handle and rehandle and change about before an established place for them could be found; the strenuous cleaning, for the former tenants had left the place extremely dirty; and the pondering over repairs, and deciding which were absolutely essential and unpostponable, and which could be put off for a little while longer.

She first carpeted, furnished and settled the parlors, intending the back one as the sleeping room for her young charge, until her marriage in the fall, when it could be used as a spare room. But Mr. Whitman had different intentions, for he at once appropriated both rooms, and would not allow the doors separating them to be closed.

One of the front windows became his favorite sitting place, and here he wrote, read his papers and sat while entertaining his friends. He was delighted with these rooms, and in them he enjoyed himself to his heart's content: first in getting things into disorder at once, and then in keeping them so.

The back room, which became kitchen, dining room and sitting room combined, was so compactly filled that many people remarked its close resemblance to the cabin of a ship, in the way of convenience as compared with space. It was lighted by one window, and over the ingrain carpet a strip of stair carpeting made a pathway from the hall to the outer door.

On the sitting room side were a lounge, sewing machine, two rocking chairs, a stand and some small pieces of furniture; on the other was a dining table against the wall, one leaf extended and always set, with the dining chairs pushed under it when not in use; the range—a veritable giant—standing in place of the dwarf it had ousted; a sink with cubby-hole below, crowded to overflowing with pots and kettles, and shelves above loaded with dishes while their enclosing doors were closely hung with kitchen utensils. As the lower shelf only could be reached by hand, a stool (a chair that had lost its back) was kept under a projection of the range.

The shed, where Mr. Whitman's stove was set up, was packed with household goods and chattels, classified and stored ready for momentary use, and around the walls were suspended the extra chairs.

A shelf in the inside cellarway off the hall was the only pantry, and the sides of the cellarway the only tin-cupboard; then for want of a place for the flour barrel, it was left standing opposite the cellar door in the hall. In this part of the house people went by feeling, not by sight, and strangers as a rule always collided with the barrel before entering the kitchen.

The little passage between the back part of the house and the wall of the one adjoining it—simply a pathway to the back entrance of the cellar—Mrs. Davis canopied with old sails and utilized as a laundry. Here she kept her washing bench, tubs and pails, and here she washed and ironed when the weather permitted. This furnished the view from the back parlor window.

The cellar and its hanging shelf had their share of plunder, and here the firewood was sawed and split.

As for pictures, there were more than enough for all the rooms, and between them wall pockets, paper racks and brackets abounded.

Her family of birds—a robin she had rescued from a cat, a pair of turtle doves and a canary—she attached to the kitchen ceiling. She made a little place in the shed for her cat's bed, and found a shelter for a few hens in the small outhouse. Her dog, more aristocratic, slept on the lounge.

On a shelf over the dining table were a clock, some china vases, and a stuffed parrakeet. No wonder that upon entering the house the first thing observed was the over-filled appearance of each small room.

Upon a bracket in the front parlor she placed a model of a ship that had been given to Captain Fritzinger by the maker. This pleased Mr. Whitman exceedingly, for he had often noticed and admired it. He said that the first time he had desired to write anything was when he saw a ship in full sail. He tried to describe it exactly and failed; had often since studied ships in the vain hope of getting the whole beautiful story into words, but had never been able to do so.

The mantels of both parlors Mrs. Davis heaped with shells and curiosities from distant parts of the world. Some of them were rare and valuable.

Such was the inside of the house after it had passed through Mary's transforming hands. There were many things in it that might have been better elsewhere, perhaps. But where? It was only a little house, and Mary had come to it from a larger one, with all her possessions. She had nowhere else to put them now, without losing them. If Mr. Whitman had any sense of being over-crowded, it was his own fault. She had come at his urging—and he had taken the two large parlors on the first floor, and the large front chamber with the anteroom above, entirely for his own use, thus leaving for the two women the kitchen (which he shared with them in its aspect of dining room) and the only remaining room in the house—the little back chamber on the second floor. Into this, they condensed and squeezed their more personal belongings.