I begin this letter at 11 [illegible] A.M.
Sunday July 18—sitting in the extra[illegible]d,
airy hall or open sitting room common to the [illegible]ed log
buildings which form so common a style of residences of the moderately "well-off" Southerners—especially of my section, where
saw-mills have not been so plentiful as to favor the building frame houses, and most efforts in
brick-burning have succeeded
badly—producing a very sorry article. (I have not determined, before sitting down, when I will finish this and send it on.) The sun is
shining bright. This is a tolerably flat level place—convenient for getting about. I [illegible]south eastward
through an orchard of low top[illegible] Apple and [illegible]trees. Three hundred yards
from [illegible] house, runs north eastwardly and south westwardly, a ridge,
or line of more or less closely joined knobs, hills, or short transverse ridges about 150 feet high. The ridge runs parallel with the big river
and [illegible]ally divides our valley into a sandstone sub valley nex[illegible] broad
but low Sand mountain; and a sub valley
[illegible] lime land next the river.
Looking [illegible]h [illegible]st[illegible]a new
[illegible]r approaching [illegible] mostly stopped
[illegible]erge[illegible]d a[illegible]er growth
[illegible] young
hickories are no vi[illegible] suggestion
of the presence of the great river 1 ½ miles [illegible] whose
[illegible]lity
or grandeur would [illegible] seriously passed
[illegible] 5 mile long isl[illegible] [illegible]ing low[illegible]
bil[illegible]except tillers [illegible] p[illegible]ts;
divide the[illegible] and gives only about
[illegible]hird [illegible]its volume to[illegible] share.
So, while our ho[illegible] is [illegible]ch if at all
injured by malaria
loc_tb.00766.jpg
and [illegible]y convenient, and is as I call it mighty handy to bread and meat",
we yet have not dire [illegible] from the house any
very lively outlook But a [illegible] minutes travel brings
us to parts even in the level [illegible] from which the
prospects have a quiet or gentle loveliness.
A mountain range north of the river coming right in front of me for two or three miles close to the river and giving back a little right and left presents with its top
and side green or blue (according to season)
a pleasing boundary to the landscape. In the other sub-valley (my term) the big, broad mountain and gentle undulations of the valley itself
present varying pleasing or soothing scenes.
Yet you know mountains whose bigg[illegible]ast might be an elevation of
only [illegible] feet cant [illegible]a striking
or awe-inspiring appearance to any landscape. Most people here live in log
houses—[illegible]a very few years back, we have partly used wooden and earthen chimneys,
as good stone (that we knew to be such) was not very plentiful about the surface, and
nobody undertook to mine for it and then
use several f[illegible]in
brickmaking, Later though have been trying
[illegible]wn sandstone [illegible] i[illegible]
I have [illegible]then out stone [illegible]–an[illegible]eely
dress [illegible]f[illegible] a[illegible]
put up. So you[illegible]he [illegible]e of
q[illegible] man [illegible] with no
[illegible] but a small but zealous) [illegible] one [illegible] I
[illegible]affords [illegible]
so[illegible]es of the [illegible]dge [illegible]h
[illegible]milk, fruit, and poi[illegible] [illegible] away,
(an[illegible]d [illegible] how [illegible], many,
[illegible]ays, and how mu[illegible]d labor.
beca[illegible]e u[illegible]ed). Indeed, I love to [illegible]
about a [illegible] in [illegible] for no
loc_tb.00767.jpg
purpose [illegible] [illegible]k up [illegible]ine knots
[illegible]et them [illegible] is to a wagon wch [illegible]
breathe the[illegible], how delicious [illegible]. This valley of two [illegible]
valleys is about 10 mi long [illegible] miles wide—contains
perhaps 150 grown men The Negroes
are mostly in two clusters
about two or three miles northeast and southwest of my home—they [illegible]
quiet and well behaved—perhaps the grown males of the negroes would number 30 or 40.
Our people are very plain or Democratic in
ways—no aristocracy—little crime—the religious part are old orthodox Baptists and Methodists. Most of our better educated people
are inclined to skepticism, but don't dispute much with the other class so far as I know. (All the above I have written because your letter of
July 131 seems [illegible] for such sketches.
I cant get a good pen point. It would take something like a book to deal
with all the subjects you open for me.)
I had one only brother two years older2—in a former letter3 I said when he was a boy or very young man he was "rude and repellent"—that
only meant his [illegible]ly fault was a teasing or jeering
provoking way that made me fear often [illegible]hat h[illegible]
affection was unsteady and unreliable. He died of sickness
13 years ago—Major in the Confederate
Army. He lived and died at the old homestead 10 South [illegible]f [illegible]
and his family still [illegible] in good circumstances [illegible]
big [illegible] with no [illegible] isolates me
[illegible] them very much. My mother4 was married at 26 and died [illegible] 29, the day
I was born—she [illegible] of a family of[illegible]ters from
Virginia—her mother Motley5—they were
wea[illegible] old families on both [illegible] but her father "raced himself
poor—[illegible]e of her [illegible]us was a Morehead, an
old-time [illegible] of North Carolina.6
loc_tb.00768.jpg
[illegible] was raised
[illegible] manhood
about [illegible]en miles from
Baltimore/Ma7 [illegible]ear—his father8 was
quite [illegible] poor man describe
[illegible]me by an acquaintance last year [illegible]ng
in his old age—near 10[illegible]as tho
not religious yet [illegible]ly one of the most perfect men that ever lived—a great
hunter—a man of large frame and immense strength—a
remarkable pugilist in his young days—they moved to upper East Tennessee—"papa" got a little education—went to building flat and
"keel" boats, and traded to Nashville and New Orleans, and dealt as a settled merchant at various points in
East Tennessee and North Alabama—made a small little fortune for those times, yet paradoxically was considered
rarely honest, candid, liberal—a man of immense vim[illegible]lly settled
high up on a mountain side with a most magnificent proud outlook—adorned his home with buildings, and
orchards of fruit trees and plants (they came quickly into bearingeg in that day of rich fresh soil). His home was somewhat isolated—probably
he lived among his slaves and a few "retainers" of whit[illegible] much like a Scottish Chieftain—yet he was not
righteous nor a conformist
tho transmitting to his heirs [illegible]legacy
his [illegible]t good [illegible]se,
generosity, and spirit. [illegible] for [illegible]time,).
Little Walt9 is perhaps "small" only a[illegible] lacks the draw[illegible]ous flesh has [illegible] sire [illegible]ough—started out as a reformer rather [illegible]—a week after [illegible] he commenced drawing [illegible] moved himself into a Ea[illegible] room (20[illegible]t) and [illegible] stopped and overtur[illegible] a jug of whiskey with which I was only "treating [illegible] neighbors and workmen at threshing time. I shall [illegible] slap him before [illegible]k got[illegible].
J.N.J.Did you ever have to pay [illegible] postage because of a foolscap sheet being too [illegible]maybe it is.
Monday morning [illegible] or could get some rain for the wheat [illegible]her crops—
The largest [illegible]nt from [illegible] the smallest [illegible] means. I am glad you could not[illegible] slowly I came to understand your writing[illegible]a whole—knowing it myself, I am not [illegible] so vain a person as you might suppose—at first I saw the beauty and goodness of[illegible] but not the beauty and goodness of the whole [illegible] it seemed like there must be [illegible]unnecessary matter—I see now you[illegible]et finds each item of the Universe an [illegible]part. Was not the fact almost clearly stated[illegible]Burroughs?10 ☛ Great is (not hard, fatiguing study but) the long persistent scanning which indescribable, impalpable beauty commands.
In that "Post" paper you sent me, I saw you contemplated a possible both writing and speaking for America
hereafter.
"I second the motion". Suppose you "lecture"!
You will draw audiences—you can [illegible] that disposition
to give away all you[illegible]—you can travel, see more of the
world, see [illegible]me and my baby, "publish" yourself
[illegible]our beliefs) through your own personal[illegible]ouldn't
I like to introduce you to a [illegible] audience [illegible]
in a more Judicious and [illegible] than you
loc_tb.00770.jpg
or any one else would look for? But go ahead and do as you think best.
Maybe I am too easy about educating children—it seems to me that spelling and reading [illegible]all that a young person should be compelled to learn—perhaps a little Arithmetic—as for the rest, "wisdom can not be passed from [illegible]ving it to one not having it." All knowledge[illegible] to him who reads well.
(Mrs. Philosopher11 39½ years old—exceedingly neat in p[illegible] as a housekeeper—looked to[illegible] neighborhood for help in "cutt[illegible] contriving"—quick-witted but will not reflect, will not read one page o[illegible] book or anything in ten years, (consequently [illegible], and must be everlastingly vis[illegible] about—one, two, or three miles—day or night—let old "papa" take care of house, housework, babies, chickens, cows &c—never "pouts" half a day, always mixing liveliness, crossness, rude speech, kind speech, industry, laziness, selfishness, unmotherliness (of the grossest), motherliness, a[illegible]ng through the same day, day after day. No looking to the future to fret, or [illegible] and act by steady principles. A good litt[illegible], motherless, (but not brotherless or sist[illegible]—Just to give one's children the strong [illegible]n to work for an honest living [illegible] Was ever[illegible] Philosopher (so charmed and yet so [illegible]ized? And again was there ever so ho[illegible]st a (practical) Philosoph[illegible]
Correspondent:
John Newton Johnson
(1832–1904) was a colorful and eccentric self-styled philosopher from
rural Alabama. There are about thirty letters from Johnson in the Charles E.
Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919 (Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.), but unfortunately there are no replies extant,
although Whitman wrote frequently for a period of approximately fifteen years.
When Johnson wrote for the first time on August 13,
1874, he was forty-two, "gray as a rat," as he would say in another
letter from September 13, 1874: a former Rebel
soldier with an income between $300 and $400 annually, though before the
war he had been "a slaveholding youthful 'patriarch.'"
He informed Whitman in the August 13, 1874, letter
that during the past summer he had bought Leaves of Grass
and, after a momentary suspicion that the bookseller should be "hung for swindling," he discovered the mystery of
Whitman's verse, and "I assure you I was soon 'cavorting' round and asserting
that the $3 book was worth $50 if it could not be replaced, (Now
Laugh)." He offered either to sell Whitman's poetry and turn over to him all
profits or to lend him money. On October 7, 1874,
after describing Guntersville, Alabama, a town near his farm from which he often
mailed his letters to Whitman, he commented: "Orthodoxy flourishes with the usual lack of
flowers or fruit." See
also Charles N. Elliot, Walt Whitman as Man, Poet and
Friend (Boston: R. G. Badger, 1915), 125–130.