Elizabeth Leavitt Keller - Walt Whitman in Mickle Street

Elizabeth Leavitt Keller was born at Buffalo, N. Y., on November 3,1839. Both her parents were descended from the first settlers of thiscountry, and each in turn came to Buffalo in its early days, her mother,Sarah Ellis, by private conveyance in 1825, and her father, James S.Leavitt, by way of the newly opened Erie Canal in 1834.

Elizabeth was the second daughter. In the spring of 1841 she was takento Niagara Falls, and all her childhood recollections are clusteredaround that place. Returning to Buffalo in 1846, her father opened abook-bindery, and later added a printing office and stationery store.

At nineteen years of age Elizabeth Leavitt was married to WilliamWallace Keller, of Little Falls, N. Y. Seven years later she became awidow.

Her natural instinct for nursing was developed during the Civil War andthe years that followed, but the time and opportunity for professionaltraining did not come until 1876, when, her two children being providedfor, she was free to apply for admission to the school for nursesconnected with the Women's Hospital in Philadelphiaone of the threesmall training schools then existing in the United States.

Before her course was finished her younger sister died. Mrs. Keller leftthe hospital to take care of the five motherless children, and it wasnot until ten years later that she was free to resume her training. Whenshe graduated she was a grandmotherthe only one, it need scarcely besaid, in the class.

While nursing her patient, Walt Whitman, during his last illness, shelearnt much about his personality and home life, and much also about hisunselfish friend and housekeeper, Mrs. Davis. The desire to tell thetruth about the whole caseso often misunderstood or distortedgrewstronger with the passing years, and finally Mrs. Keller entered an oldladies' home in her own city, where she would have leisure to carry outher design. Here the book was commenced and completed. "After numerousstruggles and disappointments," she writes, "my second great desiretoset Mrs. Davis in her true lighthas been fulfilledthis time by agreat-grandmother!"

It is not often that a great-grandmother, after a long life of serviceto others, sees her first book published on her eighty-second birthday.

Mrs. Keller uses her pen as if she were twenty or thirty years younger.Her letters are simple but cheery, her outlook on life contented but inno way obscured. Not deliberately, but through a natural gift, sheconveys vivid impressions of the world as it now appears to her, just asshe conveys so unpretentiously but unforgettably in her book the wholeatmosphere of Walt Whitman's world, when it had been narrowed to thelittle frame house in Mickle Street, and finally to a bed of sufferingin one room of that little house.

Whatever else her book may be, it is an extraordinary instance ofrevelation through simplicity; the picture stands out with all itsdetails, not as a work of conscious art, but assuredly as a work thatthe artist, the student of life and of human nature, will be glad tohave.

CHARLES VALE

Had it ever occurred to me that the time might come when I should feelimpelled to write something in regard to my late patient, Walt Whitman,I should have taken care to be better prepared in anticipation; wouldhave kept a personal account, jotted down notes for my own use, observedhis visitors more closely, preserved all my correspondence with Dr.Bucke, and recorded items of more or less interest that fade from memoryas the years go by. Still, I have my diary, fortunately, and can be trueto dates.

After I had been interviewed a number of times, and had answered variousquestions to the best of my knowledge and belief, I was surprised to seeseveral high-flown articles published, all based on the meagreinformation I had furnished, and all imperfect and unsatisfactory.

Interviewers seemed to look for something beyond me; to wait expectantlyin the hope that I could recall some unusual thing in Mr. Whitman'seccentricities that I alone had observed; words that I alone had heardhim speak; opinions and beliefs I alone had heard him express; anythingremarkable, not before given to the public. They wanted the sensationaland exclusive, if possible. I suppose that was natural.

But it set me thinking that if my knowledge was of any value or interestto others, why not write a truthful story myself, instead of having mywords enlarged upon, changed and perverted? Simple facts are surelybetter than hasty exaggerations.

I have done what I could. One gentleman (Mr. James M. Johnston, ofBuffalo), who has read the manuscript, and for whose opinion I have thegreatest regard, remarked as he returned it: "It appears to me that yourmain view in writing this was to exonerate Mrs. Davis."

He had discovered a fact I then recognized to be the truth.

My greatest fear is that I may have handled the whole truth toofreelywithout gloves.

E. L. K.

I write this book
in loving memory of
three of the most kind-hearted,
unselfish and capable people I ever knew.
I dedicate It
to
ALEX. McALISTER, M.D.

Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honored middle-age,
Nor victories of politics or war;
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame like fresher, balmier air,
As the days take on a mellower light,
And the apple at last hangs really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all,
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

WALT WHITMAN

"She hath wrought a good work on me.... This also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her."ST. MARK XIV: 6, 9.

"Whitman with the pen was one manWhitman in private life was another man."THOMAS DONALDSON.

Someone has said: "A veil of silence, even mystery, seems to have shutout from view the later home life of Walt Whitman."

There is no reason for this, but if it be really so, the veil cannot belifted without revealing in a true light the good womanMary OakesDavisso closely connected with the poet's later years, and of whom heoften spoke as "my housekeeper, nurse and friend."

Mrs. Davis's life from the cradle to the grave was one of self-sacrificeand devotion to others. Her first clear recollection was of a blind oldwoman to whom her parents had given a home. In speaking of this shesaid: "I never had a childhood, nor did I realize that I had the rightto play like other children, for at six years of age 'Blind Auntie' wasmy especial charge. On waking in the morning my first thought was ofher, and then I felt I must not lie in bed another minute. I arosequickly, made my own toilet and hastened to her." She continued with adetailed account of the attention daily given to "Auntie," how she puton her stockings and shoes, and handed her each article of clothing asit was needed; how she brought fresh water for her ablutions, combed herhair and made her presentable for the table; how at all meals she sat byher side to wait upon her, and how, after helping her mother with thedishes, she walked up and down the sidewalk until schooltime to give"Auntie" her exercise, the walks being repeated when school was over.