`The Slow Fruit is the Best'

A friend happily celebrated his 28th birthday on Monday, and my own 55th arrives in a month, and though I’m supposed to entertain wistfully bittersweet sentiments at such a convergence of events, I’m fairly content to be who and what I am. I’m significantly less stupid than I was at 28, less willful, impulsive and convinced of my own rightness, and those are all consolations. I also enjoy my company more. At last, I can begin to understand some of Walt Whitman’s insights into growing older. To his contemporaries, Whitman always seemed older than his calendar age, prematurely matured and, though childless, somehow fatherly. He was, in good American fashion, a late bloomer – 36 when he published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855. The battlefield nursing he performed during the Civil War accelerated the aging of his demeanor, as did ill health, and by the time he was 45, in 1864, he appeared picturesquely superannuated. He reveled in self-display, and was photographed nearly as often as Abraham Lincoln, so we can chart his maturation. Ever histrionic, Whitman artfully grew into the role of patriarchal poet.

A consistent theme throughout the nine volumes (1.9 million words) of With Walt Whitman in Camden, Horace Traubel’s transcription of the poet’s conversations at his home in Camden, N.J., between 1888 and his death in 1892, is Whitman’s contemplation of aging. Call it rationalization, but he always praises the equanimity of maturity over the cocky bullheadedness of youth. This is from June 13, 1888:

“More and more as I grow old do I see the futility of calculation: refuse myself illusions – try not to get into the habit of expecting certain things at certain times – of planning for tomorrows, the eternal tomorrows, that never come quite as we arrange for them.”

And this, from Aug. 22, 1888: “It is singular how soon some natures come to a head and how long it takes others to ripen, though I believe, as a rule, the slow fruit is the best.”

No wise cracks about “slow fruit,” please. Here’s an especially reassuring remark, from New Year’s Day 1889: “…it’s mainly the slow maturers who mature to stay – mature to grow.”

And this, less reassuring but no less true, from Aug. 31, 1888: “I have heard it said that reason comes with the forties. I should say as to most men, that reason does not come even then – does not come at all – for I am impressed with the general lack of it.”

He said on Aug. 1, 1889, at the age of 70: “…I was a great deal more vehement years ago than I am now – Oh! I know I was! In my old days I take on the usual privilege of years – to go slow, to be less vehement, to trust more to quiet, to composure.”

And, finally, this, on a slightly different subject, from Oct. 2, 1888:

“Anyway you look at it, I’m not a bloomin’ success from the market point of view. I find that with regard to the abridged books I hate ‘em more and more. I hate the idea of being put somewhere with the harm taken out of me, as good house-wives alter Tomcats to make them respectable in the neighborhood.”