OCR Text |
Show WHEN THREE POETS MET. Walt Whitman, Joaquin miller and Richard Henry Stoddard . Their Chat. By chance I saw a street meeting between be-tween three poets Walt Whitman, Joaquin Joa-quin Miller and Richard Henry Stoddard. They all looked it. Their visible linen was clean enough, but their hair was in each case longer than fashion permits ; their clothes had the hang of genius, and their faces were not ordinary. Here were men who had gained fame in their calling. call-ing. Perhaps measurement by a standard stand-ard of dollars is not right, but I couldn't help thinking that if they had been as successful in producing excellent shoes as they were in making good poetry each would be a millionaire. The hard truth was that they were poor. Whitman lives poverty-stricken in Camden, with no more income than when he drove a stage in Broadway. Miller Mil-ler gets more money, but not enough to live in anything like luxury. He has been beated out of the profit of his one prosperous drama ; he has not proved adaptable to newspaper writing, and the sales of his books are not prodigious. He and Whitmrn shook hands very warmly, and stopped in a restaurant to drink sociable glasses of milk punch. The beverages were not excessively alcoholic. "Make mine light." said Miller to the waiter. "Not lighter than mine," said Whitman. Then they 3aw Stoddard passing the window by which they sat, and Miller called him in. Stoddard was better off pecuniarily than they perhaps as a compensation com-pensation for getting rather less of fame. He was living in a moderate degree of luxury, rendered possible by facility and industry in contributing to the press. He had for a year or so provided a column a day for the Evening Mail, fifty per cent, composed of excerpts from new publications, publica-tions, and for that service received $50 a week. His income was augmented by criticisms in weekly journals, prefaces for editions of standard works and occasional pieces in the magazines ; but all of this did not enrich him so much that, when President Cleveland offered a foreign berth to him, he felt like declining. You may wonder what the three poets talked about ; and it is imaginable that they discussed something , aesthetically connected with their works. Judging by the snatches of conversation which could be overheard, they spoke of nothing nearer to a literary matter than a half jocose allusion to the marketable value of their books." Uncle Bill's" New York Letter. |