Puritan ideas and a revolt against the Puritan
tendency to solidify ideas into authoritarian the-
ology. Thus, ‘‘whereas the Puritans had ‘puri-
fied’ the church of prayer-books, vestments and
music, the Quakers wished to go one step further
and purify the church of clergy.’’ They wished to
maintain an openness to the source of religious
illumination. They firmly believed that God
did speak directlyto individualsand that a com-
munity of believers was possible without the
intervention of ecclesiastic authority. Just as
the Quakers went beyond Puritanism, however,
Whitman went beyond Quakerism, recognizing
both his differences and his likenesses to the
followers of the Inner Light.
The purpose of this article is to summarize
the facts of Whitman’s relationship to Quaker-
ism and to define at least three basic kinds
of indebtedness: for what Whitman calls his
Quaker intuition; for the inspirational effect on
Whitman of the Quaker leader, Elias Hicks; and
for the implications of Quakerism to Whitman.
The relationship has not, I think, been fully
summarized and explored for the light it sheds
on Whitman’s work as a creative artist....
There are relatively few biographical facts
concerning Whitman’s Quaker background and
its possible influence on him. This is revealed in
the fact that some critical biographers, John
Burroughs and Gay Wilson Allen, for example,
have almost nothing to say about the Quaker
influence. Others—notably Henry Seidel Canby,
Emory Holloway, Clifton Furness, and F. O.
Matthiessen—do rather generally credit Whit-
man’s mysticism, religious outlook, and human-
itarian principles to Quakerism.
It was from his mother that Whitman was
supposed to have acquired his Quaker tenden-
cies. Louisa Van Velsor was part Quaker in the
sense that her mother, Naomi Williams, came
from Quaker stock and maintained Quaker
ways and sympathies. It is probable that Whit-
man’s maternal grandmother, or her parents,
were barred from Quaker membership for mar-
rying outside the society. Thus, as far as formal
membership is concerned, Whitman was two or
three generations removed from Quaker circles,
and certainly the Whitmans were not Quaker in
any formal or active sense. Yet in later life Whit-
man seems to have been increasingly absorbed
with the desire to pick up threads of influence,
and Quakerism was important to him as one of
these threads.
Another connection with Quakerism men-
tioned by Whitman was the association of his
grandfather with the Quaker leader, Elias Hicks.
Hicks was well known on Long Island. In his
youth he had been a sociable fellow who liked to
dance, go hunting and fishing, and join in the
general merrymaking of young people his age.
He happened at this time to be in a group with
which Whitman’s grandfather was also associ-
ated. Later, when Hicks became well known on
Long Island as a relatively prosperous farmer, a
Quaker leader, and a preacher attracting large
crowds, Whitman’s parents attended some of his
public meetings. Whitman made much in later
years of the influence of Hicks on his family and
himself. He said once, ‘‘It was through my
mother that I learned of Hicks: when she found
I liked to hear of him she seemed to like to
speak.’’
Though the formal connections with Qua-
kerism were few, Whitman picked out the
Quaker influence, slender as it may have been,
to explain the humanitarian and intuitive char-
acteristics in his own nature. His ‘‘Quaker’’
mother is thus made a source of style and inspi-
ration: ‘‘Leaves of Grassis the flower of her
temperament active in me.’’ His father’s antislav-
ery attitude is explained as a result of his being a
follower of Hicks; and all Quakers, Whitman
said, were opposed to slavery. It is interesting
to note, however, that even as an old man, mel-
lowed by this reminiscing, Whitman was forced
to admit the discontinuity and the vagueness of
the Quaker influence in his own general makeup.
He knew he was not, could not be, in fact, a real
Quaker, as he told Horace Traubel.
[Whitman:] ‘‘When I was a young fellow up
on the Long Island shore I seriously
debated whether I was not by spiritual bent a
Quaker?—whether if not one I should not
become one? But the question went its way
again: I put it aside as impossible: I was never
made to live inside a fence.’’ [Traubel:] ‘‘If you
had turned a Quaker wouldLeaves of Grass
ever have been written?’’ [Whitman:] ‘‘It is
more than likely not—quite probably not—
almost certainly not.’’
If Whitman had become a Quaker at the age
of twenty, by Quaker discipline he would have
had to give up going to stage plays and concerts,
to avoid reading ‘‘pernicious’’ books, to give up
any inclination toward accepting a governmen-
tal office, and generally to live simply and not in
‘‘conformity to the vain and changeable fashions
of the world.’’ Instead of adopting any suchA Noiseless Patient Spider