Another English Connection: John Cowper Powys, Walt Whitman, and Percy Ives

Abstract

In fall of 1880, Percy L. Ives, newly enrolled art student at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, paid historic visit to Walt Whit- man in home in Stevens Street, Camden, New Jersey, that Whit- man shared with his brother George. Ives appears not to have read any of Whitman's poems at time, although he had read Emerson and Carlyle, as noted in his Commonplace Book after visit (November 17, 1880);1 it was his grandmother, Mrs. Elisa Leggett, who suggested that I had better go across river to Camden to see him.2 With proper sense of his calling, youthful Percy-not yet seventeen-was bold enough to ask whether he could of poet and was permitted to do so. After two-hour session, this first effort significantly drew no critical comment from Whitman, just an open invitation: Sometime when you come again .. . you may be able to make another (Ives 6). The initial sketch does not appear to have survived,3 but Charles E. Feinberg reproduced two later ones, then in his collection, each dated Dec. 6. '81: one is head-and-shoulders portrait, labeled Walter Whitman and other is study of left holding an open book, labeled Walt's hand (Ives 5).4 Though Joann P. Krieg describes these as preliminary sketches for oil portrait of that Ives completed in 1882,5 differences between drawings and oil painting make this claim rather unlikely-especially since Ruth L. Bohan explicitly links oil painting with sketch made on February 12, 1881.6 The por- trait, described at time as a very strongly painted and correctly drawn portrait of Walt Whitman7 was gifted to his grandmother who had encouraged him to visit poet.8 For time painting was displayed in storefront window of Roehm and Wright, an upscale Jewelers and Silversmiths in Detroit, perhaps also through agency of his grandmother (Detroit 8).Recently long-lost third graphite (pencil) drawing from same period, with obvious affinities to sketch of December 6, 1881, and an impeccable provenance, has reappeared (see back cover).9 It is on machine-made woven paper that measures 6.25 by 8.5 inches and is mounted on gray board. Cushing Memorial Library and Archives (Texas AM unlike others, it is also signed by himself, albeit in rather shaky hand. No doubt this is version that both artist and sitter deemed most satisfactory and that therefore merited Whitman's imprimatur in form of his signature. Such explicit evidence of Whitman's approval may explain why Percy Ives kept drawing for himself so long. In any case, we can discern in three portrait drawings (February 12, 1881; December 6, 1881; December 21, 1881) marked progression away from conventional portraiture, as Ives gained confidence and learned to see Whitman-perhaps with some discreet guidance from his subject-as monumental figure, as poet-seer.Ed Folsom has demonstrated significance of Whitman's many illustrations of self in Leaves of Grass11 and makes very persuasive case for Whitman's preference for photographic over other represen- tations of self.12 He cites, for example, comment by recorded in Horace Traubel's With Walt in Camden that pho- tography lets nature have its way whereas the botheration with painters is that they don't want to let nature have its way: they want to make nature let them have their way.13 But he also documents Whit- man's doubts, even anxiety, about disconcerting revelatory powers of photography and thus his need to manipulate (a key word for Folsom) images of himself wherever possible. In particular, he points to implicit contradiction between a poet who celebrated fullness and wholeness of an endlessly diverse self and the images that he chose to have reproduced . …