The "Labour Prophet"?: Representations of Walt Whitman in the British Nineteenth-Century Socialist Press

Abstract

The s ignificance of Walt Whitman to British socialism has long been recognized: in emerging fin de siecle labor movement, socialist peri- odicals printed articles about him and extracts from his poems; socialist orators spoke of him and quoted from Leaves of Grass ; his poems were set to music, published in labor movement songbooks, and sung at Labor Church meetings; Leaves of Grass was advertised and recommended to socialist readers alongside economic and political publications; he was even featured in a calendar of socialist saints. As M. Wynn Thomas has convincingly argued in relation to Edward Carpenter's Whitman- esque collection of poetry Towards Democracy, these can be seen as acts of translation: Whitman's democratic vision was removed from its American context and reconstructed so that it was applicable to Britain and socialist cause.1 For Whitman, America and were convertible terms, interchangeable conceptually and linguisti- cally.2 Clearly, British commentators did not interpret in this way, and as Thomas observes, it was a ver y heatedly contested term.3 Socialists were one group who incorporated it into their vocabu- lary, and in discourses of this movement, tended to be used either synonymously with or to denote an overarching category which included not only socialism but other movements which worked towards creating a more equal society. In this way, W hitman, who was frequently dubbed of democracy by contemporary critics, was seen to have a special message for labor movement and could be claimed as a poet of British socialism.This essay is part of a larger research project which examines how Whitman was represented, interpreted, and used in socialist publications in late nineteenth century. My aim is to use examples, or speci- mens (to use a W hitmanian term), from three periodicals to give an overview of some of ways in which he was invoked by fin de siecle socialist journalists. It is not always easy to determine what constitutes a socialist publication; at end of nineteenth century, anarchism and socialism were not such distinct ideologies, and it can be difficult to pinpoint where radical liberalism ended and socialism began. For purposes of this study I follow Deborah Mutch in defining socialist periodical in same way that Deian Hopkin defines left-wing press: as papers that espoused socialism or one of its variants and generally regarded themselves as politically on opposite side, so to speak, of conventional press.4 The periodicals selected-Seed-Time, The Labour Prophet, and The Labour Leader -span a period from 1889 (when first number of Seed-Time was published) to 1922 (when The Labour Leader became The New Leader). This gives a sense of progres- sion, showing how socialism developed and how this development had an impact on way that socialist periodicals treated Whitman and literature more generally.These three publications were chosen according to two further criteria. First and most obviously, they had to engage with Whitman and his work. This criterion was not established in an attempt to provide a skewed notion of Whitman's importance but, rather, to show how he was appropriated when he was appropriated. The second consideration was variety, as I felt it would be fruitful to examine journals that served different socialist purposes and had different intended readerships. As journal for Fellowship of New Life (a group interested in religious thought, ethical propaganda, and social reform that gathered around philosopher Thomas Davidson in 1883), Seed-Time is associated with what has been described as the fons et origo of later nineteenth- century ethical socialism of England.5 The Fellowship promoted a form of socialism that prioritized development of individual spirit over state reform, and individualism was not seen as being antithetical to socialism, a philosophy which has strong resonances with Whitman's cel- ebration of both individual and social whole. …