Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892. November Boughs ; from Complete Poetry and Collected Prose
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

| Table of Contents for this work |
| All on-line databases | Etext Center Homepage |

GEORGE FOX (AND SHAKSPERE)

   While we are about it, we must almost inevitably go back to the origin of the Society of which Elias Hicks has so far prov'd to be the most mark'd individual result. We must revert to the latter part of the 16th, and all, or nearly all of that 17th century, crowded with so many important historical events, changes, and personages. Throughout Europe, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were unusually arous'd -- (some would say demented.) It was a special age of the insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were hung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an age of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only to think of it -- that age! its events, persons -- Shakspere just dead, (his folios publish'd, complete) -- Charles 1st, the shadowy spirit and the solid block! To sum up all, it was the age of Cromwell!

   As indispensable foreground, indeed, for Elias Hicks, and perhaps sine qua non to an estimate of the kind of man, we must briefly transport ourselves back to the England of that period. As I say, it is the time of tremendous moral and political agitation; ideas of conflicting forms, governments, theologies, seethe and dash like ocean storms, and ebb and flow like mighty tides. It was, or had been, the time of the long feud between the Parliament and the Crown. In the


-1245-


midst of the sprouts, began George Fox -- born eight years after the death of Shakspere. He was the son of a weaver, himself a shoemaker, and was "converted" before the age of 20. But O the sufferings, mental and physical, through which those years of the strange youth pass'd! He claim'd to be sent by God to fulfil a mission. "I come," he said, "to direct people to the spirit that gave forth the Scriptures." The range of his thought, even then, cover'd almost every important subject of after times, anti-slavery, women's rights, &c. Though in a low sphere, and among the masses, he forms a mark'd feature in the age.

   And how, indeed, beyond all any, that stormy and perturb'd age! The foundations of the old, the superstitious, the conventionally poetic, the credulous, all breaking -- the light of the new, and of science and democracy, definitely beginning -- a mad, fierce, almost crazy age! The political struggles of the reigns of the Charleses, and of the Protectorate of Cromwell, heated to frenzy by theological struggles. Those were the years following the advent and practical working of the Reformation -- but Catholicism is yet strong, and yet seeks supremacy. We think our age full of the flush of men and doings, and culminations of war and peace; and so it is. But there could hardly be a grander and more picturesque and varied age than that.

   Born out of and in this age, when Milton, Bunyan, Dryden and John Locke were still living -- amid the memories of Queen Elizabeth and James First, and the events of their reigns -- when the radiance of that galaxy of poets, warriors, statesmen, captains, lords, explorers, wits and gentlemen, that crowded the courts and times of these sovereigns still fill'd the atmosphere -- when America commencing to be explor'd and settled commenc'd also to be suspected as destin'd to overthrow the old standards and calculations -- when Feudalism, like a sunset, seem'd to gather all its glories, reminiscences, personalisms, in one last gorgeous effort, before the advance of a new day, a new incipient genius -- amid the social and domestic circles of that period -- indifferent to reverberations that seem'd enough to wake the dead, and in a sphere far from the pageants of the court, the awe of any personal rank or charm of intellect, or literature, or the varying excitement


-1246-


of Parliamentarian or Royalist fortunes -- this curious young rustic goes wandering up and down England.

   George Fox, born 1624, was of decent stock, in ordinary lower life -- as he grew along toward manhood, work'd at shoemaking, also at farm labors -- loved to be much by himself, half-hidden in the woods, reading the Bible -- went about from town to town, dress'd in leather clothes -- walk'd much at night, solitary, deeply troubled ("the inward divine teaching of the Lord") -- sometimes goes among the ecclesiastical gatherings of the great professors, and though a mere youth bears bold testimony -- goes to and fro disputing -- (must have had great personality) -- heard the voice of the Lord speaking articulately to him, as he walk'd in the fields -- feels resistless commands not to be explain'd, but follow'd, to abstain from taking off his hat, to say Thee and Thou, and not bid others Good morning or Good evening -- was illiterate, could just read and write -- testifies against shows, games, and frivolous pleasures -- enters the courts and warns the judges that they see to doing justice -- goes into public houses and market-places, with denunciations of drunkenness and money-making -- rises in the midst of the church-services, and gives his own explanations of the ministers' explanations, and of Bible passages and texts -- sometimes for such things put in prison, sometimes struck fiercely on the mouth on the spot, or knock'd down, and lying there beaten and bloody -- was of keen wit, ready to any question with the most apropos of answers -- was sometimes press'd for a soldier, (him for a soldier!) -- was indeed terribly buffeted; but goes, goes, goes -- often sleeping out-doors, under hedges, or hay stacks -- forever taken before justices -- improving such, and all occasions, to bear testimony, and give good advice -- still enters the "steeple-houses," (as he calls churches,) and though often dragg'd out and whipt till he faints away, and lies like one dead, when he comes-to -- stands up again, and offering himself all bruis'd and bloody, cries out to his tormenters, "Strike -- strike again, here where you have not yet touch'd! my arms, my head, my cheeks." -- Is at length arrested and sent up to London, confers with the Protector, Cromwell, -- is set at liberty, and holds great meetings in London.

   Thus going on, there is something in him that fascinates


-1247-


one or two here, and three or four there, until gradually there were others who went about in the same spirit, and by degrees the Society of Friends took shape, and stood among the thousand religious sects of the world. Women also catch the contagion, and go round, often shamefully misused. By such contagion these ministerings, by scores, almost hundreds of poor travelling men and women, keep on year after year, through ridicule, whipping, imprisonment, &c. -- some of the Friend-ministers emigrate to New England -- where their treatment makes the blackest part of the early annals of the New World. Some were executed, others maim'd, par-burnt, and scourg'd -- two hundred die in prison -- some on the gallows, or at the stake.

   George Fox himself visited America, and found a refuge and hearers, and preach'd many times on Long Island, New York State. In the village of Oysterbay they will show you the rock on which he stood, (1672,) addressing the multitude, in the open air -- thus rigidly following the fashion of apostolic times. -- (I have heard myself many reminiscences of him.) Flushing also contains (or contain'd -- I have seen them) memorials of Fox, and his son, in two aged white-oak trees, that shaded him while he bore his testimony to people gather'd in the highway. -- Yes, the American Quakers were much persecuted -- almost as much, by a sort of consent of all the other sects, as the Jews were in Europe in the middle ages. In New England, the cruelest laws were pass'd, and put in execution against them. As said, some were whipt -- women the same as men. Some had their ears cut off -- others their tongues pierc'd with hot irons -- others their faces branded. Worse still, a woman and three men had been hang'd, (1660.) -- Public opinion, and the statutes, join'd together, in an odious union, Quakers, Baptists, Roman Catholics and Witches. -- Such a fragmentary sketch of George Fox and his time -- and the advent of `the Society of Friends' in America.

   Strange as it may sound, Shakspere and George Fox, (think of them! compare them!) were born and bred of similar stock, in much the same surroundings and station in life -- from the same England -- and at a similar period. One to radiate all of art's, all literature's splendor -- a splendor so dazzling that he


-1248-


himself is almost lost in it, and his contemporaries the same -- his fictitious Othello, Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, as real as any lords of England or Europe then and there -- more real to us, the mind sometimes thinks, than the man Shakspere himself. Then the other -- may we indeed name him the same day? What is poor plain George Fox compared to William Shakspere -- to fancy's lord, imagination's heir? Yet George Fox stands for something too -- a thought -- the thought that wakes in silent hours -- perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought latent in the human soul. This is the thought of God, merged in the thoughts of moral right and the immortality of identity. Great, great is this thought -- aye, greater than all else. When the gorgeous pageant of Art, refulgent in the sunshine, color'd with roses and gold -- with all the richest mere poetry, old or new, (even Shakspere's) -- with all that statue, play, painting, music, architecture, oratory, can effect, ceases to satisfy and please -- When the eager chase after wealth flags, and beauty itself becomes a loathing -- and when all worldly or carnal or esthetic, or even scientific values, having done their office to the human character, and minister'd their part to its development -- then, if not before, comes forward this over-arching thought, and brings its eligibilities, germinations. Most neglected in life of all humanity's attributes, easily cover'd with crust, deluded and abused, rejected, yet the only certain source of what all are seeking, but few or none find -- in it I for myself clearly see the first, the last, the deepest depths and highest heights of art, of literature, and of the purposes of life. I say whoever labors here, makes contributions here, or best of all sets an incarnated example here, of life or death, is dearest to humanity -- remains after the rest are gone. And here, for these purposes, and up to the light that was in him, the man Elias Hicks -- as the man George Fox had done years before him -- lived long, and died, faithful in life, and faithful in death.