November 1905 (16:138)

Here is a charming and amusing thumbnail sketch of Traubel and the Traubel writing style, by no means flattering.  The editor’s talent for self-deprecation was well-developed!  J. William Lloyd’s article was reprinted from The Ariel of Westwood, Massachusetts.

This Traubel*

            I wonder if any of my readers ever saw, walking the streets of Philadelphia or Camden, a short, stout, handsome man, with a leonine face, full lips, prominent eyes, and a slouch hat pulled carelessly over a bushy head of beautiful white hair, and knew that that man was Horace Traubel, the Boswell of Whitman and editor of The Conservator?  A remarkable little man, this Traubel, yet a great one; a fire of sweet, great-hearted love for man, a boiling pot of words. Almost affectedly rough and careless, few men ever lived more really sensitive, and the rudeness of his terms, at times, is only a mask for the passionate tenderness of his big heart.  Traubel is a poet, a prophet, a communist-socialist, and an incomparable editor of literary gems.  And his devotion to Whitman deserves the world’s gratitude. He was one of the “Old Guard” who made the last days of the great Walt secure.  The only thing I have against Traubel is his style.  He has a style that breaks me all up.  I love the man, but all that is within me kicks at the style.  My soul balks like a bad horse at the hurdle.  And it makes me mad at myself, too, for I believe in individuality, in every man giving his message in his own words, but all the same the effect of this man’s words on me is pathological.  The short, abrupt, solid, sentences and exclamations, all on a level, the over-elaboration and interminable repetitions soon beat my feeble nerves into insensibility.  I am hypnotized, narcotized, and swiftly lose all power to think, understand or remember.  Pleased at first, before long I am conscious only of the desire to get away, and if I persist, I go to sleep.  I am ashamed to confess it, but so it is.  The reason for my writing this is that Traubel sent me for review a lovingly inscribed copy of his Chants Communal.  So I was up against it, and bit by bit I conscientiously read it.  Yet I hardly found a word I did not agree with, an idea I did not approve, and I rose from its perusal with two thoughts burning in my mind—a profound admiration for the character and quality of the man who wrote it, and a profound wish that he could so modify his style, in accord with itself and its own spontaneity, if possible, that I might enjoy its perusal as much as its substance.  Let not my friend, nor any friend of my friend, think hard of me for this.  God knows I take no joy in “roasting,” but when I am asked to criticise I am a witness in the box, under oath for the whole truth.

J. William Lloyd.