Tweet of the Week: Martin F. Tupper

I would like to start this blog post by saying married his cousin, just an interesting fact I thought we all might enjoy. Also when you Google Martin F. Tupper the first three selections that come up are in fact the tweet-of-the-week. But all inane facts aside Tupper was an interesting fellow and had quite the direct relationship with Whitman. I have found an essay online by one Matt Cohen who links the two through the early reviews of Leaves of Grass. The essay is titled “Martin Tupper, Walt Whitman, and the Early Reviews of Leaves of grass” in it he goes on to say why Tupper came up so often. I’m not really going to go in to what he sees too much, I’m merely mentioning to credit Mr. Cohen as my source for discovering this nifty little fact. Anyway Martin F. Tupper wrote a series of morally didactic proverbs titled Proverbial Philosophy. It is filled with nifty lines like, “A man too careful of danger/ Liveth in continual torment,” when they first came out in1837 they were widely unpopular, especially in America. Over time, however, they slowly began to worm their way into people’s hearts and by 1867 nearly a million copies were sold in the U.S. and all of that I got from Wikipedia. But back to the topic of Whitman and Tupper, I went over are reviews of Leaves of Grass and found three that mentioned Tupper.
In “Our Book Table” the anonymous author simply mention that Whitman’s style is similar to Tupper’s. He or she doesn’t go into much more detail than that; to be fair though the author does mention such Emerson as a second influence to Whitman.
In the "[Review of Leaves of Grass (1855)]." from The Literary Examiner the other anonymous writer brings in Tupper as though he were speaking to English audience, saying something along the lines of, “Oh that Whitman fellow is much like a young Martin Tupper,” I’m paraphrasing of course. His own words described Whitman as a “Tupper of the west.” He’s making Whitman out to be a moral and didactic compass of the American citizen, so that we might escape the tradition of the Tupper of the east; which is all fine and good, but now that we have our own guy we don’t much need the other one.
The third and final review, which by no means desires to remain anonymous, was written by George Eliot in which he says, “like the measured prose of Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, or of some of the Oriental writings. The external form, therefore, is startling, and by no means seductive.” It is very clear that he doesn’t like either poet.
All the reviews point to stylistic similarities as well as similar goal orientations. Tupper was trying to be a didactic poet for England while Whitman was attempting to establish himself as a great American poet. I didn’t read much Tupper so I’m not sure how successful he was, but I can say Whitman did very well indeed.