Rebel Souls
Page 31
LOC. Library of Congress, Washington, DC
SP. Saturday Press, the Vault at Pfaff’s digital archive, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
WW. Walt Whitman
WWC. Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, vols. 1–9, accessed online at the Walt Whitman Archive
NOTE ON WHITMAN POETRY
Whitman published seven editions of Leaves of Grass, a work that evolved over time with changes to poems’ titles, changes to syntax, sometimes even changes of wording. With this in mind, I’ve chosen to reproduce passages that are true to how the poems originally appeared. For example, if I’m quoting from a poem that first appeared in the 1855 edition, I consulted that edition as the source. I relied on the following:
Leaves of Grass (1855): page-by-page photographs of an original printing of the book, accessed online at the Walt Whitman Archive (Brooklyn: Rome Brothers, 1855).
Leaves of Grass (1860): The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition, edited by Jason Stacy (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009).
Leaves of Grass (final edition): edited by Sculley Bradley and Harold Blodgett (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973). This is a complete Whitman collection that features all the poems from the “deathbed edition” of 1891–1892, plus some additional annexes of poetry and unpublished works.
INTRODUCTION: A VISIT TO PFAFF’S
3 “Pfaff’s ‘Bohemia’ was never”: Thomas Donaldson, Walt Whitman the Man (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1896), 208.
CHAPTER 1: BOHEMIA CROSSES THE ATLANTIC
5 November 11, 1814: Clapp genealogical details from Ebenezer Clapp, comp., The Clapp Memorial: Record of the Clapp Family in America (Boston: David Clapp & Son, 1876).
5 The Nantucket of Clapp’s youth: Description of Nantucket in this era from multiple sources, including Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (New York: Penguin Books, 2000).
5 New England ancestry to 1630: Clapp, Clapp Memorial, 3.
6 “Spare-the-Rod-spoil-the-Child Academy”: SP, November 13, 1858.
6 Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin: Details about this school from multiple sources, including Margaret Moore Booker, The Admiral’s Academy: Nantucket Island’s Historic Coffin School (Nantucket, MA: Mill Hill Press, 1998).
6 Clapp took two voyages: Brooklyn Eagle, May 25, 1884.
6 “I venture the assertion”: Henry Clapp Jr., The Pioneer; or, Leaves from an Editor’s Portfolio (Lynn, MA: J. B. Tolman, 1846), 73.
6 “pacific business, viz:”: Ibid., 46.
7 “liked to say startling things”: Charles Congdon, Reminiscences of a Journalist (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1880), 173.
7 Clapp was convicted: Massachusetts Spy, April 1, 1846.
7 “like snapping glass”: William Shepard, ed., Pen Pictures of Modern Authors (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1882), 162.
7 “a wily creature”: William Lloyd Garrison to Henry Clarke Wright, March 1, 1847, Boston Public Library Anti-Slavery Collection, accessed online.
8 “faith in man”: Clapp, The Pioneer, 5.
8 In August 1849: Clapp is listed as an attendee in the Report of the Proceedings of the Second General Peace Congress (London: Charles Gilpin, 1849), 99.
8 “I could say oui”: SP, November 27, 1858.
8 The term Bohemian: Discussion of Bohemianism from multiple sources, including Jerrold Siegel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
9 “Everything that had an arm”: SP, December 4, 1858.
10 an estimated forty-five hundred cafés: W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789–1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 3.
10 “a consistency between a liquid”: SP, January 8, 1859.
10 “Thank you, gentlemen”: SP, November 20, 1858.
11 “secured a nice little nook”: SP, December 25, 1858.
12 The unlikely catalyst was Henry Murger: Portrait of Murger from multiple sources, including Malcolm Easton, Artists and Writers in Paris: The Bohemian Idea, 1803–1867 (London: Edward Arnold, 1964).
13 “The public is being moved”: Robert Baldick, The First Bohemian: The Life of Henry Murger (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961), 124.
13 “Everything is, so to speak”: Ibid., 125.
14 “La Bohème, c’est nous”: Théodore Barrière and Henry Murger, La vie de Bohème (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1878), 11.
14 “Oh, my youth”: Ibid., 104.
15 “Temperance secured for us”: SP, December 11, 1858.
15 “more good sense”: SP, January 1, 1859.
15 “There was a charm”: SP, January 8, 1859.
16 returned to America late in 1853: Several sources agree on this date, including Mark Lause, The Antebellum Crisis and America’s First Bohemians (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2009), 17.
CHAPTER 2: A LONG TABLE IN A VAULTED ROOM
17 In 1856 he happened upon: Multiple sources agree on this date, including Rufus Rockwell Wilson, New York in Literature: The Story Told in the Landmarks of Town and Country (Elmira, NY: Primavera Press, 1947), 63.
17 located elsewhere on Broadway: For the year 1856, Wilson’s Business Directory of New York City lists Pfaff’s at 683 Broadway.
17 No. 647, a few doors north: For address, see advertisements in Saturday Press such as September 24, 1859.
18 possible to get a full meal: Discussion of Pfaff’s fare and drinks from multiple sources, including New York Times, April 26, 1890.
19 “one of the first men”: Philadelphia Inquirer, November 27, 1892.
19 very first recruit was Fitz-James O’Brien: Wilson, New York in Literature, 63.
19 There was no better choice: Description of O’Brien from multiple sources, including Francis Wolle, Fitz-James O’Brien: A Literary Bohemian of the Eighteen-Fifties (Boulder: University of Colorado Studies, 1944).
21 “Haste is evident”: Critic, February 26, 1881.
21 “No American writer”: New York Tribune, March 6, 1881.
22 “a certain kind of magnetism”: Junius Henri Browne, The Great Metropolis: A Mirror of New York (Hartford, CT: American, 1869), 152.
22 among the early notables: Descriptions of Charles Halpine, George Arnold, and Thomas Nast from multiple sources, including The Vault at Pfaff’s: An Archive of Art and Literature by New York City’s Nineteenth-Century Bohemians, maintained online by Lehigh University.
22 Halpine regularly amazed: Description of his inspired stuttering from Louis Starr, Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), 9.
22 “Here, / With my beer”: SP, January 1, 1859.
23 “altogether the most showy”: Putnam’s magazine quoted in the New York Public Libraries Online Exhibition Archive.
23 “Saints and sinners”: Browne, Great Metropolis, 341.
24 The heart of Broadway: Description of Broadway from multiple sources, including David Dunlap, On Broadway: A Journey Uptown over Time (New York: Rizzoli, 1990).
24 Mary Todd Lincoln: Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 878.
24 “‘I lodge in Bleecker street’”: Browne, Great Metropolis, 379.
25 found himself on the rock: Details about O’Brien’s desperation from multiple sources, including William Winter, Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1909).
26 “One of Harper’s Authors”: Eugene Lalor, “The Literary Bohemians of New York City in the Mid-Nineteenth Century” (PhD diss., St. John’s University, 1976), 29.
26 “Just at that period death”: William Winter, ed., The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O’Brien (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1881), l
v.
27 “born, like Baudelaire”: Joseph Wood Krutch, Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 192.
27 dedicated area in his lager house: Description of Pfaff’s vaulted room from multiple sources, including Philadelphia Inquirer, November 27, 1892.
28 “King of Bohemia”: Albert Parry, Garrets and Pretenders: A History of Bohemianism in America (New York: Covici, Friede, 1933), 44.
28 “Cater-wall Street”: Ibid., 45.
28 “aimed at nothing”: Mark Antony de Wolfe Howe, Memories of a Hostess (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922), 185.
28 “spied the intruder”: American Magazine, January 1896.
29 “never spared each other”: Winter, Old Friends, 96.
29 “Those were merry and famous nights”: Browne, Great Metropolis, 156.
29 “of quip, and quirk”: SP, December 3, 1859.
CHAPTER 3: WHITMAN AT A CROSSROADS
31 likely sometime in 1858: While some accounts date Whitman’s first appearance at Pfaff’s to 1859, others say he first showed up there in 1858. There is convincing evidence for 1858, such as a Brooklyn Daily Times article he wrote that year that shows familiarity with Bohemianism. See Emory Holloway, Free and Lonesome Heart: The Secret of Walt Whitman (New York: Vantage Press, 1960), 88.
31 “greatest poet”: Leaves of Grass (1855), v, reproduction of an original printing, accessed online at the Walt Whitman Archive.
32 “as good talk around the table”: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 11, 1886.
32 “rubbing and drubbing”: WWC, 3:116.
32 “My own greatest pleasure”: Ibid., 1:417.
32 “That’s the feller!”: William Winter, Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1909), 91.
32 “The ravishing charm”: Ibid.
33 “I have often said”: WWC, 2:375.
33 Born in 1819: Account of Whitman’s early years from multiple sources, including Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955).
34 “To cure a tooth ache”: WW quoted in the Atlantic, November 1903.
34 “honorable nonsense”: Ibid.
36 bender, bummer, spree, and shin-dig: Terms from Whitman’s Primer of Words mentioned in Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life (New York: Perennial, 1979), 229.
36 Phrenology is a pseudoscientific theory: Description of phrenology from multiple sources, including David Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
37 “Know thyself”: “The Fowler Brothers” at Harvard.edu, accessed online.
37 gallery of plaster casts: Advertisement for Fowler & Wells in Wilson’s Business Directory of New York City (1850), v.
37 Whitman rated an exemplary 6.5: Details of WW’s phrenological reading from Leaves of Grass, 1856 edition (Brooklyn, 1856), 362, reproduction of an original printing, accessed online at the Walt Whitman Archive.
38 “great pressure, pressure from within”: Allen, Solitary Singer, 147.
38 “adjudged already to deserve”: CW, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, 5:1744.
38 “the gush, the throb”: WWC, 2:25.
38 “wrote, rewrote, and re-rewrote”: John Trowbridge, My Own Story (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), 367.
38 “the book arose out of my life”: Curtis Hidden Page, ed., The Chief American Poets (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905), 686.
38 a treble entendre: Notion that “leaves of grass” is a treble entendre from multiple sources, including Jerome Loving, Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 179.
39 “The proof of a poet”: Leaves (1855), xii.
39 “Do I contradict myself?”: Ibid., 55.
40 selling 30,000 copies: Matthew Bevis, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 783.
40 to sell 300,000 copies: Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America, 315.
40 “a curious and lawless”: Putnam’s, September 1855.
40 “There is neither wit”: Boston Intelligencer, May 3, 1856.
40 “Walt Whitman is as unacquainted”: Critic, quoted in Leaves (1856), 375.
41 “I am not blind”: Ralph Waldo Emerson to Whitman, July 21, 1855, quoted in ibid., 345.
41 “an emperor”: George Rice Carpenter, Walt Whitman (New York: Macmillan, 1909), 76.
41 “The writer shall not dig”: James Elliot Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1890), 2:450.
41 a “cold, fastidious” person: Emerson to Thomas Carlyle, July 31, 1841, in The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834–1872 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), 1:366.
42 “the courtly muses of Europe”: The American Scholar: An Address Delivered by Ralph Waldo Emerson Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, August 1837 (New York: Laurentian Press, 1901), 56.
42 “He shouted for a ‘tin mug’”: Edward Carpenter, Days with Walt Whitman (New York: Macmillan 1908), 167.
43 “Here are thirty-two Poems”: Leaves (1856), 346.
43 overcome with hot passion: Ted Genoways, Walt Whitman and the Civil War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 29.
43 “Every thing I have done”: CW, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, 1:167.
44 “not become famous yet”: Elihu Vedder, The Digressions of V. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 226.
44 “I don’t know if”: WWC, 3:118.
45 “I like your tinkles”: Winter, Old Friends, 140.
45 “bovine air of omniscience”: Ibid., 141.
45 “Willy is a young Longfellow”: Albert Parry, Garrets and Pretenders: A History of Bohemianism in America (New York: Covici, Friede, 1933), 41.
45 “It is now time to stir”: Allen, Solitary Singer, 216.
45 “eats dirt and excrement”: Justin Kaplan, ed., Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982), 1310.
46 “I would be much pleased”: Ibid., 1308.
46 “wander-speaker”: CW, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, 4:1554.
46 “I desire to go by degrees”: Allen, Solitary Singer, 219.
46 “henceforth my employment”: Ibid.
46 “What wit, humor, repartee”: Thomas Donaldson, Walt Whitman the Man (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1896), 208.
CHAPTER 4: HASHISH AND SHAKESPEARE
47 “We were all very merry”: SP, December 24, 1859.
48 James Buchanan was president: Description of Buchanan from multiple sources, including James Taranto, ed., Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and Worst in the White House (New York: Wall Street Journal Books, 2004).
48 A particularly deranged episode: Description of February 5, 1858, melee in Congress from multiple sources, including James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 168.
49 Buchanan, arguably the worst: Assertion from multiple sources, including US News & World Report, July 13, 2010, which ranks Buchanan as the worst.
49 Dred Scott, often considered the nadir: Assertion from multiple sources, including Ethan Greenberg, Dred Scott and the Dangers of a Political Court (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009).
49 “hot passions” and “inertia”: CW, Prose Works, 1892, 2:498.
49 “What historic denouements”: Justin Kaplan, ed., Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982), 1325.
49 “some great emergency”: CW, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, 4:1554.
50 “overcharged Leyden jar”: Fred Pattee, The Feminine Fifties (New York: D. Appleton–Century, 1940), 4.
50 a formidable conversationalist: Description of Ludlow’s conversational powers from m
ultiple sources, including New York Evening Mail, December 24, 1870.
51 “the smartest and most learned boy”: Donald Dulchinos, Pioneer of Inner Space: The Life of Fitz Hugh Ludlow (New York: Autonomedia, 1998), 25.
51 “childhood’s sweetest flavor”: Golden Era, November 22, 1863.
51 “Fitz Hugh, I mean you”: Andrew Shores, “Fitz Hugh Ludlow, a Biography” (Union College, June 1980), 6.
51 “whole gamut of queer agents”: Fitz Hugh Ludlow, The Hasheesh Eater: Being Passages from the Life of a Pythagorean (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857), 17.
51 “When the circuit”: Ibid., 17.
52 “A most pleasurable and harmless”: Harper’s, October 16, 1858.
52 what he called a “bolus”: Ludlow, Hasheesh Eater, 19.
52 “I am in eternity”: Ibid., 33.
52 eat cayenne pepper: Helen Ludlow, sketch about her brother Fitz Hugh, Special Collections, Union College Schaffer Library.
53 “The Nile! The Nile!”: Ludlow, Hasheesh Eater, 93.
53 “Life became with me”: Ibid., 196.
53 he was fined $1.12: Dulchinos, Pioneer of Inner Space, 44.
53 “hot and hissing whisper”: Ludlow, The Hasheesh Eater, 125.
53 “unseen tongues syllabled”: Ibid., 125.
53 “Slowly thus does midnight”: Ibid., 202.
53 “like a heavy tragedy”: Ibid., 86.
54 “research,” not “indulgence”: Ibid., 17.
54 “For me, henceforth, Time”: Dulchinos, Pioneer of Inner Space, 90.
54 “and Johnny must needs experiment”: William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915), 1:47.
55 “where I used to eat Hasheesh”: John Hay, A Poet in Exile: Early Letters of John Hay (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910), 23.
55 went through three printings: Publishing details of The Hasheesh Eater from Dulchinos, Pioneer of Inner Space, 90.
55 “Her form, the freshly blossomed”: Fitz Hugh Ludlow, “Our Queer Papa,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1858.
55 “slight, bright-eyed, alert”: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1870.