Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

Front Matter, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 36, no. 4

McMullen, Kevin

“This Damned Act”: Walt Whitman and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

Traubel, Horace

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“COLLECT”
FROM THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL ISSUE OF 
THE CONSERVATOR (MAY 1919)
HORACE TRAUBEL
I know you can tell me how old Walt Whitman is this year. But how 
old are you? That’s more important. How many years old or young are 
you? How many years sensible or senseless? How many years merciful 
or malignant? How many years illuminated or blind? It dont matter 
so much whether he served or not. Have you served? Are you serving? 
Can you really tell your own age? You think you’ve done enough when 
you’ve told about him. But you haven’t. Not till you’ve told about your-
self. You speak of honoring him with celebrations. You dont, you cant, 
honor him. You honor yourselves. His account is closed. Yours is still 
open. Tell your own story. Not mostly of what you’ve done. Chiefly of 
what you are. How old were you on your first birthday? Are you any 
older now? I hear the sayers say they’ve lived through so many noble 
years. How many noble years have the sayers lived through? He wasn’t 
perfect. Nor are you or we. We’d be afraid of each other if we were. 
We dont have to romance about him or ourselves. The truth’s good 
enough. Light enough and shadow enough. It’s too late to pace him. 
Now we must pace ourselves. It’s all right to indicate his loyalties. But 
what of our own? I’ve said at Whitman meetings: “We’ll never have a 
real Whitman day till we come together to celebrate ourselves not him.” 
I hear wonderful things said about him today by people who when he 
was alive greeted him with derision and deliberate venom. I dont say 
it’s too late for them to see. It’s never too late, of course. But it’s some 
late, quite some. He toed the mark fairly well. Do we? None of us are 
any too remarkable at the best. Nor are any of us any too contemptible 
at the worst. We admit Walt. Do we admit ourselves? We can make 
this a year of years. A year for you and me as well as for Whitman. 
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Our year as well as his year or anybody’s year. Whitman’s a hundred 
years born this year. Well, I’m sixty. And you: what are you? They’re 
just as significant in all cases if we’ve made them so. What have you 
made of your years? What have I made of mine? I’ve won my way to 
sixty years by an untraveled route and I’ve not had a free pass, either. 
You’ve made your years also suggestive. Suggestive of what? That’s 
the test of it all. Not what Whitman was but what you are and what I 
am. One of us may precede the others for a while but all arrive just the 
same. Jesuses and Judases. We’re always tempted to glorify big men 
when they reach to big names. But when they’re just as big with little 
names we refuse to speak, except, perhaps, in scorn or skepticism. We 
say: “God, the father.” And yet we rob the man next door. We say: 
“Whitman, the universal comrade.” And yet we hate the alien. One 
of our most eloquent orators at the Brevoort Whitman meetings used 
to be continually talking of “the God damned Jews.” Is your sense 
of fraternity parochial or international? Is it white or yellow or black 
or all three or none of them? Everything we say of Walt comes back 
to us. Good and bad. Wise and foolish. To paraphrase Walt himself: 
“Idolatry’s to the idolater and comes back most to him.” The initiato-
ry lesson from Walt is to be stuck on yourself. Then there’s another to 
go with it. That is, to let every other fellow be stuck on himself. Just 
as though all the stars were made for him, whoever he is. As though 
everybody was just for him and he was for everybody. The preacher 
priest class as a class (there were always exceptions) reprobated the 
theory of evolution till all culture and science as a class accepted it. 
Then they claimed it as their own. And when the time comes for the 
succeeding hypothesis they’ll stand by evolution with their usual vehe-
ment anathema till the next step is safe. Then they’ll take the next step. 
And say they always knew it was in order. And claim the new ground 
as they did the old. The literary class as a class (there were always 
exceptions) derided Whitman till Whitman became inevitable. There 
are a few feeble echoes of that derision yet. Now they’re acclaiming 
him and possessing him. It’s the same old story. When we pass to the 
next man they’ll caustically and brutally defend Whitman against 
our new adventure. Walt said: “Greater than me will follow.” What is 
the antecedent of life? Death. What is the antecedent of death? Life. 
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Always and always. Walt Whitman’s a hundred years old this year. 
How old are you? A hundred years international. How many years 
international are you? am I? He’s a hundred years democratic. How 
many years democratic are we? He’s been a crowd man for a hundred 
years. A woman’s man. A criminal’s man. How long have you been 
that kind of people? He’s a hundred years confirmed this year. How 
many years are we confirmed? I’m more curious to know how many 
years old and young you are, especially young, than how many years 
old and young he is. I know you can tell me how old Walt Whitman 
is this year. 
Walt was ushered into heaven with the ribald noise of brass bands. 
Yes. Especially brass. As long as he could be denied he remained 
an outlaw. Schools, customs, rejected him. Scholarship, fashion, 
professionalism and professorialism, church and state, in the dubious 
measures of their silences and laughters, treated him as a negligible 
claimant. But he stayed round till they melted. He wasn’t scared off 
by bad weather. He wore out the patience of thousands of hells. They 
gave in. He didn’t. Of course he had only the usual steering chart to 
go by. Every man, derelict or divine, has this and no more. He took his 
medicine as they take theirs. With mingled emotions of gladness and 
sorrow. He was as capable of being way down as of being way up. He 
didn’t like being cursed and denounced any more than you or I do. 
You see, Jesus needed his Judas. Whitman needed his persecutors. We 
all need something. Our poverty. Our misfortune. Even our ignominy. 
Malignity plays its part with mercy. I never complain for Whitman. I 
rather complain for his traducers. He didn’t lose. They lost. They paid 
for all postponements and delays. Just as in our average life the system 
pays for all the sufferings of its victims. Who paid the cost of hanging 
John Brown? Tradition says Brown did. But we know that America, 
civilization, did. The shadow of affliction gives the proper accent to 
every portrait. I never resent the interrogation. For that’s what it is. 
Make good, we’re told. Our claims are all met with that “why.” We 
cant escape with the goods unquestioned. After all the questions are 
answered there are more questions. There seems to be no end to the 
historic questionings. You cant be so little as to be missed. Nor can 
you be big enough to be feared. There’s a no for every yes. A black 
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for every white. A discord for every harmony. Walt was called out in 
the usual way. He told us who he was. Where he came from. Where 
he was going. The world questioned all. It permitted no angle to go 
unexamined. Dagger thrusts. Thwartings of will. Confessions of dere-
liction. Erratic crimes of intention. Nothing avoided its vigilant eyes. 
That was the proof of the pudding. Natural, inevitable and welcome. 
He emerged from the great darkness. The tests are universal. They 
compass the range of all benevolence and malevolence. They subject 
us to all the petticisms of intrigue and pettifoggery. Things are flung 
in the road to trip us up at every step. Friends go back on us. Promises 
are broken. Notes defaulted. Death, even with murder, complicates the 
issue. Fifty hold back for one who rushes on. Chaos. Bedlam. Hoots 
and howls. Warnings. Threatenings. There are no two ways. There’s 
truly only one way. For bootblack and bard. The other day Gompers 
was thrown out of an auto. The chauffer was also chucked on his 
head. The chauffer was dismissed with a line. Gompers got a column. 
No one seemed to care what happened to the chauffer. Whether he 
lived or died. But Gompers? In the perspective of eternity one was as 
important as the other. There’s no big or little in the final analysis. 
No Whitmans and the men who cant read and write. No saviors and 
no lost. That’s the reason Walt to his very last day was concerned lest 
he hadn’t made, as he said, his fellowship for the criminals, outcasts, 
unpopulars, unmentionables, sufficiently unmistakable. He craved 
no isolated eminence. He in fact craved no eminence. He was a real 
crowd man though he didn’t call himself such in my terms. He recog-
nized his intimacy with those social classes who are not qualified on 
the lists. With the forgotten. With those who if they’re ever named at 
all are only included apologetically. The and-so-forths. The oh-yeses 
that we never invite in unless someone shames us into hospitality. He 
knew the situation. The pro and con of the divine economy. He was 
near the farthest off. He descended below the lowest. He passed over 
the heads of the Christs. Not because he was better than anybody. 
Rather because he was the neighbor of everybody. He went fearlessly 
into the jungled wilderness. He shrank from no encounter with the 
mysterious. Just as anybody does. Just as anybody must. With every-
body. Admitting no inferiority or supremacy. The law of one is the law 
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of all. He objected to being denounced. But not because he wanted to 
be lauded. He didn’t want anybody denounced. He intrepidly accepted 
the decrees of fate. They were not exceptional for him at the worst. 
Others had worse. Worse than the worst. He declined to believe himself 
one exceptional for blessedness or punishment. Dark as the darkest 
night was it wasn’t too dark for him to endure. Or light as the lightest 
day was it wasn’t too light for him to enjoy. He often told that story 
of the old woman who comforted herself in the midst of her physical 
miseries by the exclamation: “And to think! there are some who suffer 
more than I do!” He much preferred to be the nearest of men than to 
be the only man. “It’s deadly black today,” he said to me once, “but 
I guess the shadow’s proper for my light.” So you see the brass bands 
wont hurt his feelings now. Not even the brass. The most tragic of the 
experiences he was subjected to were the vital accompaniments of his 
exaltation. As they also are of yours and mine. With the after brass 
and all. 
Well, boys, girls, everybody, we can tell each other how old old 
Walt was when he died and how old he’d be if he was still with us in 
the flesh. We all know all about that. But let’s take a more immediate 
account. How old or dear are you to me and us? How many years to 
the good or how many years to the bad? Walt did his stunt. And on 
the whole did it handsomely. Have you done your stunt? Have I done 
mine? Let’s see. I dont ask you to limit yourselves in talking of Walt 
or to withdraw anything you’ve said. But what of yourselves? Where 
have you stood? Where have I stood and where do I stand? Have we 
been faithful or have we defaulted? Has the present crisis found us 
contemporary? Or are we, have we been, laggards? We, some of us, 
cry, Whitman, Whitman, just as some pious people cry, God, God, 
or Jesus, Jesus. It means nothing because it never gets beyond God, 
Jesus and Whitman. Never circulates as the current coin of imme-
diate performance. Every big man is useful if he makes us better 
acquainted with ourselves. But the big names are useless, even in the 
way, if they only take us back to their dead pastures. Big men die in 
themselves and live in their successors. They are kept momentous 
rather than ominous only in their power to stir the race to constantly 
expanding influences. This is a good time for Whitmanites to confess. 
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Not to the authority of a priest. Not even to the authority of Walt. 
But to the impressive authority of the self. Every one of us. Have we 
gone to jail with the innocent? Or have we backed water at the jail 
door? Whittier once wrote to a young man: “Ally yourself with some 
unpopular cause.” Have we done that? Hugo said: “Fear the popular 
high roads. Take to the wilderness.” Have we taken to the wilder-
ness? Zola warned authors: “The way of the academy is the way of 
death.” Have we avoided the way of the academy? When we play 
with the game the game plays us. Walt one day said to me when his 
enemies were particularly active: “Let them howl: we’ll outdo them 
with silence.” Have we proved capable of meeting public clamor in 
that spirit? “Let’s listen to all they have to say: every word: let’s not 
refuse to hear the worst with the best: then let’s go on doing our own 
job in our own way.” Have we always been openeared for the people 
who said things we didn’t like? And have we stuck to our own convic-
tions through thick and thin? Especially thick? Honest, now: have 
we? If we have, all right. But if we haven’t, all wrong. Let’s admit it. 
Have we been afraid of the fellow or the thing around the corner? 
Or haven’t we cared who or what was around the corner? We unite 
in calling Walt great now after the tests of wear and tear. But are we 
equal to knowing the greatness of still obscured men and women? 
After people tell us Walt is great we assent in an echoing chorus. But 
what capacity have we for discovering a great man for ourselves? We 
agree in lauding established reputations. But how many of us are 
brave enough to undergo the ridicule that attends a contemporary 
decision? Are we ready and willing to pick a man out of the gutter 
and set him on a throne? All comes at last to that. All Whitmanism 
as all Christianism. All Tolstoyism as all any-ism. How many years 
old are we? In adventure and daring? In independence and joy? In 
all the things we greet in another as evidences of nobility? How old 
are we in timorous social assent or brave social rebellion? How old in 
insight or opacity? How old in service or selfishness? It all comes to 
that. That’s our Whitman in figures as well as in rhetoric. It’s just as 
well our Leninism or anything else we celebrate in round numbers. 
Have we put Walt into a cabinet for observation or into the flesh and 
blood of our virile living activity? Is he an oil painting on a wall? Or 
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is he the outcast of some slandered password of revolution? Is he a 
volume of poem words or the flaming tissue of a challenging reform? 
Has he become a book of reference or a way of life? He has said to 
himself that he dont teach a lesson but rather takes down the bars to a 
lesson. He takes down the bars. We are the lesson. He says again that 
he’s best understood in the lesson by which he’s himself destroyed. 
He dont take us as a possession. He leaves us to our own ownerships. 
We’re to find out how many years worth while we are not how many 
years illustrious he is. He used to say that when you got his meaning 
Leaves of Grass was no longer “I, Walt Whitman, of Manhattan the 
son,” but just as much “I, Horace Traubel, of Camden the son,” or I, 
anybody, man or woman, of anywhere, the son or daughter.
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27


English

"Collect"

Keller, Helen

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WHY WE LOVE HORACE TRAUBEL
REMARKS DELIVERED AT THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 
DINNER, NEW YORK CITY. MAY 31ST, 1919.
HELEN KELLER
Dear Comrades and Fellow-Admirers of Walt Whitman: I came here 
to listen, not to speak. But, since the Chairman has called upon me, 
being a woman, I avail myself of this opportunity to talk. There are 
so many here paying eloquent tributes to Walt Whitman, I want to 
say a word to the chiefest of his lovers, Horace Traubel.
To stand up here and talk about Horace Traubel is like proclaiming 
the charms and the desirability of one’s sweetheart from the house-
tops. The truth is, I love Horace Traubel. To discuss him in this public 
fashion is, therefore, somewhat embarrassing, especially as this is our 
first meeting. But since we are all “comrades and lovers,” you will let 
me tell of my admiration and affection for one whom we all love.
There are two men in Horace Traubel. I suppose that is why we 
love him twice as well as we love other men. He is a mystic, and he is 
a realist. His heart is full of dreams and ardent sentiments, and yet he 
is a most profound observer of men and their actions. He has thought 
out a scheme of life for himself. His interpretation of the world we 
live in, while deeply poetical, is very practical and human. He loves 
the just and the unjust, the wicked and the good, the rich and the 
poor, because of the inclusiveness of his nature. These antitheses are 
revealed in his writings. He is angry with evil; he hates injustice and 
wickedness.
But he holds out his kind hand to sinners and draws them to him 
with cords of human love. There is but one thing he asks of men and 
women—that they shall love one another. His kindness and magna-
nimity are inexhaustible.
Indeed, there is something of the Savior about his interest in 
human beings, and his sympathy with their struggles. To him neither 
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the individual nor the crowd is vile. He finds in each man and in the 
mass beautiful, common, elemental qualities of humanity. It is upon 
these qualities that Horace Traubel rests his hopes for the future. For 
him love, valor, self-sacrifice and the free spirit exist, and they are the 
only vital facts of life. They constitute the important and essential 
part of his scheme of a better world. Yet he penetrates far into the 
structure of our social order, and comprehends what is wrong with it. 
It is here that the mystic and the realist clasp hands. He is the great 
Optimist, and his work is wholesome and encouraging. His dream is 
persuasive and inspiring.
That is why we love Horace Traubel. 


Why We Love Horace Traubel

Memorial tribute to Whitman actor Rip Torn

Loving, Jerome

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IN MEMORIAM: RIP TORN (1931-2019)
The actor Rip Torn, who died on July 9, 2019, at the age of 
88, memorably played Walt Whitman twice during his heralded 
career. The first time, he impersonated a younger Whitman, from 
1855 when he issued the first Leaves of Grass on through the Civil 
War and up to his first stroke. It was a CBS production entitled 
“Song of Myself,” which aired on March 9th, 1976. I remember 
alerting my students and taking my phone off the hook to watch 
the show myself. The network ran the following advertisement in 
the New York Times on the day of the television broadcast: 
“Many consider him one of the greatest Americans who ever 
lived. Others have branded him shameful, immoral. Tonight you 
decide!” The emphasis, of course, was not on the poetry but on 
the idea that the Good Gray Poet was also the Good Gay Poet. It 
was during the 1970s that the American Psychological Association 
had just removed homosexuality from its list of pathologies. Clearly, 
CBS was hedging its bet on whether the show’s emphasis would be 
widely approved. Although Whitman’s father had died before the 
first edition was published, the CBS drama had the old man 
trying to talk his son out of issuing the book because of its 
“immorality.” It also subtly suggested that Whitman had been 
fired from his government job for being gay, and the poet’s 
brother, George Whitman, as regarding his brother as “a dirty old 
man.” None of these assertions were true. On the third, George 
testified after his brother’s death in 1892 that “any charge that he 
led a miscellaneous life” was false.
Rip played an older Whitman in the 1990 Canadian movie 
Beautiful Dreamers, which dramatized his time visiting the alienist 
and disciple Richard Maurice Bucke in 1880 at the insane asylum he 
oversaw in London, Ontario. Here the social message was to 
challenge the negative attitude towards the mentally retarded. 
Unlike other such psychologists involved with such patients, Dr.  
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Bucke in the film treats them humanely, as human beings instead 
of near animals. Whitman, who actually did visit Bucke in Canada, 
champions his cause. In fact, if I remember the plot correctly, the 
poet freely communicates with the insane and wins their trust.
At the time of the CBS production I had never heard of Rip 
Torn, but that was to change after Beautiful Dreamers when I 
began—after the Iowa Centennial Conference in 1992—to write 
Whitman’s biography, which appeared in 1999 as Walt Whitman: 
The Song of Himself. I don’t remember exactly how Rip and I first got 
in contact, but it may have been through my sister Mary Loving, 
a public relations specialist, who got the job of PR person for Rip 
when he played on Broadway in Horton Foote’s last play, Young 
Man from Atlanta, in 1995. Rip was very devoted to Whitman and 
interested in my work on the poet’s biography. I think I even had 
dinner with Rip, my wife Cathy, and my sister at Elaine’s in New 
York City, a famous watering hole for actors and writers, including 
Norman Mailer, whom Torn famously hit with a hammer during 
the filming of Mailer’s movie “Maidstone.” (Mailer in retalia-
tion tried to bite off part of Rip’s ear!) When my Whitman biog-
raphy came out, I appeared at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in 
Union Square along with Rip and Whitman biographer David 
S. Reynolds. My sister got Rip to attend. He arrived somewhat
ruffled in clothing and wearing a fisherman’s cap. Carrying a
tattered paperback copy of Leaves of Grass, he gave a reading of “O
Captain! My Captain!” Afterward, I never again thought dismis-
sively, like so many scholars, of Whitman’s most famous poem
because of its conventional verse. As Rip began his reading, the
actor suddenly remembered that he was still wearing his hat and
quickly removed it. It was as if we were transported back in time
to the Great Emancipator’s funeral.
When Roger Asselineau of the Sorbonne died in 2002, I 
arranged for my university, Texas A&M, to purchase his Whitman 
library, which had every edition of Leaves of Grass except the first 
(which the Texas A&M Library quickly acquired) as well as every  
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foreign translation of the book then in existence. The first edition 
of Leaves became the Library’s three-millionth book (I think we 
now have 5 or 6 million), and to celebrate we held a small confer-
ence on Whitman in College Station. Present among the partic-
ipants were Ed Folsom and Whitman collector Ken Reed. But 
the real celebrity visitor was Mr. Elmore “Rip” Torn, who—as 
we soon learned—had begun his college career as an agricul-
ture major at Texas A&M. After one year he transferred to the 
University of Texas at Austin, where he became a drama major, 
and the rest was history. At the opening ceremony for the newly 
acquired first edition of Leaves, Rip read another poem, I believe. 
More memorable to me was his response at the roundtable the 
next day. When somebody asked him a scholarly question about 
Whitman, Rip said, “If you want an actor to say something, you 
have to give him some lines.” Rest in Peace, RIP.
Texas A&M University   JEROME LOVING


In Memoriam: Rip Torn (1931-2019)

Robinson, Rose

Laurence Hutton and a Newly Recovered Photograph of Walt Whitman

Sollenberger, David

“The Central Urge in Every Atom”: Whitman’s Atomism and Schelling’s Naturphilosophie

Hentoff, Nick

Folsom, Ed

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WHO IS “W.”?: QUESTIONS ABOUT WHITMAN’S FIRST 
KNOWN PIECE OF PUBLISHED JOURNALISM
In Specimen Days (1882), Whitman reminisces about his early newspa-
per days and the delight he experienced upon seeing his first published 
articles in print: 
I commenced when I was but a boy of eleven or twelve writing sentimental bits 
for the old ‘Long Island Patriot,’ in Brooklyn; this was about 1832. Soon after, I 
had a piece or two in George P. Morris’s then celebrated and fashionable ‘Mir-
ror,’ of New York city. I remember with what half-suppress’d excitement I used 
to watch for the big, fat, red-faced, slow-moving, very old English carrier who 
distributed the ‘Mirror’ in Brooklyn; and when I got one, opening and cutting 
the leaves with trembling fingers. How it made my heart double-beat to see my 
piece on the pretty white paper, in nice type.1
The Journalism volumes in the Collected Writings of Walt Whitman
include none of the “sentimental bits” he wrote for the Patriot, since 
only one issue is extant from the June 1831-September 1832 period 
during which Whitman was associated with the paper, and that issue 
has nothing identifiable as Whitman’s.2 The earliest known piece of 
Whitman’s journalism, then, has up to now been identified as the 
brief “The Olden Time,” which appeared in the New-York Mirror in 
the November 29th 1834, issue. It is signed “W.,” and appears in the 
“Original Communications” section of the paper. The Journalism
volumes print it as Whitman’s sole contribution to the Mirror and place 
it as his first published piece of journalism, dated to when Whitman 
was only fifteen years old.3
The identification of Whitman as the author of this article has 
been based on the fact that it is signed “W.” and that Whitman had 
begun work as a compositor in New York City perhaps as early as 1834.4 
Herbert Bergman, editor of the Journalism volumes, provides addi-
tional reasons why he believed “The Olden Time” was by Whitman: 
Whitman used the phrase “the olden time” in other pieces, including 
an 1846 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and an 1845 piece in The 
American Review; Whitman “had lived in Suffolk County and was 
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interested in Long Island history,” which is consonant with the focus 
in the piece on Smithtown in Suffolk county; and Whitman often 
expressed an interest in “the aged ‘patriots’ who ‘are left as visible 
and speaking mementos of their brethren.’”5 The article reports on 
“a Negro Harry” who died in 1758 at the age of “at least one hundred 
and twenty years,” and who “remembered New-York, he said, when 
there were but three houses in it.” The article also records the death 
in 1762 of “one John Crockeser, an extremely aged person,” who had 
gone hunting in “a wilderness, where [there] is now a city.”
Nick Hentoff, a New York attorney and collector of literary first 
appearances, recently found another piece in the Mirror signed “W.” It 
appeared a month earlier, in the November 1, 1834, issue, also in the 
“Original Communications” section of the paper, and its title—“New-
York in the Olden Time”—contains the same “The Olden Time” 
heading of the other article.6 It consists of a long description of—and 
paraphrases and excerpts from—a book “done about the year 1700, 
by a reverend gentleman who had visited New-York, as the chaplain of 
Governor Andros7 and the few English Episcopalians which could be 
found in a land then so new, and so generally Dutch.” “W.” identifies 
the author of the book only as a “Rev. C. W.,” who arrived in New 
York in 1678. While “W.” does not identify the book beyond this, it is 
in fact A two Years Journal in New-York: And part of its Territories in 
America, by Rev. Charles Wolley (London: John Wyat, 1701), identi-
fied on the title page only as “C. W.” 8 “W.” quotes Wolley’s descrip-
tion of early New York and adds a parenthetical commentary on it: 
“The city of New-York he found as large (what a vague measurement) 
as some market-towns in England, and all built the London way.” 
It might seem, then, that “New-York in the Olden Time” is also 
by Whitman, confirming the poet’s late recollection that he published 
“a piece or two” [emphasis added] in the Mirror. All the reasons that 
Bergman offers for identifying “The Olden Time” as Whitman’s apply 
equally well to “New-York in the Olden Time.” They are the only 
two prose articles in the Mirror signed “W.”9 and, like “The Olden 
Time,” “New-York in the Olden Time” would highlight Whitman’s 
antiquarian streak, so evident in many of his later journalistic writings, 
including Brooklyniana, a long series on Brooklyn history published 
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in the Brooklyn Standard in 1861-1862. Hentoff’s discovery of the 
earlier piece by “W.,” then, initially appeared to be a major contribu-
tion to our understanding of Whitman’s work, offering us what now 
would become the earliest known piece of Whitman journalism. 
There is a significant problem with this identification, however, 
one that in fact puts in question Whitman’s authorship of either piece 
in the Mirror. Soon after making his discovery, Hentoff found yet 
another and even earlier piece in the Mirror signed “W.,” this one 
appearing in the October 25, 1834, issue.10 Instead of another piece of 
prose journalism, however, this contribution by “W.” was a poem—
four quatrains of conventional verse called “The Morning Serenade,” 
in which the speaker awakens his lover by describing the dawn of 
a new day. It does not sound unlike some of Whitman’s very early 
newspaper verse, but this particular poem is in fact identifiable: it is 
by Thomas Richard Whitney, republished (with slight alterations) 
in his 1844 poetry collection called Evening Hours.11 Whitney (1807-
1858) was a New York City engraver,  journalist, poet, fiction writer, 
and politician, a prominent figure in the Native American (later just 
“American”) anti-immigrant party (the Know Nothings) and elected 
to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1855.12 He was an editor and 
publisher at the New York Sunday Times (starting in 1844-1845), the 
Sunday Morning News (1847), and The Republic magazine (1851), 
which he founded. 
When, in 1834, the twenty-seven-year-old Whitney initially 
submitted “The Morning Serenade” to the Mirror, the editors 
commented in their “To Correspondents” section (a kind of ongoing 
chat with readers and contributors about what kinds of writing would 
and would not work in the paper): “We do like ‘The Morning Serenade,’ 
and yet we will not ‘put it in the Mirror,’ as the writer bids us, unless 
he will send us other and still better ‘tastes of his quality.’”13 This 
comment appeared in the October 4 issue, and the poem appeared in 
the paper three weeks later. Clearly, Whitney did send the editors other 
samples of his writing after October 4th, which the editors must have 
liked and so published all three contributions by the end of November. 
Since the “W.” initial clearly is attached to Whitney in these weeks, 
it is likely that he was the author of the poem and both of the “Olden 
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Time” pieces. The “piece or two,” then, that young Walt Whitman 
published in the Mirror remain unidentified.14
NICK HENTOFF                       New York City 
ED FOLSOM The University of Iowa 
NOTES
1  Specimen Days, in Whitman, Prose Works 1892, ed. Floyd Stovall (New York 
University Press, 1962), 1:287. The piece was published first in the Camden Courier
(June 1, 1882), then reprinted in the New York World (June 11, 1882).
2  Walt Whitman, The Journalism, Volume 1: 1834-1846, ed. Herbert Bergman, 
Douglas A. Noverr, and Edward J. Recchia (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), xliii 
n5.
3  Journalism, 1:3. The piece appeared in the Mirror 12 no. 22 (November 29, 
1834), 173.
4  See Bergman’s explanation in Journalism 1:xliv-xlv.
5  Bergman, Journalism, 1:487.
6  New-York Mirror 12 no. 18 (Saturday, November 1, 1834), 141. Jason Stacy, 
current editor of Whitman’s journalism for the Walt Whitman Archive and co-editor, 
with Douglas Noverr and Zachary Turpin, of the forthcoming Collected Writings of 
Walt Whitman: The Journalism volumes, has pointed out that “The Olden Time” 
was a continually recurring motif in the Mirror in 1834 and 1835, very much like 
an informal journalistic series with a number of different contributors. Stacy sug-
gests that both “W.” articles appear to be part of that series, with “New-York in 
the Olden Time” inaugurating it. The “Olden Time” articles thus include: “New-
York in the Olden Time” (November 1, 1834), 141, signed “W.”; “New York in 
the Olden Time—Ancient Dutch Edifices—Corner of Broad and Garden Streets” 
(November 15, 1834), 153, unsigned; “The Olden Time” (November 29, 1834), 
173, signed “W.”; “A Couple of Stray Leaves from the History of the Olden Time” 
(January 17, 1835), 229, signed “R.V.M.”; “New-York in the Olden Time—Letter 
from Lawrie Todd—Being Scraps from His Note-Book for 1799” (February 14, 
1835), 261, signed “Todd”; “New-York in the Olden Time—To the Editors of the 
New-York Mirror” (February 21, 1835), 271, signed “John F. Watson”; “Sketches 
of the Olden Time—Scene at Cato’s, Twenty Odd Years Ago—A Fragment of a 
Contemplated Novel” (March 28, 1835), 310, signed “William Dunlap.”
7  After the Treaty of Westminster (1674) returned the colony of New Netherland 
to England, Sir Edmund Andros (1637-1714) was appointed Colonial Governor 
of New York and served from 1674 to 1683.
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8  The book had a second impression the same year (London: Dickenson Boys; 
Boston: George Barton, 1701). The book was then reprinted in New York in 1860 
by William Gowans and again in 1902 by Burrows Brothers, edited by Edward 
Gaylord Bourne. The 1902 edition of the book is available online at the Digital 
Commons@University of Nebraska-Lincoln (digitalcommons.unl.edu), with an 
introduction by Paul Royster. The scant biographical information known about 
Wolley is presented in an afterword by Edward Gaylord Bourne (pp. 48-57), which 
originally appeared as the introduction to the 1902 edition of the book. Wolley was 
a graduate of Cambridge University (B.A., 1674; M.A., 1677), became garrison 
chaplain in New York from 1678 to 1680, as indicated in his “journal,” returned 
to England and was a minister in Alford, Lincolnshire, then gave up the ministry 
and, in his retirement, wrote this unfinished memoir of his two years in New York 
(the reason for its never having been completed is unknown). 
9  There were other contributors to the Mirror who could have used the “W.” 
signature. John F. Watson, as indicated in note 8 above, published an article en-
titled “New-York in the Olden Time—To the Editors of the New-York Mirror” 
on February 21, 1835, but he signed his full name. And William Dunlap, an es-
tablished writer at the time, published fiction in the Mirror, including a March 
28, 1835, piece called “Sketches of the Olden Time—Scene at Cato’s, Twenty 
Odd Years Ago—A Fragment of a Contemplated Novel,” but, again, he signed 
the piece with his full name. The abbreviated “W.” would have been more likely 
to have been used by a younger and unknown contributor, as both Whitman and 
Whitney were at the time (Whitney was then in his mid-20s). Our thanks to Jason 
Stacy for pointing out the Watson and Dunlap pieces to us.
10 New-York Mirror 12 no. 17 (October 25, 1834), 129.
11 Thomas Richard Whitney, Evening Hours: A Collection of Poems (New York: 
Leavitt, Trow, 1844). The poem appears in the book in a slightly revised version, 
with the four quatrains compressed into two octaves. Evening Hours was reviewed 
quite positively, probably by Edgar Allan Poe, in the New York Evening Mirror 
(December 21, 1844), 2, where the “Morning Serenade” is singled out as “de-
lightful.” See the online Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore website (eapoe.org), 
under “Poe’s Literary Criticism” (eapoe.org/works/criticsm/em441207.htm).
12 For a good overview of Whitney’s life and an in-depth study of his involve-
ment in the Native American party and the nativist fraternity known as the Order 
of United Americans, see Dale T. Knobel’s “Beyond ‘America for Americans’: 
Inside the Movement Culture of Antebellum Nativism,” in Timothy Walch, ed., 
Immigrant America: European Ethnicity in the U.S. (New York: Garland, 1994), 
7-28. Knobel points out that one of the anomalies in Whitney’s particular brand 
of nativism was that it focused its disdain almost exclusively on poor foreign im-
migrants, particularly Catholics, but that Whitney had surprisingly positive things 
to say about American blacks and about American Indians, whom he believed 
were truly American and worthy of full citizenship, given their established resi-
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121
dence on American land. These views would coincide with the positive comments 
about American Indians in the November 1 Mirror piece as well as the positive 
attitude toward “Negro Harry” in the November 29 piece. For a more in-depth 
examination of the odd marriage between Native American ideology and “Native 
Americans” (American Indians), see Knobel’s “Know-Nothings and Indians: 
Strange Bedfellows?” in Western Historical Quarterly 15 (April 1984), 175-198.
13 New-York Mirror 12 no. 14 (October 4, 1834), 111.
14 Stefan Schöberlein of Marshall University has developed a promising comput-
er method for author-identification and agreed to test the “Olden Time” pieces 
in relation to Whitman’s other early journalism. While the pieces are too short to 
produce fully reliable results, Schöberlein reports that nothing in the results he 
was able to generate point toward Whitman as the author. For a description of 
Schöberlein’s “stylometric analysis,” see his “Poe or Not Poe? A Stylometric Analysis 
of Edgar Allan Poe’s Disputed Writings,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 32 
no. 3 (2017), 643-659. 


Who Is “W.”?: Questions about Whitman’s First Known Piece of Published Journalism

O'Neil, Brandon James

A WHITMAN BICENTENNIAL ALBUM:
THE CELEBRATORY PROCESSION
In his influential essay “The Poet,” Ralph Waldo Emerson argues that 
the Poet is one whose vision “turns the world to glass, and shows us 
all things in their right series and procession.” Responding to Emer-
son’s description of poetic activity and justifying his claim to the title 
of The Poet, Walt Whitman declares that “All is a procession, / The 
universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion” (“I Sing 
the Body Electric”).  “Procession” can evoke the ceremonious and 
often sombre, as Webster’s 1844 definition confirms by positioning 
three common processional scenarios side-by-side—a clergy’s proces-
sion into church, a triumphal procession, and a funeral procession—
followed by a quote, “Him all his train / Follow’d in bright proces-
sion,” from Milton’s Paradise Lost, representative of stately Old World 
poetic tradition. But Webster truncates Milton’s description of the 
celestial procession, omitting the wherefore of their movements: the 
procession followed in order to “behold Creation and the wonders of 
His might,” after which came “acclamation and the sound sympho-
nious of ten thousand Harps,” enough to make the “empyrean ring.” 
Milton describes a heavenly celebration, a birthday party for the new 
Creation, complete with a choir, a band, and swingin’ incense. It is 
perhaps that celebratory strain that Emerson’s Poet can discern with-
in the universe, rather than a funeral march or a victor’s triumphant 
entry through the gates of a captured city. The celebratory procession 
is the very basis of Whitman’s poetic project, in which the celebration 
of self sings its way into ever-widening circles, until all space and all 
time find symphonious inclusion.
Like Milton’s angels on the first Sabbath, Whitman’s fans and 
followers have been celebrating a momentous birthday this year. Each 
party, performance, poetry reading, exhibition, and lecture has added 
its voice to a symphony that carries Whitman’s memory and his poetry 
around the world. It doesn’t take the sensitivity of Emerson’s nearly-di-
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vine Poet to observe this procession as it winds through cities, states, 
and nations, attesting Whitman’s wide appeal through a variety of trib-
utes. Multiple actors (of varying beard length) have depicted the Good 
Gray Poet; historians and museums have curated their collections 
and hosted educational talks; poets and lovers of poetry have stepped 
to the mic to share their favorite lines. As the lengthy Bibliography 
at the end of this issue suggests, the ever-growing body of literature 
on Whitman has swelled with books, magazines, and articles from 
view-points fittingly multitudinous and contradictory. For promoting 
many of these tributes, designers—hired professional and talented 
amateur—were called in to create stunning and useful works of adver-
tising art. Over the past year, WWQR has collected about a hundred 
of these posters, circulars, postcards, and digital marketing media, 
sent in by readers and discovered on the web. The album we have 
compiled from them is more representative than comprehensive, since 
collecting and documenting every Bicentennial observation would be 
a daunting task, even for a team of accomplished researchers. Perhaps 
the reader attended an event that is not represented in this album: do 
not be discouraged! Your celebration was still in the procession, still 
contributing to Whitman’s birthday symphony. 
The final 13 pages of the album are dedicated to Whitman treats—
tributes in the form of beer, cookies, ice cream, and, of course, birthday 
cakes. Whitman had promised readers in “Song of Myself” to “act as 
the tongue of you”; thanks to bakers and brewers, that tongue can be 
put to good use this Bicentennial year. Whitman once confessed to 
Horace Traubel his hankering for a late-night snack:
“I was up, it was near midnight: I felt a gnawing something here—a void”—
indicating his stomach and laughing— “so I took some of the cakes and ate 
them alone, in the dark, in the dead silence” (1:121). 
By contrast, Whitman’s bicentennial birthday cakes were at the center 
of noisy parties and cut around the world. Cake is so ubiquitous in 
birthday celebrations that a February event in Philadelphia was devot-
ed entirely to finding the perfect one for the city’s May 31st birthday 
party. Needless to say, all the entries were enticing and the winner is 
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truly an amazing confection. “How much (perhaps all) the value of a 
thing—your joy, satisfaction, with it—consists in having it just at the 
right time,” Whitman continues in his snacking confession. “That’s 
the way it was with the cakes.” The 2019 birthday cakes, coming in 
every shape, size, and flavor, made timely and joyous homage to a poet 
who would have gleefully joined in their disappearance. Though Whit-
man was fond of washing sweets down with a bottle of champagne, 
as Jerome Loving’s talk on Whitman’s seventieth birthday relates (see 
page 233), this year he could substitute a “Song of Myself” themed 
German-inspired American IPA. 
Ever one to take command of promotion, Whitman directs his 
future readers exactly how best to honor him: “Publish my name 
and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover” (“Recorders 
Ages Hence”). Many of the entries in our Bicentennial Album feature 
Whitman’s portrait—particularly the 1855 Hollyer frontispiece—
proving that publishing his name seems nearly inseparable from 
hanging up his picture. Through icing and fondant, his image even 
looks out prominently from several of the cakes and cookies. The 
constant presence of Whitman’s picture acts as an invitation into the 
bicentennial procession from celebrators of 2019 to the poet born in 
1819. Together, we have made the empyrean ring, and continue to 
invoke his presence as many of our celebrations continue. Milton’s 
angels stood beside the Creator to “behold Creation and the wonders 
of His might.” We stand with our poet, the “tenderest lover,” to 
commemorate his wondrous gift, Leaves of Grass, and to affirm that 
1819-2019 is a span of uninterrupted procession. 
The University of Iowa BRANDON JAMES O’NEIL
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Behnam M Fomeshi. The 
Persian Whitman: Beyond a 
Literary Reception (Leiden, 
Netherlands: Leiden 
University Press, 2019). 
Revisiting Walt Whitman on 
the Occasion of his 200th 
Birthday. Winfried Herget, 
ed. (New York: Peter Lang 
Publishing, 2019). 
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A Whitman Bicentennial Album: The Celebratory Procession

Review of Éric Athenot and Cristanne Miller, eds. Whitman &amp; Dickinson: A Colloquy

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