Whitman and the City: |
The following chronology uses the places Whitman knew--Long Island, Brooklyn, New York City, Washington, D.C.--to organize some of the details of his life. As a boy, Whitman spent most of his time in Brooklyn and Long Island, with a brief stint in Manhattan when he was 16 years old. He moved to Manhattan when he was 22. He returned to Brooklyn when he was 26, though he continued to make frequent trips to New York. When the Civil War began, and Whitman had already published three editions of Leaves of Grass, he moved to Washington, D.C. where he visited soldiers in the hospitals. In 1873, at 54, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, and he stayed there until his death. As a young man, Whitman traveled to New Orleans, and in his later years he traveled as far west as Denver, and as far north as Ontario.
The chronology not only identifies where Whitman lived and when, but it also notes selected urban experiences--Lincoln's innaugural march in Manhattan on the way to Washington, D.C., and a victory parade in D.C.--as well as his early work with a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, and political organizations political involvements. These jobs and experiences surely deepened his knowledge of cities, and a fair amount of his newspaper writing required Whitman to adopt a voice that identified with the city and that could address boldly the citizens of the city. The poet's life and literary work were intertwined with the emergence of big cities, and especially New York City.
In 1819, Walter Whitman is born on May 31 in West Hills, Long Island. In 1823 Whitman's father relocates the family to Brooklyn where the father hopes to succeed as a builder of small houses. In 1824, Whitman's father purchases a lot on Johnson Street in Brooklyn, but he loses the lot the same year. In 1825, Whitman's father tries again, purchasing a lot on Tillary and Adams in Brooklyn, and Whitman begins attending Brooklyn District School No. 1, the first public school in Brooklyn.
When he is ten, in1829, Whitman witnesses the public funeral of a Navy officer who was killed in an explosion which killed twenty-four seamen; and at 11 (nearly 12), Whitman leaves school and begins work to help with family finances, starting as an office boy for lawyers James B. Clarke and his son Edward. The next year, 1831, Whitman is apprenticed to Samuel E. Clements, editor of Long Island Patriot, Democratic, and the foreman printer teaches Whitman the process of setting type by hand. In 1832 Whitman, now 13 years old, begins working for Erastus Worthington, a Brooklyn printer. Economic troubles force the Whitman family to move back to West Hills in Long Island in spring, while Whitman remains in Brooklyn, now working as a compositor for the Whig weekly Long-Island Star.
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In 1838, Whitman moves to Huntington, Long Island, where, although he is only 19 years old, he founds a weekly newspaper, the Long-Islander, serving as publisher, editor, compositor, pressman, and distributor. The next year, Whitman sells the newspaper and visits with his family in West Babylon. He moves to Jamaica, Long Island, working on the Long Island Democrat as a typesetter and boarding with James J. Brenton, the editor of the paper. Whitman resigns from the paper and returns to schoolteaching at Jamaica Academy in Flushing Hill, but continues writing articles for the Democrat.
In the fall of 1840, Whitman serves as Democratic electioneer for Queens County and enters into debates with political candidates. Whitman's family moves to Dix Hills, and Whitman resumes teaching in Woodbury. The next year, Whitman abruptly abondons teaching at Woodbury, and moves to Whitestone where he teaches for one month.
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In May 1841, Whitman moves to New York City and begins writing for the Democratic Review. In the fall, he becomes a compositor for the weekly magazine, New World. In 1842, Whitman edits the New York Aurora, but he is later fired for alleged laziness. He writes a bulletin of murders for New York Evening Tattler, and then works for the Daily Plebeian, a Democratic Party paper where he becomes a penny-a-liner. Whitman publishes Franklin Evans, a temperance novel, as a part of a weekly shilling-novel series.
In 1843, Whitman begins editing New York Statesman, a semiweekly Democratic paper, and in 1844, he briefly writes for the New York Mirror, a popular weekly. In July, Whitman begins editing the New York Democrat, a daily morning paper.
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In 1845, Whitman's family returns to Brooklyn, and in August, now 26 years old, Whitman leaves Manhattan to settle near his family in Brooklyn. In the fall, Whitman begins editing stories for the Long Island Star. In March of 1846, Whitman starts at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a conservative Democratic paper. He hears Orson Fowler lecture on phrenology, and George Bush lecture on Swedenborgian religious philosophy. A year later, in March of 1848, Whitman is fired from the Eagle, apparently for his support of the Wilmot Proviso, a bill that called for the exclusion of slavery from all newly acquired territories. Whitman travels to New Orleans with his younger brother, Thomas Jefferson (Jeff) Whitman, and when he returns four months later he is selected as one of fifteen delegates from Brooklyn representing Kings County at a convention introducing the Free-Soil Party. At the convention, Whitman hears speeches by Frederick Douglass, Charles Redmond, and Henry Garnet.
In September of 1848, Whitman establishes the Brooklyn Daily Freeman, a newspaper that sympathizes with the Free-Soil cause. After the first edition appears, a fire destroys the office of the newspaper at Orange Street, and the newspaper is taken over by Democrats as part of an effort to stifle the Free-Soil cause. In October, Whitman purchases a lot at 106 Myrtle Avenue, and makes plans to have a house built for himself and his family.
In January of 1849, Whitman rents space in Brooklyn's Granada Hall, selling pens, pencils, paper, inkstands, musical instruments, and other miscellaneous items. With his family he moves into the newly built house on Myrtle Street in April, transferring his store to a first floor room in the house. He writes a series of articles for the Sunday Dispatch, describing outings to east end of Long Island, and in July, he travels to Clinton Hall to have his head read by phrenologist. He works a brief stint as an editor of a new paper, the New York Daily News, which shuts down in February due to financial failure.
In 1850, Whitman publishes four poems, and in 1851, he issues a guidebook from his print shop entitled The Salesman and Traveller's Directory for Long Island, but quits publishing it after a few issues. He turns to writing Long Island sketches under the title of "Letters from Paumanok" in Bryant's Evening Post; he begins spending time in the studios of artists and sculptors residing in Brooklyn; and he is elected president of the Brooklyn Art Union, an organization that lasted only a short time.
In 1852, Whitman tries his hand at his father's carpentry business: he sells the Myrtle Street property, and builds two three-story frame houses on Cumberland Street. In September, he moves into one of the houses on Cumberland Street, and rents out the other. Next spring, he sells both houses, moves into a smaller house nearby, and his family moves to a house he built on Skillman Street.
In 1855,Whitman has the first edition of Leaves of Grass printed at a Brooklyn printing shop. About 800 copies are initially printed, and the first 295 copies are advertised for sale at $2.00 a copy. Emerson praises Leaves of Grass in a letter to Whitman, and the next set are printed with less gold stamping and sell for $1.00 a copy. In November the last set of copies are issued, at .75¢ a copy. Whitman's father also dies this year.
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In 1856, Whitman and his family move to Classon Avenue, and the second edition, with new poems and revisions, is published by Fowlers and Wells in New York, priced at $1.00 per copy. Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and Sarah Tyndale visit Whitman and his family. In the spring of 1857, Whitman begins editing the Brooklyn Daily Times, where he reviews books, writes editorials, and selects the fiction to be printed. His editorials focus on urban life, condemning high crime rates and poor public sanitation.
In 1859, Whitman's brother, Jeff, marries and moves in to the Whitman household, and the whole family moves to a house on Portland Avenue in Brooklyn. In June, Whitman is dismissed from the Brooklyn Daily Times, after publishing two editorials calling for the legalization of prostitution and more liberal attitudes towards pre-marital sex for men and for women. On February 10, 1860, Whitman receives a letter from publishers Thalyer and Eldridge of Boston, who offer to publish a third edition of Leaves of Grass, with a 10% royalty on all copies sold, and on March 5, 1860, Whitman arrives in Boston to supervise the publishing.
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On February 19, 1861, when Lincoln passes through Manhattan on his twelve-day journey from Springfield to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration, Whitman watches Lincoln from the top of an omnibus. Around midnight on April 13, while walking down Broadway after seeing a Verdi opera, Whitman hears the newsboys announcing the attack on Fort Sumter. Whitman writes a recruiting poem, "Beat! Beat! Drums," and he supports himself as a freelance journalist, writing a series of articles about Brooklyn life and a few about Manhattan, including descriptions of the saloons and dance halls of the Bowery, and accounts of the suffering of the wounded and sick in New-York Hospital, including a few stage-driver friends of his.
In 1862, Whitman visits hospitals in Brooklyn to help those wounded in the Civil War, and he goes to Washington D.C. and Fredericksburg, Virginia, to find his wounded brother, George. In Washington, Whitman works part-time as a copyist in the Army Paymaster's office, and he regularly visits wounded soldiers in Washington hospitals. At the end of the war, in 1865, Whitman publishes Drum-Taps. He watches the victory parade in May, writing to his mother that it was "too much & too impressive to be described. Whitman gets work as a clerk in the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, but when a new Secretary of the Interior takes office, Leaves of Grass is found indecent and Whitman is fired.
Whitman secures an appointment in the Attorney General's office, and between 1866 and 1872 Whitman lives in D.C. and visits his family in Brooklyn often. In 1871, and again in 1872, Leaves of Grass, the fifth edition, is published. Democratic Vistas is also published. In 1872, Whitman travels to Hanover, New Hampshire for the Dartmouth University commencement where he reads As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, which is published later that year.
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On January 23, 1873 Whitman suffers a stroke. A few months later his mother dies, and Whitman leaves Washington for Camden, New Jersey, never returning to Washington, D.C. In 1876, Whitman publishes another edition of Leaves of Grass, and also Memoranda During the War and Two Rivulets.
In 1879 Whitman makes a western trip, visiting St. Louis, Topeka, and Denver, and in 1880 he summers with Richard Maurice Bucke in London, Ontario.
In 1881 - 1882 Leaves of Grass, sixth edition, is published, and Whitman lectures on Lincoln before the St. Botolph Club in Boston. In 1884 Whitman buys a house, 328 Mickle Street, in Camden, New Jersey. In June of 1888 Whitman suffers a paralytic stoke, and Whitman dies on March 26, 1892. The "death-bed" edition of Leaves of Grass is published in 1891 and 1892 by David McKay in Philadelphia.
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