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First Impressions of Literary New York

Howells, William Dean. "First Impressions of Literary New York." Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 01 Jun. 1895: 62-74.
Type: 
magazine
Genre: 
essay
Abstract: 

This essay, first published in Harper's Monthly Magazine in June 1895, is Howells' first-person account of his first visit to New York in August 1860. Howells describes his encounters with the Bohemians both at the Saturday Press and Pfaff's. Howells describes in detail his first meeting with Walt Whitman, at Pfaff's, as well as his other encounters with the poet. Howells also discusses his friendships with other New York literary notables, such as Edmund Clarence Stedman, Richard Henry Stoddard and Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard.

People who Created this Work

Howells, William author

This piece discusses Howells' trip to New City York in August 1860.

People Mentioned in this Work

Aldrich, Thomas [pages:63]

Howells claimed that to be published in the Saturday Press was to be in his "company" (63).

Butler, William [pages:70 (ill.)]
Clapp, Henry [pages:63-65]

Howells doesn't refer to him by name, but it's clear from the context that he's talking about Clapp.

Howells claims that Clapp must have stolen the "shredded prose" style of the Saturday Press from the writing of Victor Hugo (63). Howells states that Clapp "brought it back with him from one of those soujourns in Paris which posses one of the French accent rather than the French language" (63).

Howells describes Clapp as "a man of such open and avowed cynicism that he may have been, for all I know, a kindly optimist at heart; some say, however, that he had really talked himself into being what he seemed. I only know that his talk, the first day first day I saw him, was of such a quality that if he was half as bad, he would have been too bad to be. He walked up and down his room saying what lurid things he would directly do if anyone accused him of respectibility, so that he might disabuse the minds of all witnesses" (63).

Howells states that he "could not disown" his fascination with Clapp during his first meeting with him, even though Clapp's language caused him "inner disgust" (63).

Clapp preferred the anonymity of writers in New York to the tradition and recognition of Boston writers (63).

Howells feels that Clapp was toying with him when he asked him of his impression and relationship with Hawthorne (63).

Howells discusses Clapp's death: "The editor passed away too, not long after, and the thing that he had inspired had ceased to be. He was a man of certain sardonic power, and used it rather fiercely and freely, with a joy probaby more apparent than real in the pain it gave. In my last knowledge of him he was much milder than when I first knew him, and I have a feeling that he too came to own before he died that man cannot live by snapping turtle alone. He was kind to some neglected talents, and befriended them with a vigor and a zeal which he would have been the last to let you call generous. The chief of these was Walt Whitman, who, when the Saturday Press took it up, had as hopeless a cause with the critics on either side of the ocean as any man would have" (65).

Clare, Ada [pages:64]

Howells doesn't refer to her by name, but it's clear from the context that he's talking about Clare.

Howells states that "It was said, so far west as Ohio, that the queen of the Bohemia sometimes came to Pfaff's: a young girl of sprightly gift in letters, whose name or pseudonym had made itself pretty well known at that day, and whose fate, pathetic at times, out-tragedies almost any other in the history of letters. She was seized with hydrophobia from the bite of her dog, on a railroad train; and made a long journey home in the paroxysms of that agonizing disease, which ended in her death after she reached New York. But this was after her reign had ended, and no such black shadow cast backward upon Pfaff's, whose name often figured in the epigrammatically paragraphed prose of the Saturday Press" (64).

Curtis, George [pages:65]

Howells mentions his adoration of Curtis and muses over why he didn't see him when he visited New York (65).

Howells, William [pages:62-68, 67(ill.)]

Howells feels that the "Bohemian group represented New York literature to my imagination" (63).

He discusses how the anti-Boston sentiment of the New York Bohemians made him uneasy during his first visit to the offices of the Saturday Press (64).

Howells states that the same day he visited the Saturday Press, he also visited the "beer cellar," "where I was given to know that the Bohemian nights were smoked and quaffed away" (64). He felt he should visit since he had been a contributor to the Saturday Press and that he should at least "witness" the "revels of my comrades" (64). Of the conversation that night, Howells claims that "Nothing of their talk remains with me, but the impression remains that it was not so good talk as I heard in Boston" (64). Howells also claims that his first night with the Bohemians was his last Bohemian evening and the last of his New York authorship for a period.

Says of his visit that "The Bohemians were the beginning and end of the story for me, and to tell the truth I did not like the story" (66). Howells mentions that during his visit of Pfaff's he found the conversation, humor, and atmosphere unpleasant to his sensibilties; he much preferred the Boston literary circle. He claims that after that evening, much of the rest of his New York trip was spent sight-seeing.

Howells also discusses issues with publishing and writing for young American writers.

Ludlow, Fitz Hugh [pages:63]

Howells claimed that to be published in the Saturday Press was to be in his "company" (63).

O'Brien, Fitz-James [pages:63,73]

Howells claimed that to be published in the Saturday Press was to be in his "company" (63).

Howells begins a discussion of O'Brien's military career by mentioning O'Brien's literary successes with the story of "The Diamond Lens" and a ghost story. Howells mentions that upon his return to New York he found out that O'Brien had enlisted in the war. Howells claims O'Brien "had risen to be an officer in the swift process of the first days of it" (73).

Howells recounts that O'Brien had shot and killed a man at camp, and the outcome or his punishment was uncertain. O'Brien was cleared of wrong-doing on that account. O'Brien would die of lockjaw from a battle injury (73).

The Saturday Press [pages:62-63, 64, 68]

Howells claims that on his second day in New York in August 1860, "Very probably I lost no time going to the office of the Saturday Press, as soon as I had my breakfast after arriving, and I have a dim impression of the Bohemians whose gay theory of life obliged them to a good many hardships in lying down early in the morning, and rising up late in the day. I was the office-boy who bore me company during the first hour of my visit, by-and-by the editors and contributors actually began to come in. I would not be more specific about them if I could, for since that Bohemia has faded from the map of the republic of letters, it has grown more and more difficult to trace its citizenship to any certain writer. There are some living who knew the Bohemians and even loved them, but there are increasingly few who were of them, even in the fond retrospect of youthful folly and errors"(62-3). Of the Bohemians and the Saturday Press, Howells continues, "It was in fact but a sickly colony, transplanted from the mother asphalt of Paris, and never really striking root in the pavements of New York; it was a colony of ideas, of theories, which had perhaps never had any deep root anywhere. What these ideas, these theories, were in art and life, it would not be very easy to say; but in the Saturday Press they came to violent expression, against all existing forms of respectibility. If respectability was your bete noir, then you were a Bohemian; and if you were in the habit of rendering yourself in prose, then you necessarily shredded your prose into very fine paragraphs of a sentence each, or very few words, or even of one word" (63).

Howells mentions his own contributions to the Saturday Press.

Howells feels that the "Bohemian group represented New York literature to my imagination" mainly because he had pride in the Saturday Press (especially since he had been published in it) and "because that paper really emboided the literary life of the city. It was clever, and full of the wit that tries its teeth on everything. It attacked all literary shams but its own, and made itself felt and feared. The young writers througout the country were ambitious to be seen in it, and they gave their best to it; they gave literally, for the Saturday Press never paid in anything but hopes of paying, vaguer even than promises. It is not too much to say that it was very nearly as well for one to be accepted by the Press as to be accepted by the Atlantic, and for the time there was no other literary comparison" (63).

Howells states that to be published in the Saturday Press was to "be in the company of Fitz James O'Brien, Fitzhugh Ludlow, Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Stedman, and whoever else was liveliest in prose and liveliest in verse at that day in New York" (63).

Howells describes the Press as "a very good snapping turtle" (63). Howells also insinuates that the quality of the Press has since declined.

Howells equates his visit to the Saturday Press to visiting the offices of the Atlantic, only with a different after-feeling. Howells indicates that the anti-Boston sentiment of the Bohemians made him uneasy (64).

Howells mentions that Pfaff's "[whose] name often figured in the epigrammatically paragraphed prose of the Saturday Press" (64).

Howells mentionts that "When I came the next year the Saturday Press was no more, and the editor and his contributors had no longer a common centre. The best of the young fellows I met there confessed, in a pleasant exchange, that he thought the pose a vain and unprofitable one; and when the Press was revived, after the war, it was without any of the old Bohemian characteristics except that of not paying for material. It could not last long upon these terms, and again passed away, and still awaits its second palingenisis" (64).

Howells discusses Clapp's relationship to Whitman: "He was kind to some neglected talents, and befriended them with a vigor and a zeal which he would have been the last to let you call generous. The chief of these was Walt Whitman, who, when the Saturday Press took it up, had as hopeless a cause with the critics on either side of the ocean as any man would have" (65). Howells also states that "It was not till long afterward that his English admirers began to discover him, and make his countrymen some noisy reproaches for ignoring him; they were wholly in the dark concerning the Saturday Press, which first stood as his friend, and the young men who gathered about it, made him their cult" (65).

Stedman, Edmund [pages:63,70-72,74(ill.)]

Howells claimed that to be published in the Saturday Press was to be in his "company" (63).

Howells also mentions that he and Stedman shared their recollections of this time period before the publication of Howells' piece (70).

Howells states that in Stedman "I found the quality of Boston, the honor and passion of literature, and not merely a pose of the literary life; and the world knows without my telling how true he has been to his ideal of it. His earthly mission then was to write letters from Washington for the New York World, which started in life as a good young evening paper, with a decided religious tone, so that the Saturday Press could call it the Night-blooming Serious" (70-71).

Howells remarks on Stedman's skill and talent at being a Washington correspondent. Howells also mentions that Stedman later obtained a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and went into the field of business. Howells says that the career change has allowed Stedman to "mean something more single in literature than many more singly devoted to it" (71). Howells mentions that he and another writer used to discuss Stedman's work and "always decided that Stedman had the best of it in being able to earn his living in a sort so alien to literature that he could come to it unjaded, and with a gust unspoiled by kindred savors. But no man shapes his own life, and I dare say Stedman may have all the time been envying us our tripods from his high place in the Stock Exchange. What is certain is that he has come to stand for literature and to embody New York in it as no one else does. In a community which seems never to have had a conscious relation to letters, he has kept the faith with dignity and fought the fight with constant courage. Scholar and poet at once, he has spoken to his generation with authority which we can forget only in the charm which makes us forget everything else" (71).

Howells discusses meeting Stedman before either experienced any fame and how they would share writing with one another. It seems Stedman would advise Howells on publication venues (71).

Howells also discusses Stedman's "worldliness" and his appearance when they first met (72).

Stoddard, Elizabeth [pages:72-73, 72 (ill.)]

Introduced to Howells by Stedman, Howells states that the Stoddards were in "the glow of their early fame as poets" (72). He also mentions that "they knew about my poor beginnings and were very, very good to me" (72).

Of his friendship with the Stoddards, Howells says "But what I relished most was the long talk I had with them both about authorship in all its phases, and the exchange of delight in this poem and that, this novel and that, with gay, wilful runs away to make some wholly irreverent joke, or fire puns into the air at no mark whatsoever. Stoddard had then a fame, with the sweetness of personal affection in it, from the lyrics and the odes that will perhaps best keep him known, and Mrs. Stoddard was beginning to make her distinct and special quality felt in the magazines, in verse and fiction. In both it seems to me she has failed of the recognition her work merits, and which will be hers when Time begins to look about him for work worth remembering" (72-73).

Of Mrs. Stoddard's work, Howells continues, "Her tales and novels have in them a foretaste of realism, which was too strange for the palate of their day, and is now too familiar, perhaps. It is a peculiar fate, and would form the scheme of a pretty study in the history of literature. But in whatever she did she left the stamp of a talent like no other, and a personality disdainful of literary environment" (73).

Howells also states "In a time when most of us had to write like Tennyson, or Longfellow, or Browning, she never would write like anyone but herself" (73).

Howells fondly recalls visiting the couple and mentions that they had an appreciation for all literature, including his own (73).

Howells says "I liked the Stoddards because they were frankly not of that Bohemia which I disliked so much, and thought it of no promise or validity; and because I was fond of their poetry and found them in it" (73).

Stoddard, Richard [pages:72-73,73(ill.)]

Introduced to Howells by Stedman. Howells states that the Stoddards were in "the glow of their early fame as poets" (72). He also mentions that "they knew about my poor beginnings and were very, very good to me" (72). Howells mentions that "Stoddard went with me to Franklin Square, and gave the sanction of his presence to the ineffectual offer of my poem there" (72).

Of his friendship with the Stoddards, Howells says "But what I relished most was the long talk I had with them both about authorship in all its phases, and the exchange of delight in this poem and that, this novel and that, with gay, wilful runs away to make some wholly irreverent joke, or fire puns into the air at no mark whatsoever. Stoddard had then a fame, with the sweetness of personal affection in it, from the lyrics and the odes that will perhaps best keep him known, and Mrs. Stoddard was beginning to make her distinct and special quality felt in the magazines, in verse and fiction. In both it seems to me she has failed of the recognition her work merits, and which will be hers when Time begins to look about him for work worth remembering" (72-73).

Howells fondly recalls visiting the couple and mentions that they had an appreciations for all literature, including his own (73).

Howells says "I liked the Stoddards because they were frankly not of that Bohemia which I disliked so much, and thought if of no promise or validity; and because I was fond of their poetry and found them in it" (73).

Ward, Artemus [pages:68,71(ill.)]

Howells mentions that he sailed for Liverpool without the money for some poems that Vanity Fair bought for him, but that he was unsurprised about not being paid, as "the editor, who was then Artemus Ward, had frankly told me in taking my address that ducats were few at that moment with Vanity Fair" (68).

Whitman, Walt [pages:65, 67(ill.), 70]

Howells discusses Clapp's relationship to Whitman: "He was kind to some neglected talents, and befriended them with a vigor and a zeal which he would have been the last to let you call generous. The chief of these was Walt Whitman, who, when the Saturday Press took it up, had as hopeless a cause with the critics on either side of the ocean as any man would have" (65). Howells also states that "It was not till long afterward that his English admirers began to discover him, and make his countrymen some noisy reproaches for ignoring him; they were wholly in the dark concerning the Saturday Press, which first stood as his friend, and the young men who gathered about it, made him their cult" (65).

Howells claims "No doubt he was more valued because he was so offensive in some ways than he would have been if he had been in no way offensive, but it remains a fact that they celebrated him quite as much as was good for them" (65).

Howells claims that Whitman was present the night he visited Pfaff's and was "the chief fact of my experience." Howells recounts, "I did not know he was there till I was on my way out, for he did not sit at the table under the pavement, but at the head of one further into the room. There, as I passed, some friendly fellow stopped me and named me to him, and I remember how he leaned back in his chair, and reached out his great hand to me, as if he were going to give it me for good and all. He had a fine head, with a cloud of Jovian hair upon it, and a branching beard and mustache, and gentle eyes that looked most kindly into mine, and seemed to wish the liking which I instantly gave him, though we hardly passed a word, and our aquaintance was summed up in that glance and the grasp of his mighty fist upon my hand. I doubt if he had any notion who or what I was beyond the fact that I was a young poet of some sort, but he may have possibly remembered seeing my name printed after some very Heinsesque verses in the Press. I did not meet him again for twenty years, and then I had only a moment with him when he was reading some proofs of his poems in Boston. Some years later I saw him for the last time, one day after his lecture on Lincoln, in that city, when he came down from the platform, to speak with some hand-shaking friends who gathered about him. Then and always he gave me the sense of a sweet and true soul, and I felt in him a spiritual dignity which I will not try to reconcile with his printing in the forefront of his book a passage from a private letter of Emerson's, though I believe he would not have seen such a thing as most other men would, or thought ill of it in another" (65).

Howells says that he "will make sure only of the greatest benignity in the presence of the man." And states that Whitman was "the apostle of the rough, the uncouth, was the gentlest person; his barbaric yawp, translated into terms of social encounter, was an address of singular quiet, delivered in a voice of winning and endearing friendliness" (65).

Howells gives a less shining critique of Whitman's work.

Howells mentions that when he met William D. O'Connor "he had not yet risen to be the chief of Walt Whitman's champions outside of the Saturday Press" (70). Howells also mentions that Boston publisher of Leaves of Grass was present at this gathering and that he had issued "a very handsome edition of Leaves of Grass, and then failed promptly if not consequently" (70).