An Archive of Art and Literature by the Bohemians of Antebellum New York
Authoritative biography of Walt Whitman that includes many details about the Pfaff's years.
Aldrich is listed as one of Pfaff's "literary customers" who sat at the large, reserved table against the establishment's far wall. Allen mentions that Aldrich "later went to Boston and became 'respectable'" (229). Allen continues that Aldrich and Stoddard were most likely as "respectable" Howells, "and doubtless none of them were as wicked as they tried to appear" (231).
While at Pfaff's, Arnold is mentioned as being "quarrelsome" and his satirical wit was no match for Walt Whitman.
Benton was a friend and correspondent of Burroughs'. Burroughs wrote Benton several times with his impressions of Whitman.
Clapp was referred to as Whitman's "sardonic friend."
Allen reprints a September 30, 1865, letter from Curtis to Willaim O'Connor that responds to O'Connor's request for "advice and aid" in seeking a publisher for a draft of his essay The Good Gray Poet. Curtis was the editor of Harper's and wrote to O'Connor:
"The task you undertake is not easy, as you know. The public sympathy will be the Secretary for removing a man who will be considered an obscene author and a free lover. But your hearty vindication of free letters will not be less welcome to all liberal men.
"Personally I do not know Whitman and while his Leaves of Grass impressed me less than it impressed many better men than I, I have never heard anything of him but what was noble nor believed anything byt what was honorable.
"That a man should be expelled from office and held up to public contumely, because of an honest book which no candid mind can truly regard as hurtful to public morality, is an offense which demands exposure and censure."
According to Allen, "Curtis offered to do what he could 'to redress the wrong' that O'Connor had undertaken to right" (361-362).
Emerson reads a first edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass and sends Whitman a letter which "greets" him "at the beginning of a great career."
Whitman shared Greeley's opinion that the Crystal Palace Exhibition was "a thing to be seen once in a lifetime" (120).
According to Brooklyn journalist Charles Skinner, in 1858, compared with Whitman's dress (or affected costume), "Even Horace Greeley, who affected a rustic make-up was more conventional in his costume" (212).
Clapp worked for a while with Greeley and Brisbane to try to "popularize the doctrines of Fourier and socialism" (229).
Leland befriended Whitman in the 1870's (506). Whitman admired Leland for his "easy association with 'Bohemians and bummers'" (507-508).
The American Review (later the American Whig Review) was famous in 1845 because of the publication of Poe's "The Raven" in the February edition (65).
Whitman submitted a short essay on "Art-Music and Heart-Music" to the Broadway Journal in 1845. Poe was editing the paper, and printed the essay with an editorial endorsement. Whitman most likely called on Poe shortly after and wrote: "[Poe was] very cordial, in a quiet way...I have a distinct and pleasing remembrance of his looks, voice, manner, and matter; very kindly and human, but subdued, perhaps a little jaded" (71). Allen reprint's Poe's comments in note 20, p.552.
Whitman attended the public reburial of Poe's remains in Baltimore in 1876. Whitman was invited to sit on the platform at the event, but declined the offer to speak, as was reported in the November 16 Washington Star (the account was most likely written by Whitman himself). "Here he was reported to have said in an informal interview that he had long had a distaste for Poe's writings, in which he missed the sunlight, fresh air, and health, but he had recently come to appreciate Poe's special place in literary history" (468).
Raymond wrote in the New York Times that the rioters of July 13 and 14, 1863 were "not the people" as was reported in the World and the Tribune but "for the most part...the vilest elements of the city," which was to become the view of later historians (302).
On Decemeber 2, 1866, Raymond gave O'Connor four columns on the Sunday editorial page of the Times to review the new Leaves of Grass and discuss Whitman and included his own half-column endorsement of O'Connor's article, "though he still felt that the book was too indecent to be circulated freely." O'Connor's article was so persuasive and well-written that Raymond considered him for an editorial position at the Times (376).
Stanley is one of the departed Pfaffians Whitman writes about toasting with Pfaff during his 1881 visit (494).
Source: Whitman - CW 5:21
Winter, a "sentimental poet and later dramatic critic" is listed as one of the "literary customers" at Pfaff's (229).
The Vault at Pfaff's