The Antebellum Crisis and America's First Bohemians

Friends have remembered George Arnold as having celebrated "in a careless way the pleasures and pains of love, the joys of wine, the charm of indolence, the gayety and worthlessness of existence in the true Anacreontic vein" (50).

Arnold is said to have been part of a group of Saturday Press contributors who mocked Walt Whitman over his Leaves of Grass(53).

Arnold was known for his series of spoofs written for the Saturday Press titled "McArone." This "would-be hero" followed the troubles in Italy in the 1860's, and often recounted fights "from which he 'emerged from the fray, covered with mud, blood, and glory'" (112). By the spring of 1861, "McArone" moved on the cover the war in the United States.

Arnold was part of the group of men who restarted the Saturday Press after the war. But he didn't get to work on it long--less than three months after its revival, he "'slipped out of the World which had been much and little to him, and left behind him many sincere mourners'"(116).

Bellew, a transplanted Briton who came to America to pursue a career in painting, is noted for his particular love of the duck-billed platypus. Bellew persuaded the owner of a new restaurant on Spring Street in New York to name is after the creature. "Gathering regularly there, he and his friends 'talked, sang, joked, drank beer, and smoked church-warden pipes'" (47).

The "Benton brothers" are mentioned as "Pfaffian writers" who had "close ties to New England" (78).

Boughton, an artist who visited Pfaff's, is noted as one of the "pioneering landscape painters" of the time (62).

Brisbane is described as the "long-time leader among the American followers of Charles Fourier," and believed "'the great reforms to be effected in society relate to political economy, that is to credit, the currency, commerce, and banking'" (31).

Brisbane's glass eye is noted to have inspired Henry Clapp to become further interested in Fourierism (120).

Brisbane was a participant in the experimental Unitary Household (66-67).

Clapp was responsible (along with Fitz-James O'Brien) for introducing his group of literary friends to Pfaff's beer cellar (50).

Clapp was a devout abolitionist, and the Massachusetts "Washingtonian" clubs selected him to represent them at the World Temperance Convention in London in the summer of 1846 (8). However, his strong views on slavery and politics made him a number of enemies in the movement, particularly William Lloyd Garrison (8). Throughout 1848 and 1849, Clapp continued to tour Europe and attend peace conferences (9-10).

While living in London is 1848, Clapp formed part of the "literary Bohemia of that day" (12). After London, Clapp moved to Paris, and "found the French 'more ready, more genial, more witty' than English or Americans" (14). It was here than he began to develop a taste for strong coffee, alcohol, and "spending time with women, without marriage as a goal" (17).

Clapp returned from Europe as an admirer of Fourier, and remained a "'prominent spokesperson for the Socialists'" in the United States (17).

Though Clapp would later "largely be forgotten," Walt Whitman thought his abilities were "'way out of the common'" (18).

Clapp's views on religion were particularly controversial, and he once scoffed "'what is the use of Christianity?'" (96). However, he began as a pious New England man, who rejected the devil and his works (2).

Henry was a twin, and grew up in a large family in Nantucket (2). He held many jobs as a young man, and had much success in maritime and mercantile employment (3).

"Clapp and his circle started their own thoroughly independent and iconoclastic newspaper, the Saturday Press, as an expression of discomfort along the more radical margins of an increasingly successful Republican Party" (64-65). "In promoting what it saw as the best in its field, the Press became an advocate for good journalism and publishing" and received praise from many of its contemporary newspapers (78). However the war took a toll on the paper, and after a short attempt at restarting it in 1865, it was shut down for good (116). Afterwards Clapp became a "'casual writer for City journals'" but no longer held any real journalistic standing. By 1870 he had begun to take some solace in drink, and he died a few years later. Whitman said of him, "he died in a gutter—drink—drink—took him down, down" (116).

William Winter wrote an epitaph after his death:

Wit stops to grieve and laughter stops to sigh
That so much wit and laughter e'er could die;
But Pity, conscious of its anguished past,
Is glad this tortured spirit rests at last.
His purpose, thought, and goodness ran to waste,
He made a happiness he could not taste:
Mirth could not help him, talent could not save:
Through cloud and storm he drifted to the grave.
Ah, give his memory,--who made the cheer,
And gave so many smiles,--a single tear! (118)

Walt Whitman once said "'You will have to know something about Henry Clapp if you want to know all about me'" (53).

More than anything, Henry Clapp valued humor. He is known to have asked "'What is there here on the earth, or up yonder in the skies, to be so mighty solemn about? Nature herself is half the time on the broad grin. She laughs at us even through her tears" (126).

Clemenceau was a newcomer to Pfaff's in the war years.

Danforth was described as a "wild, impulsive, Western woman" who was the estranged wife of a naval officer (57). Danforth was known not to be her real name.

De Walden is noted as an actor who was present at Pfaff's.

A humorist, Dodge was among the occasional callers at Pfaff's.

Sol Eytinge was an "original and deeply interesting character" who worked on the New York Illustrated News (62).

"Regularly turning up at labor and socialist meetings, William Henry Fry, a French-educated musician, Fourierist, and critic for the Tribune, wrote and brought to the stage [...] works of home-grown American opera" (59).

Fry was considered the author of some of the first indigenous American opera (68).

Getty Gay was known to Pfaffians as a "pretty little creature" who had been an actress (58).

The "respectable and conservative" Fitz-Greene Halleck would escape his rural Connecticut home as often as he could for a "'night with the bohemians at Pfaff's'" (79).

Halleck made his living as an accommodating clerk to John Jacob Astor (88).

Ohioan William Dean Howells visited Pfaff's and recorded his poor impressions of the rowdiness of the crowd there (78).

Jefferson is noted as a famous actor who was present at Pfaff's.

Leland is a noted Philadelphia writer who visited Pfaff's when in town, and who would later become the editor of Vanity Fair (52, 53).

Homer Dodge Martin was among the artists at Pfaff's that pioneered the painting of landscapes, specifically focusing on the Hudson Valley, the Berkshires, animal life, and the West for inspiration.

Menken began showing up at Pfaff's in 1859, but remained either silent or totally misleading about who she actually was (57).

In 1868 Menken's health failed, and she died in Paris at age 33.
Menken's strikingly good looks got her onto the stage, but left her with a "defensive obsession to demonstrate genuine talent" (58).

After the dramatic resolution of her third marriage, Adah Menken plunged into despair. In a small apartment in Jersey City, she wrote her suicide note. But rather than carry through with it, she chose to reinvent herself, accepting a role to play the male part of Mazeppa in Voltaire's History of Charles XII, King of Sweden. The part was a huge risk and required Mazeppa to be tied naked to a horse and sent into the wilderness. Menken's performance was "remarkable" and is thought to be "inseperable from the dislocations and disruptions of war [...] and the bringing of such commercialized sensuality to the respectable stage" (113).

Menken's health began failing in 1868, and she died in Paris at age 33 (116).

As a journalist, Newell mocked the phony romanticism and self-serving patriotism of wartime public life. Newell wrote under the pen name "Orpheus C. Kerr" and "echoed Clapp's forebodings about the legions of office seekers inspired by 'the flesh-pots' of Washington" (112).

Fitz-James O'Brien was a regular at Pfaff's and one of the first Bohemians (along with Henry Clapp) to frequent the place. O'Brien was born to a well-off family and had come to the United States as an assistant to Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman. O'Brien was described as both "quick-fisted" and "generous" and was considered one of the "'cardinals in the high church of Bohemia.'" Though he mostly thought of himself as a poet, he also wrote macabre short stories that rivaled Poe's. His work on Putnam's Monthly Magazine earned him a solid reputation by 1859 (47-48).

O'Brien and Clapp introduced their friends and fellow writers to Pfaff's, making it grow in popularity among their circle of bohemians (49).

O'Brien served in the army in place of Aldrich. On February 15, 1862, he was ambushed by Confederates. As he rode forward to shoot the "'foremost rebel'" he was wounded in his shoulder. The injury claimed his life on April 6, 1862 (110). Though O'Brien's unionist sentiments have been questioned, it is clear that "O'Brien and the circle at Pfaff's left an ample record of a deep dedication to the cause for which he gave his life" (125-126).

Ottarson is mentioned as a writer who came from the printing trade (86). Ottarson's fellow printers sent him as their delegate to the 1850 national convention, at which he served as secretary. In September of 1851 he attended another convention which led to the formation of the National Typographical Union (88).

Ottarson died in 1884 "'in very feeble condition brought on by hard work and irregular habits'" (118).

Although Poe was a Southerner and had attended West Point, he "cast away the respectable profession of the sword for a more precarious one with the pen" (52).

Seymour hailed from London. A former school teacher, he became a music and drama critic for the New York Times and attained fame in 1858 with his book Self-Made Men (48).

Seymour attended the Paris Exhibition in 1868, and died the following spring (116).

Aaron Draper Shattuck was one of the pioneering landscape painters of the Hudson River School (62).

Formerly Elizabeth Drew Barstow, she became Elizabeth Stoddard in 1852 when she married Richard Henry Stoddard (51).

Elizabeth and her husband were both great admirers of Edgar Allen Poe (52).

Elizabeth studied at Wheaton Seminary and "not only assisted his literary work but regularly wrote poems, stories, and essays for the periodical press and, eventually, three novels," (58).

Strakosch was a musician struggling to open an opera company in the city. He was part of a rival of two other men intending to do the same, yet all would meet at Pfaff's to discuss the hectic life of touring musicians (59).

During the Depression, Strakosch proposed to gradually reduce what he was paying his performers. When one of his rivals, B. Ullmann, heard this, he likened Strakosch's suggestion to the relationship between a peasant and his donkey (89).

Eventually, Strakosch and Ullmann headed for Europe leaving the third member of their rivalry, Max Maretzek, to become the master of New-York based American opera (114).

Swinton was Scottish-born and educated in Canada and at Amherst College. He worked at the Edgeworth Female Seminary in North Carolina before going to New York. In 1858 he joined the staff at the New York Times. In the following year his pieces were published for Putnam's Monthly as Rambles among Words: Their Poetry and Wisdom (50).

A writer for Putnam's, William Swinton "went to the seat of the war for the Times and became so conversant in military matters that his discussions of them incurred the displeasure of General Grant" (110).

"Antebellum social standards required a dehumanization, which Mortimer Thomson caricatured as 'lazy, shiftless Northern white men'" (88).

Thomson is noted as being one of the more conservative bohemians. He mocked self-deceptions about the American past. In his spoof on Longfellow's Hiawatha, Thomson declared his intention to "'slaughter the American Eagle, cut the throat of the Goddess of Liberty, annihilate the Yankee nation...'" (94).

Thomson's pen name was "'Q.K. Philander Doesticks, P.B.,'" which stood for "'Queer Kritter, Philander Doesticks, Perfect Brick'" (48). He had gained fame by "going to Niagra falls and writing self deprecating letters back to the Tribune" (49). He was also known as a popular humorist.

Charles Farrar Browne created the persona "Artemus Ward" while editing the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Soon after he moved to New York and worked for the Saturday Press and Vanity Fair. "'He was a pure Bohemian, thoroughly good-natured, incapable of malice towards any one, with a capacity for gentleness and tenderness.'" He also attained fame on the lecture circuit (54).

The bohemians often chose to do battle over "questions of culture rather than electoral politics." Artemus Ward in particular offered a crisp focus on the absurdity of race (92).

By his death in 1867, Ward had gained a net worth of almost $100,000, which was enough to support his aged mother and open an asylum for old and disabled printers (116).

President Lincoln's assassination deeply impacted many of the bohemians, including Walt Whitman, whose "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" articulated the national grief (115).

Whitman was an old friend of Henry Clapp's, and he remains the most famous of the old bohemians. By 1881, the seventh edition of Leaves of Grass was quite large and "did well enought to allow Whitman to purchase a home in Camden, New Jersey. After a long and very well-documented old age, he died on March 26, 1892" (119).

Whitman "embodied the importance of Pfaff's for the future of American letters." He began making his way into Pfaff's when he was nearly forty years old, and had attained enough of a reputation by then to inspire a mixture of jealousy as well as respect. Even into his old age, Whitman spoke of how important Pfaff's had been to him, saying "'You will have to know something about Henry Clapp if you want to know all about me'" (53).

When Henry Clapp arranged to have a woman from upstate review Whitman's work, Whitman said "'the girls have always been my sturdiest defenders, upholders'" (87).

Winter was one of the men at Pfaff's who was quite willing to join in tormenting Walt Whitman over his Leaves of Grass (53).

In late 1859, Harvard graduate William Winter showed up in New York city and was "drawn into Clapp's paper as 'sub-editor'" (79).

Upon Henry Clapp's death, Winter wrote a touching epitaph. However, since the lines were not approved by his only living relative, they were not ascribed on his gravestone (118).