A Walk with Walt

"Gods! what a glorious morning it was! Just enough of enervating, voluptuous heat--and just enough breeze to fill the wings of the zephyrs--and just enough sunshine to reflect a sparkle in the eyes of beautiful women--and just enough people . . . on the pave to make one continued, ceaseless, devilish, provoking, delicious, glorious jam!" Thus ecstatically did young (22) Editor Walt Whitman of Manhattan's daily Aurora (circ. 5,000) sing the praises of New York in the spring of 1842. It was a notable newspaper era. Besides Whitman's Aurora, New York City boasted 15 other daily, six Saturday and five Sunday newspapers, all serving a population of 400,000.* Moses Y. Beach's New York Sun, James Gordon Bennett's Herald and Horace Greeley's Tribune were all bigger than the Aurora, but none could boast a livelier or more literate editorial page. For nearly 100 years, the Aurora's files for the two months of Walt Whitman's editorship were thought lost or destroyed. Then Joseph Jay Rubin came across a file of the defunct daily in the Paterson, N. J. library. In a new book, Rubin (a Penn State professor) and Charles H. Brown have collected 180 articles and two poems by Walt Whitman of the New York Aurora (Bald Eagle Press; $4).

Broadway Dandy. Whitman was at his best when, in impressionistic, rhapsodic style, he told about his New York--"the great place of the western continent, the heart, the brain, the focus, the main spring, the pinnacle, the extremity, the no more beyond, of the New World ..." A tall, graceful young man in fashionable top hat and frock coat, Whitman took a stroll every day down Broadway to the Battery, in search of editorial inspiration. In his lapel was a fresh boutonniere, on his arm a dark and polished cane, in his roving eye a twinkle. He sniffed the clean air like a connoisseur sampling fine brandy, poked his head into a pistol gallery, a bookstore, a flophouse and a church, watched small boys shooting marbles in the park, and smiled appreciatively at each passing pretty girl.

Whitman took his readers on a mouthwatering tour of the Grand Street market: "What an array of rich, red sirloins, luscious steaks, delicate and tender joints . . ." At Hudson & Ottingnon's gym, he found a sweaty figure "laboring up a smooth pole with all the eagerness of a man struggling for life," and commended the practice to dyspeptic readers. At a temperance meeting, he noted with amusement a sign reading BEWARE THE FIRST GLASS.** Whitman, a nondenominational Christian, told how he explained the Crucifixion, by signs, to a deaf-mute child: "It was very singular . . . that the mind of this dumb youth seemed to respond at once to the idea of a God . . ."

Midnight Ghoul. Editor Whitman could also flare into rage. When a Baptist graveyard was sold and the bodies disinterred, the young editor denounced the "miserable wretches [who have] rendered themselves infamous ... to add something to their ill-won heaps of gold . . ." Whitman was especially outspoken on another question that is still unsettled: public aid to parochial schools. At a time when anti-Catholic feeling was erupting into riots, he denounced Roman Catholic Bishop John Hughes as "a false villain [whose] pontifical robes . . . cover the blackest, most traitorous heart in the ... republic . . ."

But Whitman saved his strongest epithets for Publisher Bennett of the rival, sensational Herald: "A reptile marking his path with slime . . . and breathing mildew at everything fresh and fragrant; a midnight ghoul, preying on rottenness and repulsive filth . . ."

After two months, Whitman's publishers decided that the young editor's style was too strong and tried to tone down his editorials. "If you want such stuff in the Aurora, write it yourself," said Whitman, and departed. Later Whitman denounced his once-beloved Aurora as "trashy, scurrilous and obscene . . ."

* With a 1950 population of 7,841,023, New York has seven major dailies, six Sundays.

** Whitman later claimed that he wrote his 1842 temperance tract, Franklin Evans, or the Inebriate, with the help of gin cocktails.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.