Henry Clapp, Jr. to Walt Whitman, 27 March 1860
loc.01292.001.jpg
No. 9 Spruce Street, New York,
(NEAR PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE.)
Office of the N. Y. Saturday Press,
New York,
Mch 27 1860
My dear Walt:
I am so busy that I hardly have time to breathe; moreover I am in the greatest possible difficulties on a/c of one or two past liabilities still.
This must explain my not answering yr letter promptly.
Do write and let me know about when the book is to be ready.
I can do a great deal for it.
loc.01292.002.jpg
I meant to have done more last week, but followed yr advice and made a modest and copyable announcement. The papers all over the land have noticed your poem in the Atlantic and have generally pitched into it strong; which I take to be good for you and your new publishers, who if they move rapidly and concentrate their forces will make a Napoleonic thing of it.1
It just occurs to me that you might get Messrs.
loc.01292.003.jpg
T. & E. to do a good thing for me: to wit, advance me say 100 dollars on advertising account—that is if they mean to advertise with me.2 Or if they dont , to let me act for them here as a kind of N.Y. agent to push the book, and advance me the money on that score.
I must have $100 before Saturday night or be in a scrape the horror of which keeps me awake o' nights. I could if necessary give my note at three mos for the amount and it is a good note since we have never been protested.—
loc.01292.004.jpg
Of course I know how extremely improbable it is that Messrs T. & E. to whom I am an entire stranger will do anything of the kind: but in suggesting it, I have done only my duty to the Sat. Press, and, as I think, to the cause of sound literature.3
Yrs truly H Clapp Jr.I need not say we are all anxious to see you back to Pfaff's,4 and are eagerly looking for your proposed letter to the crowd
loc.01292.005.jpg
loc.01292.006.jpg
Correspondent:
Henry Clapp, Jr. (1814–1875)
was a journalist, editor and reformer. Whitman and Clapp most likely met in
Charles Pfaff's beer cellar, located in lower Manhattan. Clapp, who founded the
literary weekly the Saturday Press in 1858, was
instrumental in promoting Whitman's poetry and celebrity: over twenty items on
Whitman appeared in the Press before the periodical
folded (for the first time) in 1860. Of Clapp Whitman told Horace Traubel, "You
will have to know something about Henry Clapp if you want to know all about me."
For more about Whitman's thoughts on Clapp, see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in
Camden, Sunday, May 27, 1888. For more information on Clapp, see Christine
Stansell, "Clapp, Henry (1814–1875)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. Whitman published the poem "Bardic Symbols" in the Atlantic Monthly 5 (April 1860), 445–447. The poem was revised as "Leaves of Grass. 1" in Leaves of Grass (1860) and reprinted as "Elemental Drifts," Leaves of Grass (1867). The final version of the poem, "As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life," was published in Leaves of Grass (1881–82). [back]
- 2. Thayer and Eldridge was a Boston publishing firm responsible for the third edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1860). For more on Whitman's relationship with Thayer and Eldridge see "Thayer, William Wilde [1829–1896] and Charles W. Eldridge [1837–1903]." [back]
- 3. Though Whitman refused to ask Thayer and Eldridge for money on Clapp's behalf, Clapp wrote to Thayer and Eldridge directly and managed to secure a check for $200. In return Clapp advertised Leaves of Grass for six months in the New-York Saturday Press. [back]
- 4. This refers to Charles Pfaff's beer cellar, located in lower Manhattan. For discussion of Whitman's activity there, see "The Bohemian Years." [back]