Content:
This manuscript may have been written between 1850 and 1855, when Whitman was preparing materials for the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The description of the plate-glass windows on Broadway bears some resemblance to a description in the first poem in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." This manuscript also bears a distant resemblance to a discussion of "shadows" in the poem later titled "There Was a Child Went Forth." It is also possible that the manuscript was written later, however: the description of Broadway in these lines also closely resembles a description Whitman wrote in his unfinished poem known as "The Two Vaults," a poem that is recorded in a New York notebook (loc.00348) that probably dates to the early 1860s. Whitman also wrote about Broadway elsewhere in later poems, so the manuscript may have been written still later. The manuscript has been pasted down, so an image of the back of the leaf is currently unavailable.
Content:
This notebook includes a draft of lines written about Pfaff's, a popular
mid-nineteenth century Bohemian spot (see surfaces 11 through 18). The
lines were edited and published posthumously as "The Two Vaults." This notebook also
contains the notes (see surfaces 23 to 44 and 47 to 59) about the
Jamaica Presbyterian bicentennial which were used by Whitman in the
article "Important Ecclesiastical Gathering
at Jamaica, L.I." published in the
Brooklyn City News
in January
1862.
