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July, 1854. Steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer
of daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison (original daguerreotype lost).
Saunders #4. Courtesy of the Bayley Collection, Ohio Wesleyan
University. Walt Whitman said, "The worst thing about this is,
that I look so damned flamboyant--as
if I was hurling bolts at somebody--full of mad oaths--saying defiantly,
to hell with you!" He also worried about the portrait because "Many
people think the dominant quality in Harrison's picture is its sadness,"
but he nevertheless liked the portrait "because it is natural, honest,
easy: as spontaneous as you are, as I am, this instant, as we talk together."
Whitman guessed that at the time of this portrait he weighed "about
a hundred and sixty-five or thereabouts: I formerly lacked in flesh,
though I was not thin. . . ." The
engraving appeared in the 1855 and 1856 editions of Leaves of Grass,
then again in the 1876 and 1881-1882 (and following) editions, as well as--in
a cropped version--in William Michael Rossetti's 1869 British edition of
Walt Whitman's poems. In reprinting it in the 1881 edition, Whitman
insisted on its facing
"Song of Myself" because the portrait "is involved as part
of the poem." Some of Whitman's friends did not share his
enthusiasm for the image; William Sloane Kennedy, for example,
hoped "that this repulsive, loaferish portrait, with its
sensual mouth, can be dropped from future editions, or be
accompanied by other and better ones that show the mature man,
and not merely the defiant young revolter of thirty-seven, with
a very large chip on his shoulder, no suspenders to his
trousers, and his hat very much on one side." Whitman
recalled how, when the 1855 Leaves of Grass came out, the
portrait "was much hatchelled by the fellows at the
time--war was waged on it: it passed through a great fire of
criticism." William O'Connor liked it, Whitman said,
"because of its portrayal of the proletarian--the
carpenter, builder, mason, mechanic," but Whitman didn't
share his view. |