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Williamsburgh Word Portraits, No. 5

About This Item

  • Title: Williamsburgh Word Portraits, No. 5
  • Date: 2 June 1859
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01421
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 2 June 1859: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Williamsburgh Word Portraits, No. 5." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01421.xml (TEI)
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WILLIAMSBURGH WORD PORTRAITS.

By Appelles. No. 5.

PORTRAIT No. 13

Is that of a middle sized, middle-aged man, who walks along the street with long, rapid strides, swinging his arms violently as he proceeds. He wears his beard, and addresses you in a hurried manner and with rapid intonation, having also a perceptible foreign accent, attributable to the fact of his having been born on a certain small island, intended by nature and geography to belong to France, but which the fortunes of war have long since made an appanage of the Crown of England. My subject is in prosperous circumstances, and is one of the few men of that class who have become prominent in public affairs without making enemies; he obtains successive re-elections to responsible office without stooping to any mean artifices to procure support. He is a quiet man, seldom taking a leading part in general questions, but attending strictly to the concerns of his own particular portion of the city, where an almost unprecedented reduction of taxation has been effected by his good management, and where his own ability and trustworthiness are made the more conspicuous from the contrast which they afford to the qualities of his predecessors of the same ilk. It is not his ambition to figure as a talker, but for a concise and clear exposition of his views, for a constant attendance in his seat, and an invariable vote on the side of economy and right, he may be depended upon. He is slightly obstinate, like a good many other excellent men, but has never done anything, and is not likely to, that should impair the confidence and respect which the community unanimously entertain for him. He is an Eastern District man to the core—was a prominent officer of the old city, and is still unquestionably one of the leading men in the city councils. Modest, retiring, unassuming, he provokes no animosities, while he earns a solid meed of approval and credit. So long as he lives, he may be relied on as a helper and worker in every good measure and design; and when he is called to leave this mundane sphere (which day may the Fates make distant!) few men will leave a clearer and more honorable record behind them.

PORTRAIT No. 14.

This is a man of intense activity—all nerve and sinew. Always in a hurry—always overwhelmed with business—who does for the public gratuitously more work than almost any man who receives a large salary from the city treasury. A man to whom work is pastime, and labor pleasure—who, though comparatively young, is a complete walking compendium of information on all matters pertaining, even in the remotest degree, to the affairs of Brooklyn. From earliest youth he has been a business man. I cannot imagine that he was ever a child, in the common acceptation of the term. The cares of a large property fell upon his shoulders ere the hair grew upon his chin. Yet he found time in early youth to mingle in the toilsome “play” of the firemen. Any recreation less arduous was not to his taste. After filling responsible offices in the department, and taking a leading part in its concerns, he went into public life, and the same intense application which he had shown in his own personal and family concerns, and the same energy, tact, and shrewdness which he had displayed in the trivial contests of the fire department, he transferred with him to the City Hall. He is, more than any of his colleagues, the terror of lazy and unfaithful office holders. He shames their slothfulness by his untiring exertion, and alarms their apprehension by his strict scrutiny. Hardly yet arrived at middle age, he has been for some time the leader of his party on the floor of the civic Senate, and he narrowly missed becoming their candidate for the highest city office last Spring. Well would it have been, perhaps, for them if he had been. They could not have so frittered away their fair chances in hopeless inaction, under the influence of the stimulating example he would have set them. So far the good qualities of my subject in public life. In his private life he has hosts of attached friends. Every improvement, every beneficial measure inaugurated in his section of the city, if it does not emanate from him, is seconded by him with his customary vigor. Without being reckless, he is enterprising in an unusual degree in matters of this kind. His prescience perceives, and his restless energy carries out, every scheme which can tend to the prosperity of that district of the city in which he and his family are largely interested. Though not a native American, he possesses in a high degree the best qualities which are “to the manor born.” He seems to have had a double measure of American energy, shrewdness, tact and enterprise, bestowed on him, as if to compensate for the unavoidable accident of having been born before instead of shortly after the removal of his progenitors to this country. Against this array of good qualities candor compels me to set off something to the other side. My subject is sometimes too fast. His energy sometimes goes ahead of his prudence. Seeing his end clearly, and believing that it ought to come to pass, he is not always so scrupulous as he should be in the choice of his means to bring it about. I have known him both in word and deed to be rash, unadvised, imprudent, indefensible, when acting from the best of motives, and with an unexceptionable object in view. In truth there is too much progression about him to always suit my conservative ideas. A little study of the Hibernian motto, “Fair and aisy goes far in a day,” would do him no harm. This, however, is the very worst that can truly be said of him, and therefore I think that, on the whole, his character is greatly to be admired, and highly to be esteemed.

PORTRAIT No. 15.

A short, stout, dark-haired man, who formerly sat in the City Councils with the two above mentioned. He represented a ward where the choice of able public servants seems somewhat restricted, and certainly they never had a representative who matched this one—at least not in my recollections. A man of unflagging industry, careful, acute, intelligent, he made his mark in the politics of the city, and attained a high position in the ranks of the political party to which he attached himself. Though cautious in action, he is bold and outspoken—never deserted a principle nor abandoned a friend; and I do not believe he often forbore to attack an opponent. Throughout the late struggle of the rival factions of the Democracy, none did more to sustain the anti-Taylor interest than he; and during the sickness of Judge Vanderbilt,1 the chief responsibility of the leadership of that camp devolved upon him as the Secretary of the Committee. How ably the duty was discharged the erect position of that wing then, compared with its fallen position since he relinquished politics, indicates.—Though he has all the elements in him of a successful politician, I am glad, for his own sake, that he has betaken himself to other employment. He is now in a position where his natural abilities, sharpened as they have been by the struggles of partisanship, have full play, and I doubt not his influence will be salutary on the future of the Eastern District. He is now in a position where a man may earn, as some have done when similarly situated; the dislike and aversion of the community—or where, on the other hand, by prompting a far-seeing and liberal line of policy toward the inhabitants, he may benefit alike the locality and his employers, who have confided to him the management of their weighty affairs. Some time ago my subject was inducted into a post of considerable political importance in another part of the State, where he made himself greatly respected and acquired no little influence at the fountain head of legislation. I then feared that we were to lose him from among us; but now that he has resumed his residence here, I hope he will long remain and identify himself with the growth and interests of the Eastern District, the welfare of which his present sphere of action may considerably influence.

Notes:

1. John Vanderbilt (1819–1877) was a member of the New York State senate. [back]

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