Typesetting
Letter by letter Walt Whitman grew a book
To see the previous chapter in this series, click here.
In the first line of the poem “Song of Myself” in his iconic book of poetry Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman announced, “I celebrate myself.” He knew that he had better sing about himself because while he hoped that some famous authors of the day like Ralph Waldo Emerson might publicly praise his maiden poetic undertaking, as an unknown poet no one was going to pay him to publish his initial work. Rather, he would bear the cost. Whitman was an unwitting pioneer in the world of self-publishing.
And so late on a warm Friday morning in May 1855, a tall 36 year-old bearded fellow—clad simply except for his broad-brimmed black hat—walked through the streets of Brooklyn, New York with an extra bounce in his step. He tapped the brim with two fingers to cock his stylish hat rakishly to the side and a smile escaped his lips as he observed Brooklynites going about their daily business. Despite his otherwise ordinary attire, he had a certain flamboyance in his demeanor and gait that made him stand out amongst the throngs of pedestrians. He carried a dark brown, worn folder stuffed full of handwritten pages and a cheery disposition. He felt that he had created something great, and he was not bashful about his conceit in the least.
Whitman understood that having original, powerful thoughts and converting them into written words of equal import was only half the battle. Getting them printed and distributed so that they were in the hands of readers—both the erudite and his preferred audience of the common man—was a secondary but equal challenge. He understood the importance of pushing his writing into the world so that people knew that it was there, ready for consumption, just like a freshly made apple pie in a baker’s shop window.
He felt light on his feet as he rapped on the door of the Rome brothers’ print shop. His white shirt still bore speckles of ink from yesterday’s press work. Andrew Rome rolled his eyes since Whitman was late as usual and had interrupted Andrew’s typically fastidiously choreographed morning schedule. He assumed that Whitman had slept in after having spent the previous evening drinking beer and trading outlandish stories with his barroom friends. Even now, after being admitted to the shop, Andrew knew that Walt would read the New York Tribune for at least a good half hour before succumbing to the fact that he needed to get moving on typesetting if he were to complete a page before the shop closed for the day.
It was perilously close to the lunch hour by the time Walt started hunting the trays for the 12-font letters for the lines of “Song of Myself.” The work was tedious but at the same time pleasing—at least to Walt. He regularly interrupted Andrew and his brother James with questions and to discuss matters of the day, which alternately amused and annoyed them. Andrew’s Scottish brow often furrowed with irritation at this oversized dreamer waxing about disparate topics while he and his brothers struggled to keep their small print shop solvent and service their demanding clients. But there was something earnest and transcendent about Walt that Andrew deeply admired and made him much more tolerant than he ordinarily would be to anyone else whose antics regularly distracted the Rome brothers from the business of producing the legal publications and books that were their staple.
The Rome brothers knew Whitman did not have enough money to pay them to publish the cloth-bound versions of his book, so Walt was providing his own labor to lower the cost. However, the brothers imagined and hoped, with a healthy dose of charitable projection due to their fondness for the young poet, that if his book, or subsequent ones, did improbably catch on with the public, Whitman would be quick to hire them to print such future volumes. Perhaps there would be a profit in that. They also supported the literary arts and being in his orbit provided a fair amount of continuous free publicity given that he was a social butterfly. He spread their name around the community of New York authors and journalists in venues such as Pfaff’s beer cellar. Andrew publicly nodded when others criticized Whitman’s grandiosity and self-promotion, but secretly he admired his verve.
In the waning hours of the work day, Walt felt the muscles in his arms and shoulders ripple as he pulled on the press bar. Publishing was more than a mental act—it was physical. He hoped that his poems would be similarly stamped into the minds of his readers.
He liked to imagine his future readers as they read his poems. There was the highly educated set, the Harvard Crimsons and the Yalies, who scoffed at the accessibility of his imagery and words, but would have to grudgingly admit that he artfully made the grandness of America available to everyone. There was the bootblack who would slap him on the back on the streets of Brooklyn Heights, gleeful that—though he was only marginally literate—he could brag to his wife that he had read the great poet’s book and actually encountered him in the flesh. And of course there was the society lady, concealing his volume of poetry within the stiff jacket of a different, sober publication. She would publicly scoff at its sensuality but was secretly thrilled by the licentious verbal pictures that he drew.
It felt good to Walt—almost all of it. And as much as he sometimes felt the urge to offload the typesetting of his book to the Rome brothers if only he could scrape together enough money to afford to do so, he knew that mechanically birthing a book was a mentally and physically arduous but necessary step at this stage of his life. He appreciated that for the Rome brothers printing was both an occupation and a passion.
As I finish polishing my first book and prepare to launch it into the world, I thought that it might be inspirational to experience what it felt like when Walt Whitman strode into the Rome brother’s print shop on that sunny Friday morning in May 1855. This gave me an idea, which you can read about in my next chapter.
Stay tuned for the next chapter of Intermittently Human in two weeks
Mary Beth: That would be a great project to undertake - finding and analyzing a first edition. I own one of the subsequent editions with a green cloth jacket that is pictured in my Substack story, "An Invisible Poet." It has marvelous watercolor paintings accompanying some of his poems. But it is not the magical first edition you are focused on. Being a native of Long Island, I visited the Walt Whitman Birthplace, a museum in West Hills, New York about thirty years ago. The museum may house a first edition but I am not sure. The thing that actually struck me about my visit is there was a nearby shopping center named the Walt Whitman Shopping Center, that was named in his honor. It made me doubt whether the people who decided to name it had any understanding of his poetry! I may write something on that topic down the road.
I love this chapter. Walt Whitman, always a favorite, so beautifully described here. I can see him, smell the ink in the print shop, here the little clicks when the type is searched through in the trays that holds it. The letters the words, the need to see/think backwards to set the type accurately. The good old days. It's all so visceral. Thank you, Douglas.