The “Vault at Pfaff's”: Whitman, Bohemia, and the Saturday Press
The “Vault at Pfaff's”: Whitman, Bohemia, and the Saturday Press
Bohemianism provides an integral standpoint from which to view the development of urban life and class formation in the United States. In order to discover the first self-identified American Bohemians, it is necessary to explore the counterculture unstably contained within the national geography of bourgeois identity, consciousness, and expression. This chapter focuses on the emergence of Bohemia in New York City in the late 1850s, focusing on Henry Clapp Jr. and Pfaff's beer cellar. An iconoclast who came from Paris, Clapp harbored the idea of recreating la vie bohème in Pfaff's beer cellar. His circle included Walt Whitman, who composed a poem entitled “The Vault at Pfaff's,” which he left unfinished. The chapter compares the Bohemians' self-descriptions to less favorable representations of the group, providing a case study in the (mutually constitutive) relationship between the Bohemians and their “bourgeois” antagonists. Many of the Bohemians who gathered at Pfaff's—such as journalists, artists, and poets—wrote for, or illustrated, Harper's, the New York Leader, Vanity Fair, and the Saturday Press, which became the circle's house organ.
Keywords: Bohemia, Bohemianism, la vie bohème, bourgeois, New York City, Bohemians, Henry Clapp Jr, Pfaff's beer cellar, Walt Whitman, Saturday Press
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