Nineteenth-century American literary culture can be construed in part as a quarrel between admirers of New York and admirers of Boston. Many American writers looked down on New York as a vulgar place that was addicted to commerce. Emerson disliked New York; Thoreau hated it. Lydia Child, a Bostonian who moved to New York in 1841, said that in New York “the loneliness of the soul is deeper, and far more restless, than the solitude of the mighty forest.” Yet Child, who wrote a column about life in New York for a Boston newspaper, was impressed by New York’s “infinite varieties of character.”
Several American writers—most notably Walt Whitman and Henry James—defended New York and criticized Boston. Whitman thought Boston was filled with effete snobs. James found Boston boring. In November 1904, when he was visiting the United States, he wrote to Edith Wharton: “Boston doesn’t speak to me; never has, in irresistible accents, or affect me with the sweet touch of an affinity.”
William Dean Howells could not make up his mind whether he preferred Boston or New York. “I look forward to a winter in New York with loathing,” Howells told his father in 1891. “But it will be well for the work I am trying to do. . . . Between the two cities I prefer New York; it is less ‘done,’ and there is more for one to see and learn there.” New York, he said, was “splendidly and sordidly commercial.”
