Cranioklepty by Colin Dickey

came to the New York Golgotha to have their heads read was a young printer’s devil named Walt Whitman. Whitman had already established himself as a phrenology convert. Three years before, in November 1846, as an editor of the
Brooklyn Eagle
, Whitman had written of phrenology, “Breasting the waves of detraction, as a ship dashes sea-waves, Phrenology, it must now be confessed byall men who have open eyes, has at last gained a position, and a firm one, among the sciences.” 102
    And now he waited patiently in the lobby, paid the fee not just for the chart but for the full reading, and was examined by Lorenzo Fowler himself. Like most people who came to see the Fowlers, Whitman was told that on most counts, his skull was quite exceptional. He scored high in Amativeness, Philoprogenitiveness, Adhesiveness, Inhabitiveness, Alimentiveness, Self-Esteem, Firmness, Benevolence, and Sublimity, with lower readings in Concentrativeness, Acquisitiveness, Secretiveness, Approbativeness, and Marvelousness. 103
    Most of the chart, as can be expected, was composed of the sort of bland platitudes that were meant on the one hand to be reassuring, and on the other to be unverifiable: “You were blessed by nature with a good constitution and power to live to a good old age. You were undoubtedly descended from a long-lived family. . . . You are very firm in general and not easily driven from your position. Your sense of justice, of right and wrong is strong and you can see much that is unjust and inhuman in the present condition of society.”
    Some of it, in retrospect, seems fairly accurate with regard to the figure that Walt Whitman would become: “You choose to fight with tongue and pen rather than with your fist. . . . You areno hypocrite but are plain spoken and are what you
appear
to be at all times. You are in fact most
too
open at times and have not always enough restraint in speech.”
    Some of it, on the other hand, was completely off the mark, given what we now know of the poet: “Your love and regard for woman as such are strong and you are for elevating and ameliorating the female character. You were inclined to marry at an early age. You could not well bear to be deprived of you[r] domestic privileges and enjoyments. . . . By practice you might make a good accountant.”
    In sum, the chart that Lorenzo Fowler produced for Whitman had the same measure of accuracy that any successful huckster could provide: a good snap judgment of character filled out by vague compliments and tautological nonsense.
    Whitman ate it up.
    The chart Lorenzo produced for him would go on to develop a life of its own—Whitman would publish it as a testament to his genius in the first three editions of
Leaves of Grass
and would keep it close throughout his life. When asked about his visit to Lorenzo in 1888, Whitman replied, “I guess most of my friends distrust it—but then you see I am very old fashioned—I probably have not got by the phrenology stage yet.” 104
    The Fowlers, who were looking for a poetic genius with whom they could associate phrenology and further its cultural influences, saw in Whitman an opportunity. They carried his self-publishedbook of poetry in their storefront and advertised it in the
Phrenological Journal.
This was in many ways their most prescient act, the closest they came to anything like actual prophecy. Considering the dismal failure that
Leaves of Grass
was in its first edition (before Ralph Waldo Emerson’s endorsement), the Fowlers’ decision to back the young Whitman indicates a fair amount of poetic judgment.
    It helped, of course, that Whitman had apotheosized phrenology in his work, going so far as to make it a central lynchpin in his poetry. In what would become a literary landmark, the voice that defined American poetry had constant recourse to phrenology; the New Science insinuated itself throughout. “The sailor and traveler,” he wrote in the