Camden N J1
Feb: 25
Evening
Thanks—If convenient then send me the Carlyle Tribune2—& I will return.
Walt Whitman
Notes
- 1. This card marks the
beginning of Whitman's extensive correspondence with William Sloane Kennedy
(1850–1929), who at this time was on the staff of the Philadelphia American, and who later published biographies of
Longfellow and Whittier (Dictionary of American
Biography). Apparently Kennedy had called on the poet for the first time on
November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of
Walt Whitman [London: Alexander Gardner, 1896], 1). Though Kennedy was
to become a fierce defender of Whitman, in his first published article he
admitted reservations about the "coarse indecencies of language" and protested
that Whitman's ideal of democracy was "too coarse and crude"; see The Californian, 3 (February 1881), 149–158. Yet,
according to John Burroughs's letter to Whitman on November 2, 1880, Kennedy was
angered by Edmund Clarence Stedman's article in Scribner's
Monthly (see the letter from Whitman to Burroughs of November 26, 1880), and thought that his own
article did Whitman "fuller justice" (T. E. Hanley Collection, University of
Texas). He vigorously defended his views in a letter to Burroughs on February
26, 1881 (Clara Barrus, Whitman and
Burroughs—Comrades [Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931],
201–204). [back]
- 2. Excerpts from articles
about Thomas Carlyle appeared in the New York Tribune on
February 21. Whitman returned the clipping from the newspaper on February 28
(Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of
Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]