Yours of 19th came (always welcome)1 with Rhys's2 letters (herewith returned) & the Transcript—Thanks—for your warm words, y'r affectionate personal & literary extra appreciation—always—thanks for writing & sending—I am kept in here quite all the time & was glad you sent R's letters—Poor dear noble O'Connor's3 ailment is I fear locomotor ataxyia—induration of the spine—I have heard nothing further—time only can decide—but I have serious apprehensions—
Nothing new with me—am glad your book over there is under Ernest Rhys's management & overseeing—He makes the impression on me of a deep true friend of L of G & of myself—What is that ab't Trowbridge?4 I do not understand.5 Had a drive yesterday thro' a splendid snowstorm—
Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
William Sloane Kennedy
(1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and the Boston Transcript; he also
published biographies of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier (Dictionary of American Biography [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933], 336–337). Apparently Kennedy called on
the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [London: Alexander
Gardener, 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. For more about Kennedy, see Katherine Reagan, "Kennedy, William Sloane (1850–1929)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).