Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 7 September [1887]

Camden Sept 7, Evn'g

I return S[ymonds]'s1 letter—All I can say ab't it is I myself like to get views from every quarter2—then I go on the tack that seems to me rightest—As I write, it is clouding up dark for a thunderstorm—I expect Dr Bucke3 to-morrow or next day4—Morse5 and Gilchrist6 still here—

Walt Whitman

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Notes

• 1. John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), a prominent biographer, literary critic, and poet in Victorian England, was author of the seven-volume history Renaissance in Italy, as well as Walt Whitman—A Study (1893), and a translator of Michelangelo's sonnets. But in the smaller circles of the emerging upper-class English homosexual community, he was also well known as a writer of homoerotic poetry and a pioneer in the study of homosexuality, or sexual inversion as it was then known. See Andrew C. Higgins, "Symonds, John Addington [1840–1893]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 2. After Swinburne's intemperate repudiation of Walt Whitman appeared in the August issue of The Fortnightly Review, Symonds offered what he himself termed "a temperate reprimand" in the next issue. On August 21, in a letter to Kennedy, Symonds admitted that "it is enormously difficult to write on Whitman." He continued this apologetic vein in his letter of September 17; see William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman (1896), viii. The poet termed Symonds' rebuttal "a milk and water affair" (See Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, February 10, 1889. The story of Walt Whitman's reaction to Swinburne is well told by Harold Blodgett in Walt Whitman in England (1934), 112–121. [back]
• 3. Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany. Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 4. Richard Maurice Bucke accompanied Walt Whitman to Glendale on September 11. Timothy Blair Pardee (see Whitman's letter to John H. Johnston of June 20, 1880) apparently joined Bucke at Camden on September 13 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]
• 5. Sidney H. Morse (1832–1903) was a self-taught sculptor as well as a Unitarian minister and, from 1866 to 1872, editor of The Radical. He visited Whitman in Camden many times and made various busts of him. Whitman had commented on an earlier bust by Morse that it was "wretchedly bad." For more on this, see Ruth L. Bohan, Looking into Walt Whitman: American Art, 1850–1920 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 105–109. [back]
• 6. Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist (1857–1914), son of Alexander and Anne Gilchrist, was an English painter and editor of Anne Gilchrist: Her Life and Writings (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887). For more information, see Marion Walker Alcaro, "Gilchrist, Herbert Harlakenden (1857–1914)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]