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see notes Aug 26 & 29 '88
send something?
1 Adam St.
Adelphi.
London
W.C.
23 April 1877
Dear Sir,
I have been reading aloud your 'Whispers of Heavenly Death'1 this evening from the copy which you so kindly sent me in March 1876; and it has led me on to ask if you have any poems still unpublished in
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the same vein of mystic realism.2 And if so, could you spare me one or two for the Magazine which I represent? I am sorry that but a trifle could be offered for them, as the Magazine has been neglected of late, and has only recently come into my hands, to be worked up again by labour & patience
I trust you are as well as you expect to be, and nearly as happy as you hope.
Yours faithfully
Kenningale Cook.
to Walt Whitman Esq.
Notes
- 1. Whitman's poem "Whispers of Heavenly Death" was
first published in 1868. After printing two sympathetic accounts of Whitman in
their Broadway Annual (London), Routledge & Sons
requested "one or two papers or poems" from him on December 28, 1867
(Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, June 4, 1888, 263). Whitman sent "Whispers of Heavenly
Death," which appeared in the October 1868 edition of the Broadway. For this periodical printing, see "Whispers of Heavenly Death." [back]
- 2. Kenningale Robert Cook
(1845–1886) sought a contribution to the Dublin
University Magazine, a journal he edited (Marion Meade, Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth [New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1980], 390). Cook was also the author of The Fathers of Jesus: A Study of the Lineage of the Christian Doctrine and
Traditions, 2 vols. (London: K. Paul, Trench & Co., 1886). Cook
first wrote to Whitman in February 1876, enclosing money for a copy of Whitman's
complete poems. In that letter, Cook also notes that while he considered sending
Whitman copies of his own poems, he decided against it as "they are very
juvenile." [back]