Yours of 25th rec'd & welcomed1—I think I will send you a good photo (or two) of myself for Mrs. F[airchild]2—I was aware she was a real friend of mine & appreciater of L of G. but not aware how deep and good—you have rec'd my letter of yesterday I suppose3—I felt dull & under a cloud yesterday & am so to-day—Morse had the model photo'd yesterday4—he is to take a casting from it forthwith—it is not a portrait in the usual sense—better I think.
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).