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Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 28 December 1886

I am ab't​ as usual & in good spirits & condition—Have been out driving to-day, & have eaten a good dinner (oysters &c)—Have a Tennyson blaat in the forthcoming Critic of Dec. 311—Happy New Year!

Walt Whitman

Correspondent:
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).


Notes

  • 1. "A Word about Tennyson" appeared in the Critic on January 1, 1887. See the letter from Whitman to the editor of the Critic of December 15, 1886. [back]
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