Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 1 March 1887

About This Item

Title: Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 1 March 1887
Date: March 1, 1887
Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00833
Source: The Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 71–72. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein Ian Faith Kevin McMullen Stephanie Blalock
Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 1 March 1887." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 09 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
Source File: duk.00833.xml (TEI)

Camden March 1 '87 2½ P M

Your letter of Sunday has come,1 & I am glad to get those impromptu well filled yellow sheets—write again—I have not heard any more from O'Connor2—when I do I will tell you—I write or send papers or something every day3—Have just had my dinner—a great piece of toasted Graham bread salted & well buttered with fresh country butter, & then a lot of good panned oysters dumped over it, with the hot broth—then a nice cup custard & a cup of coffee—So if you see in the paper that I am starving (as I saw it the other day) understand how—I enclose Rhys's4 letter rec'd this morning5—As I understand it, Wilson is no more in the W[ilson] & McC[ormick] partnership, Glasgow, but sets up by himself—

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. Kennedy's letters to Whitman from this time are not extant. [back]
2. William Douglas O'Connor (1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866. For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
3. Although Whitman made a similar notation in his Commonplace Book (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.) on February 25, there is no extant correspondence between the poet and O'Connor during this period. [back]
4. Ernest Percival Rhys (1859–1946) was a British author and editor; he founded the Everyman's Library series of inexpensive reprintings of popular works. He included a volume of Whitman's poems in the Canterbury Poets series and two volumes of Whitman's prose in the Camelot series for Walter Scott publishers. For more information about Rhys, see Joel Myerson, "Rhys, Ernest Percival (1859–1946)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
5. Whitman is probably referring to Rhys's letter of February 15, 1887. [back]