The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 16 October 1888
Date: October 16, 1888
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00907
Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. The transcription presented here is derived from The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 4:223. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Stefan Schöberlein, Caterina Bernardini, and Stephanie Blalock
Camden
Tuesday Evn'g
Oct: 16 '88
Thanks for the Thackeray pamphlet,1 (wh' I have been reading through this afternoon)—& the Transcripts—Pretty much the same sing song with me—no worse—no better—I am waiting with anxiety to hear from O'C[onnor]2—the bad trouble with his eyesight—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
William Sloane Kennedy
(1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and later published biographies of Longfellow and Whittier
(Dictionary of American Biography). Apparently
Kennedy had called on the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William
Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [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. Whitman is referring to an article on Thackeray by Frederic R. Guernsey, who was on the staff of the Boston Herald. For Whitman's comments on the article, see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Wednesday, October 17, 1888. [back]
2. William Douglas O'Connor (1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet "The Good Gray Poet," published in 1866 (a digital version of the pamphlet is available at "The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication"). 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]