Camden
April 16 '89
Nothing very different or new in my affairs—the past ten days bad
rather—sort of suspicion of lull to-day—y'r last rec'd—have no
opinion or comment or suggestion to make1—did you
receive (& send on to O'C[onnor])2 my letter3 with Stedman's4 enc'd?5 Am sitting here alone as usual.
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. This was a cold rejoinder
to Kennedy's announcement on April 8, 1889 that
Alexander Gardner was going to publish Kennedy's "Walt Whitman, Poet of
Humanity" "in 2 vols." Whitman offered no opinion about Gardner's request to
delete Kennedy's inclusion of "the censor's list of objectionable passages" in
the Osgood edition of Leaves of Grass. [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. Whitman is referring to
his April 8, 1889, letter to William Sloane
Kennedy, William Douglas O'Connor, and Richard Maurice Bucke. He sent
instructions with this letter that directed Kennedy to send the letter and its
enclosure to Ellen O'Connor (wife of William D. O'Connor), and then the
O'Connors were to send the letters to Bucke. The enclosure Whitman sent with the
letter was a March 27, 1889, letter that he had
received from the writer and editor, Edmund Clarence Stedman. [back]
- 4. Edmund Clarence Stedman
(1833–1908) was a man of diverse talents. He edited for a year the Mountain County Herald at Winsted, Connecticut, wrote
"Honest Abe of the West," presumably Lincoln's first campaign song, and served
as correspondent of the New York World from 1860 to 1862.
In 1862 and 1863 he was a private secretary in the Attorney General's office
until he entered the firm of Samuel Hallett and Company in September, 1863. The
next year he opened his own brokerage office. He published many volumes of poems
and was an indefatigable compiler of anthologies, among which were Poets of America, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1885) and A Library of American Literature from the Earliest
Settlement to the Present Time, 11 vols. (New York: C. L. Webster,
1889–90). For more, see Donald Yannella, "Stedman, Edmund Clarence (1833–1908)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 5. See Stedman's letter to
Whitman of March 27, 1889. [back]