The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 11 April 1890
Date: April 11, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00943
Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 5:37. 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, Ian Faith, and Stephanie Blalock
Camden
Ev'g April 11 '901
Still the grip & badly day & night—sometimes most strangles me—I fight it as if a great serpent, worst late at night—How are you & getting along?—Astonishing [what] one can stand when put to your trumps—Transcripts2 come regularly.
Love to you & Mrs: K3—
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). Apparently Kennedy had 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 letter is addressed: Sloane Kennedy | Belmont | Mass:. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Apr 11 | 8 PM | 90. [back]
2. Kennedy frequently sent Whitman copies of the Boston Transcript, where he worked as a proofreader. [back]
3. Kennedy had married Adeline Ella Lincoln (d. 1923) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 17, 1883. Their son Mortimer died in infancy. [back]