I am immensely pleased (tickled) with the result of my little Wifekin Dame Kennedy's3 visit to you. She has read yr books & Bucke's4 ever since she has returned. She was finally converted by the impression made by your personal presence. Says she felt that strange thrill (caused by yr great magnetism) that so many others have felt. She wrote to-day a tremendous arraingment of the Leslie Nutler5 I told you of. She hauled him over the coals finely. I rubbed my hands in glee after quoting some of the good great fellows (in England & America) who stand up for W. W. & love him she says, "Thoreau6 thinks he is a great fellow, & I think so, too." She says, "I saw with my own eyes, his nobility & manners," &c. She thoroughly understands and approves yr Children of Adam poems, too! Sees loc.03053.002_large.jpgtheir noble purpose.
She doesn't need you so much as I did, though, for she has always been a liberated spirit. Her father & grandfather were deists.
I tell you she's a rare little soul, I wish you knew how keenly she pierces to the heart of shams & humbugs. Yet generous enough to forgive everybody. Tears spring to her eyes at the recital of some noble heroic deed. All unfortunates flock to her.
Just begun to rain. The wooded hills & farmstead slopes give grand spreads of dull-glowing brown; not bright but rich-subdued. Have you had any new cider yet. I "hant."
affec. W. S. Kennedy. loc.03053.003_large.jpg over loc.03053.004_large.jpgMond. morn Rainbow in West at 6 o'c, glorious sunshine, fresh dew warm-southern wind.7
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).