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Belmont1
June 8 '90
Sund. eve 5 ½ o'c.
My dear Friend,
I am very curious to get a fuller idea of Ingersoll's2 dinner
speech.3 Thank you for the papers you sent. I suppose no verbatim record was
taken?
Just been out whaling (oil soap) the rose lice. The mystery
of life & solar systems lies around me, yet on I go in the petty round of petty daily duties. Am
getting ready for my Western jaunt on July 7th. Saw item abt yr will.
With the full-perfumed love of my soul, I close,
W S Kennedy
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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 letter is addressed:
Walt Whitman | Camden | New Jersey. It is postmarked: Belmont | Jun | 9 | 1890 |
Mass.; Ca[illegible] N. J. | Jun | 10 |
9am | 1890 | Rec'd. [back]
- 2. Robert "Bob" Green Ingersoll
(1833–1899) was a Civil War veteran and an orator of the post-Civil War
era, known for his support of agnosticism. Ingersoll was a friend of Whitman,
who considered Ingersoll the greatest orator of his time. Whitman said to Horace
Traubel, "It should not be surprising that I am drawn to Ingersoll, for he is
Leaves of Grass. He lives, embodies, the
individuality I preach. I see in Bob the noblest
specimen—American-flavored—pure out of the soil, spreading, giving,
demanding light" (Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden,
Wednesday, March 25, 1891). The feeling was mutual. Upon Whitman's
death in 1892, Ingersoll delivered the eulogy at the poet's funeral. The eulogy
was published to great acclaim and is considered a classic panegyric (see
Phyllis Theroux, The Book of Eulogies [New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1997], 30). [back]
- 3. Whitman's friends gave him a
birthday supper in honor of his 71st birthday on May 31, 1890, at Reisser's
Restaurant in Philadelphia, at which the noted orator Col. Robert G. Ingersoll
(1833–1899) gave a "grand speech, never to be forgotten by me" (Whitman's
Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman,
1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Daniel Brinton
(1837–1899), a professor of linguistics and archaeology at the University
of Pennsylvania, presided, and other speakers included the Canadian physician
Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) and Silas Weir Mitchell
(1829–1914), a writer and a physician specializing in nervous disorders.
The Philadelphia Inquirer carried the story on the front
page on the following day. The Camden Daily Post article
"Ingersoll's Speech" of June 2, 1890, was written by Whitman himself and was
reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (Prose
Works, 1892, ed. Floyd Stovall, 2 vols. [New York: New York University
Press: 1963–1964], 686–687). Later Traubel wrote "Walt Whitman's
Birthday" for Unity (25 [August 28, 1890], 215). [back]