The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 14 August 1890
Date: August 14, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03089
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt
Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Notes for this letter were created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Ian Faith, Ryan Furlong, Breanna Himschoot, and Stephanie Blalock
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Camden1
Aug: 14 '90 Evn'g
Thanks for the Herald too with the good acc't, wh' I was wanting2—Have you seen a good acc't of the rebel veteran show at the Richmond Lee3 statue4 unveiling? It is very curious. I have a good acc't wh' I will lend you if you want—(to be return'd to me)—All goes on fairly with me these days—Have a little piece in (probably) the forthcoming Critic5—have just got outside of my supper—am going out in wheel chair.6
W W
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 postcard is addressed: Sloane Kennedy | Belmont Mass:. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Aug 14 | 6 AM | 90. [back]
2. Kennedy described the Grand Army of the Republic (G. A. R.) convention in his letter to Whitman of August 12, 1890 and evidently sent a clipping from the Boston Herald. Apparently Whitman sent the letter to a Camden newspaper; see Kennedy's letter to Whitman on August 23, 1890. The poet did not comment on Kennedy's report of the death of Whitman's old friend John Boyle O'Reilly; however, it was noted in the Camden Morning News on August 15, 1890 (A. L. McLeod, ed., Walt Whitman in Australia and New Zealand 1964, 29). [back]
3. General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) was an American military officer who commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War. [back]
4. Whitman is referring to the May 29, 1890, unveiling of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee (the Robert E. Lee Monument) in Richmond, Virginia. [back]
5. Whitman's "An Old Man's Rejoinder" was published in The Critic 17 (August 16, 1890): 85–86. It was later reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891). [back]
6. Horace Traubel and Ed Wilkins, Whitman's nurse, went to Philadelphia to purchase a wheeled chair for the poet that would allow him to be "pull'd or push'd" outdoors. See Whitman's letter to William Sloane Kennedy of May 8, 1889. [back]