The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: William Sloane Kennedy to Walt Whitman, 12 May 1891
Date: May 12, 1891
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03163
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.
Editorial note: The annotation, "see notes May 18 1891," is in the hand of Horace Traubel.
Contributors to digital file: Ethan Heusser, Cristin Noonan, Breanna Himschoot, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |
I bt Traubel's1 piece—The New Englander Whitman number—today2 & frau3 & I are sitting here by kitchen fire enjoying it. It's the best thing ever done here in Massat. & on W.W. good for T. & Mead!4 What, I wonder, do the Vice Society, idiots here think of these things?
W.S.K.
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. Horace L. Traubel (1858–1919) was an American essayist, poet, and magazine publisher. He is best remembered as the literary executor, biographer, and self-fashioned "spirit child" of Walt Whitman. During the mid-1880s and until Whitman's death in 1892, Traubel visited the poet virtually every day and took thorough notes of their conversations, which he later transcribed and published in three large volumes entitled With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906, 1908, & 1914). After his death, Traubel left behind enough manuscripts for six more volumes of the series, the final two of which were published in 1996. For more on Traubel, see Ed Folsom, "Traubel, Horace L. [1858–1919]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
2. Kennedy is referring to the the May 1891 issue of the New England Magazine, which contained Horace Traubel's article, "Walt Whitman at Date." For Traubel's article, see New England Magazine 4.3 (May 1891), 275–292. The article is also reprinted in the first appendix of the eighth volume of Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden. [back]
3. Kennedy had married Adeline Ella Lincoln (d. 1923) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 17, 1883. [back]
4. Edwin Doak Mead (1849–1937) was an editor and author who edited the New England Magazine from 1889 to 1901; his work is credited with helping spark the Progressive Era. [back]
5. This postal card is addressed: Walt Whitman | Camden | New Jersey. It is postmarked: Belmont | May | 13 | 1891 | M [illegible], Camden, N.J. | May | 14 | 9AM | 1891 | Rec'd. [back]