loc.03174.002_large.jpg
Dear W.W.1
I always forget to say that while several
times in my MS2 I [illegible]seem
to have ignored yr notes, in reality I [illegible] them all. Where I wrote "omit," I have embodied what you wrote elsewhere.
Hope you are well as usual, or rather no worse, dear friend. I tho't yr poem in Critic3
strong in diction, & Bucke's4 Jubilate good. I think Howells5 has something on the big vol. in
Feb. Harpers.6 Just
wrote Burroughs7 7 deg. above here today Sunday.
W S K
loc.03174.001_large.jpg
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 postal card is
addressed: Walt Whitman | Camden | New Jersey. It is postmarked: North Cambridge
| Jan | 21 | 8am | MASS; [illegible] |
Jan | 22 | 8am | [illegible] |
REC'D. [back]
- 2. Kennedy's manuscript, "Walt
Whitman, the Poet of Humanity," eventually became two books, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman (1896) and The Fight
of a Book for the World (1926). [back]
- 3. "To the Year 1889" (later titled "To the Pending Year") appeared in
the Critic on January 5, 1889; Whitman received $6
for the piece (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E.
Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of
Congress, Washington, D. C.) [back]
- 4. Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a
Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and
meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke
claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him
to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany.
Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt
Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one
of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of
Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 5. William Dean Howells
(1837–1920) was an American realist novelist and literary critic, serving
the staff of the New York Nation and Harper's Magazine during the mid 1860s. During his tenure as
editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly from 1871 to
1880, he was one of the foremost critics in New York, and used his influence to
support American authors like Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, and Emily
Dickinson. He also brought attention to European authors like Henrik Ibsen,
Giovanni Verga, and Leo Tolstoy in particular. Howells was highly skeptical of
Whitman's poetry, however, and frequently questioned his literary merit. In an
Ashtabula Sentinel review of the 1860 edition Leaves of Grass, Howells wrote, "If he is indeed 'the
distinctive poet of America,' then the office of poet is one which must be left
hereafter to the shameless and the friendless. for WALT WHITMAN is not a man
whom you would like to know." In 1865, Howells would write the first important
review of Drum-Taps in the Round
Table, demonstrating early signs of his conflicted opinion about
Whitman. For more information on Howells, see Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson, William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005). [back]
- 6. Howells's "Editor's Study," a review of Whitman's November
Boughs (1888), was published in the February 1889 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. [back]
- 7. The naturalist John Burroughs
(1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After
returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long
correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman.
However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged,
curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or
devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting
the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs,
see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]