That young fop, Hartmann,1 has sent me a ms. for Herald called "A Lunch with Walt Whitman," worse than the N. Y. Herald yarn of two years ago, or so, in its mischief-making potency. It consists of cheap tattle, with malicious and ill-natured flings at prominent men. It would be well to "serve an injunction" on the young man, for the publication of any of his untruthful gossip about you would grieve all your friends.
Yours sincerely Sylvester Baxter loc_es.00120.jpgCorrespondent:
Sylvester Baxter (1850–1927)
was on the staff of the Boston Herald. Apparently he met
Whitman for the first time when the poet delivered his Lincoln address in Boston
in April, 1881; see Rufus A. Coleman, "Whitman and Trowbridge," PMLA 63 (1948), 268. Baxter wrote many newspaper columns
in praise of Whitman's writings, and in 1886 attempted to obtain a pension for
the poet. For more, see Christopher O. Griffin, "Baxter, Sylvester [1850–1927]," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).