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Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 7 July [1889]

About This Item

  • Title: Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 7 July [1889]
  • Date: July 7, [1889]
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: med.00880
  • Source: The location of this manuscript is unknown. Edwin Haviland Miller derives his transcription from a facsimile of the letter published in Gay Wilson Allen, Walt Whitman (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 124. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 354. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett Caterina Bernardini Ryan Furlong Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 7 July [1889]." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 26 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: med.00880.xml (TEI)
Camden Sunday aft'n July 7

Nothing very new or different—Keep up—go out in the wheel chair1—a bad spell the last week & now (gradually declining)—a letter f'm Mrs O'C[onnor]2 Wash'n.3 She is gloomily, poorly left without means.4 The little dinner book5 is being put in type—

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. 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]
  • 2. Ellen M. "Nelly" O'Connor (1830–1913) was the wife of William D. O'Connor (1832–1889), one of Whitman's staunchest defenders. Before marrying William, Ellen Tarr was active in the antislavery and women's rights movements as a contributor to the Liberator and to a women's rights newspaper Una. Whitman dined with the O'Connors frequently during his Washington years. Though Whitman and William O'Connor would temporarily break off their friendship in late 1872 over Reconstruction policies with regard to emancipated African Americans, Ellen would remain friendly with Whitman. The correspondence between Whitman and Ellen is almost as voluminous as the poet's correspondence with William. Three years after William O'Connor's death, Ellen married the Providence businessman Albert Calder. For more on Whitman's relationship with the O'Connors, see Dashae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas [1832–1889]" and Lott's "O'Connor (Calder), Ellen ('Nelly') M. Tarr (1830–1913)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 3. Whitman may be referring to the July 3, 1889, letter he received from Ellen O'Connor. [back]
  • 4. William Sloane Kennedy wrote on July 9, 1889, of Mrs. O'Connor: "The wife of such a Philip Sidney of a man as O'C [William D. O'Connor] demands chivalrous treatment if we w'd emulate the virtues of him. So I shall think & act." [back]
  • 5. The notes and addresses that were delivered at Whitman's seventieth birthday celebration in Camden, on May 31, 1889, were collected and edited by Horace Traubel. The volume was titled Camden's Compliment to Walt Whitman, and it included a photo of Sidney Morse's 1887 clay bust of Whitman as the frontispiece. The book was published in 1889 by Philadelphia publisher David McKay. [back]
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