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Camden
Nov: 6 PM '891
All fairly well with me—Sunny bright cool weather—y'rs
rec'd2—let the MS: lay by then3 & mellow & round & be added to
(& be yet rounded if fate ordains)—settle on the few matters you w'd
exploit & bend to them & enrich & fortify them & prune (perhaps) the
rest, & sort 'em out—I hear f'm Buck 4 often, he is well &
busy—Was out yesterday (after three weeks' embargo) in my wheel chair5, too
cold.
Best respects to Mrs: K6
Walt Whitman
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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 letter is addressed:
Sloane Kennedy | Belmont Mass:. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Nov 6 | 8PM |
89. [back]
- 2. Kennedy wrote on November 5, 1889: "Fred. Wilson writes me that if
he publishes I must pay cost of production. I can't, so I write him to return
the MS. to me. I must wait till I get able." Richard Maurice Bucke, to whom
Whitman sent Kennedy's note, promised on November 8,
1889 that if the meter paid off he would "ad[vance] the funds
required, for I am [most?] anxious to have K's book pub[lished] and so made
safe." On January 28, 1891, Kennedy informed Bucke that Wilson had not returned
his manuscript: "He has about $200 at least subscribed. I recently wrote him
again, asking him if he wd like to bring out the 1st half, & let the
Concordance slide." [back]
- 3. Kennedy's manuscript
eventually became two books, Reminiscences of Walt
Whitman (1896) and The Fight of a Book for the
World (1926). Alexander Gardner (1821–1882) of Paisley, Scotland,
a publisher who reissued a number of books by and about Whitman, ultimately
published Reminiscences of Walt Whitman in 1896 after a
long and contentious battle with Kennedy over editing the book. [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. 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]
- 6. William Sloane Kennedy
married Adeline Ella Lincoln of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1883; they lived
for forty years in a house they built in Belmont, Massachusetts. [back]