Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Letters
  3. Correspondence
  4. owu.00014

Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 13 December 1889

About This Item

  • Title: Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 13 December 1889
  • Date: December 13, 1889
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: owu.00014
  • Source: The Bayley-Whitman Collection, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH. 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.
  • Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett Ryan Furlong Brandon James O'Neil Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 13 December 1889." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 09 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: owu.00014.xml (TEI)
 owu.00014.001.jpg Camden Evn'g Dec: 13 '891

All goes on the same & fairly. Have been out in the sun & mild temperature a good part of afternoon. Sent on out a little poemet (welcoming Brazilian Republic) to McClure's N Y Syndicate—& rec'd money for it.2 So Browning3 is dead—(I have never read much B & don't have any inherent opinion)—How are you & Mrs: K?4

Walt Whitman  owu.00014.002.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 letter is addressed: Sloane Kennedy | Belmont Mass:. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Dec 13 | 8PM | 89. [back]
  • 2. Whitman is referring to the poem ultimately titled "A Christmas Greeting." In his December 3, 1889, letter to Richard Maurice Bucke the poet refers to the poem as "the little 'Northern Star-Group to a Southern' (welcome to Brazilian Republic)." This would become the poem's subtitle: "From a Northern Star-Group to a Southern. 1889–'90." See also "[A North Star]," a manuscript draft of this poem, in the Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. [back]
  • 3. The English poet Robert Browning (1812–1889), known for his dramatic monologues, including "Porphyria's Lover" and "My Last Duchess," was also the husband of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). [back]
  • 4. 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]
Back to top