You are very kind to remember Kennedy—yr son by adoption & affinity—Nothing in the world makes me prouder than to merit in only a slight degree yr esteem. My indebtedness to you—estimating values by all that makes life high & noble—is simply boundless. Your confidential item abt royalties also makes me glad & wrings my heart at the same time. I cannot but think that the publisher has at least been negligent of yr interests.1 Walt will you let me pay you now loc.02604.002_large.jpg $5. on that $13 I owe? The $13. is a pure business debt. $5000. represents my soul indebtedness to Walt Whitman, who is the only god I at present worship apart from the Universe as a whole
I can sympathize as to copyrights; I have not rec'd a cent yet for my railroad book2—a year's sales—not having sold much over a 1000 copies.
I have passed civil service examinations (State, & U S.) & have a good prospect of soon getting position in the Custom House. May the gods be propitious!
I saw "The Voice of the Rain" quoted in newspapers here. I hear that it is considered by many one of the most exquisite things you have done. Popular & sweet & plain it is. Compare Tennyson's3 latest grind with it for an idea of sophistication vs grand simplicity.
loc.02604.003_large.jpgEditor Baxter4 of Outing tells me that you think of visiting Boston soon, my most noble poet, & I implore thee (as Whittier5 wd say) to come & see me for a week & drink in our sublime prospect & be soothed by our matchless rural quiet (flowers, birds, & trees).
I see by the Critic, with some consternation, that the members of the esoteric Whitman Comradeship in London are making up a good-will offering to send to Walt W. Let 'em do it Walt. But I shd suggest that the old way of yrs be hinted to 'em i.e. to let yr books go over there. Let 'em send their tribute if it will please them, but let them take a cargo of books from McKay in return. That is the way to do the square thing.
loc.02604.004_large.jpgHere is a poet whose books are the delight of the finest minds in the world. He has earned & deserves a far greater competence than such an elegant peculator as Longfellow.6 Let us all then, exert our energy in the attempt to spread a knowledge of yr "new gladness & roughness" wider & wider. That is the business-like & right way. You are defrauded of the wage of yr life-labor otherwise. Damn it, what a mistaken blind, good bonhomme monster the people are!
very affecttly yrs W. S. KennedyI shall be grieved to the heart if you dont come out & see me, if you shd come to Boston. This is yr home, & I am your lover & friend remember now!
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).