I hope the Rhys1 brothers have not gone to the bottom! It begins to fill me with alarum that we do not hear from the Croma2 in wh. he sailed.
I went in H. Williams & Everetts3 this evening after
work, & passed a few rapt moments in looking at the bust of you which is
handsomely mounted on a polished wood tall pedestal standing on the middle landing
of the stairs & just before a pier glass mirror—The very best position in
the rooms. I then saw loc.02912.002_large.jpg that I had not really seen it at all in the right
way—before (I mean) it was on a pedestal & viewed at a distance. I gave it
draining regards that fixed it in my mind. I regard it as a noble work, & am
very glad of this rich honor done to my poet, & I want to congratulate Morse
very heartily on it. It is a fine, nay a great, work, in my opinion.
It seems to me that the chief traits that emerge are compassion blended with alert curiosity.
I don't know whether it strikes others so, or whether you wd want these traits emphasized so much. I do see too, in some measure, the far forward look you spoke of in yr good letter to me. But I think Morse4 might put more of the prophet or seer in it, or another one possibly.
Mrs. Fairchild5 & her husband are going to drive out & see my Cox photo, some time.6
I suppose Baxter has written you that we have written to Bost. Pub. Lib. about acceptance of bust.7 They have a little
gallery of sculpture—as I now remember, & it will be a good place for it.
Though I preferred the art museum. loc.02912.004_large.jpg But Baxter likes to have his own
way always.8
I must ask him about his Herald notice of it. For we must draw attention to it. He seems to have acted on Sidney M's suggestion abt Williams & Everett's being a better place than Chase's.
WS. KennedyCorrespondent:
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).