Yes; i.e. Baxter2 wrote me an indignant letter—enclosing clipping fr. some N. Y.
paper—a hifalutin journalese acc't of the Japanese's outrageous act. It seems,
then, that the set of the alleged conversations with you which he gave me was only a
copy: I have them now somewhere. The duplicate wh. he retained he has pub.d,—where I can't quite make out, N. Y. Herald I
suppose you mean.3 We were very sorry for yr sake: the damage done is irreparable I
suppose. You remember, I wrote & warned you that the fellow tried to pub. these
things. We were both of us—you & I—too careless. I should have tho't
that he might have a duplicate, & your good nature shd not
have hindered you writing him peremptorily & severely not to pub.—However,
with all my deep chagrin, I cd but laugh (long & well),
over little Stedman4 & Holmes (I suppose the Holmes bit came out
too). What the frantic-for-notoriety pap. reports is true as gospel, whether you
said it or not. How wd it do for me to send to Stedman the
card I rec'd fr. you anent yr alleged opinion of him à la Hartmann,5 (in which card you say good things of Stedman, & deny that you
hold the Hartmannian opinion) how wd it do for me to send this to Stedman? I was not going to mention the matter to you or to St. loc.03000.002.jpg But since it has come
out so publicly, this card wd serve as a sort of rebuttal
& amende perhaps. You say in it "as to my alleged opinion
of Stedman: I have no such opinion.6 My feeling toward S. is one of good will &
thanks markedly—O'C7 says he is a good fellow, & I say so too."
But no: I wd not dare to send this card. Stedman wd never forgive my trying to comfort him. Ha! ha! The worst of the damnable business is that it shd come so close on the heels of that at bottom warm-hearted (if conceited & patronizing—slightly—) letter of S's to you. Hang it, hang it. Damn these foreign adventurers say I.
I think I shall now pitch overboard fr my book the Hartmannian lading (supplement) entirely.
I have a day off to-day: am resting by varnishing, shellac-ing &c inside—polishing the nacre of the shell.
Glad to hear that the Sarrazin book8 is out. Will make note thereof.
With affec. regards to yrself & the senior members of our masculine comrade-family—the three or four—when you write 'em. W. S. 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).