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Belmont
June 12 89.
Dear W. W.:—
The poem came to hand, (on the Johnston calamity1). It adds an
important shade of tho't I think to your religious poems yr philosophy. I don't see
how you cd do it so quickly. It is firstrate
I did make that condition in my letters to Gardner2—i.e.
that my corrections on proofs shd be followed. I only surmised that he might be mean enough to go
ahead without me. But I have no real ground to think so.
Let him take his time.
We are having a rose carnival. Burroughs's3 curious state of mind
is all right. He is happy & moulting. I don't understand
him though, do you? I think of Gilder4 often lately, with some
satisfaction.
W. S. K.
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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. In The
Commonplace-Book Whitman recorded his thoughts on the Johnstown flood
on June 1, 1889: "The most pervading & dreadful news this m'ng is of the
strange cataclysm at Johnstown & adjoining Cambria County, Penn: by wh' many
thousands of people are overwhelm'd, kill'd by drowning in water, burnt by fire,
&c: &c:—all our hearts, the papers & the public interest, are
fill'd with it—the most signal & wide-spread horror of the kind ever
known in this country—curious that at this very hour, we were having the
dinner festivities &c—unaware." C. H. Browning, the Philadelphia
representative of the New York World, was instructed by
Julius Chambers to ask the poet for "a threnody on the Johnstown dead," which
became "A Voice from Death" (Horace Traubel, With Walt
Whitman in Camden, Wednesday, June 5, 1889). The poem was first published in the New York World on June 7, 1889. [back]
- 2. Alexander Gardner (1821–1882)
of Paisley, Scotland, was a publisher who reissued a number of books by and
about Whitman; he ultimately published William Sloane Kennedy's Reminiscences of Walt Whitman in 1896 after a long and
contentious battle with Kennedy over editing the book. Gardner published and
co-edited the Scottish Review from 1882 to 1886. [back]
- 3. The naturalist John Burroughs
(1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After
returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long
correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman.
However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged,
curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or
devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting
the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs,
see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 4. Richard Watson Gilder
(1844–1909) was the assistant editor of Scribner's
Monthly from 1870 to 1881 and editor of its successor, The Century, from 1881 until his death. Whitman had met
Gilder for the first time in 1877 at John H. Johnston's (Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer [New York: New York University Press,
1955], 482). Whitman attended a reception and tea given by Gilder after William
Cullen Bryant's funeral on June 14; see "A Poet's Recreation" in the New York Tribune, July 4, 1878. Whitman considered Gilder
one of the "always sane men in the general madness" of "that New York art
delirium" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden,
Sunday, August 5, 1888). For more about Gilder, see Susan L.
Roberson, "Gilder, Richard Watson (1844–1909)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]