William Sloane Kennedy to Walt Whitman, [10 October] 1889

About This Item

Title: William Sloane Kennedy to Walt Whitman, [10 October] 1889
Date: [October 10], 1889
Creator(s): William Sloane Kennedy
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03052
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. . 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: Kirby Little Breanna Himschoot Ian Faith Stephanie Blalock
Cite this page: Kennedy, William Sloane. "William Sloane Kennedy to Walt Whitman, [10 October] 1889." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 03 October 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
Source File: loc.03052.xml (TEI)

loc.03052.002.jpg

I forgot1 to tell you that I had a nice visit w. Mrs O'Connor.2 We walked and talked for an hour in Athenaeum & on Common. I refunded $5. to her & we went down and saw Benj. Tucker3 & he wd take nothing of course for six copies4 of the paper on William.5 Mrs K6 being away I could not have Mrs O'C out here this time but invited her for another.—Busy times, lots of letters, have a visitor—cousin—coming to see me for a few days. Baxter7 had an article on you in Herald.8 I see by it you have the new ed. of L. of G. out, glad of it.

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. This letter is addressed: Walt Whitman | Camden | New Jersey | It is postmarked: CAMDEN | NJ | OCT 11 | 6 AM | 1889 | REC'D. There is a Belmont postmark, but it is illegible. [back]
2. Ellen M. "Nelly" O'Connor (1830–1913) was the wife of William D. O'Connor (1832–1889), one of Whitman's staunchest defenders. Before marrying William, Ellen Tarr was active in the antislavery and women's rights movements as a contributor to the Liberator and to a women's rights newspaper Una. Whitman dined with the O'Connors frequently during his Washington years. Though Whitman and William O'Connor would temporarily break off their friendship in late 1872 over Reconstruction policies with regard to emancipated African Americans, Ellen would remain friendly with Whitman. The correspondence between Whitman and Ellen is almost as voluminous as the poet's correspondence with William. Three years after William O'Connor's death, Ellen married the Providence businessman Albert Calder. For more on Whitman's relationship with the O'Connors, see Dashae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas [1832–1889]" and Lott's "O'Connor (Calder), Ellen ('Nelly') M. Tarr (1830–1913)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
3. Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) was an American activist and editor of the anarchist periodical Liberty, which ran from 1881 to 1908. [back]
4. In her September 26, 1889 letter to Whitman, Nelly writes "I have written to Tucker asking him to save six copies for me till I go to Boston, & can call or send for them." [back]
5. William Douglas O'Connor (1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866. For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
6. 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]
7. Sylvester Baxter (1850–1927) was on the staff of the Boston Herald. Apparently he met Whitman for the first time when the poet delivered his Lincoln address in Boston in April, 1881; see Rufus A. Coleman, "Whitman and Trowbridge," PMLA 63 (1948), 268. Baxter wrote many newspaper columns in praise of Whitman's writings, and in 1886 attempted to obtain a pension for the poet. For more, see Christopher O. Griffin, "Baxter, Sylvester [1850–1927]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
8. Baxter reviewed "Whitman's Complete Works" in the Boston Herald on January 3, 1889; no later 1889 Baxter piece on Whitman in the Herald is known. [back]