Yr two cards just rec'd.2 The books had better be sent to Chas. E. Hurd,3 literary editor, or kept till my return. Had grand visit of 3 days with Dr. Bucke.4 It puts me rapport now with so much concerning him & you. Thank you for urging me to go. I fear I can't see you on my return, as my ticket takes me back (excursion ticket, via northern N. Y. So sorry. Am unwell (stomach & cold &c.). change of water & night-air.
affec. Kennedy. loc.03060.001.jpgCorrespondent:
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).