The Ingersoll2 lecture (Liberty & Literature) is to come off evn'g Oct: 21, a week from next Tuesday. Horticultural Hall, Phila.3 I shall go & show myself & say publicly a word or so, (as I wish to definitely show my identification, sympathy & gratitude, & there has been some dodging & perhaps cowardise)—Looks now as there is going to be a full and lively meeting—Ing's: heart is in it—I will send you the best accts & reports (wish you & the dear frau4 c'd be here)—the grip is still hold of me—am writing
Walt Whitman loc.03087.001_large.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).