loc.03165.002_large.jpg
Sat. morn 6 am1
Dear W.W.
I shall count it a distinguished favor to get the loan of that
Bucke2 letter3 anent T. Tenn4 was the bright
particular star of my youth & early
manhood—is a man who makes this dull earth godlike, & immortality not at
all strange. I will sacredly respect yr wish as I mention & will be extremely
careful not even to mention it to any dangerous person whatever.
W.S. Kennedy
loc.03165.001_large.jpg
see notes Dec 19 1891
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: BELMONT | AUG | 22 | 1891
| MASS; CAMDEN,N.J. | AUG | 24 | 6AM | [illegible] | REC'D. [back]
- 2. Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a
Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and
meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke
claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him
to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany.
Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt
Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one
of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of
Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. At this time, the Canadian
physician Richard Maurice Bucke was traveling abroad in England in an attempt to
establish a foreign market for the gas and fluid meter he was developing with
his brother-in-law William Gurd. During this trip, on August 10, 1891, Bucke sent Whitman a lengthy account of his meeting
with the British Poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In an August 20, 1891, letter to Kennedy, Whitman had offered to send the
letter to Kennedy to read, after which Whitman directed that it should be
returned. [back]
- 4. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(1809–1892), among the best-known British poets of the latter half of the
nineteenth century, wrote such poems as "Morte d'Arthur," "Ulysses," "The Charge
of the Light Brigade," and In Memoriam A.H.H.. In 1850,
the same year In Memoriam was published, Tennyson was
chosen as the new poet laureate of England, succeeding William Wordsworth. The
intense male friendship described in In Memoriam, which
Tennyson wrote after the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, possibly
influenced Walt Whitman's poetry. Tennyson began a correspondence with Whitman
on July 12, 1871July 12, 1871. Although Tennyson
extended an invitation for Whitman to visit England in a July 12, 1871July 12, 1871, letter, Whitman never acted on the
offer. [back]