"March 19, 1897, Newburyport, Mass.

Mr. Kennedy -

Dear Sir,

I have just received from you a brief letter so extraordinary that I have read it over three times before being able to persuade myself that it is indeed from the same pen which wrote so reasonably and courteously before. It is not possible to convince me that a man defrauded cancels his right to his money by recourse to law; or that such a course is "hounding"; or that any "murky splendors" in the delinquent's character can either justify the original fraud or convert the victim's natural resentment into a counterbalancing offense. And I think that you will find that the majority of honest people, even literary ones, will be equally difficult to bring to your peculiar point of view, should you ever try to impress it upon them. So pray understand that Mrs. Parton and I rest assured of the entire propriety of Mr. Parton's conduct, and have no wish to modify any "admissions" which we have made concerning it.

When you add that we bring nothing new, and that Whitman's own admission of moral lapses "cuts the ground from under our feet," you seem to forget in your excitement that confession may perhaps be palliation, but it is also confirmatory evidence; and that - pardon the extreme frankness, but you have made your own point of view very plain that I may surely make mine equally so - I do not care whether what we bring is new or old, exculpatory or damnatory, so long as it is the truth. Whitman is to me simply a formless literary monster, and a poor sort of human being, and I am not in the least concerned for his reputation in either capacity.

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and is not expected. To us, it is quite immaterial whether the Whitmanite "temple" is reared, as you would rear it, upon a curious moral view of accepted facts, or as Mr. Harned would, upon the concealment of such facts as would be ugly in the common eye. Our sole desire has been to place the true version of a biographical incident which we knew at the service of those interested to learn it; the responsibility of dealing with it afterwards we shall not assume - unless, indeed, any such unwarranted attack upon Mr. Parton's course as you have allowed yourself to make in a hasty letter were repeated in cool print. Then we should have to defend him, or choose a champion from among his friends to do it for us. There would be no lack. Most persons do not regard legal process against one who has obtained money fraudulently, and the making public of the name of the offender, as an unjustifiable attack upon a noble character; and we should have no fear for the result.

"March 19, 197.

I am flaming out with thunders and lightings of wrath against the Philadelphia hedgers and shufflers. If that money is not paid to Mrs. Parton I have told them I withdraw from the whole fellowship. Your own admissions show me that James Parton cancelled his right to the money by his injury to Whitman's character in hounding him with the law and in spreading the story all about town. Whitman may have lied, but I think he was justified in not paying Parton. But his executors have no quarrel with Mrs. Parton, and that money must be paid or I will bring down their silly temple into ruins about their ears. Whitman stands in all his murky splendor sin-tarnished and grand, above us all. I abate no jot of my respect of him, but a true picture must go down about him. That is the gist of the whole thing; for his gospel is a personal one. In Crossing Brooklyn Ferry and elsewhere he admits all that you have said against him, and cuts the ground from under your feet. You bring nothing new except a concrete instance of the lapses he admits.

W. S. Kennedy.

Thanks for your letters. "

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of his have exasperated Mr. Kennedy to talk of "hounding" as he
does. Mr. Parton was perfectly willing, and desirous, that Whitman,
whom he reckoned at the time a dangerous dead-beat, should feel
the hands of his misdeeds; but it was Mr. Dyer, then a lawyer, who
asked his leave to push the case, not he who proposed it to Mr. Dyer.
Though after all it matters little, I suppose.