Whitman is mentioned as one of the older men Aldrich knew in New York. Greenslet indicates that the young Aldrich met Whitman several times during his experiences in "Literary Bohemia" in New York, but that the records indicate that the meetings were "not of the most sympathetic nature" (38).
Aldrich wrote a letter (Nov. 20, 1880, from Ponkapog, Mass.) to Stedman discussing a "paper" Stedman wrote on Walt Whitman. Aldrich's response to Whitman's work was as follows: "You seemed to think that I was going to take exception to your paper on Walt Whitman. It was all admirably said, and my own opinion did not run away from yours at any important point. I place less value than you do on the indorsement of Swinburne, Rossetti and Co., inasmuch as they have have also indorsed the very poor paper of ---. If Whitman had been able (he was not able, for he tried it and failed) to put his thought into artistic verse, he would have attracted little or no attention, perhaps. Where he is fine, he is fine in precisely the way of conventional poets. The greater bulk of his writing is neither prose nor verse, and certainly it is not an improvement on either. A glorious line now and then, and a striking bit of color here and there, do not constitute a poet -- especially a poet for the People. There never was a poet so calculated to please a very few. As you say, he will probably be hereafter exhumed and anatomized by learned surgeons -- who prefer a subject with thin shoulderblades or some abnormal organ to a well-regulated corpse. But he will never be regarded in the same light as Villon. Villon spoke in the tone and language of his own period: what is quaint or fantastic to us was natural to him. He was a master of versification. Whitman's manner is a hollow affectation, and represents neither the man nor the time. As the voice of the 19th century, he will have little significance in the 21st. That he will outlast the majority of his contemporaries, I haven't the faintest doubt -- but it will be in a glass case or a quart of spirits in an anatomical museum" (138-9).
Stedman responded to Aldrich: "I do not see but we perfectly agree on Whitman. My estimate of him was based, not, as you seem to half suspect, on the recollection of his early barbaric yawps, but on a careful study of his complete works. Awhile ago I invested ten dollars in two solid volumes which I should be glad to let any enthusiastic Whitmaniac have at a very handsome reduction. I admire his color and epithets and lyrical outbreaks when I can forget the affectation that underlies it all. There was always something large and sunny in Wordsworth's egotism. There is something unutterably despicable in a man writing newspaper puffs of himself. I don't believe a charlatan can be a great poet. I couldn't believe it if I were convinced of it!" (140).
The Vault at Pfaff's