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Dr B is interested in a new meter a simple patented machine for measuring the flow of water, gas, or anyything
& also a cheap easy motor &c. I sent him one of the two group pictures.
Insane
Asylum London
Ontario
18 Sept. '90
see notes Sept 4 1891
A lovely bright cool Autumn day. Am working away here in my office at the Asylum as
usual. Have from you this morning "Poet Lore"1 and photo.
of Johnston, Wallace and others2—thanks.
Nothing stirring here but the usual work—am hard at my Annual Report while all
other Asylum matters must be attended to at the same time—then I
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spend about an hour a day on the meter.3 All these things keep me going pretty well. A
few weeks will see me in calmer water I hope. The meter goes well but not to say
rapidly—it will be a couple of weeks yet I guess before we get fairly started
making (this "start" is always a couple of weeks ahead—but we will catch up to
it yet!)—We are getting a lot of new books for the Asylum library and among
them are a set of Little, Brown & Co's4 Dumas5 Works—I am reading (evenings)
the Count of Monte Cristo—it is many years since I read it first (more than
forty, I guess)—This L.B. ed. is a good translation and it is a grand story
(and I must say there is nothing I like much better than a real good story of the
old fashioned kind—Marryatt,6 Scott,7 or Dumas—these modern
"Psycological
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Analisis " folk such as George Eliot,8 Wilkie Collins,9
Tolstoi,10 Turgenieff 11
& co. though splendid in their own way don't go to the right spot
after all in the same direct straightforward manner).
I am anxiously waiting to hear more about the Ingersoll12 Lecture for
the benefit of W.W.
Best love to you
RM Bucke
Correspondent:
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).
Notes
- 1. The article Whitman sent to
Bucke was probably Jonathan Trumbull, "Walt Whitman's View of Shakespeare," Poet-Lore 2.7 (July 15, 1890): 368–371. [back]
- 2. Dr. John Johnston and
James William Wallace were members of a group of Whitman admirers in Bolton,
Lancashire, England, who referrred to their little circle as the "Bolton
College." Dr. Johnston visited Whitman in the summer of 1890, while Wallace
visited both Whitman and Bucke in the fall of 1891. An account of "Bolton
College" and of these visits is found in their Visits to Walt
Whitman in 1890–91 (London, England: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.,
1917). Bucke visited them in July 1891. [back]
- 3. Bucke and his brother-in-law
William John Gurd were designing a gas and fluid meter to be patented in Canada
and sold in England. [back]
- 4. Founded by Charles Little
(1799–1869) and James Brown (1800–1855), Little, Brown and Company
began as a bookseller and publishing firm in Boston in 1837. The firm published
the works of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and were also well known as
a legal publisher; later they published numerous volumes of works by British
poets. Today, Little, Brown and Company is part of the Hachette book group, and
they continue to publish both fiction and nonfiction works. [back]
- 5. Alexandre Dumas
(1802–1870) was a French author known best for his works The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte
Cristo. [back]
- 6. Frederick Marryat
(1792–1848) was a novelist, Royal Navy Officer, and a friend of the
British novelist Charles Dickens. Marryat is known for such works as the novel
Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836) and a children's novel
titled The Children of the New Forest (1847). [back]
- 7. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)
was a Scottish statesman, historical novelist, playwright, and poet, best known
for Ivanhoe (1820), The Lady of the
Lake (1810), and Waverly (1814). For Whitman's
view of Scott, see Vickie L. Taft, "Scott, Sir Walter (1771–1832)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 8. "George Eliot" was the pen name of
Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), one of the most influential British writers of
the nineteenth century. Her works include The Mill on the
Floss (1860), Middlemarch (1871–1872), and
Daniel Deronda (1876). Whitman was especially
enamored by Eliot's essay writing: "She is profound, masterful: her analysis is
perfect: she chases her game without tremor to the very limit of its endurance"
(Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Wednesday, October 31, 1888). [back]
- 9. Wilke Collins (1824–1889) was
an English novelist and playwright. He was a close friend of Charles Dickens,
and some of his writings were first published in All the Year
Round and Household Words, magazines that
Dickens edited. Collins is best known for his novels The Woman
in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868), which
is often considered the first English detective novel. [back]
- 10. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
(1828–1910) was a Russian realist writer of novels, plays, short stories
and novellas. [back]
- 11. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
(1818–1883) was a Russian playwright and novelist. He is regarded as one
of the leading figures in Russian Realism. [back]
- 12. Robert "Bob" Green Ingersoll
(1833–1899) was a Civil War veteran and an orator of the post-Civil War
era, known for his support of agnosticism. Ingersoll was a friend of Whitman,
who considered Ingersoll the greatest orator of his time. Whitman said to Horace
Traubel, "It should not be surprising that I am drawn to Ingersoll, for he is
Leaves of Grass. He lives, embodies, the
individuality I preach. I see in Bob the noblest
specimen—American-flavored—pure out of the soil, spreading, giving,
demanding light" (Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden,
Wednesday, March 25, 1891). The feeling was mutual. Upon Whitman's
death in 1892, Ingersoll delivered the eulogy at the poet's funeral. The eulogy
was published to great acclaim and is considered a classic panegyric (see
Phyllis Theroux, The Book of Eulogies [New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1997], 30). [back]