loc_es.00482.jpg
Superintendent's Office.
ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE
LONDON.
ONTARIO
London, Ont.,1
22 Nov 1888
If I had Hamlin Garland's2 address I think I would write
him a few lines to say how much I admire his calm and pleasant sentences in the
"Transcript".3 I do not know when I have read
anything that pleased me more—not I think since I read O'Connor's4 letter in the N.Y. Tribune on the Osgood-Stevens affair.5 We are coming to the front at last—and shall
come—I have no fear, no doubt. It is only a question of waiting a few years
untill men have time to take it in. Another quarter or half century will see L. of
G. acknowledged to be what it really is—The bible of America.
My visit East is likely to be delayed some weeks. We have abt. decided that we will
not show the loc_es.00483.jpg meter
untill it is protected (by patent) in other countries as well as in the States. Wm Gurd6 will return here from N.Y.
almost at once and proceed to Ottawa—arrange there for the Canadian and other
patents—as soon as these are secured we shall go East. I, of course, cannot
say how soon this will be but I am in hopes we shall get to Phila immediately after Xmas.
Saw Pardee7 on Monday he is bad—very sick
indeed—mind very feeble. Do not hear from O'Connor, do you?8
I am thinking over something to say about you and L. of G. if I have the chance when
I am in Phila; impossible to say yet what it will come to,
if anything.—must only wait and see. It seems to me a long time since I wrote
you last—I have been in9 a kind of a whirl, better luck in future!
Love to you
R M Bucke
loc_es.00478.jpg
See notes Nov 24, 1888
loc_es.00479.jpg
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. This letter is addressed:
Walt Whitman | 328 Mickle Street | Camden | New Jersey | U.S.A. It is
postmarked: LONDON | PM | NO 22 | 88 | CANADA; CAMDEN, N.J. | NOV | 24 | 10AM |
[illegible] | REC'D. [back]
- 2. Hamlin Garland
(1860–1940) was an American novelist and autobiographer, known especially
for his works about the hardships of farm life in the American Midwest. For his
relationship to Whitman, see Thomas K. Dean, "Garland, Hamlin," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. Garland's review of November Boughs appeared in the Boston Transcript on November 15, 1888. He spoke of his review in letters to
Whitman dated November 9, 1888 and November 16, 1888. Whitman commented to Horace
Traubel: "The Transcript piece has as a trifle a certain air almost of apology:
but for that feature I like it. We are forcing the enemy to listen to us" (see
Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Saturday, November 17, 1888). [back]
- 4. William Douglas O'Connor
(1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet
The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866.
For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 5. On March 1, 1882,
Oliver Stevens, the District Attorney of Boston, notified Osgood and Co., the
publishers of the seventh edition (1881–1882) of Leaves
of Grass, that Whitman's book was officially classified as obscene and
was to be suppressed. Stevens wrote: "We are of the opinion that this book is
such a book as brings it within the provisions of the Public Statutes respecting
obscene literature and suggest the propriety of withdrawing the same from
circulation and suppressing the editions thereof" (Edwin Haviland Miller, ed.,
Walt Whitman: The Correspondence [1886–1889], 6
vols., 4:267 n16; see also Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary
Singer [1955], 498–500). O'Connor wrote a long letter condemning
Stevens' ruling; the letter was published as "Suppressing Walt Whitman" in the
New York Tribune (May 25, 1882). [back]
- 6. William John Gurd (1845–1903)
was Richard Maurice Bucke's brother-in-law, with whom he was designing a gas and
fluid meter to be patented in Canada and sold in England. Bucke believed the
meter would be worth "millions of dollars," while Whitman remained skeptical,
sometimes to Bucke's annoyance. In a March 18,
1888, letter to William D. O'Connor, Whitman wrote, "The practical
outset of the meter enterprise collapsed at the last moment for the want of
capital investors." For additional information, see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, March 17, 1889, Monday, March 18, 1889, Friday, March 22, 1889, and Wednesday, April 3, 1889. [back]
- 7. Timothy Blair Pardee
(1830–1889) was a Canadian lawyer and politician, member of the
Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontaria, Canada, and Minister of the
Crown. Pardee appointed Richard Maurice Bucke, with whom he was a close friend,
as the Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane in Hamilton at its founding
in 1876, and then the next year as Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane
in London. For more on Pardee, see H. V. Nelles, "Pardee, Timothy Blair," Dictionary of Canadian Biography Vol. 11 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1982). [back]
- 8. Both Timothy Blair Pardee
and William Douglass O'Connor had been in poor health; both men died in 1889.
For Whitman's reaction to the news of the death of O'Connor, see Horace Traubel,
With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, May 10, 1889. For his thoughts upon learning of Pardee's
death, see With Walt Whitman in Camden, Thursday, July 25, 1889. [back]
- 9. This letter is continued at
the top of the first page. [back]