Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 25 December 1888
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7 P.M.
Superintendent's Office.1
ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE
LONDON. ONTARIO
London, Ont.,
25 Dec 1888
Your card of 23d to hand by this morning mail2—glad to hear that you are holding
your grip—We have had a quiet Xmas—we have eaten 122 turkeys—80
geese and over 400 lbs of plum pudding—regular English style! For my own part
I have just had a glorious dinner of roast turkey and plum pudding and feel well! My
great anxiety now is to put meter matters3 in such shape that I may get to Phila and
see yourself and Traubel4 and see with my own eyes how things are 
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with you.
Must close this letter and go upstairs to the amusement room where we have Xmas trees for the patients and then dancing
Love and good luck to you RM Bucke
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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 | AM | DE 26 | 88 | Canada; Camden, N.J. | DEC 27 | 12PM | 1888 | REC'D. [back]
- 2. See the letter from Whitman to Bucke of December 23, 1888. [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. Horace L. Traubel (1858–1919) was an American essayist, poet, and magazine publisher. He is best remembered as the literary executor, biographer, and self-fashioned "spirit child" of Walt Whitman. During the late 1880s and until Whitman's death in 1892, Traubel visited the poet virtually every day and took thorough notes of their conversations, which he later transcribed and published in three large volumes entitled With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906, 1908, & 1914). After his death, Traubel left behind enough manuscripts for six more volumes of the series, the final two of which were published in 1996. For more on Traubel, see Ed Folsom, "Traubel, Horace L. [1858–1919]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]