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Superintendent's Office
Asylum
for the Insane
London.
Ontario
London, Ont.,
31 Dec 18881
Goodby poor old '88! Hurra for 89!
This morning arrived your post card of 28th2 your letter enclosing Kennedy's3 of
29th4 and the "Springfield
Repn for all which thanks.
Yesterday I read over again (for the 3d 4th or 5th time) "A Backward
Glance" and "Elias Hicks"5 and dipped into a lot of other
old favorites6 in the big Volume.7 Superficial readers will not
of course detect the fine, oblique, personal touches running everywhere, through
every page of this wonderfull book—nor do I pretend that I see the last
meanings everywhere—but I see alot! More than in any other writing—but
the subtlety of much of it is wonderful and when seen that very loc_es.00555.jpg elusiveness gives it an extraordinary
piquancy: yes, I think you need not doubt that you have put in so much of yourself
and contemporary America that a 'cute man reading the "C.W." hundreds of years from
now could reconstruct in his own mind both you and your time & land in a truer
and more radical sense than any past time of even 50 or 100 years back can be
reconstituted from any book in actual existence and this for many reasons but
cheifly for the reason of the unique vitality and
suggestiveness of L. of G. Yes, I think you may trust me to know something of your book & you, I have not studied them
this past twenty years for nothing! If I did not know you both and love you both
there would be something wrong on the one side or the other—but I don't think
there is much wrong!
Love to you
R M Bucke8
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see | notes | Jan 2d | 1889
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see | notes | Jan 2 | 1889
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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 | PM | DE 31 | 8[illegible];
Camden N.J. | Jan | 2 | 1 PM | 188[illegible] | Rec'd. [back]
- 2. See Whitman's letter to
Bucke of December 28, 1888. For a transcription
and further context, see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in
Camden, Wednesday, January 22, 1889. [back]
- 3. William Sloane Kennedy
(1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and the Boston Transcript; he also
published biographies of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier (Dictionary of American Biography [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933], 336–337). Apparently Kennedy called on
the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [London: Alexander
Gardener, 1896], 1). Though Kennedy was to become a fierce defender of Whitman,
in his first published article he admitted reservations about the "coarse
indecencies of language" and protested that Whitman's ideal of democracy was
"too coarse and crude"; see The Californian, 3 (February
1881), 149–158. For more about Kennedy, see Katherine Reagan, "Kennedy, William Sloane (1850–1929)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 4. Whitman sent Kennedy's
letter of December 25, 1888, as an enclosure in
his December 29, 1888, letter to Bucke. [back]
- 5. Elias Hicks (1748–1830) was a
Quaker from Long Island whose controversial teachings led to a split in the
Religious Society of Friends in 1827, a division that was not resolved until
1955. Hicks had been a friend of Whitman's father and grandfather, and Whitman
himself was a supporter and proponent of Hicks's teachings, writing about him in
Specimen Days (see "Reminiscence of Elias Hicks") and November
Boughs (see "Elias Hicks, Notes (such as they are)"). For more on Hicks and his
influence on Whitman, see David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman's
America (New York: Knopf, 1995), 37–39. [back]
- 6. The short titles Bucke lists
here refer to Whitman's essay on Elias Hicks and his essay titled "A Backward
Glance O'er Travel'd Roads," both of which were also published in November Boughs (1888). [back]
- 7. Whitman's Complete Poems & Prose was published in December 1888. With the
help of Horace Traubel, Whitman made the presswork and binding decisions, and
Frederick Oldach bound the volume, which included a profile photo of the poet on
the title page. For more information on the book, see Ed Folsom, Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and
Commentary (University of Iowa: Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, 2005). [back]
- 8. Bucke enclosed a printed
copy of "An impromptu criticism on the 900 page Volume, 'The Complete Poems and
Prose of Walt Whitman,' first issued December, 1888," in which he praised
Whitman's collection as "the bible of the future." See Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Thursday, December 27, 1888. [back]