loc_es.00611.jpg
Superintendent's Office.
Asylum for the Insane,
London, Ont.,
9 June 18891
I have your letter of 4th & 5th and post card of 6th2 You will know before this that I got the papers (with
account of banquet)3 but if you send another set (not to
hand yet) it is no harm. Yes, of course I have the pocket book L. of G.4 and am never tired of handling it and admiring
it—it is the lovelist little book I ever saw and now that the last corrections
are made it is I suppose abt perfect as a piece of printing. I like the paper much,
it has a good dead surface and tho' the ink shows through a little it does not
obscure the reading any to hurt. Please do not forget to send me a copy (no doubt
you have some printed as usual, or better yet if it would not be too much trouble,
to write it out for me—I should value an M.S. copy to no end) of "Voice from
Death" What a fearful catastrophe!5 America has never
seen the like and I trust never will again—What a subject for an interlude in
a big, great loc_es.00612.jpg
poem—or for a chapter in some great prose work! But it seems a sin to think of
it that way—it is too awful—the hundreds of little children and women
overwhelmed and suffocated in a moment. The great ship wrecks sink into
insignificance before the horror of it. I have written Harned6 to
put me down for $5. worth of the banquet book or pamphlet7—guess it will be
quite an interesting contribution to the great heap of W.W. literature.8 Nothing new from W.J. Gurd9 and the
meter—I guess all is going well but it goes mighty slow. All well here. Rain,
rain, rain—has rained now for near a month and still keeps on—raining
quite hard the present moment (11.40 a.m.).
Au revoir, dear Walt,
Love to you always
R M Bucke
loc_es.00609.jpg
See note June 12, 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 | AM | JU 10 | 89 | Canada; NY | 6–11–89 | 8 AM | [illegible]; Cam[illegible] | Jun | 11 | 3 PM | 1889 | Rec'd. [back]
- 2. See Whitman's letters of
Bucke of June 4–5, 1889 and June 6, 1889. [back]
- 3. For Whitman's seventieth
birthday, Horace Traubel and a large committee planned a local celebration for
the poet in Morgan's Hall in Camden, New Jersey. The committee included Henry
(Harry) L. Bonsall, Geoffrey Buckwalter, and Thomas B. Harned. See Horace
Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Tuesday, May 7, 1889. The day was celebrated with a testimonial
dinner. Numerous authors and friends of the poet prepared and delivered
addresses to mark the occasion. Whitman, who did not feel well at the time,
arrived after the dinner to listen to the remarks. [back]
- 4. In his letter of June 1, 1889, Whitman told Bucke that he sent a
copy of the pocket-book edition of Leaves of Grass. The
poet had the special pocket-book edition printed in honor of his 70th birthday
(May 31, 1889) through special arrangement with Frederick Oldach. See Whitman's
May 16, 1889, letter to Oldach. Only 300
copies were printed, and Whitman signed the title page of each one. The volume
also included the annex Sands at Seventy and his essay
A Backward Glance O'er Traveled Roads. 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). Bucke's copy of the 1889 pocket-book edition of
Leaves of Grass is described in the Sotheby & Co
(1935) and the American Art Association (1936) auction catalogues of his Whitman
collection. The item is numbered 11 and 294, respectively. [back]
- 5. In The
Commonplace-Book Whitman recorded his thoughts on the Johnstown flood
on June 1, 1889: "The most pervading & dreadful news this m'ng is of the
strange cataclysm at Johnstown & adjoining Cambria County, Penn: by wh' many
thousands of people are overwhelm'd, kill'd by drowning in water, burnt by fire,
&c: &c:—all our hearts, the papers & the public interest, are
fill'd with it—the most signal & wide-spread horror of the kind ever
known in this country—curious that at this very hour, we were having the
dinner festivities &c—unaware." C. H. Browning, the Philadelphia
representative of the New York World, was instructed by
Julius Chambers to ask the poet for "a threnody on the Johnstown dead," which
became "A Voice from Death" (Horace Traubel, With Walt
Whitman in Camden, Wednesday, June 5, 1889). The poem was first published in the New York World on June 7, 1889. [back]
- 6. Thomas Biggs Harned
(1851–1921) was one of Whitman's literary executors. Harned was a lawyer
in Philadelphia and, having married Augusta Anna Traubel (1856–1914), was
Horace Traubel's brother-in-law. For more on him, see Dena Mattausch, "Harned, Thomas Biggs (1851–1921)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). For more on his relationship with Whitman, see
Thomas Biggs Harned, Memoirs of Thomas B. Harned, Walt
Whitman's Friend and Literary Executor, ed. Peter Van Egmond (Hartford:
Transcendental Books, 1972). [back]
- 7. The notes and addresses that
were delivered at Whitman's seventieth birthday celebration in Camden, on May
31, 1889, were collected and edited by Horace Traubel. The volume was titled Camden's Compliment to Walt Whitman, and it included a
photo of Sidney Morse's 1887 clay bust of Whitman as the frontispiece. The book
was published in 1889 by Philadelphia publisher David McKay. [back]
- 8. See Whitman's June 2, 1889, letter to Traubel, regarding the
published volume of birthday speeches Camden's Compliment to
Walt Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1889). [back]
- 9. 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]