The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Richard Maurice Bucke, 15 March 1888
Date: March 15, 1888
Whitman Archive ID: loc.07508
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 4:156. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Ryan Furlong, Alex Ashland, Caterina Bernardini, and Stephanie Blalock
Camden1
March 15 '88
Everything continuing on ab't the same with me—was out to dinner at my friends the Harneds2 Sunday—Harry Stafford3 has been here—the throat trouble still—otherwise well—O'C[onnor]4 is taking massage treatment5—the H[erald] has paid my first bill6—I continue on. Y'r letters rec'd—A terrible three days' storm & cold & gale & snow—but has not affected me particularly—
W W
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: Dr R M Bucke | Asylum | London | Ontario Canada. It is postmarked: Camden (?) | Mar 15 | 8 PM | 8(?). [back]
2. Thomas Biggs Harned (1851–1921) was a lawyer in Philadelphia and, later, one of Whitman's literary executors. His wife, Augusta Anna Traubel Harned (1856–1914), was Horace Traubel's sister. [back]
3. Walt Whitman met the 18-year-old Harry Lamb Stafford (1858–1918) in 1876, beginning a relationship which was almost entirely overlooked by early Whitman scholarship, in part because Stafford's name appears nowhere in the first six volumes of Horace Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden—though it does appear frequently in the last three volumes, which were published only in the 1990s. Whitman occasionally referred to Stafford as "My (adopted) son" (as in a December 13, 1876, letter to John H. Johnston), but the relationship between the two also had a romantic, erotic charge to it. In 1883, Harry married Eva Westcott. For further discussion of Stafford, see Arnie Kantrowitz, "Stafford, Harry L. (b.1858)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
4. William Douglas O'Connor (1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet "The Good Gray Poet," published in 1866 (a digital version of the pamphlet is available at "The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication"). 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. The "treatment" to which Bucke refers is described in Ellen O'Connor's letter to Whitman of March 13, 1888, as well as a postscript letter that O'Connor sent to Whitman, also on March 13, 1888. [back]
6. Whitman was writing poems and prose for the New York Herald all through 1888 and was billing the newspaper and getting paid regularly. [back]