Camden1
April 8 '89
Shall send you Stedman's2 letter3 in a
day or two—it is well worth reading—Nothing very new—As I smell
the fumes of the cooking while I write, thankful that they do not seem utterly
welcomeless to me as so much (books, magazines &c) do. Well, here comes my
dinner—
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 postal card is
addressed: Dr R M Bucke | Asylum | London | Ontario Canada. It is postmarked:
Camden, N.J. | Apr 8 | 8 PM | 89. [back]
- 2. Edmund Clarence Stedman
(1833–1908) was a man of diverse talents. He edited for a year the Mountain County Herald at Winsted, Connecticut, wrote
"Honest Abe of the West," presumably Lincoln's first campaign song, and served
as correspondent of the New York World from 1860 to 1862.
In 1862 and 1863 he was a private secretary in the Attorney General's office
until he entered the firm of Samuel Hallett and Company in September, 1863. The
next year he opened his own brokerage office. He published many volumes of poems
and was an indefatigable compiler of anthologies, among which were Poets of America, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1885) and A Library of American Literature from the Earliest
Settlement to the Present Time, 11 vols. (New York: C. L. Webster,
1889–90). For more, see Donald Yannella, "Stedman, Edmund Clarence (1833–1908)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. See Stedman's letter to
Whitman of March 27, 1889. See also Whitman's April 8, 1889, letter to William Sloane Kennedy,
William Douglas O'Connor, and Richard Maurice Bucke. Whitman sent Stedman's
letter to Kennedy as an enclosure and instructions with this letter that
directed Kennedy to send the letter and the enclosure to Ellen O'Connor (wife of
William D. O'Connor), and then he asked the O'Connors to send the letters to
Bucke. [back]