Camden
April 16 '891
Cloudy raw weather—(may be part of my glum condition)—No word from
O'C[onnor]2 now for a week and over—write a card to
him to-night, & to Kennedy3—Good words &c from big
printed quarters (N Y World and Herald)4—if I get them will send
you—
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, N.J.
| 16 Apr | 8 PM. [back]
- 2. William Douglas O'Connor
(1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet
The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866.
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]
- 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. Richard Hinton's
three-column article "Walt Whitman at Home" appeared in the New York World on April 14, 1889. Whitman observed to Traubel: "It seems like
three crowded columns of gush. . . . It may seem ungracious . . . to say so (for
Dick is my friend and means me well) but his piece impresses me most by its
emptiness—impresses me as a big tumor or boil, much swelled, inflamed,
bulging, but nothing after all" (Horace Traubel, With Walt
Whitman in Camden, Wednesday, April 17, 1889, Thursday, April 18, 1889). C. Sadakichi Hartmann's article "Walt
Whitman. Notes of a Conversation with the Good Gray Poet by a German Poet and
Traveller" appeared in the New York Herald on April 14.
For Whitman's reactions, see his April 17 letter
to Bucke and his May 4 letter to William Sloane
Kennedy (see also Traubel, Tuesday, April 16, 1889, and Wednesday, April 17, 1889). Bucke prepared a correction for the Herald which was not printed (Traubel, Monday, May 6, 1889). [back]