Camden
Wednesday PM July 25 '881
Weather perfect continued—they say yesterday was fearfully hot, but I didn't
mind it—the hours rather dull but ab't as usual & no setback. Nov: Boughs2 copy done—the three letters from
Rhys,3 Miss Bates,4 & our old Japanee friend5
I will enclose6—(don't want them back)—
If any gaps of the proof pages up to 104 exist, mention it & I will
remit—Keep my room yet—am sitting now (& in four fifths time day) in
the capacious ratan-seated arm chair—my condition of feebleness &
locomotive capacity is fearful—the brain works ab't as before—&
muscle & grip of arms (especially right) strong & glib perhaps as
ever—
Walt Whitman
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
to: Dr R M Bucke | Asylum | London | Ontario | Canada. It is postmarked: Camden,
N.J. | Jul 25 | 8 PM | 88. [back]
- 2. Whitman's November Boughs was published in October 1888 by Philadelphia
publisher David McKay. For more information on the book, see James E. Barcus
Jr., "November Boughs [1888]," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. Ernest Percival Rhys
(1859–1946) was a British author and editor; he founded the Everyman's
Library series of inexpensive reprintings of popular works. He included a volume
of Whitman's poems in the Canterbury Poets series and two volumes of Whitman's
prose in the Camelot series for Walter Scott publishers. For more information
about Rhys, see Joel Myerson, "Rhys, Ernest Percival (1859–1946)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 4. Charlotte Fiske Bates
(1838–1916) was a poet and editor. She published Risks
and Other Poems (1879), a collection of around 120 poems, and she
edited the Cambridge Book of Poetry and Song (1882). She
contributed to numerous magazines and worked as an instructor in English at the
Salisbury School for Young Ladies. She later married M. Adolphe Rogé. For
more information on Bates, see American Women: Fifteen Hundred
Biographies with over 1,400 Portraits, eds. Frances E. Willard and
Mary A. Livermore, (New York: Mast. Crowell and Kirkpatrick, 1897),
2: 617–618. [back]
- 5. Carl Sadakichi Hartmann (ca.
1867–1944) was an art historian and early critic of photography as an art
form. He visited Whitman in Camden in the 1880s and published his conversations
with the poet in 1895. Generally unpopular with other supporters of the poet, he
was known during his years in Greenwich Village as the "King of Bohemia." For
more information about Hartmann, see John F. Roche, "Hartmann, C. Sadakichi (ca. 1867–1944)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 6. See Ernest Rhys's letter
of July 9–10, 1888. Charlotte Fiske Bates
wrote a laudatory letter on July 19, 1888: ". . .
In one sense, no other writer of any age, has, in his work, laid so far-reaching
and sympathetic a grasp on the heart of the future as you have done." The
"Japanee friend," C. Sadakichi Hartmann, on July 24,
1888, reported his return from abroad. [back]