The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Richard Maurice Bucke, 6 February 1891
Date: February 6, 1891
Whitman Archive ID: loc.07996
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), 5:161–162. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Cristin Noonan, Zainab Saleh, Stephanie Blalock, and Andrew David King
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Camden1
Feb: 6 '91
Much relieved to know you get over so easily f'm the bad little attack—am well pleas'd that Beemer2 sh'd have one of the pictures—physically much the same with me—a Californian magazine ("Overland") in an art. in wh' I am alluded to, just rec'd3—will send it to you—dark & rainy mn'g but is clearing I think now.
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 postal card is addressed: Dr Bucke | Asylum | London | Ontario | Canada. It is postmarked: CAMDEN, N.J. | Feb 6 | 430 PM | 91; LONDON | AM | FE 9 | [illegible]1 | CANADA. [back]
2. Dr. Nelson Henry (N. H.) Beemer (ca. 1854–1934) was in charge of the "Refractory Building" at Bucke's asylum and served as his first assistant physician. Whitman met Beemer during his visit there in the summer of 1880. See James H. Coyne, Richard Maurice Bucke: A Sketch (Toronto: Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1906), 52. [back]
3. In "The Colonel, at Home, in Sonoma County," (Overland, 17 [February, 1891], 200–208), Laura Lyon White has the Colonel recite to reluctant children some excerpts from "Song of Myself," until one of them cries: "Enough, enough, . . . I am now ready to acknowledge the truth of Emerson's assertion that 'Walt Whitman is a god with a grunt'" (202–203). On January 29 she wrote to Walt Whitman: "If there is a wounding word in the 'Overland' article . . . I trust it may be pardoned one who admiringly reads your writings, and who fancies she feels their spirit" (Charles E. Feinberg Collection). [back]