loc_zs.00296.jpg
Medical Superintendent's
Office.
INSANE ASYLUM
LONDON ONTARIO1
22 Feb 1891
Postcard of 19th2 from you to hand last evening. Was
much relieved to hear that you were easier even if it is not very much so.
I trust now that you will keep out of the deep ruts for a while
and be able to look after the annex.3
Have you given up the idea of other folks writing in it?
I hope so—Horace4 & I are busy planning a vol. of W.W.
essays and I do not see why we should not carry it thro' at once—that would
seem to me far the better course.
The first machine made meter5 is done & tested—it is perfect. I have "The
New Spirit"6 have had it a year—the "W.W." is mostly good—has
some bad shots in it
Best love always
R M Bucke
loc_zs.00297.jpg
loc_zs.00298.jpg
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:
Walt Whitman | 328 Mickle Street | Camden | New Jersey | U.S.A. It is
postmarked: CAMDEN, N.J. | FEB | 24 | 1 PM | 1891 | REC'D, LONDON | AM | FE 23 |
91 | CANADA. [back]
- 2. See Whitman's postal card to
Bucke of February 19, 1891. [back]
- 3. Whitman's book Good-Bye My Fancy (1891) was his last miscellany, and it
included both poetry and short prose works commenting on poetry, aging, and
death, among other topics. Thirty-one poems from the book were later printed as
"Good-Bye my Fancy" in Leaves of Grass
(1891–1892), the last edition of Leaves of Grass
published before Whitman's death in March 1892. For more information see, Donald
Barlow Stauffer, "'Good-Bye my Fancy' (Second Annex) (1891)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 4. Horace L. Traubel (1858–1919)
was an American essayist, poet, and magazine publisher. He is best remembered as
the literary executor, biographer, and self-fashioned "spirit child" of Walt
Whitman. During the late 1880s and until Whitman's death in 1892, Traubel visited
the poet virtually every day and took thorough notes of their conversations,
which he later transcribed and published in three large volumes entitled With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906, 1908, & 1914).
After his death, Traubel left behind enough manuscripts for six more volumes of
the series, the final two of which were published in 1996. For more on Traubel,
see Ed Folsom, "Traubel, Horace L. [1858–1919]," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 5. Bucke and his brother-in-law
William John Gurd were designing a gas and fluid meter to be patented in Canada
and sold in England. [back]
- 6. Henry Havelock Ellis
(1859–1939) was an English physician and sexologist. He co-wrote Sexual Inversion (published in German 1896; English
translation in 1897) with Whitman correspondent John Addington Symonds. His book
The New Spirit, with a chapter on Whitman, appeared
in 1890. [back]