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Walt Whitman to Richard Maurice Bucke, 18 November 1891

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Fine sunny cold day (changed sudden last night)—bowel evacuation forenoon, dark, indurated—first since four or five days—feeling ab't same continued—buckwheat cakes & coffee for b'kfst—"hold y'r horses" ab't the Shakespere—Bacon2 point3—Ign: D.4 collects a staggering am't of S's conventional, personal inferiority—it has quite seriously impress'd me, & is superimposed on what I have clearly long seen, that there are strange mysteries & hiatuses on the S. cultus matter—but the Bacon attribution & cyphers5 are too thin yet—too "got up" at best—But we will see what time brings out further—at any rate "probable" or even "likely" wont do in science or history—Sold 50 big books6 in sheets to McK7 for some Eng: dealer—shall send you one of the very first new—complete L of G8 (probably unbound) I get—am sitting here as usual in big chair with wolf (not calf) skin spread back—& good wood fire in stove—Harry Stafford9 here yesterday & all goes same with them—letter f'm Mrs: O Connor10 Providence RI—I fluctuate between tolerable & pretty bad—

Walt Whitman  loc_zs.00591.jpg  loc_zs.00592.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: Dr Bucke | Asylum | London | Ontario | Canada. It is postmarked: CAMDEN, N.J.; PHILADELPHIA, P.A. | NOV | 18 | 730 PM | 91 | TRANSIT; BUFFALO, N.Y. | NOV 19; [illegible] Whitman wrote this letter on stationery printed with the following notice from the Boston Evening Transcript: "From the Boston Eve'g Transcript, May 7, '91.—The Epictetus saying, as given by Walt Whitman in his own quite utterly dilapidated physical case is, a 'little spark of soul dragging a great lummux of corpse-body clumsily to and fro around.'" [back]
  • 2. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was an English philosopher, scientist, statesman, and author. Bacon's personal notebooks and works came under scrutiny during the nineteenth-century because of suspicions that he had written plays under the pen-name William Shakespeare in order to protect his political office from material some might find objectionable. For more on the Baconian theory, see Henry William Smith, Was Lord Bacon The Author of Shakespeare's Plays?: A Letter to Lord Ellesmere (London: William Skeffington, 1856). [back]
  • 3. Here, Whitman is responding to Bucke's November 14, 1891, letter in which Bucke mentioned comparing the writings of William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon and referenced the Baconian theory of Shakespere authorship. Additionally, Bucke described his longing to spend time discussing the subject with Whitman's friend and defender William D. O'Connor (1832–1889), who had authored the book Hamlet's Note-book (Boston: Houghton & Mifflin, 1886), which argued that Sir Francis Bacon had written the plays attributed to Shakespeare. In 1888, regarding Hamlet's Note-book, Whitman admitted to Horace L. Traubel, "I have never read it myself" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, July 15, 1888). [back]
  • 4. Ignatius L. Donnelly (1831–1901) was an American politician, writer, pseudo-scientist and Shakespeare critic, who argued that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. [back]
  • 5. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, a variety of scholars began to speculate on the question of the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays. A favorite theory was that Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, actually wrote the plays and left behind a series of clues or ciphers in his letters and journals. Whitman was evidently never very interested in this theory but he did publish an essay, "What Lurks behind Shakespeare's Historical Plays," in the Critic on September 27, 1884. On August 30, 1887, he wrote a letter to Bucke, William Sloane Kennedy, and John Burroughs in which he mentions reading an extensive article on the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy in the August 28th issue of the New York World. In the letter he wrote, "I am tackling it—take less and less stock in it," and the result was Whitman's poem "Shakespeare Bacon's Cipher," which was published in The Cosmopolitan in October 1887. [back]
  • 6. Whitman often referred to Complete Poems & Prose (1888) as his "big book." The volume was published by the poet himself in an arrangement with publisher David McKay, who allowed Whitman to use the plates for both Leaves of Grass and Specimen Days—in December 1888. With the help of Horace Traubel, Whitman made the presswork and binding decisions, and Frederick Oldach bound the volume, which included a profile photo of the poet on the title page. For more information on the book, see Ed Folsom, Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and Commentary (University of Iowa: Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, 2005). [back]
  • 7. David McKay (1860–1918) took over Philadelphia-based publisher Rees Welsh's bookselling and publishing businesses in 1881–82. McKay and Rees Welsh published the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass after opposition from the Boston District Attorney prompted James R. Osgood & Company of Boston, the original publisher, to withdraw. McKay also went on to publish Specimen Days & Collect, November Boughs, Gems from Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works, and the final Leaves of Grass, the so-called deathbed edition. For more information about McKay, see Joel Myerson, "McKay, David (1860–1918)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 8. The 1891–1892 Leaves of Grass was copyrighted in 1891 and published by Phildelphia publisher David McKay in 1892. This volume, often referred to as the "deathbed" edition, reprints, with minor revisions, the 1881 text from the plates of Boston publisher James R. Osgood. Whitman also includes his two annexes in the book. The first annex, called "Sands at Seventy," consisted of sixty-five poems that had originally appeared in November Boughs (1888); while the second, "Good-Bye my Fancy," was a collection of thirty-one short poems taken from the gathering of prose and poetry published under that title by McKay in 1891, along with a prose "Preface Note to 2d Annex." Whitman concluded the 1891–92 volume with his prose essay "A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads," which had originally appeared in November Boughs. For more information on this volume of Leaves, see R.W. French, "Leaves of Grass, 1891–1892, Deathbed Edition," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 9. Walt Whitman met the 18-year-old Harry Lamb Stafford (1858–1918) in 1876, beginning a relationship which was almost entirely overlooked by early Whitman scholarship, in part because Stafford's name appears nowhere in the first six volumes of Horace Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden—though it does appear frequently in the last three volumes, which were published only in the 1990s. Whitman occasionally referred to Stafford as "My (adopted) son" (as in a December 13, 1876, letter to John H. Johnston), but the relationship between the two also had a romantic, erotic charge to it. In 1883, Harry married Eva Westcott. For further discussion of Stafford, see Arnie Kantrowitz, "Stafford, Harry L. (b.1858)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 10. Ellen M. "Nelly" O'Connor (1830–1913) was the wife of William D. O'Connor (1832–1889), one of Whitman's staunchest defenders. Before marrying William, Ellen Tarr was active in the antislavery and women's rights movements as a contributor to the Liberator and to a women's rights newspaper Una. Whitman dined with the O'Connors frequently during his Washington years. Though Whitman and William O'Connor would temporarily break off their friendship in late 1872 over Reconstruction policies with regard to emancipated African Americans, Ellen would remain friendly with Whitman. The correspondence between Whitman and Ellen is almost as voluminous as the poet's correspondence with William. Three years after William O'Connor's death, Ellen married the Providence businessman Albert Calder. For more on Whitman's relationship with the O'Connors, see Dashae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas [1832–1889]" and Lott's "O'Connor (Calder), Ellen ('Nelly') M. Tarr (1830–1913)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
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