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Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 14 November 1891

About This Item

  • Title: Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 14 November 1891
  • Date: November 14, 1891
  • Creator(s): Richard Maurice Bucke
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.08217
  • 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 Richard Maurice Bucke, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 95. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Zainab Saleh Stephanie Blalock Cristin Noonan Amanda J. Axley
  • Cite this page: Bucke, Richard Maurice. "Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 14 November 1891." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 20 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.08217.xml (TEI)
 loc_zs.00571.jpg Medical Superintendent's Office. INSANE ASYLUM LONDON ONTARIO1 14 Nov 1891

A cloudy, cool and very pleasant November day. We gave a ball for Clare2 last night, had over two hundred guests, danced untill 3 this a.m. The Ball was in the large amusement room at the asylum—over 100 days labor were consumed upon the decorations—it was generally allowed to be the prettiest and most enjoyable party ever given in London—today we all feel somewhat sleepy & tired but much relieved that it is well over.

I am still reading Shakespeare and Bacon3 (comparing the two (?) men4)—it is a most fascinating study—what would I not give for a week with O'Connor5 to talk it all  loc_zs.00572.jpg over. Meter matters6 jog along as usual—I hope that in the course of '92 we shall be through the worst of our troubles.—

Remember me to Horace.7

What about the new L. of G.?8 Will it soon be out? I want an early copy. Is Horace doing anything about the W.W. book?9 I want to go to work at it but shall not have an hour for that job untill after Christmas

Good luck and love to you RM Bucke  loc_zs.00573.jpg  loc_zs.00574.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 posmarked: LONDON | PM | NO 14 | 91 | CANADA; PHILADELPHIA, P.A. | NOV | 15 | 4 PM | 1891 | TRANSIT; CAMDEN, N.J. | NOV16 | 6 PM | 91 | REC'D. [back]
  • 2. Jessie Clare Bucke (1870–1943) was the daughter of the Canadian physician Richard Maurice Bucke and his wife, Jessie Maria Gurd (1839–1926). [back]
  • 3. 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]
  • 4. When Bucke mentions comparing William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon here, he is referencing the Baconian theory—the idea that Shakespeare's plays had been written by Francis Bacon. Bucke also mentions his longing to discuss the subject with Whitman's friend and defender William D. O'Connor (1832–1889), a Baconian theorist, who authored Hamlet's Note-book, in which he argued that Bacon had authored the play (Houghton , Mifflin & Co., 1886). [back]
  • 5. 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]
  • 6. 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]
  • 7. Horace L. Traubel (1858–1919) was a close acquaintance of Walt Whitman and one of the poet's literary executors. He met Whitman in 1873 and proceeded to visit the aging author almost daily beginning in the late 1880s. The result of these meetings—during which Traubel took meticulous notes—is the nine-volume collection With Walt Whitman in Camden. Later in life, Traubel also published Whitmanesque poetry and revolutionary essays. He died in 1919, shortly after he claimed to have seen a vision of Whitman beckoning him to 'Come on'. For more on Traubel, see Ed Folsom, "Traubel, Horace L. (1858–1919), Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, ed., (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 740–741. [back]
  • 8. Whitman wanted to have a copy of the final Leaves of Grass before his death, and he also wanted to be able to present copies to his friends. A version of the 1891–1892 Leaves of Grass, often referred to as the "deathbed edition," was bound in December of 1891 so that Whitman could give the volume to friends at Christmas. The following year, the 1891–1892 Leaves of Grass was published by Phildelphia publisher David McKay. This volume 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 consisted of a long prefatory essay entitled "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" and sixty-five poems; 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. For more information on this volume of Leaves, see R.W. French, "Leaves of Grass, 1891–1892 edition," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 9. Horace Traubel and Canadian physician Richard Maurice Bucke were beginning to make plans for a collected volume of writings by and about Whitman. Bucke, Traubel, and Thomas Harned—Whitman's three literary executors—edited In Re Walt Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1893), which included the three unsigned reviews of the first edition of Leaves of Grass that were written by Whitman himself, William Sloane Kennedy's article, "Dutch Traits of Walt Whitman," and Robert Ingersoll's lecture Liberty in Literature (delivered in honor of Whitman at Philadelphia's Horticultural Hall on October 21, 1890), as well as writings by the naturalist John Burroughs and by James W. Wallace, a co-founder of the Bolton Whitman Fellowship in Bolton, England. [back]
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