Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 29 October 1891
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Medical Superintendent's Office.
INSANE ASYLUM
LONDON ONTARIO
29 Oct 18911
Many thanks, dear Walt, for "The Record" (this moment received) containing "Whitman's Nightfall" (daylight is certainly fading but "night" is not yet). When night does come it will be moonlight and full of stars—I am not in any sense terrified of it. All quiet and well here. Meter2 jogging along hopefully—it has been under a bit of a cloud for a few months but I think I see some clear sky ahead now. I am reading Wigston's book on Bacon3 which I mentioned to you a few days ago4—he points out in a striking manner how B.'s Henry VII5 dovetails in between S.'s6 Richard III & S.'s Henry VIII—the same man must have written all three
R M Bucke
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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: LONDON | OCT 29 | 91 | CANADA; CAMDEN, N.J. | OCT30 | 4 PM | 91 | REC'D. [back]
- 2. 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]
- 3. William Francis C. Wigston was the author of Francis Bacon, Poet, Prophet, Philosopher, Versus Phantam Captain Shakespeare The Rosicrucian Mask (1891), which Bucke was reading at the time. The book focuses on Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who 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. See Bucke's letter to Whitman of October 27, 1891. [back]
- 5. Francis Bacon's influential book History of the Reign of Henry VII (1622) considers the first Tudor King Henry VII, who had taken the throne from Richard III—the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenets—in 1485. This is Bacon's only completed work of history; he began writing an account of Henry VIII, but only finished an introduction to the intended work. [back]
- 6. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet and playwright and is widely considered the world's greatest dramatist. He was the author of numerous plays (including Richard III and Henry VIII), sonnets, and narrative poems. [back]