The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 26 June 1891
Date: June 26, 1891
Whitman Archive ID: med.00921
Source: The location of the manuscript is unknown. Miller's transcription is derived from a transcription of this letter by Richard Maurice Bucke that is held in the 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), 5:219. 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, Stephanie Blalock, and Breanna Himschoot
Camden N. J. U. S. America1
June 26 '91
If you are feeling well enough and in opportune mood let me introduce my good friend & physician Dr Bucke2—He is Superintendent (medical and other) of the big Insane Canadian Asylum at London Ontario—is an Englishman born but raised (as we say it) in America. I still stick out here in the land of the living but pretty tough pulling most of the time—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) succeeded
William Wordsworth as poet laureate of Great Britain in 1850. The intense male
friendship described in In Memoriam, which Tennyson wrote
after the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, possibly influenced Whitman's
poetry. Whitman wrote to Tennyson in 1871 or late 1870, probably shortly after the
visit of Cyril Flower in December, 1870, but the letter is not extant (see Thomas Donaldson,
Walt Whitman the Man [New York: F. P.
Harper, 1896], 223). Tennyson's first letter to Whitman is dated July
12, 1871. Although Tennyson extended an invitation for Whitman
to visit England, Whitman never acted on the offer.
Notes:
1. Only Bucke's transcription of this letter is extant (The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]
2. 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). [back]