Camden1
Thursday P M
July 19 '88
Every thing ab't the same—with a turn probably the good—(yet the result
uncertain)—When you look at "To-Day"2 send to Dr
Bucke3—A rain here.
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
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).
Notes
- 1. This letter is endorsed:
"Answ'd July 25/88." It is addressed: Wm D O'Connor | 1015 O Street | Washington
| D C. It is postmarked: Camden (?) | Jul 20 | 6 AM | 88; Washington. Rec (?) |
Jul 20 | 12 M | (?). [back]
- 2. To-day was a London periodical in which Reginald A. Beckett published
"Walt Whitman as a Socialist Poet" in July 1888 (see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, July 16, 1888). [back]
- 3. 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]