Yours of 19th1 enclosing Wallace's2
note3 just received. There is more "non aurthodox passion" among your friends than perhaps you are aware of. Though we do
not set up and curse the (modern) Pharisees as Christ (or far more likely his
friends did) yet we feel it. It is there all the same. We
do not and cannot go with
Ingersoll4 in his refusals and denials but we like the man
and we should be foolish to do anything to deter him from giving us his
friendship loc_sd.00028.jpg and support. We want the conservative, orthodox folk (all we can get of them) and we
are getting a good many (I have a letter this morning from a young presbytarian
clergiman —a good
friend of yours5) but we want (to my
mind) the independent freethinkers even more since the immediate future (I fancy)
belongs to them. I think you are right to stand aside (personally) from this
I.6 demonstration7 but for my part (as a friend
of the cause) I look upon it (and think you should) with great complacency. I think
therefore that you are entirely wrong to be "annoyed" at a demonstration in your
favor even if it were entirely by freethinker—they cannot alter you or your
teaching and (on the contrary) you will undoubtedly, in the end, alter many of them
and will have (in the end) in all probability your most extreme partisans &
lovers from this section of humanity. As for I. being "solicited" it seems to me
that is neither here nor there—your friends have a right to do what seems best
to them in such matters—their action does not affect you—you stand aside
and let them act. That is all. For my part nothing
loc_sd.00029.jpg could give
me greater satisfaction than a rousing demonstration on the part of I. and
his friends and I shall take part in it (if I can) with a good heart. I do heartily
agree with you however in wishing that the affair8 could come off in N.Y. Could not
this be managed? I shall write to Johnston9 on this point.
All well here, fine weather, Western Fair going on in London. Meter10 moving slowly but satisfactorily
Best love to you RM BuckeCorrespondent:
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).