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Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 10 September 1888

About This Item

  • Title: Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 10 September 1888
  • Date: September 10, 1888
  • Creator(s): Richard Maurice Bucke
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.07236
  • Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Jeannette Schollaert Ian Faith Caterina Bernardini Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Bucke, Richard Maurice. "Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 10 September 1888." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 13 January 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.07236.xml (TEI)
 loc_es.00348.jpg Superintendent's Office.1 
 ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE 
 LONDON. 
  ONTARIO 
 London, Ont.,10 Sept 1888

How do the fates serve you these last few lovely days? Well I hope. We are all well here and the meter2 goes on quietly and well as far as we know. Nothing fresh however. The autumn weather here is just perfect, sunshiny, hazy, dreamy. Puts me in mind all the time of Tennyson's3 "Lotos Eaters."4 How goes the book—I hope to get a perfect autograph copy both of N.B.5 & C.W.6 from you before a very great while—I shall look upon them as the crown and summit of all my W.W. Collection—a collection by the way which gives me a lot  loc_es.00349.jpg of worry sometimes to think what I am eventually to do with it. I regard it as so precious that no ordinary disposition of it will do—I am sorry to hear that Kennedy's7 book is not to be out at present—I fear it is quite a disappointment to him.

I am going to write an elaborate annual report this year mostly on "alcohol" am in the middle of it—expect to give the alcohol men a "black eye"

Affectionately yours RM Bucke  loc_es.00344.jpg See notes Sept. 11, 1888  loc_es.00345.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 postmarked: LONDON | AM | SP 10 | 88 | CANADA. There is an additional Camden postmark from September, but it is illegible. [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. 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. [back]
  • 4. "The Lotos-Eaters" is a poem by Tennyson about Odysseus and his mariners eating lotos leaves and entering an altered state of consciousness; it was published in 1832. [back]
  • 5. Whitman's November Boughs was published in October 1888 by Philadelphia publisher David McKay. For more information on the book, see James E. Barcus Jr., "November Boughs [1888]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
  • 6. Whitman wanted to publish a "big book" that included all of his writings, and, with the help of Horace Traubel, Whitman made the presswork and binding decisions for the volume. Frederick Oldach bound Whitman's Complete Poems & Prose (1888), which included a profile photo of the poet on the title page. The book was published in December 1888. For more information on the book, see Ed Folsom, Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and Commentary (University of Iowa: Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, 2005). [back]
  • 7. William Sloane Kennedy (1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and the Boston Transcript; he also published biographies of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier (Dictionary of American Biography [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933], 336–337). Apparently Kennedy called on the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [London: Alexander Gardener, 1896], 1). Though Kennedy was to become a fierce defender of Whitman, in his first published article he admitted reservations about the "coarse indecencies of language" and protested that Whitman's ideal of democracy was "too coarse and crude"; see The Californian, 3 (February 1881), 149–158. For more about Kennedy, see Katherine Reagan, "Kennedy, William Sloane (1850–1929)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
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