Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 28 November 1888

About This Item

Title: Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 28 November 1888
Date: November 28, 1888
Creator(s): Richard Maurice Bucke
Whitman Archive ID: loc.07274
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.

Notes for this letter were created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from The Letters of Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, ed. Artem Lozynsky (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Ryan Furlong Alex Ashland Caterina Bernardini Stephanie Blalock
Cite this page: Bucke, Richard Maurice. "Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 28 November 1888." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 23 January 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
Source File: loc.07274.xml (TEI)

loc_es.00492.jpg Superintendent's Office.1 ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE LONDON. ONTARIO London, Ont., 28 Nov 1888 Evening

Thank you very much for "Critic" and "American" received today. I quite agree with you (in the "Critic") that America has produced several poets (among those who are dead) equal to several of the thirteen.2 All quiet here—a long letter from William Gurd3 today—all going well with him and the meter but it goes slow, slow—looks as if there would never be an end of it—We are having here loc_es.00493.jpg warm, dull, muggy weather. All quiet here (not to say dull)

I sent "the second head"4 the other day to an Art Loan in London—and felt quite dull without it—have got it back again—it is looking cheerfully at me now from its bracket in the corner of my office

Affectionately

R M Bucke

loc_es.00490.jpg see notes Dec 1st 1888

loc_es.00491.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 | NO 29 | 88 | CANADA; [illegible] | 11-30-88 | 9AM | [illegible]; Camden, N.J.| NOV | 30 | [illegible]AM | [illegible] | REC'D. [back]
2. See Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, October 22, 1888. See also Floyd Stovall, ed., Walt Whitman: The Prose Works 2 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 2:676. [back]
3. William John Gurd (1845–1903) was Richard Maurice Bucke's brother-in-law, with whom he was designing a gas and fluid meter to be patented in Canada and sold in England. Bucke believed the meter would be worth "millions of dollars," while Whitman remained skeptical, sometimes to Bucke's annoyance. In a March 18, 1888, letter to William D. O'Connor, Whitman wrote, "The practical outset of the meter enterprise collapsed at the last moment for the want of capital investors." For additional information, see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, March 17, 1889, Monday, March 18, 1889, Friday, March 22, 1889, and Wednesday, April 3, 1889. [back]
4. Bucke is referring to the bust of Walt Whitman by Sidney Morse. [back]