loc_es.00567.jpg
Superintendent's Office.
Asylum
for the Insane
London.
Ontario
London, Ont.,
9 April 1889
Weather here perfect, we shall have I guess a very early spring. Road drying up and
getting quite good after the last snow which is all gone except patches in the shady
places. Your welcome card of 7th1 to hand this morning, also (from you) a copy of "Journalist" cont.g J.R.
Meader's2 very excellent article (though a little narrow) on
"N.B."3 and L. of G. generally. By same mail came the April
"Scottish Art Review" with Carpenter's4 piece on "N.B."5 somewhat mechanical but good sentences here & there
in it. All well here. All quiet. Nothing yet from Wm
Gurd.6 Pardee7 is better again and I am
glad to hear that O.C.8 is also.
Love to you always
Your friend
R M Bucke
loc_es.00568.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. See Whitman's postal
card to Bucke of April 7, 1889. [back]
- 2. As yet we have no information about
this person. [back]
- 3. 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]
- 4. Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) was an English
writer and Whitman disciple. Like many other young disillusioned Englishmen, he
deemed Whitman a prophetic spokesman of an ideal state cemented in the bonds of
brotherhood. Carpenter—a socialist philosopher who in his book Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure posited civilization as
a "disease" with a lifespan of approximately one thousand years before human
society cured itself—became an advocate for same-sex love and a
contributing early founder of Britain's Labour Party. On July 12, 1874, he wrote for the first time to Whitman: "Because you
have, as it were, given me a ground for the love of men I thank you continually
in my heart . . . . For you have made men to be not ashamed of the noblest
instinct of their nature." For further discussion of Carpenter, see Arnie
Kantrowitz, "Carpenter, Edward [1844–1929]," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 5. Carpenter's review of November Boughs appeared in the Scottish Art Review (April 1889), 334–35. [back]
- 6. 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]
- 7. Timothy Blair Pardee
(1830–1889) was a Canadian lawyer and politician, member of the
Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontaria, Canada, and Minister of the
Crown. Pardee appointed Richard Maurice Bucke, with whom he was a close friend,
as the Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane in Hamilton at its founding
in 1876, and then the next year as Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane
in London. For more on Pardee, see H. V. Nelles, "Pardee, Timothy Blair," Dictionary of Canadian Biography Vol. 11 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1982). [back]
- 8. 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). [back]