Richard Maurice Bucke to Walt Whitman, 16 January 1890
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Superintendent's Office
Asylum for the Insane Ontario London, Ont., 16 Jan 18901
At the house we are getting better. Am feeling considerably better myself. W.J. Gurd2
and all the rest are also mending. But at the asylum it is doubtful if we have yet
seen the worst of this infernal La Grippe. A large number of the offices and
attendants are more or less sick with it so that it is all we can do to get through
the daily necessary work. Has it come your way yet? I do not see any accounts in the
papers of the epidemic in Philadelphia and Camden. If you get it you will probably
be pretty miserable
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for a few days but it is not likely it will do you any more harm than that
It is wintry today, ground white (though no sleighing) and air frosty. I am pretty well through with my days work (it is 4 P.M.) and after making this short report to you shall read L. of G. for a lttle while and then go to the house.
Perhaps you have a touch of La Grippe for I have not heard from you for quite a long time (your last note was written 9 days ago, viz: on 7th)3
Tell me how you are
Your friend R M Bucke
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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 | PM | Ja 17 | 90 | Canada; Camden, N.J. | Jan | 18 | 4PM | 1890 | Rec'd. [back]
- 2. 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]
- 3. See Whitman's January 7, 1890, letter to Bucke. [back]