Camden
Thursday Evn'g
Sept: 13 '881
All continuing much the same. Perfect weather here to-day. Your letters come & help
me—Still reading Froude's Carlyle,2 2d Vol. (anything but cheery).3 The printing
goes on all right—a nice big basket of fruit from Mr. Ingram.4 Stedman's5 13 pages of
Ex[cerpts] from me in his "American Literature" (ab't 9th Vol) have been shown
me6—good—Mrs. Davis's7 2d boy Harry8 has come from California—
W W
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:
Dr R M Bucke | Asylum | London | Ontario | Canada. It is postmarked: Camden,
N.J. | Sep 13 | 8 PM | 88. [back]
- 2. Whitman is referring to
James Anthony Froude's Thomas Carlyle; A History of His Life
in London, 1834–1881 (1884). [back]
- 3. Bucke replied on September 15, 1888: "No I would not recommend
Froude's Carlyle to a man who needed cheering up. I read it a few years ago and
it nearly gave me an attack of melancholia. I look upon that same Carlyle as
being (or having been?) one of the worst 'Cranks' that ever lived. . . . I shall
like to know C. by & by to see what he is like in the next world but I never
expect to care much about him!" On September 14, 1888, William Ingram wrote to
Bucke that Whitman "looked bright & cheerful and in good spirits." Bucke
continued in his letter of September 17, 1888:
"Still it is grand to see you keep up as you do—never giving up to the
last—I think it is immense, something for us all to be proud of and to
take to heart—and the world will take all this to heart one day—and
will be the better for it." [back]
- 4. William Ingram, a Quaker, kept a tea
store—William Ingram and Son Tea Dealers—in Philadelphia. Of Ingram,
Whitman observed to Horace Traubel: "He is a man of the Thomas Paine
stripe—full of benevolent impulses, of radicalism, of the desire to
alleviate the sufferings of the world—especially the sufferings of
prisoners in jails, who are his protégés" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, May 20, 1888). Ingram and his wife visited the physician
Richard Maurice Bucke and his family in Canada in 1890. [back]
- 5. Edmund Clarence Stedman
(1833–1908) was a man of diverse talents. He edited for a year the Mountain County Herald at Winsted, Connecticut, wrote
"Honest Abe of the West," presumably Lincoln's first campaign song, and served
as correspondent of the New York World from 1860 to 1862.
In 1862 and 1863 he was a private secretary in the Attorney General's office
until he entered the firm of Samuel Hallett and Company in September, 1863. The
next year he opened his own brokerage office. He published many volumes of poems
and was an indefatigable compiler of anthologies, among which were Poets of America, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1885) and A Library of American Literature from the Earliest
Settlement to the Present Time, 11 vols. (New York: C. L. Webster,
1889–90). For more, see Donald Yannella, "Stedman, Edmund Clarence (1833–1908)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 6. Stedman sent the proofs
to Traubel on September 8 (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman
in Camden, Tuesday, September 11, 1888). The article appeared in volume seven of
A Library of American Literature,
501–513. [back]
- 7. Mary Oakes Davis (1837 or
1838–1908) was Whitman's housekeeper. For more, see Carol J. Singley,
"Davis, Mary Oakes (1837 or 1838–1908)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 8. Harry Fritzinger (about
1866–?) was the brother of Warren Fritzinger, who would serve as Whitman's
nurse beginning in October 1889. Harry worked as an office boy in Camden when he
was fourteen. He also worked as a sailor. Later, he became a railroad conductor.
Mary Davis, Whitman's housekeeper, took care of both Harry and Warren after the
death of their father, the sea captain Henry W. Fritzinger. Davis had looked
after Capt. Fritzinger, who went blind, before she started to perform the same
housekeeping services for Whitman. Harry married Rebecca Heisler on September
15, 1890. [back]