loc_zs.00074.jpg
Camden1
Aug: 18 '90
Frank Sanborn's2 letter f'm Belgium enc'd3—the Transcript copies my
"rejoinder" complete.4 Rainy dark forenoon here—I
keep ab't well as usual (has been very hot here again) made my breakfast of
bread and honey in the comb—was down to river side in wheel–chair5 last
evn'g—the contemptible little Woodberry shirt:sleeve story (being piquant
& a lie) is copied & circulated every where6—I
have not heard f'm Dr Johnston (Eng'd)7—Suppose
you rec'd three papers f'm me—the "rejoinder," the
Woodberry comment & WSK's8 letter9—get quite a good many solicitous
& other such–kind letters (one enc'd)—Tom
Harned's10 family have ret'd f'm Cape May—Am on the
watch for Symonds's11 letter12 to send
you soon as I find it am'g my heaps—
God bless you all—
Walt Whitman
loc_zs.00075.jpg
loc_zs.00076.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:
Dr Bucke | Asylum | London | Ontario | Canada. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. |
Aug 18 | 8 PM | 90; London | PM | AU 20 | 9 | Canada. [back]
- 2. Franklin B. Sanborn
(1831–1917) was an abolitionist and a friend of John Brown. In 1860, when
he was tried in Boston because of his refusal to testify before a committee of
the U.S. Senate, Whitman was in the courtroom (Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer [New York: Macmillan, 1955], 242). He
reviewed Drum-Taps in the Boston
Commonwealth on February 24, 1866. He was editor of the Springfield
Republican from 1868 to 1872, and was the author of books dealing with
his friends Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott. "A Visit to the Good Gray Poet"
appeared without Sanborn's name in the Springfield
Republican on April 19, 1876. For more on Sanborn, see Linda K. Walker,
"Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin (Frank) (1831–1917)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. If there was a letter from
Sanborn, it has not survived. [back]
- 4. On August 16 the Boston
Evening Transcript printed a long article by Sanborn
entitled "'The City of the Simple'" (an account of "a Famous Belgian Insane
Asylum") as well as Whitman's response to Symonds' essay "Democratic Art" titled
"An Old Man's Rejoinder." Both of these clippings are enclosed with the letter.
"An Old Man's Rejoinder" was published in The Critic 17
(16 August 1890): 85–86. Whitman's "Rejoinder" was also reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891). See also Prose Works 1892, Volume 2: Collect and Other Prose, ed. Floyd Stovall
(New York: New York University Press, 1964), 655–658. [back]
- 5. Horace Traubel and Ed
Wilkins, Whitman's nurse, went to Philadelphia to purchase a wheeled chair for
the poet that would allow him to be "pull'd or push'd" outdoors. See Whitman's
letter to William Sloane Kennedy of May 8,
1889. [back]
- 6. Charles J. Woodbury, who met
Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1865, spread the story that Emerson told him that he once
met Whitman for dinner at the Astor House in New York, and that the poet showed
up without a coat, as if to "dine in his shirtsleeves." Whitman denied the
rumor. For one of Whitman's responses to the shirtsleeves story, see Horace
Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, August, 11, 1890. [back]
- 7. Dr. John Johnston (1852–1927)
of Annan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, was a physician, photographer, and avid
cyclist. Johnston was trained in Edinburgh and served as a hospital surgeon in
West Bromwich for two years before moving to Bolton, England, in 1876. Johnston
worked as a general practitioner in Bolton and as an instructor of ambulance
classes for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways. He served at Whalley Military
Hospital during World War I and became Medical Superintendent of Townley's
Hospital in 1917 (John Anson, "Bolton's Illustrious Doctor Johnston—a man
of many talents," Bolton News [March 28, 2021]; Paul
Salveson, Moorlands, Memories, and Reflections: A Centenary
Celebration of Allen Clarke's Moorlands and Memories [Lancashire
Loominary, 2020]). Johnston, along with the architect James W. Wallace, founded
the "Bolton College" of English admirers of the poet. Johnston and Wallace
corresponded with Whitman and with Horace Traubel and other members of the
Whitman circle in the United States, and they separately visited the poet and
published memoirs of their trips in John Johnston and James William Wallace, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 by Two Lancashire
Friends (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917). For more information on
Johnston, see Larry D. Griffin, "Johnston, Dr. John (1852–1927)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 8. 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]
- 9. Whitman is probably
referring to Kennedy's most recent letter, dated August
15, 1890. Bucke acknowledged receiving Kennedy's letter in his August 20–22 1890, letter to Whitman. [back]
- 10. Thomas Biggs Harned
(1851–1921) was one of Whitman's literary executors. Harned was a lawyer
in Philadelphia and, having married Augusta Anna Traubel (1856–1914), was
Horace Traubel's brother-in-law. For more on him, see Dena Mattausch, "Harned, Thomas Biggs (1851–1921)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). For more on his relationship with Whitman, see
Thomas Biggs Harned, Memoirs of Thomas B. Harned, Walt
Whitman's Friend and Literary Executor, ed. Peter Van Egmond (Hartford:
Transcendental Books, 1972). [back]
- 11. John Addington Symonds
(1840–1893), a prominent biographer, literary critic, and poet in
Victorian England, was author of the seven-volume history Renaissance in Italy, as well as Walt
Whitman—A Study (1893), and a translator of Michelangelo's
sonnets. But in the smaller circles of the emerging upper-class English
homosexual community, he was also well known as a writer of homoerotic poetry
and a pioneer in the study of homosexuality, or sexual inversion as it was then
known. See Andrew C. Higgins, "Symonds, John Addington [1840–1893]," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 12. The letter referred to here
is most likely the famous August 3, 1890, letter
from Symonds, to which Whitman probably responded on August 19, 1890, though only a draft of the poet's letter survives.
However, Whitman also promised to pass along "an older letter" from Symonds in
his August 24, 1890, letter to Bucke. The older
letter would probably be Symonds' passionate letter of December 9, 1889, which prefigured Symonds's August 3rd letter.
Whitman mentioned this older letter in his December
25–26 1889, letter to Bucke. [back]