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Camden1
Nov: 18 '91
Fine sunny cold day (changed sudden last night)—bowel
evacuation forenoon, dark, indurated—first since four
or five days—feeling ab't same continued—buckwheat
cakes & coffee for b'kfst—"hold y'r horses" ab't the
Shakespere—Bacon2 point3—Ign: D.4
collects a staggering am't of S's conventional, personal
inferiority—it has quite seriously impress'd me, &
is superimposed on what I have clearly
long seen, that there are strange mysteries & hiatuses on
the S. cultus matter—but the Bacon attribution & cyphers5
are too thin yet—too "got up" at best—But we will see
what time brings out further—at any rate "probable" or even
"likely" wont do in science or history—Sold 50 big books6 in
sheets to McK7 for some Eng: dealer—shall send you one of the
very first new—complete L of G8 (probably unbound) I get—am
sitting here as usual in big chair with wolf (not calf) skin spread
back—& good wood fire in stove—Harry Stafford9
here yesterday & all goes same with them—letter f'm Mrs:
O Connor10 Providence RI—I fluctuate between
tolerable & pretty bad—
Walt Whitman
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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: Dr
Bucke | Asylum | London | Ontario | Canada. It is postmarked: CAMDEN, N.J.;
PHILADELPHIA, P.A. | NOV | 18 | 730 PM | 91 | TRANSIT; BUFFALO, N.Y. | NOV 19;
[illegible] Whitman wrote this
letter on stationery printed with the following notice from the Boston Evening Transcript: "From the Boston Eve'g Transcript, May 7, '91.—The Epictetus saying, as
given by Walt Whitman in his own quite utterly dilapidated physical case is, a
'little spark of soul dragging a great lummux of corpse-body clumsily to and fro
around.'" [back]
- 2. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was
an English philosopher, scientist, statesman, and author. Bacon's personal
notebooks and works came under scrutiny during the nineteenth-century because of
suspicions that he had written plays under the pen-name William Shakespeare in
order to protect his political office from material some might find
objectionable. For more on the Baconian theory, see Henry William Smith, Was Lord Bacon The Author of Shakespeare's Plays?: A Letter to
Lord Ellesmere (London: William Skeffington, 1856). [back]
- 3. Here, Whitman is responding
to Bucke's November 14, 1891, letter in which
Bucke mentioned comparing the writings of William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon
and referenced the Baconian theory of Shakespere authorship. Additionally, Bucke
described his longing to spend time discussing the subject with Whitman's friend
and defender William D. O'Connor (1832–1889), who had authored the book
Hamlet's Note-book (Boston: Houghton & Mifflin,
1886), which argued that Sir Francis Bacon had written the plays attributed to
Shakespeare. In 1888, regarding Hamlet's Note-book,
Whitman admitted to Horace L. Traubel, "I have never read it myself" (Horace
Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, July 15, 1888). [back]
- 4. Ignatius L. Donnelly
(1831–1901) was an American politician, writer, pseudo-scientist and
Shakespeare critic, who argued that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's
plays. [back]
- 5. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth
century, a variety of scholars began to speculate on the question of the
authorship of William Shakespeare's plays. A favorite theory was that Francis
Bacon, the English philosopher, actually wrote the plays and left behind a
series of clues or ciphers in his letters and journals. Whitman was evidently
never very interested in this theory but he did publish an essay, "What Lurks
behind Shakespeare's Historical Plays," in the Critic on
September 27, 1884. On August 30, 1887, he wrote a
letter to Bucke, William Sloane Kennedy, and John Burroughs in which he mentions
reading an extensive article on the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy in the August
28th issue of the New York World. In the letter he wrote,
"I am tackling it—take less and less stock in it," and the result was
Whitman's poem "Shakespeare Bacon's Cipher," which was published in The Cosmopolitan in October 1887. [back]
- 6. Whitman often referred to Complete Poems & Prose (1888) as his "big book." The
volume was published by the poet himself in an arrangement with publisher David
McKay, who allowed Whitman to use the plates for both Leaves
of Grass and Specimen Days—in December
1888. With the help of Horace Traubel, Whitman made the presswork and binding
decisions, and Frederick Oldach bound the volume, which included a profile photo
of the poet on the title page. For more information on the book, see Ed Folsom,
Whitman Making Books/Books Making Whitman: A Catalog and
Commentary (University of Iowa: Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, 2005). [back]
- 7. David McKay (1860–1918) took
over Philadelphia-based publisher Rees Welsh's bookselling and publishing
businesses in 1881–82. McKay and Rees Welsh published the 1881 edition of
Leaves of Grass after opposition from the Boston
District Attorney prompted James R. Osgood & Company of Boston, the original publisher,
to withdraw. McKay also went on to publish Specimen Days &
Collect, November Boughs, Gems
from Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works,
and the final Leaves of Grass, the so-called deathbed edition. For
more information about McKay, see Joel Myerson, "McKay, David (1860–1918)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 8. The 1891–1892 Leaves of Grass was copyrighted in 1891 and published by
Phildelphia publisher David McKay in 1892. This volume, often referred to as the
"deathbed" edition, reprints, with minor revisions, the 1881 text from the
plates of Boston publisher James R. Osgood. Whitman also includes his two
annexes in the book. The first annex, called "Sands at Seventy," consisted of
sixty-five poems that had originally appeared in November
Boughs (1888); while the second, "Good-Bye my Fancy," was a collection
of thirty-one short poems taken from the gathering of prose and poetry published
under that title by McKay in 1891, along with a prose "Preface Note to 2d
Annex." Whitman concluded the 1891–92 volume with his prose essay "A
Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads," which had originally appeared in November Boughs. For more information on this volume of
Leaves, see R.W. French, "Leaves of Grass, 1891–1892, Deathbed
Edition," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed.
J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing,
1998). [back]
- 9. Walt Whitman met the 18-year-old Harry Lamb Stafford
(1858–1918) in 1876, beginning a relationship which was almost entirely
overlooked by early Whitman scholarship, in part because Stafford's name appears
nowhere in the first six volumes of Horace Traubel's With Walt
Whitman in Camden—though it does appear frequently in the last
three volumes, which were published only in the 1990s. Whitman occasionally
referred to Stafford as "My (adopted) son" (as in a December 13, 1876, letter to John H. Johnston), but the relationship
between the two also had a romantic, erotic charge to it. In 1883, Harry married
Eva Westcott. For further discussion of Stafford, see Arnie Kantrowitz, "Stafford, Harry L. (b.1858)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 10. Ellen M. "Nelly" O'Connor (1830–1913) was the
wife of William D. O'Connor (1832–1889), one of Whitman's staunchest
defenders. Before marrying William, Ellen Tarr was active in the antislavery and
women's rights movements as a contributor to the Liberator and to a women's rights newspaper Una. Whitman dined with the O'Connors frequently during his Washington
years. Though Whitman and William O'Connor would temporarily break off their
friendship in late 1872 over Reconstruction policies with regard to emancipated
African Americans, Ellen would remain friendly with Whitman. The correspondence
between Whitman and Ellen is almost as voluminous as the poet's correspondence
with William. Three years after William O'Connor's death, Ellen married the
Providence businessman Albert Calder. For more on Whitman's relationship with the O'Connors, see Dashae
E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas [1832–1889]" and Lott's "O'Connor (Calder),
Ellen ('Nelly') M. Tarr (1830–1913)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]