Osler Library Newsletter
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
OSLER LIBRARY NEWSLETTER McGill University, Montreal, Canada No. 71- October 1992 THE OSLER-BUCKE RELATIONSHIP liam Osler. Dr. Bucke (1837-1902) was a re- Bibliotheca Osleriana 7660 contains twelve AND THE WHITMAN CLUTTER spected practitioner and superintendent of pages of notes for Osler’s projected lecture the asylum for the insane in London, On- on Walt Whitman, and typescripts of related , now thirty-seven years old tario. However, he had first come to Cam- letters. As Cushing recounts, in 1919, the cen- in perfect health begin, den in 1877 on a personal mission - to tenary of Whitman’s birth, Sir William was Hoping to cease not till search out the poet whose lines in Leaves of asked by two literary groups to speak about death. Grass, read years before, had echoed and his encounters with Whitman twenty years Leaves of Grass, 2nd ed., further inspired his own mystic vision of the previously: one was Sir Walter Raleigh’s Eng- 1856. universe. From that meeting on, Bucke was lish class at Oxford; the second was a group to assume several functions for the charis- of English admirers of Whitman at London’s Walt Whitman did con- matic Whitman, including biographer and City Temple. Though himself in ill health, Sir tinue to write poems and edit and reorder active defender. However, it was his role as William accepted these invitations, and his works until his death, all in new editions the poet’s medical advisor that is of initial spent his final summer vacation at St. Bre- of Leaves of Grass (1), although he did so interest here. For it is in this capacity that lade’s in Jersey with “two writing-tables through many years of imperfect health. In Bucke called upon his respected colleague prepared, one for the Nervous System [a January 1873, Whitman, then living in William Osler, recently ensconsed in Phila- revision of the chapter in his textbook] and Washington, suffered the first of a series of delphia as Professor of Medicine at Univer- one for Walt Whitman". (4) strokes occasioned, he and his friends be- sity of Pennsylvania, to look in on Whitman. Osler did not live to polish or deliver the lieved, by an illness picked up years before Osler agreed, and attended Whitman inter- lecture he had entitled “A Centenary Ad- when nursing soldiers in camp hospitals mittently, alone and with Bucke, until 1889, dress: Walt Whitman, with Personal Remi- during the War Between the States. By the when he left for Johns Hopkins. niscences”. Nor did he have a chance to summer of 1873, Whitman’s health had not The state of Whitman’s health has been reread his pages and note how large a por- improved. Thus the fifty-five year old poet, amply explored, as has, for that matter, the tion of his Whitman talk had been devoted worshipped by a small band of intellectuals poet’s attitudes towards his two Canadian to “his friend Maurice Bucke of London, and idealogues on both sides of the Atlantic, doctors. (2) What has not been fully nor fairly Ont." (5) who had first asked him to look in and mocked for his self-described “barbaric treated is Osler’s view of Bucke, and the on Whitman. And Osler could certainly not yawp" by most critics and readers, had been strenghtened nature of their relationship, have anticipated that Cushing in his Life of forced to move to Camden, New Jersey, a cemented by their work together on the Osler would excerpt the one passage from nondescript industrial and shipping town Whitman case. (3) These are the areas I will B.O. 7660 that presents Bucke in his least where his brother lived. explore here. Since much germane informa- dignified state, that of mystical Whitman There, a ferry-ride away from wealthy, tion is to be found in Bibliotheca Osleriana enthusiast in the process of giving witness. cultivated Philadelphia, the poet would 7660. and the selectively reproduced sec- hold his (often lonely) court. And there, tions therefrom -- very damaging to Bucke Of the two men Bucke interested me through the years, Whitman would be at- - found in Cushing’s Life of Osler, an exami- more. Though a hero-worshipper, it tended by two McGill-trained Canadian nation of these two sources will be my start- was a new experience in my life to wit- physicians: Richard Maurice Bucke and Wil- ing point. ness such an absolute idolatry. Where Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration! Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac; This is the lexicographer or chemist . ... this made a grammar of the old cartouches, These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas, This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician. Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you, The facts are useful and real . ... they are not my dwelling .... I enter by them to an area of the dwelling. Walt Whitman, as the Good Gray Poet, photographed Richard Maurice Bucke (Courtesy of Special shortly after the Civil War. (Collection of the author) Collections, University of Western Ontario Library) The initial letter on this page is reproduced from Alexander Nesbitt (ed.) Decorative alphabets and initials, plate 96, Dover Publications, 1959. my blurred vision saw only an old nally responded favourably to Bucke’s per- It may be that the greatest bond between man, full of common sense and kindly sistent suggestion that the bedridden poet Bucke and Osler was books -- reading feelings, Bucke felt himself in the pres- move to a location where he would receive them, writing them, and above all, collect- ence of one of the world’s great proph- better medical care. Bucke then states: ing them. Both were avid readers of contem- ets, One evening after dinner at the porary literature, the classics, philosophy, Rittenhouse Club with Dr. Chapin, Dr. I wrote to Osler at Johns Hopkins ask- and the newest scientific treatises of their Tyson, Dr. J.K. Mitchell and a few oth- ing him whether W. could be received age. Both wrote articles and books, (11) and ers who I knew would appreciate him, there as a pay patient - what the rates most significantly for the argument of this I drew Bucke on to tell the story of would be & c. I have just received essay, both were prone to what Cushing in Whitman’s influence. The perfervid Osler’s answer this afternoon saying his biography terms Osler’s “infection with disciple, who talks like [Chaerephon] there would be no difficulty about W’s the bibliomania “ .(12) ..To grasp the relevance in the [Apology] is not often met with in reception and that the pay for every- of this “disease”, we must return to Osler’s these matter-of-fact days. It was an ex- thing would be about $25 a week. (10) memories of his first visit to Whitman, re- perience to hear an elderly man - corded in B.O. 7660, and transcribed in looking a venerable seer ---- with abso- But Whitman changed his mind about Cushing’s biography. lute abandonment tell how ‘Leaves of moving to Baltimore, and the matter was After the manner of a well-trained physi- Grass’ had meant for him spiritual en- dropped. cian, Osler takes careful note of the environ- lightenment, a new power in life, new After Whitman’s death in March, 1892, ment of his patient, the simple propriety of joys in a new existence on a plane the relationship between Bucke and Osler Whitman’s house, the cheerful competence higher than he had ever hoped to continued, and indeed, grew richer and of his housekeeper, and so forth. But what reach. All this with the accompanying more personal. Bucke’s administrative as- he dwells upon most particularly is the state physical exaltation expressed by di- sistant in London, Dr. Charles Sippi, re- of the poet‘s study. lated pupils and intensity of utterance corded the following events in his 1896 that were embarrassing to uninitiated I have seen what the tidy housewife friends. This incident illustrates the calls a ‘clutter’, but nothing to compare type of influence exercised by Whit- 1992 in the centenary of the death of with the front room, ground floor of man on his disciples ----- a cult of a type the great American poet Walt Whitman, No. 328 Mickle Street. At the corner, such as no other literary man of our whom Osler attended during his years in the head and upper part of a man were generation has been the object... (6) Philadelphia. It is also the 90th anniver- visible ----- everywhere else, covering sary of the death of an almost forgotten the floor, the chairs and the table, were, This portrait of a wild-eyed Dr. Bucke Canadian “alienist” (i.e. psychiatrist) to use his own description ‘heaps of shows a less complimentary side of Osler as and writer, Richard Maurice Bucke, who books, manuscripts, memoranda, scis- well - that of a somewhat cruel jokester; became the aging Whitman’s biographer sorings, proof-sheets, pamphlets, for Osler had set up that dinner party at and publicist, as well as his physician. It newspapers, old and new magazines, Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Club to put was Dr. Bucke who arranged the Whit- mysterious literary bundles tied up Bucke’s bizarre behaviour on view for the man consult for Osler. Helene Berman with stout strings’. The magazines and amusement of his fellow physicians -- Fallen, the Hamilton, Ontario-based newspapers, piled higher than the Whitman admirers perhaps, but not Whit- author of the lead article for this issue of desk, covered the floor so completely man devotees.