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The remarkable career of Richard Maurice Bucke ended suddenly on the
cold morning of February 19, 1902. In his 65 years, Bucke had been many
things to many people: an innovative doctor of psychiatry, a prospector,
a confidant and literary executor to Walt Whitman, but to Emily Chesley,
Bucke was a mystic with one foot. Actually, half a foot.
Bucke's semi-mono-pedal condition dated from the time when he went to
prospect for silver in California (1857). His prospecting crew became
lost in the mountains and was forced to survive as best they could. Frostbitten,
and near death, Bucke was the lone survivor to make it to a mining camp,
shy a foot and several toes. But it was not his lack of a full compliment
of piggies, nor was it how he managed to survive with no food in such
harsh conditions that interested Emily. (1) No,
she was fascinated by Bucke's ideas about human consciousness.
 Following
his adventures in the west and a formal education in Montreal and then
Europe, Bucke returned to Ontario, where he entered the field of psychiatric
medicine. In 1877, Bucke became the superintendent of the London Asylum
for the Insane – coincidentally, the asylum was built very near
to the homestead where he had been raised.
Bucke was a pioneer in medicine. At a time when the insane were kept
in physical restraints and force-fed alcohol, Bucke advocated a more progressive
approach to the treatment of the mentally ill. In 1879 he published his
psychiatric speculations in Man’s Moral Nature. His thesis was that
a person's moral sense was mediated via the sympathetic nervous system
and that this innate moral sense was becoming prevalent in society. In
1883 he published the authorized biography of Walt Whitman – with
whom he was friends and who, he believed, exemplified the high moral sense
he described in his first book. (2)
Emily read the book in 1894, after meeting Bucke for the first time.
Emily was accompanying one of her volunteers from the CU, Bidy "McBritches"
Brennan, to the asylum. Bidy had been acting strangely, and Bucke diagnosed
syphilis, which made sense given Bidy's occupation – a housemaid
in the Reverand P.E. Derasty's vicarage. Though the outcome of Bidy's
case was not a happy one (3), a
great literary friendship developed between Bucke and Emily.
Bucke believed in three types of consciousness in humans: simple self-awareness,
moral consciousness, and a third profoundly deep consciousness that he
called “cosmic consciousness.” He believed the third level
of consciousness had only been attained by a few dozen individuals: the
likes of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Dante, Walt Whitman, Francis Bacon,
William Blake, as well as Bucke himself of course. He thought this third
level of consciousness was attainable by everyone.
This concept fascinated Emily, and to it, she added the notion that human
evolution was geared towards the species developing this third level of
consciousness. This is the idea she explored in her 1918 book, The World
Wide Waste. In the story the human species is diverted from their genetic
destiny by the presence of a "pernicious electronic device"
fancifully termed, IntraVision. The population of the world is hypnotized
by the pseudo-entertainment form, which encouraged incipient dreams of
banality called "real theatre", not the kind of self-awareness
necessary to achieve the third level of consciousness.
Emily would often invite Bucke to tea (brandy) at the rambling mansion
on Princess Ave. (4) Bucke
enjoyed Emily's company and was as intrigued by Michael Flannigan. Both
were unique individuals, though he confided to Emily once, as she reports
in her journal: "I think your uncle may be a few wheels short of
a gear." Despite this, Bucke tried one of Flannigan's devices at
his asylum, and always took an interest in the dotty old Irishman's ingenious
contraptions. (5)
Flannigan, from Emily's reports, took great delight in the celebrated
doctor's interest. So it is not a surprise that the inventor bequeathed
the patent and a working prototype of The Flannigan Foot Replacement Device
to Bucke. Because of legal difficulties, the papers and prototype did
not arrive at Bucke's house until the late afternoon of February 18, 1902,
more than a year after Flannigan's death. The package remained unopened
until the early hours of the next day, when Bucke put on the prosthetic
feet with delight. They fit perfectly (Flannigan had adapted one for Bucke's
partially toed condition.)
Unfortunately, Bucke neglected to read the instructions that Flannigan
had written out on the back of an old bit of sausage wrapping. The prosthetic
feet had two settings: normal walking and "extra sproingy".
Yes, Flannigan had found yet another use for his patented "spring-wound
rotary propulsion thingy."
Emily speculates about Bucke's last moments in her memoir:
One can only hope that dear Richard was in the third level of consciousness
as he opened the door and took that first fateful step onto his porch.
The paper claims that he died because he slipped on ice, but it must
have been uncle's prosthetic feet that caused it – I know because
I found them later that day, hanging in a maple tree in front of Richard's
house like a signal of doom.
I can imagine the dreadful sequence of events, the sounds: the door
creaks with the cold as he opens it, and his breath rises in a plume
of steam as he takes his first step. Then the spring-wound rotary propulsion
thingy engages, and his left foot rockets up with enough force to propel
the Flannigan Flyer in a pinch! A woosh of surprise comes out of Richard
as his leg launches high into the air, kicking the ceiling of the porch,
and then the dreadful smack as his head slaps into the ground, causing
what the medical examiner called "an extreme and explosive cranial
haemorrhage."
Emily never shared her suspicions with the authorities, and mourned the
death of a Canadian original alone. (6)
Notes:
1) Though Emily did write in her journal: "one
wonders what desperate means Richard might have employed to survive so
long in the wilderness. It makes you think, especially, that he means
something when he utters the axiom: 'one foot does not a cannibal make.'"
[back]
2) Whitman came to visit Bucke in London, Ontario
in 1880 – the same year that Emily and Michael Flannigan arrived
in town. [back]
3) See the excellent monograph: "Bidy Bites
Back: The Genesis of Emily Chesley's 'Cannibalistic Chore'". [back]
4) Emily was never invited to the Bucke household,
apparently because Bucke's wife, Jessie -- whom, it must be noted did
not have a nautical background -- did not "like the cut of that slut's
jib." [back]
5) The Flannigan "Bebebebebebeb" Inhibitor
(circa. 1897) never really worked as well as Bucke had hoped, and several
designs of the device were a little too invasive for his progressive therapies.
[back]
6) In addition to his other achievements, Bucke was
elected a charter member of the Royal Society of Canada, and was the president
of national and international societies. In 1882 he helped found the "Cottage
Medical School" in London, Ontario, which evolved into the Faculty
of Medicine at Western University, now The University of Western Ontario.
There he served as Professor of Nervous & Mental Diseases until his
accidental death. [back]
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