The weather has fallen into the sulks but I don't let that trouble me at all—just jog along and pay very little attention to it—It will come round all in good time and we shall have a grand fall yet I do not doubt. The hot weather must be about over even with you and the pleasant cool autumn days will surely revive you and cheer you up. I hope you will be able to get out a little in an easy carriage before the cold weather comes.
loc_es.00339.jpgI fancy Herbert Gilchrist2 must be with you by this time—give him my kind regards and tell him I hope to see him in Philadelphia before long—i.e. if he makes any stay—I am in hopes he will take a run west and see the Asylum before he goes back to England. Yesterday was my wedding day—we are 23 years married3—getting to be quite old folk! We had some people in in the evening, had quite a pleasant time. Nothing new about the meter4—nothing much can be done until the patents are secured and this will take some weeks yet.
Your friend RM Bucke loc_es.00336.jpg See notes Sept. 10, '88 loc_es.00337.jpgCorrespondent:
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).