Still keeps warm here. Quite warm indeed the last week and still so this morning though the nights are getting cool. Yours of 4th came on Saturday,2 I was very glad to hear that you are keeping fairly well—I trust it may last. Now that the hot weather is about over I have great hopes of you. We (Mrs. B. Clare,3 some friends & self) drove to Delaware yesterday—had a pleasant visit there and a most charming drive home by moonlight. I have had a plain, very neat, oak frame, with a good mat, put on the new Photo'—it sets it off well and will keep it clean—it is a magnificent portrait, I do not know that any of the paintings touch it—I do not think I ever saw a photo' with so much expression in the eyes. The picture came in perfect order—Dickwas careful of it you may be sure4
R M Bucke loc_es.00632.jpg loc_es.00629.jpg loc_es.00630.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).