I am perhaps essentially the same—plus the feebleness & lameness & clouded heavy almost constant half-pain feeling of head & brain. Much milder weather here & I shall try to get out in phaeton if I can—I have rec'd the London Adv. Feb. 16—Two ladies have just called & chatted. (Mrs Talcott Williams2 one of them)—I enclose Ernest Rhys's3 letter, just rec'd4—also two letters for you—I believe they still print my little bits in the personal col. NY Herald,5 but do not see the paper—Do you see it there? I enjoy all you say of the balm & flowers of Florida—
Walt WhitmanCorrespondent:
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).