Yours of 31 Dec.2 just to hand. Do not worry about me,3 dear Walt, I am all right, am over at office every day now and have pretty good nights—of course I had a little pain and a few restless nights but nothing worth talking about and now even these are over— but I thank you and all the good friends down east there for your kind sympathy. Our sleighing is gone again but the wheeling is good and the weather clear and charming I am going out for a drive in an hour my boy Maurice will take me—Am reading Dumas' Marie Antoinette Romances4—am in 7th vol. of the set & have 6 more to read—it is a picture (good one) of the French Revolution
Love R M Bucke loc_zs.00205.jpg loc_zs.00206.jpg see notes Jan 16 1891Correspondent:
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).