I have had the two enclosed letters and your note to Kennedy1 and myself of 18th inst somedays,2 been too busy to write even a line, have never been so crowded with work of all kinds as I am at present. I do wish you were well enough to accept Mr. Fords proposition to go to England & Scotland. I am dead sure you would have the biggest kind of a time and lots of money (if wanted) might be made out of it. But I suppose it is no use thinking of such a thing. O'Connor's3 letter is not cheerful but for all that middling for him poor fellow, his writing is I think better than it has been, firm & clear—if he could only get better! But we must not wait for it.
yal.00289.002_large.jpgAll well here, lovely weather, spring coming on as fast as the North West wind off the neat ice fields of Lake Huron will let it.
RM BuckeCorrespondent:
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).