I have been and am still in considerable of a flustration here—have had the
Inspector, he left yesterday, have to go to Toronto this afternoon to interview the
minister of Public Works about the new building to replace one burned. Shall be back
here again Monday evening or Tuesday. We are all well, sleighing's done though
still a great deal of ice and snow over the fields &c I enclose Lippencott's
letter2—have heard nothing since about the
Worthington business.3 Have done nothing more with my loc_es.00247.jpg W.W. paper, shall
rewrite it as soon as I get a little time (a mighty hard thing to find nowadays) and
I think send it to Walsh4 of Lippencott. Or would it be
well to keep it until Kennedy's5 book comes out (will be out
very soon now I suppose?) and incorperate it in a notice of that book—?
In any case I shall get to work elaborating it as soon as I can—It has been snowing, & blowing great guns all day—there is a lull now and sun trying to come out.
Always affectionately R M 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).