Many thanks for your note of 26th enclosing frontispiece and leaf from
Lippencott —it must be mighty slow for you staying in one room all the
time—I think they ought to fit up the two downstairs rooms for you and have
you there—you could sit by the window and see out would be more in the
world—do you not think you would like it better? it would be no trouble to
make the change—just put all the furniture you needed in those two rooms and
live in them day & night—then why loc_es.00311.jpg not have a low easy
carraige
call round for you occationally on good days and drive a mile or two? It
would not be much but it would make a change—I would let the horse & buggy
go and arrange for the easy carriage (hire it) in their place—I wish I could
better attend to such things—perhaps I will be after a while if the meter
turns out as we expect— I wish you would show this letter to Horace2 and authorise him to move in the matters mentioned or at all
events consult him on the points raised—yes, H. is first class, I do not know
what we should have done without him—all well here.
Correspondent:
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).