Your letter of 8th2 which came to hand last evening gave me great pleasure for I judged by the tone of it that you are decidedly better than you have been since that bad turn in June. If you can only hold your grip now! I am glad you have at last sold the horse & phaeton3—it is much better so. Yes, I do not know what we should all do without Horace4 he is a grand fellow and sticks to his guns like an old soldier. Nothing new here about meter5 or anything else.
Love to you, RM Bucke loc_es.00353.jpg loc_es.00350.jpg See notes Sept. 13 '88 loc_es.00351.jpgCorrespondent:
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).