Nothing further from Wm Gurd.2 So cannot yet fix date of departure. Very dark rainy weather here. All quiet. I cut this piece out of the London Advertiser this morning.3
Walt Whitman, according to the Star of London, has an English cousin, a Miss Whitman, who lives at Putney. She is a handsome girl with large dark eyes, very definite eyebrows, and is about six feet high. She "does a little journalism" and writes a weekly letter for one of the leading New Zealand papers.
Have you ever heard of the said Miss W.? I fancy not. Your card of 5th4 came to hand yesterday and I was glad to see that you seemed satisfied with Wilkins5 appearance. Mighty glad also to find that you hold your grip so well—with your physique you ought to have been a hearty man at 90
R M Bucke loc_es.00457.jpg loc_es.00454.jpg See notes Nov 10, 1888 loc_es.00455.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).