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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt
+Whitman, by Walt Whitman and Anne Burrows Gilchrist
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman
+
+Author: Walt Whitman
+        Anne Burrows Gilchrist
+
+Editor: Thomas B. Harned
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35395]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS--ANNE GILCHRIST, WALT WHITMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Walt Whitman
+
+Photograph taken about the year 1870]
+
+
+
+
+  THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
+
+  Edited
+  With an Introduction
+
+  BY THOMAS B. HARNED
+  One of Walt Whitman's Literary Executors
+
+  Illustrated
+
+  GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+  1918
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
+  TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
+  INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+
+
+
+  In Memoriam
+  AUGUSTA TRAUBEL HARNED
+  1856-1914
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+
+  PREFACE                                                              xix
+
+  INTRODUCTION                                                         xxi
+
+  A WOMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN                                     3
+
+  A CONFESSION OF FAITH                                                 23
+
+  LETTER
+
+        I. WALT WHITMAN TO WILLIAM MICHAEL
+           ROSSETTI AND ANNE GILCHRIST                                  56
+
+       II. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne_
+           _September 3, 1871_                                          58
+
+      III. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Shotter Mill, Haslemere, Surrey_
+           _October 23, 1871_                                           65
+
+       IV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Washington, D. C._
+           _November 3, 1871_                                           67
+
+        V. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _November 27, 1871_                                          68
+
+       VI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _January 24, 1872_                                           72
+
+      VII. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Washington, D. C._
+           _February 8, 1872_                                           75
+
+     VIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _April 12, 1872_                                             76
+
+       IX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _June 3, 1872_                                               79
+
+        X. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _July 14, 1872_                                              82
+
+       XI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq._
+           _November 12, 1872_                                          85
+
+      XII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London, N. W._
+           _January 31, 1873_                                           86
+
+     XIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London, N. W._
+           _May 20, 1873_                                               88
+
+      XIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne, Halstead_
+           _August 12, 1873_                                            91
+
+       XV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Camden, New Jersey_
+           _Undated. Summer of 1873_                                    94
+
+      XVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne, Halstead_
+           _September 4, 1873_                                          96
+
+     XVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _November 3, 1873_                                           98
+
+    XVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _December 8, 1873_                                          102
+
+      XIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _February 26, 1874_                                         105
+
+       XX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _March 9, 1874_                                             108
+
+      XXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _May 14, 1874_                                              109
+
+     XXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _July, 4, 1874_                                             112
+
+    XXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne_
+           _September 3, 1874_                                         115
+
+     XXIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _December 9, 1874_                                          119
+
+      XXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _December 30, 1874_                                         121
+
+     XXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne, Halstead_
+           _February 21, 1875_                                         123
+
+    XXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _May 18, 1875_                                              126
+
+   XXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne_
+           _August 28, 1875_                                           129
+
+     XXIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Square, London_
+           _November 16, 1875_                                         133
+
+      XXX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _December 4, 1875_                                          137
+
+     XXXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Blaenavon, Routzpool, Mon., England_
+           _January 18, 1876_                                          139
+
+    XXXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _February 25, 1876_                                         141
+
+   XXXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _March 11, 1876_                                            143
+
+    XXXIV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Camden, New Jersey._
+           _Undated, March, 1876_                                      145
+
+     XXXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _March 30, 1876_                                            147
+
+    XXXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _April 21, 1876_                                            149
+
+   XXXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _May 18, 1876_                                              152
+
+  XXXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Round Hill, Northampton, Massachusetts_
+           _September, 1877_                                           154
+
+    XXXIX. BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _New England Hospital, Codman Avenue, Boston Highlands_
+           _Undated_                                                   156
+
+       XL. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Chesterfield, Massachusetts_
+           _September 3, 1878_                                         159
+
+      XLI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Concord, Massachusetts_
+           _October 25 (1878)_                                         161
+
+     XLII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _39 Somerset Street, Boston_
+           _November 13, 1878_                                         163
+
+    XLIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _January 5, 1879_                                           166
+
+     XLIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _January 14, 1879_                                          169
+
+      XLV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _January 27, 1879_                                          171
+
+     XLVI. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _February, 2, 1879_                                         173
+
+    XLVII. BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _33 Warrenton Street, Boston_
+           _February 16, 1879_                                         175
+
+   XLVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _March 18, 1879_                                            177
+
+     XLIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _March 26, 1879_                                            179
+
+        L. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Glasgow, Scotland_
+           _June 20, 1879_                                             181
+
+       LI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Lower Shincliffe, Durham_
+           _August 2, 1879_                                            183
+
+      LII. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Camden, New Jersey_
+           _Undated, August, 1879_                                     186
+
+     LIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Elm Villas, Elm Row, Heath Street, Hampstead, London_
+           _December 5, 1879_                                          187
+
+      LIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _5 Mount Vernon, Hampstead_
+           _January 25, 1880_                                          190
+
+       LV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Marley, Haslemere, England_
+           _August 22, 1880_                                           193
+
+      LVI. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _November 30, 1880_                                         195
+
+     LVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _April 18, 1881_                                            197
+
+    LVIII. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, North London_
+           _June 5, 1881_                                              200
+
+      LIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _December 14, 1881_                                         203
+
+       LX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _January 29 and February 6, 1882_                           205
+
+      LXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _May 8, 1882_                                               207
+
+     LXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _November 24, 1882_                                         209
+
+    LXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _January 27, 1883_                                          211
+
+     LXIV. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _April 29, 1883_                                            213
+
+      LXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _May 6, 1883_                                               215
+
+     LXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _July 30, 1883_                                             217
+
+    LXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _October 13, 1883_                                          220
+
+   LXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _April 5, 1884_                                             223
+
+     LXIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Hampstead, London_
+           _May 2, 1884_                                               225
+
+      LXX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, London_
+           _August 5, 1884_                                            227
+
+     LXXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Wolverhampton_
+           _October 26, 1884_                                          228
+
+    LXXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _December 17, 1884_                                         230
+
+   LXXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _February 27, 1885_                                         233
+
+    LXXIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Hampstead, London_
+           _May 4, 1885_                                               236
+
+     LXXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Hampstead, London_
+           _June 21, 1885_                                             239
+
+    LXXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _July 20, 1885_                                             241
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Walt Whitman                                              _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                               FACING PAGE
+
+  Anne Gilchrist                                                        54
+
+  Facsimile of a typical Whitman letter                                 94
+
+  Facsimile of one of Anne Gilchrist's letters
+  to Walt Whitman                             _in the text pages_ 131, 132
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Probably there are few who to-day question the propriety of publishing the
+love-letters of eminent persons a generation after the deaths of both
+parties to the correspondence. When one recalls the published love-letters
+of Abelard, of Dorothy Osborne, of Lady Hamilton, of Mary Wollstonecraft,
+of Margaret Fuller, of George Sand, Bismarck, Shelley, Victor Hugo, Edgar
+Allan Poe, and--to mention only one more illustrious example--of the
+Brownings, one must needs look upon this form of presenting biographical
+material as a well-established, if not a valuable, convention of letters.
+
+As to the particular set of letters presented to the reader in this
+volume, a word of explanation and history may be required. Most of these
+letters are from Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman, a few are replies to her
+letters, and a few are letters from her children to Whitman. Mrs.
+Gilchrist died in 1885. When, two years later, her son, Herbert
+Harlakenden Gilchrist, was collecting material for his interesting
+biography of his mother, Whitman was asked for the letters that she had
+written to him--or rather for extracts from them. In reply to this request
+the poet said, "I do not know that I can furnish any good reason, but I
+feel to keep these utterances exclusively to myself. But I cannot let your
+book go to press without at least saying--and wishing it put on
+record--that among the perfect women I have met (and it has been my
+unspeakably good fortune to have had the very best, for mother, sisters,
+and friends) I have known none more perfect in every relation, than my
+dear, dear friend, Anne Gilchrist." But since Whitman carefully preserved
+them for twenty years, refusing to destroy them as he had destroyed such
+other written matter as he did not care to have preserved, it would appear
+that he intended that so beautiful a tribute to the poetry that he had
+written, no less than to the personality of the poet, should be included
+in that complete biography which is being slowly written, by many hands,
+of America's most unique man of genius. In any case, when these letters
+came into my hands in the apportionment of Whitman's literary legacy under
+the will which named me as one of his three literary executors, there were
+but three things which I could honourably do with them--rather, on closer
+analysis, there seemed to be but one. To leave them in _my_ will or to
+place them in some public repository would have been to shift a
+responsibility which was evidently mine to the shoulders of others who,
+perhaps, would be in possession of fewer facts in the light of which to
+discharge that responsibility. To destroy them would be to do what Whitman
+should have done if it was to be done at all, and to erase forever one of
+the finest tributes that either the man or the poet ever received, one of
+the most touching self-revelations that a noble soul ever "poured out on
+paper." The remaining alternative was to edit and publish them (after
+keeping them a proper length of time), for the benefit, not only of the
+general reader, but as an aid to the future biographer who from the
+proper perspective will write the life of America's great poet and
+prophet. In this determination my judgment has been confirmed by that of
+the few sympathetic friends who, during the twenty-five years that the
+letters have been in my possession, have been allowed to read them.
+
+It is a matter of regret that so few of Whitman's letters to Mrs.
+Gilchrist are available. Those included in this volume, sometimes in
+fragmentary form, have been taken from loose copies found among his papers
+after his death, or, in a few instances, are reprinted from Herbert
+Harlakenden Gilchrist's "Anne Gilchrist" or Horace Traubel's "With Walt
+Whitman in Camden." Acknowledgment of these latter is made in each
+instance. But though Whitman's letters printed in this correspondence will
+not compare with Mrs. Gilchrist's in point of number, enough are presented
+to suggest the tenor of them all.
+
+As a matter of fact, the first love-letter from Anne Gilchrist to Walt
+Whitman was in the form of an essay written in his defense called "An
+Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman." For that reason this well-known
+essay is reprinted in this volume; and "A Confession of Faith," in reality
+an amplification of the "Estimate" written several years after the
+publication of the latter, is included. The reader who desires to follow
+the story of this friendship in a chronological order will do well to read
+at least the former of these tributes before beginning the letters.
+Indebtedness is acknowledged to Prof. Emory Halloway of Brooklyn, New
+York, for valuable suggestions.
+
+T. B. H.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Undoubtedly Mrs. Gilchrist's "Estimate of Walt Whitman," published in the
+(Boston) _Radical_ in May, 1870, was the finest, as it was the first,
+public tribute ever paid to the poet by a woman. Whitman himself so
+considered it--"the proudest word that ever came to me from a woman--if
+not the proudest word of all from any source." But a finer tribute was to
+follow, in the sacred privacy of the love-letters which are now made
+public forty years and more after they were written. The purpose of this
+Introduction is not to interpret those letters, but to sketch the story in
+the light of which they are to be read. And since both Anne Gilchrist and
+Walt Whitman have had sympathetic and painstaking biographers, it will not
+be necessary here to mention at length the already known facts of their
+respective lives.
+
+The story naturally begins with Whitman. He was born at West Hills, Long
+Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. His father was of English descent, and
+came of a family of sailors and farmers. His mother, to whom he himself
+attributed most of his personal qualities, was of excellent Hollandic
+stock. Moving to Brooklyn while still in frocks, he there passed his
+boyhood and youth, but took many summer trips to visit relatives in the
+country. He early left the public school for the printing offices of
+local newspapers, picking enough general knowledge to enable him, when
+about seventeen years of age, to teach schools in the rural districts of
+his native island. Very early in life he became a writer, chiefly of short
+prose tales and essays, which were accepted by the best New York
+magazines. His literary and journalistic work was not confined to the
+metropolis, but took him, for a few months in 1848, so far away from home
+as New Orleans. In 1851-54, besides writing for and editing newspapers, he
+was engaged in housebuilding, the trade of his father. Although this was,
+it is said, a profitable business, he gave it up to write poetry, and
+issued his first volume, "Leaves of Grass," in 1855. The book had been
+written with great pains, according to a preconceived plan of the author
+to be stated in the preface; and it was finally set up (by his own hands,
+for want of a publisher) only, as he tells us, after many "doings and
+undoings, leaving out the stock 'poetical' touches." Its publication was
+the occasion of probably the most voluminous controversy of American
+letters--mostly abuse, ridicule, and condemnation.
+
+In 1862 Whitman's brother George, who had volunteered in the Union Army,
+was reported badly wounded in the Fredericksburg fight. Walt, going at
+once to the war front in Virginia, found that his brother's wound was not
+serious enough to require his ministrations, but gradually he became
+engaged in nursing other wounded soldiers, until this work, as a volunteer
+hospital missionary in Washington, engrossed the major part of his time.
+This continued until and for some years after the end of the war.
+Whitman's own needs were supplied by occasional literary work and from his
+earnings as a clerk first in the Interior and later in the Attorney
+General's Department. He had gone to Washington a man of strong and
+majestic physique, but his untiring devotion, fidelity, and vigilance in
+nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the army hospitals in and about
+Washington was soon to shatter that constitution which was ever a marvel
+to its possessor, and to condemn him to pass the last two decades of his
+life in unaccustomed invalidism. The history of the Civil War in America
+presents no instance of nobler fulfilment of duty or of sublimer
+sacrifice.
+
+Meanwhile his muse was not neglected. His book had gone through four
+editions, and, with the increment of the noble war poetry of "Drum Taps,"
+had become a volume of size. At a very early period "Leaves of Grass" had
+been hailed as an important literary contribution by a few of the best
+thinkers in this country and in England but, generally speaking, nearly
+all literary persons received it with much criticism and many
+qualifications. In Washington devoted disciples like William Douglas
+O'Connor and John Burroughs never varied in their uncompromising adherence
+to the book and its author. This appreciation only by the few was likewise
+encountered in England. The book had made a stir among the literary
+classes, but its importance was not at all generally recognized. Men like
+John Addington Symonds, Edward Dowden, and William Michael Rossetti were,
+however, almost unrestricted in their praise.
+
+It was William Rossetti who planned, in 1867, to bring out in England a
+volume of selections from Whitman's poetry, in the belief that it was
+better to leave out the poems that had provoked such adverse criticism, in
+order to get Whitman a foothold among those who might prefer to have an
+expurgated edition. Whitman's attitude toward the plan at the time is
+given in a letter which he wrote to Rossetti on December 3, 1867: "I
+cannot and will not consent of my own volition to countenance an
+expurgated edition of my pieces. I have steadily refused to do so under
+seductive offers, here in my own country, and must not do so in another
+country." It appeared, however, that Rossetti had already advanced his
+project, and Whitman graciously added: "If, before the arrival of this
+letter, you have practically invested in, and accomplished, or partially
+accomplished, any plan, even contrary to this letter, I do not expect you
+to abandon it, at loss of outlay; but shall _bona fide_ consider you
+blameless if you let it go on, and be carried out, as you may have
+arranged. It is the question of the authorization of an expurgated edition
+proceeding from me, that deepest engages me. The facts of the different
+ways, one way or another way, in which the book may appear in England, out
+of influences not under the shelter of my umbrage, are of much less
+importance to me. After making the foregoing explanation, I shall, I
+think, accept kindly whatever happens. For I feel, indeed know, that I am
+in the hands of a friend, and that my pieces will receive that truest,
+brightest of light and perception coming from love. In that, all other
+and lesser requisites become pale...." The Rossetti "Selections" duly
+appeared--with what momentous influence upon the two persons whose
+friendship we are tracing will presently be shown.
+
+On June 22, 1869, Anne Gilchrist, writing to Rossetti, said: "I was
+calling on Madox Brown a fortnight ago, and he put into my hands your
+edition of Walt Whitman's poems. I shall not cease to thank him for that.
+Since I have had it, I can read no other book: it holds me entirely
+spellbound, and I go through it again and again with deepening delight and
+wonder. How can one refrain from expressing gratitude to you for what you
+have so admirably done?..." To this Rossetti promptly responded: "Your
+letter has given me keen pleasure this morning. That glorious man Whitman
+will one day be known as one of the greatest sons of Earth, a few steps
+below Shakespeare on the throne of immortality. What a tearing-away of the
+obscuring veil of use and wont from the visage of man and of life! I am
+doing myself the pleasure of at once ordering a copy of the "Selections"
+for you, which you will be so kind as to accept. Genuine--i. e.,
+_enthusiastic_--appreciators are not so common, and must be cultivated
+when they appear.... Anybody who values Whitman as you do ought to read
+the whole of him...." At a later date Rossetti gave Mrs. Gilchrist a copy
+of the complete "Leaves of Grass," in acknowledging which she said, "The
+gift of yours I have not any words to tell you how priceless it will be to
+me...." This lengthy letter was later, at Rossetti's solicitation, worked
+over for publication as the "Estimate of Walt Whitman" to which reference
+has already been made.
+
+Anne Gilchrist was primarily a woman of letters. Though her natural bent
+was toward science and philosophy, her marriage threw her into association
+with artists and writers of _belles lettres_. She was born in London on
+February 25, 1828. She came of excellent ancestry, and received a good
+education, particularly in music. She had a profoundly religious nature,
+although it appears that she was never a believer in many of the orthodox
+Christian doctrines. Very early in life she recognized the greatness of
+such men as Emerson and Comte. In 1851, at the age of twenty-three, she
+married Alexander Gilchrist, two months her junior. Though of limited
+means, he possessed literary ability and was then preparing for the bar.
+His early writings secured for him the friendship of Carlyle, who for
+years lived next door to the Gilchrists in Cheyne Row. This friendship led
+to others, and the Gilchrists were soon introduced into that supreme
+literary circle which included Ruskin, Herbert Spencer, George Eliot, the
+Rossettis, Tennyson, and many another great mind of that illustrious age.
+
+Within ten years of their marriage the Gilchrists had four children, in
+whom they were very happy. But in the year 1861, when Anne was
+thirty-three years of age, her husband died. It was a terrible blow, but
+she faced the future unflinchingly, and reared her children, giving to
+each of them a profession. At the time of her husband's death his life of
+William Blake was nearing completion. With the assistance of William and
+Gabriel Rossetti Mrs. Gilchrist finished the work on this excellent
+biography, and it was published by Macmillan. Whitman has paid a fitting
+tribute to the pluck exhibited in this achievement: "Do you know much of
+Blake?" said Whitman to Horace Traubel, who records the conversation in
+his remarkable book "With Walt Whitman in Camden." "You know, this is Mrs.
+Gilchrist's book--the book she completed. They had made up their minds to
+do the work--her husband had it well under way: he caught a fever and was
+carried off. Mrs. Gilchrist was left with four young children, alone: her
+perplexities were great. Have you noticed that the time to look for the
+best things in best people is the moment of their greatest need? Look at
+Lincoln: he is our proudest example: he proved to be big as, bigger than,
+any emergency--his grasp was a giant's grasp--made dark things light, made
+hard things easy.... (Mrs. Gilchrist) belonged to the same noble breed:
+seized the reins, was competent; her head was clear, her hand was firm."
+
+The circumstances under which she first read Whitman's poetry have been
+narrated. When in 1869 Whitman became aware of the Rossetti
+correspondence, he felt greatly honoured, and through Rossetti he sent his
+portrait to the as yet anonymous lady. In acknowledging this communication
+his English friend has a grateful word from "the lady" to return: "I gave
+your letter, and the second copy of your portrait, to the lady you refer
+to, and need scarcely say how truly delighted she was. She has asked me to
+say that you could not have devised for her a more welcome pleasure, and
+that she feels grateful to me for having sent to America the extracts from
+what she had written, since they have been a satisfaction to you...."
+Early in 1870 the "Estimate" appeared in the _Radical_, still more than a
+year before Mrs. Gilchrist addressed her first letter to Whitman. He
+welcomed the essay, and its author as a new and peculiarly powerful
+champion of "Leaves of Grass." To Rossetti he wrote: "I am deeply touched
+by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from England,
+and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to me to
+get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them but approve
+that action. I realize indeed of this smiling and emphatic _well done_
+from the heart and conscience of a true wife and mother, and one, too,
+whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your letter, after flowing
+through the heart and conscience, must also move through and satisfy
+science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto received no eulogium
+so magnificent." Concerning this experience Whitman said to Horace
+Traubel, at a much later period: "You can imagine what such a thing as her
+'Estimate' meant to me at that time. Almost everybody was against me--the
+papers, the preachers, the literary gentlemen--nearly everybody with only
+here and there a dissenting voice--when it looked on the surface as if my
+enterprise was bound to fail ... then this wonderful woman. Such things
+stagger a man ... I had got so used to being ignored or denounced that the
+appearance of a friend was always accompanied with a sort of shock....
+There are shocks that knock you up, shocks that knock you down. Mrs.
+Gilchrist never wavered from her first decision. I have that sort of
+feeling about her which cannot easily be spoken of--...: love (strong
+personal love, too), reverence, respect--you see, it won't go into words:
+all the words are weak and formal." Speaking again of her first criticism
+of his work, he said: "I remember well how one of my noblest, best
+friends--one of my wisest, cutest, profoundest, most candid critics--how
+Mrs. Gilchrist, even to the last, insisted that "Leaves of Grass" was not
+the mouthpiece of parlours, refinements--no--but the language of strength,
+power, passion, intensity, absorption, sincerity...." He claimed a closer
+relationship to her than he allowed to Rossetti: "Rossetti mentions Mrs.
+Gilchrist. Well, he had a right to--almost as much right as I had: a sort
+of brother's right: she was his friend, she was more than my friend. I
+feel like Hamlet when he said forty thousand brothers could not feel what
+he felt for Ophelia. After all ... we were a family--a happy family: the
+few of us who got together, going with love the same way--we were a happy
+family. The crowd was on the other side but we were on our side--we: a few
+of us, just a few: and despite our paucity of numbers we made ourselves
+tell for the good cause."
+
+From these expressions it is quite clear that Whitman's attitude toward
+Mrs. Gilchrist was at first that of the unpopular prophet who finds a
+worthy and welcome disciple in an unexpected place. And that he should
+have so felt was but natural, for she had been drawn to him, as she
+confided to him in one of her letters, by what he had written rather than
+and not by her knowledge of the man. There can be no doubt, however, that
+on Mrs. Gilchrist's part something more than the friendship of her
+new-found liberator was desired. When she read the "Leaves of Grass" she
+was forty-one years of age, in the full vigour of womanhood. To her the
+reading meant a new birth, causing her to pour out her soul to the prophet
+and poet across the seas with a freedom and abandon that were phenomenal.
+This was in the first letter printed in this volume, under date of
+September 3, 1871, and about the time that Whitman had sent to his new
+supporter a copy of his poems. Perhaps the strongest reason why Whitman
+did not reply to passion with passion lies in the fact that his heart was,
+so far as attachments of that sort were concerned, already bestowed
+elsewhere. I am indebted to Professor Holloway for the information that
+Whitman was, in 1864, the unfortunate lover of a certain lady whose
+previous marriage to another, while it did not dim their mutual devotion,
+did serve to keep them apart. To her Whitman wrote that heart-wrung lyric
+of separation, "Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd." This suggests that
+there was probably a double tragedy, so ironical is the fate of the
+affections, Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman both passionately yearning for
+personal love yet unable to quench the one desire in the other.
+
+But if there could not be between them the love which leads to marriage,
+there could be a noble and tender and life-long friendship. Over this
+Whitman's loss of his magnificent health, to be followed by an invalidism
+of twenty years, had no power. In 1873 Whitman was stricken with
+paralysis, which rendered him so helpless that he had to give up his work
+and finally his position, and to go to live for the rest of his life in
+Camden, New Jersey. Mrs. Gilchrist's affection for him did not waver when
+this trial was made of it. Indeed, his illness had the effect, as these
+letters show, of quickening the desire which she had had for several years
+(since 1869) of coming to live in America, that she might be near him to
+lighten his burdens, and, if she could not hope to cherish him as a wife,
+that she might at least care for him as a mother. Whitman, it will be
+noted, strongly advised against this plan. Just why he wished to keep her
+away from America is unclear, possibly because he dared not put so
+idealistic a friendship and discipleship to the test of personal
+acquaintance with a prematurely broken old man. Nevertheless, on August
+30, 1876, Mrs. Gilchrist set sail, with three of her children, for
+Philadelphia. They arrived in September. From that date until the spring
+of 1878 the Gilchrists kept house at 1929 North Twenty-second street,
+Philadelphia, where Whitman was a frequent and regular visitor.
+
+It is interesting to note that Mrs. Gilchrist's appreciation of Whitman
+did not lessen after she had met and known him in the intimacy of that
+tea-table circle which at her house discussed the same great variety of
+topics--literature, religion, science, politics--that had enlivened the
+O'Connor breakfast table in Washington. She shall describe it and him
+herself. In a letter to Rossetti, under date of December 22, 1876, she
+writes: "But I need not tell you that our greatest pleasure is the society
+of Mr. Whitman, who fully realizes the ideal I had formed from his poems,
+and brings such an atmosphere of cordiality and geniality with him as is
+indescribable. He is really making slow but, I trust, steady progress
+toward recovery, having been much cheered (and no doubt that acted
+favourably upon his health) by the sympathy manifested toward him in
+England and the pleasure of finding so many buyers of his poems there. It
+must be a deep satisfaction to you to have been the channel through which
+this help and comfort flowed...." And a year later she writes to the same
+correspondent: "We are having delightful evenings this winter; how often
+do I wish you could make one in the circle around our tea table where sits
+on my right hand every evening but Sunday Walt Whitman. He has made great
+progress in health and recovered powers of getting about during the year
+we have been here: nevertheless the lameness--the dragging instead of
+lifting the left leg continues; and this together with his white hair and
+beard give him a look of age curiously contradicted by his face, which has
+not only the ruddy freshness but the full, rounded contours of youth,
+nowhere drawn or wrinkled or sunk; it is a face as indicative of serenity
+and goodness and of mental and bodily health as the brow is of
+intellectual power. But I notice he occasionally speaks of himself as
+having a 'wounded brain,' and of being still quite altered from his former
+self."
+
+Whitman, on his part, thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon sunshine of such
+friendly hospitality, for he considered Mrs. Gilchrist even more gifted as
+a conversationalist than as a writer. For hints of the sort of talk that
+flowed with Mrs. Gilchrist's tea I must refer the reader to her son's
+realistic biography.
+
+After two years of residence in Philadelphia, the Gilchrists went to dwell
+in Boston and later in New York City, and met the leaders in the two
+literary capitals. From these addresses the letters begin again, after the
+natural interruption of two years. It is at this time that the first
+letters from Herbert and Beatrice Gilchrist were written. These are given
+in this volume to complete the chain and to show how completely they were
+in sympathy with their mother in their love and appreciation of Whitman.
+From New York they all sailed for their old home in England on June 7,
+1879. Whitman came the day before to wish them good voyage. The chief
+reason for the return to England seems to have been the desire to send
+Beatrice to Berne to complete her medical education. After the return to
+England, or rather while they are still en route at Glasgow, the letters
+begin again.
+
+Several years of literary work yet remained to Mrs. Gilchrist. The chief
+writings of these years were a new edition of the Blake, a life of Mary
+Lamb for the Eminent Women Series, an article on Blake for the Dictionary
+of National Biography, several essays including "Three Glimpses of a New
+England Village," and the "Confession of Faith." She was beginning a
+careful study of the life and writings of Carlyle, with the intention of
+writing a life of her old friend to reply to the aspersions of Freude.
+This last work was, however, never completed, for early in 1882 some
+malady which rendered her breathing difficult had already begun to cast
+the shadow of death upon her. But her faith, long schooled in the optimism
+of "Leaves of Grass," looked upon the steadily approaching end with
+calmness. On November 29, 1885, she died.
+
+When Whitman was informed of her death by Herbert Gilchrist, he could find
+words for only the following brief reply:
+
+     _15th December 1885.
+     Camden, United States, America._
+
+     DEAR HERBERT:
+
+     I have received your letter. Nothing now remains but a sweet and rich
+     memory--none more beautiful all time, all life all the earth--I
+     cannot write anything of a letter to-day. I must sit alone and think.
+
+     WALT WHITMAN.
+
+Later, in conversations with Horace Traubel which the latter has preserved
+in his minute biography of Whitman, he was able to express his regard for
+Mrs. Gilchrist more fully--"a supreme character of whom the world knows
+too little for its own good ... If her sayings had been recorded--I do not
+say she would pale, but I do say she would equal the best of the women of
+our century--add something as great as any to the testimony on the side of
+her sex." And at another time: "Oh! she was strangely different from the
+average; entirely herself; as simple as nature; true, honest; beautiful as
+a tree is tall, leafy, rich, full, free--_is_ a tree. Yet, free as she
+was by nature, bound by no conventionalisms, she was the most courageous
+of women; more than queenly; of high aspect in the best sense. She was not
+cold; she had her passions; I have known her to warm up--to resent
+something that was said; some impeachment of good things--great things; of
+a person sometimes; she had the largest charity, the sweetest fondest
+optimism.... She was a radical of radicals; enjoyed all sorts of high
+enthusiasms: was exquisitely sensitized; belonged to the times yet to
+come; her vision went on and on."
+
+This searching interpretation of her character wants only her artist son's
+description of her personal appearance to make the final picture complete:
+"A little above the average height, she walked with an even, light step.
+Brown hair concealed a full and finely chiselled brow, and her hazel eyes
+bent upon you a bright and penetrating gaze. Whilst conversing her face
+became radiant as with an experience of golden years; humour was present
+in her conversation--flecks of sunshine, such as sometimes play about the
+minds of deeply religious natures. Her animated manner seldom flagged, and
+charmed the taciturn to talking in his or her best humour." Once, when
+speaking to Walt Whitman of the beauty of the human speaking voice, he
+replied: "The voice indicates the soul. Hers, with its varied modulations
+and blended tones, was the tenderest, most musical voice ever to bless our
+ears."
+
+Her death was a long-lasting shock to Whitman. "She was a wonderful
+woman--a sort of human miracle to me.... Her taking off ... was a great
+shock to me: I have never quite got over it: she was near to me: she was
+subtle: her grasp on my work was tremendous--so sure, so all around, so
+adequate." If this sounds a trifle self-centred in its criticism, not so
+was the poem which, in memory of her, he wrote as a fitting epitaph from
+the poet she had loved.
+
+
+"GOING SOMEWHERE"
+
+  My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend (Now buried in an English
+      grave--and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake),
+  Ended our talk--"The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern
+      learning, intuitions deep,
+  Of all Geologies--Histories--of all Astronomy--of Evolution, Metaphysics
+      all,
+  Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering,
+  Life, life an endless march, an endless army (no halt, but, it is duly
+      over),
+  The world, the race, the soul--in space and time the universes,
+  All bound as is befitting each--all surely going somewhere."
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN[1]
+
+[FROM LETTERS BY ANNE GILCHRIST TO W. M. ROSSETTI.]
+
+
+_June 23, 1869._--I am very sure you are right in your estimate of Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him that I shall ever let go my hold of. For
+me the reading of his poems is truly a new birth of the soul.
+
+I shall quite fearlessly accept your kind offer of the loan of a complete
+edition, certain that great and divinely beautiful nature has not, could
+not infuse any poison into the wine he has poured out for us. And as for
+what you specially allude to, who so well able to bear it--I will say, to
+judge wisely of it--as one who, having been a happy wife and mother, has
+learned to accept all things with tenderness, to feel a sacredness in all?
+Perhaps Walt Whitman has forgotten--or, through some theory in his head,
+has overridden--the truth that our instincts are beautiful facts of
+nature, as well as our bodies; and that we have a strong instinct of
+silence about some things.
+
+_July 11._--I think it was very manly and kind of you to put the whole of
+Walt Whitman's poems into my hands; and that I have no other friend who
+would have judged them and me so wisely and generously.
+
+I had not dreamed that words could cease to be words, and become electric
+streams like these. I do assure you that, strong as I am, I feel sometimes
+as if I had not bodily strength to read many of these poems. In the series
+headed "Calamus," for instance, in some of the "Songs of Parting," the
+"Voice out of the Sea," the poem beginning "Tears, Tears," &c., there is
+such a weight of emotion, such a tension of the heart, that mine refuses
+to beat under it,--stands quite still,--and I am obliged to lay the book
+down for a while. Or again, in the piece called "Walt Whitman," and one or
+two others of that type, I am as one hurried through stormy seas, over
+high mountains, dazed with sunlight, stunned with a crowd and tumult of
+faces and voices, till I am breathless, bewildered, half dead. Then come
+parts and whole poems in which there is such calm wisdom and strength of
+thought, such a cheerful breadth of sunshine, that the soul bathes in them
+renewed and strengthened. Living impulses flow out of these that make me
+exult in life, yet look longingly towards "the superb vistas of Death."
+Those who admire this poem, and don't care for that, and talk of
+formlessness, absence of metre, &c., are quite as far from any genuine
+recognition of Walt Whitman as his bitter detractors. Not, of course, that
+all the pieces are equal in power and beauty, but that all are vital; they
+grew--they were not made. We criticise a palace or a cathedral; but what
+is the good of criticising a forest? Are not the hitherto-accepted
+masterpieces of literature akin rather to noble architecture; built up of
+material rendered precious by elaboration; planned with subtile art that
+makes beauty go hand in hand with rule and measure, and knows where the
+last stone will come, before the first is laid; the result stately, fixed,
+yet such as might, in every particular, have been different from what it
+is (therefore inviting criticism), contrasting proudly with the careless
+freedom of nature, opposing its own rigid adherence to symmetry to her
+willful dallying with it? But not such is this book. Seeds brought by the
+winds from north, south, east, and west, lying long in the earth, not
+resting on it like the stately building, but hid in and assimilating it,
+shooting upwards to be nourished by the air and the sunshine and the rain
+which beat idly against that,--each bough and twig and leaf growing in
+strength and beauty its own way, a law to itself, yet, with all this
+freedom of spontaneous growth, the result inevitable, unalterable
+(therefore setting criticism at naught), above all things, vital,--that
+is, a source of ever-generating vitality: such are these poems.
+
+  "Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,
+  Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and from the
+      pondside,
+  Breast sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than
+      vines,
+  Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the sun
+      is risen,
+  Breezes of land and love, breezes set from living shores out to you on
+      the living sea,--to you, O sailors!
+  Frost-mellowed berries and Third-month twigs, offered fresh to young
+      persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
+  Love-buds put before you and within you, whoever you are,
+  Buds to be unfolded on the old terms.
+  If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
+      form, colour, perfume, to you:
+  If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
+      tall branches and trees."
+
+And the music takes good care of itself, too. As if it _could_ be
+otherwise! As if those "large, melodious thoughts," those emotions, now so
+stormy and wild, now of unfathomed tenderness and gentleness, could fail
+to vibrate through the words in strong, sweeping, long-sustained chords,
+with lovely melodies winding in and out fitfully amongst them! Listen, for
+instance, to the penetrating sweetness, set in the midst of rugged
+grandeur, of the passage beginning,--
+
+  "I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
+  I call to the earth and sea half held by the night."
+
+I see that no counting of syllables will reveal the mechanism of the
+music; and that this rushing spontaneity could not stay to bind itself
+with the fetters of metre. But I know that the music is there, and that I
+would not for something change ears with those who cannot hear it. And I
+know that poetry must do one of two things,--either own this man as equal
+with her highest completest manifestors, or stand aside, and admit that
+there is something come into the world nobler, diviner than herself, one
+that is free of the universe, and can tell its secrets as none before.
+
+I do not think or believe this; but see it with the same unmistakable
+definiteness of perception and full consciousness that I see the sun at
+this moment in the noonday sky, and feel his rays glowing down upon me as
+I write in the open air. What more can you ask of the works of a man's
+mouth than that they should "absorb into you as food and air, to appear
+again in your strength, gait, face,"--that they should be "fibre and
+filter to your blood," joy and gladness to your whole nature?
+
+I am persuaded that one great source of this kindling, vitalizing power--I
+suppose _the_ great source--is the grasp laid upon the present, the
+fearless and comprehensive dealing with reality. Hitherto the leaders of
+thought have (except in science) been men with their faces resolutely
+turned backwards; men who have made of the past a tyrant that beggars and
+scorns the present, hardly seeing any greatness but what is shrouded away
+in the twilight, underground past; naming the present only for disparaging
+comparisons, humiliating distrust that tends to create the very barrenness
+it complains of; bidding me warm myself at fires that went out to mortal
+eyes centuries ago; insisting, in religion above all, that I must either
+"look through dead men's eyes," or shut my own in helpless darkness. Poets
+fancying themselves so happy over the chill and faded beauty of the past,
+but not making me happy at all,--rebellious always at being dragged down
+out of the free air and sunshine of to-day.
+
+But this poet, this "athlete, full of rich words, full of joy," takes you
+by the hand, and turns you with your face straight forwards. The present
+is great enough for him, because he is great enough for it. It flows
+through him as a "vast oceanic tide," lifting up a mighty voice. Earth,
+"the eloquent, dumb, great mother," is not old, has lost none of her fresh
+charms, none of her divine meanings; still bears great sons and daughters,
+if only they would possess themselves and accept their birthright,--a
+richer, not a poorer, heritage than was ever provided before,--richer by
+all the toil and suffering of the generations that have preceded, and by
+the further unfolding of the eternal purposes. Here is one come at last
+who can show them how; whose songs are the breath of a glad, strong,
+beautiful life, nourished sufficingly, kindled to unsurpassed intensity
+and greatness by the gifts of the present.
+
+  "Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy."
+
+  "O the joy of my soul leaning poised on itself,--receiving identity
+      through materials, and loving them,--observing characters, and
+      absorbing them!
+  O my soul vibrated back to me from them!
+
+  "O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
+  The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist, fresh
+      stillness of the woods,
+  The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the
+      forenoon.
+
+  "O to realize space!
+  The plenteousness of all--that there are no bounds;
+  To emerge, and be of the sky--of the sun and moon and the flying clouds,
+      as one with them.
+
+  "O the joy of suffering,--
+  To struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted,
+  To be entirely alone with them--to find how much one can stand!"
+
+I used to think it was great to disregard happiness, to press on to a high
+goal, careless, disdainful of it. But now I see that there is nothing so
+great as to be capable of happiness; to pluck it out of "each moment and
+whatever happens"; to find that one can ride as gay and buoyant on the
+angry, menacing, tumultuous waves of life as on those that glide and
+glitter under a clear sky; that it is not defeat and wretchedness which
+come out of the storm of adversity, but strength and calmness.
+
+See, again, in the pieces gathered together under the title "Calamus," and
+elsewhere, what it means for a man to love his fellow-man. Did you dream
+it before? These "evangel-poems of comrades and of love" speak, with the
+abiding, penetrating power of prophecy, of a "new and superb friendship";
+speak not as beautiful dreams, unrealizable aspirations to be laid aside
+in sober moods, because they breathe out what now glows within the poet's
+own breast, and flows out in action toward the men around him. Had ever
+any land before her poet, not only to concentrate within himself her life,
+and, when she kindled with anger against her children who were treacherous
+to the cause her life is bound up with, to announce and justify her
+terrible purpose in words of unsurpassable grandeur (as in the poem
+beginning, "Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps"), but also to go
+and with his own hands dress the wounds, with his powerful presence soothe
+and sustain and nourish her suffering soldiers,--hundreds of them,
+thousands, tens of thousands,--by day and by night, for weeks, months,
+years?
+
+  "I sit by the restless all the dark night; some are so young,
+  Some suffer so much: I recall the experience sweet and sad.
+  Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have crossed and rested,
+  Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips:--"
+
+Kisses, that touched with the fire of a strange, new, undying eloquence
+the lips that received them! The most transcendent genius could not,
+untaught by that "experience sweet and sad," have breathed out hymns for
+her dead soldiers of such ineffably tender, sorrowful, yet triumphant
+beauty.
+
+But the present spreads before us other things besides those of which it
+is easy to see the greatness and beauty; and the poet would leave us to
+learn the hardest part of our lesson unhelped if he took no heed of these;
+and would be unfaithful to his calling, as interpreter of man to himself
+and of the scheme of things in relation to him, if he did not accept
+all--if he did not teach "the great lesson of reception, neither
+preference nor denial." If he feared to stretch out the hand, not of
+condescending pity, but of fellowship, to the degraded, criminal, foolish,
+despised, knowing that they are only laggards in "the great procession
+winding along the roads of the universe," "the far-behind to come on in
+their turn," knowing the "amplitude of Time," how could he roll the stone
+of contempt off the heart as he does, and cut the strangling knot of the
+problem of inherited viciousness and degradation? And, if he were not bold
+and true to the utmost, and did not own in himself the threads of darkness
+mixed in with the threads of light, and own it with the same strength and
+directness that he tells of the light, and not in those vague generalities
+that everybody uses, and nobody means, in speaking on this head,--in the
+worst, germs of all that is in the best; in the best, germs of all that is
+in the worst,--the _brotherhood_ of the human race would be a mere
+flourish of rhetoric. And brotherhood is naught if it does not bring
+brother's love along with it. If the poet's heart were not "a measureless
+ocean of love" that seeks the lips and would quench the thirst of all, he
+were not the one we have waited for so long. Who but he could put at last
+the right meaning into that word "democracy," which has been made to bear
+such a burthen of incongruous notions?
+
+  "By God! I will have nothing that all cannot have their counterpart of
+      on the same terms!"
+
+flashing it forth like a banner, making it draw the instant allegiance of
+every man and woman who loves justice. All occupations, however homely,
+all developments of the activities of man, need the poet's recognition,
+because every man needs the assurance that for him also the materials out
+of which to build up a great and satisfying life lie to hand, the sole
+magic in the use of them, all of the right stuff in the right hands.
+Hence those patient enumerations of every conceivable kind of industry:--
+
+  "In them far more than you estimated--in them far less also."
+
+Far more as a means, next to nothing as an end: whereas we are wont to
+take it the other way, and think the result something, but the means a
+weariness. Out of all come strength, and the cheerfulness of strength. I
+murmured not a little, to say the truth, under these enumerations, at
+first. But now I think that not only is their purpose a justification, but
+that the musical ear and vividness of perception of the poet have enabled
+him to perform this task also with strength and grace, and that they are
+harmonious as well as necessary parts of the great whole.
+
+Nor do I sympathize with those who grumble at the unexpected words that
+turn up now and then. A quarrel with words is always, more or less, a
+quarrel with meanings; and here we are to be as genial and as wide as
+nature, and quarrel with nothing. If the thing a word stands for exists by
+divine appointment (and what does not so exist?), the word need never be
+ashamed of itself; the shorter and more direct, the better. It is a gain
+to make friends with it, and see it in good company. Here at all events,
+"poetic diction" would not serve,--not pretty, soft, colourless words,
+laid by in lavender for the special uses of poetry, that have had none of
+the wear and tear of daily life; but such as have stood most, as tell of
+human heart-beats, as fit closest to the sense, and have taken deep hues
+of association from the varied experiences of life--those are the words
+wanted here. We only ask to seize and be seized swiftly, over-masteringly,
+by the great meanings. We see with the eyes of the soul, listen with the
+ears of the soul; the poor old words that have served so many generations
+for purposes, good, bad, and indifferent, and become warped and blurred in
+the process, grow young again, regenerate, translucent. It is not mere
+delight they give us,--_that_ the "sweet singers," with their subtly
+wrought gifts, their mellifluous speech, can give too in their degree; it
+is such life and health as enable us to pluck delights for ourselves out
+of every hour of the day, and taste the sunshine that ripened the corn in
+the crust we eat (I often seem to myself to do that).
+
+Out of the scorn of the present came skepticism; and out of the large,
+loving acceptance of it comes faith. If _now_ is so great and beautiful, I
+need no arguments to make me believe that the _nows_ of the past and of
+the future were and will be great and beautiful, too.
+
+  "I know I am deathless.
+  I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's compass.
+  I know I shall not pass, like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick
+      at night.
+  I know I am august.
+  I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.
+
+  "My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite:
+  I laugh at what you call dissolution,
+  And I know the amplitude of Time."
+
+  "No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and Death."
+
+You argued rightly that my confidence would not be betrayed by any of the
+poems in this book. None of them troubled me even for a moment; because I
+saw at a glance that it was not, as men had supposed, the heights brought
+down to the depths, but the depths lifted up level with the sunlit
+heights, that they might become clear and sunlit, too. Always, for a
+woman, a veil woven out of her own soul--never touched upon even, with a
+rough hand, by this poet. But, for a man, a daring, fearless pride in
+himself, not a mock-modesty woven out of delusions--a very poor imitation
+of a woman's. Do they not see that this fearless pride, this complete
+acceptance of themselves, is needful for her pride, her justification?
+What! is it all so ignoble, so base, that it will not bear the honest
+light of speech from lips so gifted with "the divine power to use words?"
+Then what hateful, bitter humiliation for her, to have to give herself up
+to the reality! Do you think there is ever a bride who does not taste more
+or less this bitterness in her cup? But who put it there? It must surely
+be man's fault, not God's, that she has to say to herself, "Soul, look
+another way--you have no part in this. Motherhood is beautiful, fatherhood
+is beautiful; but the dawn of fatherhood and motherhood is not beautiful."
+Do they really think that God is ashamed of what he has made and
+appointed? And, if not, surely it is somewhat superfluous that they should
+undertake to be so for him.
+
+  "The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,"
+
+Of a woman above all. It is true that instinct of silence I spoke of is a
+beautiful, imperishable part of nature, too. But it is not beautiful when
+it means an ignominious shame brooding darkly. Shame is like a very
+flexible veil, that follows faithfully the shape of what it
+covers,--beautiful when it hides a beautiful thing, ugly when it hides an
+ugly one. It has not covered what was beautiful here; it has covered a
+mean distrust of a man's self and of his Creator. It was needed that this
+silence, this evil spell, should for once be broken, and the daylight let
+in, that the dark cloud lying under might be scattered to the winds. It
+was needed that one who could here indicate for us "the path between
+reality and the soul" should speak. That is what these beautiful, despised
+poems, the "Children of Adam," do, read by the light that glows out of the
+rest of the volume: light of a clear, strong faith in God, of an
+unfathomably deep and tender love for humanity,--light shed out of a soul
+that is "possessed of itself."
+
+  "Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
+  Corroborating for ever the triumph of things."
+
+Now silence may brood again; but lovingly, happily, as protecting what is
+beautiful, not as hiding what is unbeautiful; consciously enfolding a
+sweet and sacred mystery--august even as the mystery of Death, the dawn as
+the setting: kindred grandeurs, which to eyes that are opened shed a
+hallowing beauty on all that surrounds and preludes them.
+
+  "O vast and well-veiled Death!
+
+  "O the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments,
+      for reasons!"
+
+He who can thus look with fearlessness at the beauty of Death may well
+dare to teach us to look with fearless, untroubled eyes at the perfect
+beauty of Love in all its appointed realizations. Now none need turn away
+their thoughts with pain or shame; though only lovers and poets may say
+what they will,--the lover to his own, the poet to all, because all are in
+a sense his own. None need fear that this will be harmful to the woman.
+How should there be such a flaw in the scheme of creation that, for the
+two with whom there is no complete life, save in closest sympathy, perfect
+union, what is natural and happy for the one should be baneful to the
+other? The utmost faithful freedom of speech, such as there is in these
+poems, creates in her no thought or feeling that shuns the light of
+heaven, none that are not as innocent and serenely fair as the flowers
+that grow; would lead, not to harm, but to such deep and tender affection
+as makes harm or the thought of harm simply impossible. Far more beautiful
+care than man is aware of has been taken in the making of her, to fit her
+to be his mate. God has taken such care that _he_ need take none; none,
+that is, which consists in disguisement, insincerity, painful hushing-up
+of his true, grand, initiating nature. And, as regards the poet's
+utterances, which, it might be thought, however harmless in themselves,
+would prove harmful by falling into the hands of those for whom they are
+manifestly unsuitable, I believe that even here fear is needless. For her
+innocence is folded round with such thick folds of ignorance, till the
+right way and time for it to accept knowledge, that what is unsuitable is
+also unintelligible to her; and, if no dark shadow from without be cast on
+the white page by misconstruction or by foolish mystery and hiding away of
+it, no hurt will ensue from its passing freely through her hands.
+
+This is so, though it is little understood or realized by men. Wives and
+mothers will learn through the poet that there is rejoicing grandeur and
+beauty there wherein their hearts have so longed to find it; where foolish
+men, traitors to themselves, poorly comprehending the grandeur of their
+own or the beauty of a woman's nature, have taken such pains to make her
+believe there was none,--nothing but miserable discrepancy.
+
+One of the hardest things to make a child understand is, that down
+underneath your feet, if you go far enough, you come to blue sky and stars
+again; that there really is no "down" for the world, but only in every
+direction an "up." And that this is an all-embracing truth, including
+within its scope every created thing, and, with deepest significance,
+every part, faculty, attribute, healthful impulse, mind, and body of a
+man (each and all facing towards and related to the Infinite on every
+side), is what we grown children find it hardest to realize, too. Novalis
+said, "We touch heaven when we lay our hand on the human body"; which, if
+it mean anything, must mean an ample justification of the poet who has
+dared to be the poet of the body as well as of the soul,--to treat it with
+the freedom and grandeur of an ancient sculptor.
+
+  "Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy of the muse:--I say the
+      form complete is worthier far.
+
+  "These are not parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul.
+
+  "O, I say now these are soul."
+
+But while Novalis--who gazed at the truth a long way off, up in the air,
+in a safe, comfortable, German fashion--has been admiringly quoted by high
+authorities, the great American who has dared to rise up and wrestle with
+it, and bring it alive and full of power in the midst of us, has been
+greeted with a very different kind of reception, as has happened a few
+times before in the world in similar cases. Yet I feel deeply persuaded
+that a perfectly fearless, candid, ennobling treatment of the life of the
+body (so inextricably intertwined with, so potent in its influence on the
+life of the soul) will prove of inestimable value to all earnest and
+aspiring natures, impatient of the folly of the long-prevalent belief that
+it is because of the greatness of the spirit that it has learned to
+despise the body, and to ignore its influences; knowing well that it is,
+on the contrary, just because the spirit is not great enough, not healthy
+and vigorous enough, to transfuse itself into the life of the body,
+elevating that and making it holy by its own triumphant intensity;
+knowing, too, how the body avenges this by dragging the soul down to the
+level assigned itself. Whereas the spirit must lovingly embrace the body,
+as the roots of a tree embrace the ground, drawing thence rich
+nourishment, warmth, impulse. Or, rather, the body is itself the root of
+the soul--that whereby it grows and feeds. The great tide of healthful
+life that carries all before it must surge through the whole man, not beat
+to and fro in one corner of his brain.
+
+  "O the life of my senses and flesh, transcending my senses and flesh!"
+
+For the sake of all that is highest, a truthful recognition of this life,
+and especially of that of it which underlies the fundamental ties of
+humanity--the love of husband and wife, fatherhood, motherhood--is needed.
+Religion needs it, now at last alive to the fact that the basis of all
+true worship is comprised in "the great lesson of reception, neither
+preference nor denial," interpreting, loving, rejoicing in all that is
+created, fearing and despising nothing.
+
+  "I accept reality, and dare not question it."
+
+The dignity of a man, the pride and affection of a woman, need it too. And
+so does the intellect. For science has opened up such elevating views of
+the mystery of material existence that, if poetry had not bestirred
+herself to handle this theme in her own way, she would have been left
+behind by her plodding sister. Science knows that matter is not, as we
+fancied, certain stolid atoms which the forces of nature vibrate through
+and push and pull about; but that the forces and the atoms are one
+mysterious, imperishable identity, neither conceivable without the other.
+She knows, as well as the poet, that destructibility is not one of
+nature's words; that it is only the relationship of things--tangibility,
+visibility--that are transitory. She knows that body and soul are one, and
+proclaims it undauntedly, regardless, and rightly regardless, of
+inferences. Timid onlookers, aghast, think it means that soul is
+body--means death for the soul. But the poet knows it means body is
+soul--the great whole imperishable; in life and in death continually
+changing substance, always retaining identity. For, if the man of science
+is happy about the atoms, if he is not baulked or baffled by apparent
+decay or destruction, but can see far enough into the dimness to know that
+not only is each atom imperishable, but that its endowments,
+characteristics, affinities, electric and other attractions and
+repulsions--however suspended, hid, dormant, masked, when it enters into
+new combinations--remain unchanged, be it for thousands of years, and,
+when it is again set free, manifest themselves in the old way, shall not
+the poet be happy about the vital whole? shall the highest force, the
+vital, that controls and compels into complete subservience for its own
+purposes the rest, be the only one that is destructible? and the love and
+thought that endow the whole be less enduring than the gravitating,
+chemical, electric powers that endow its atoms? But identity is the
+essence of love and thought--I still I, you still you. Certainly no man
+need ever again be scared by the "dark hush" and the little handful of
+refuse.
+
+  "You are not scattered to the winds--you gather certainly and safely
+      around yourself."
+
+  "Sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together."
+
+  "All goes onward and outward: nothing collapses."
+
+  "What I am, I am of my body; and what I shall be, I shall be of my
+      body."
+
+  "The body parts away at last for the journeys of the soul."
+
+Science knows that whenever a thing passes from a solid to a subtle air,
+power is set free to a wider scope of action. The poet knows it too, and
+is dazzled as he turns his eyes toward "the superb vistas of death." He
+knows that "the perpetual transfers and promotions" and "the amplitude of
+time" are for a man as well as for the earth. The man of science, with
+unwearied, self-denying toil, finds the letters and joins them into words.
+But the poet alone can make complete sentences. The man of science
+furnishes the premises; but it is the poet who draws the final conclusion.
+Both together are "swiftly and surely preparing a future greater than all
+the past." But, while the man of science bequeaths to it the fruits of
+his toil, the poet, this mighty poet, bequeaths himself--"Death making him
+really undying." He will "stand as nigh as the nighest" to these men and
+women. For he taught them, in words which breathe out his very heart and
+soul into theirs, that "love of comrades" which, like the "soft-born
+measureless light," makes wholesome and fertile every spot it penetrates
+to, lighting up dark social and political problems, and kindling into a
+genial glow that great heart of justice which is the life-source of
+Democracy. He, the beloved friend of all, initiated for them a "new and
+superb friendship"; whispered that secret of a godlike pride in a man's
+self, and a perfect trust in woman, whereby their love for each other, no
+longer poisoned and stifled, but basking in the light of God's smile, and
+sending up to him a perfume of gratitude, attains at last a divine and
+tender completeness. He gave a faith-compelling utterance to that "wisdom
+which is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and of
+the excellence of things." Happy America, that he should be her son! One
+sees, indeed, that only a young giant of a nation could produce this kind
+of greatness, so full of the ardour, the elasticity, the inexhaustible
+vigour and freshness, the joyousness, the audacity of youth. But I, for
+one, cannot grudge anything to America. For, after all, the young giant is
+the old English giant--the great English race renewing its youth in that
+magnificent land, "Mexican-breathed, Arctic-braced," and girding up its
+loins to start on a new career that shall match with the greatness of the
+new home.
+
+
+
+
+A CONFESSION OF FAITH[2]
+
+
+"Of genius in the Fine Arts," wrote Wordsworth, "the only infallible sign
+is the widening the sphere of human sensibility for the delight, honour,
+and benefit of human nature. Genius is the introduction of a new element
+into the intellectual universe, or, if that be not allowed, it is the
+application of powers to objects on which they had not before been
+exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce
+effects hitherto unknown. What is all this but an advance or conquest made
+by the soul of the poet? Is it to be supposed that the reader can make
+progress of this kind like an Indian prince or general stretched on his
+palanquin and borne by slaves? No; he is invigorated and inspirited by his
+leader in order that he may exert himself, for he cannot proceed in
+quiescence, he cannot be carried like a dead weight. Therefore to create
+taste is to call forth and bestow power."
+
+A great poet, then, is "a challenge and summons"; and the question first
+of all is not whether we like or dislike him, but whether we are capable
+of meeting that challenge, of stepping out of our habitual selves to
+answer that summons. He works on Nature's plan: Nature, who teaches
+nothing but supplies infinite material to learn from; who never preaches
+but drives home her meanings by the resistless eloquence of effects.
+Therefore the poet makes greater demands upon his reader than any other
+man. For it is not a question of swallowing his ideas or admiring his
+handiwork merely, but of seeing, feeling, enjoying, as he sees, feels,
+enjoys. "The messages of great poems to each man and woman are," says Walt
+Whitman, "come to us on equal terms, only then can you understand us. We
+are no better than you; what we enclose you enclose, what we enjoy you may
+enjoy"--no better than you potentially, that is; but if you would
+understand us the potential must become the actual, the dormant sympathies
+must awaken and broaden, the dulled perceptions clear themselves and let
+in undreamed of delights, the wonder-working imagination must respond, the
+ear attune itself, the languid soul inhale large draughts of love and hope
+and courage, those "empyreal airs" that vitalize the poet's world. No
+wonder the poet is long in finding his audience; no wonder he has to abide
+the "inexorable tests of Time," which, if indeed he be great, slowly turns
+the handful into hundreds, the hundreds into thousands, and at last having
+done its worst, grudgingly passes him on into the ranks of the Immortals.
+
+Meanwhile let not the handful who believe that such a destiny awaits a man
+of our time cease to give a reason for the faith that is in them.
+
+So far as the suffrages of his own generation go Walt Whitman may, like
+Wordsworth, tell of the "love, the admiration, the indifference, the
+slight, the aversion, and even the contempt" with which his poems have
+been received; but the love and admiration are from even a smaller
+number, the aversion, the contempt more vehement, more universal and
+persistent than Wordsworth ever encountered. For the American is a more
+daring innovator; he cuts loose from precedent, is a very Columbus who has
+sailed forth alone on perilous seas to seek new shores, to seek a new
+world for the soul, a world that shall give scope and elevation and beauty
+to the changed and changing events, aspirations, conditions of modern
+life. To new aims, new methods; therefore let not the reader approach
+these poems as a judge, comparing, testing, measuring by what has gone
+before, but as a willing learner, an unprejudiced seeker for whatever may
+delight and nourish and exalt the soul. Neither let him be abashed nor
+daunted by the weight of adverse opinion, the contempt and denial which
+have been heaped upon the great American even though it be the contempt
+and denial of the capable, the cultivated, the recognized authorities; for
+such is the usual lot of the pioneer in whatever field. In religion it is
+above all to the earnest and conscientious believer that the Reformer has
+appeared a blasphemer, and in the world of literature it is equally
+natural that the most careful student, that the warmest lover of the
+accepted masterpieces, should be the most hostile to one who forsakes the
+methods by which, or at any rate, in company with which, those triumphs
+have been achieved. "But," said the wise Goethe, "I will listen to any
+man's convictions; you may keep your doubts, your negations to yourself, I
+have plenty of my own." For heartfelt convictions are rare things.
+Therefore I make bold to indicate the scope and source of power in Walt
+Whitman's writings, starting from no wider ground than their effect upon
+an individual mind. It is not criticism I have to offer; least of all any
+discussion of the question of form or formlessness in these poems, deeply
+convinced as I am that when great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please. But my aim is rather to suggest such trains of thought,
+such experience of life as having served to put me _en rapport_ with this
+poet may haply find here and there a reader who is thereby helped to the
+same end. Hence I quote just as freely from the prose (especially from
+"Democratic Vistas" and the preface to the first issue of "Leaves of
+Grass," 1855) as from his poems, and more freely, perhaps, from those
+parts that have proved a stumbling-block than from those whose conspicuous
+beauty assures them acceptance.
+
+Fifteen years ago, with feelings partly of indifference, partly of
+antagonism--for I had heard none but ill words of them--I first opened
+Walt Whitman's poems. But as I read I became conscious of receiving the
+most powerful influence that had ever come to me from any source. What was
+the spell? It was that in them humanity has, in a new sense, found itself;
+for the first time has dared to accept itself without disparagement,
+without reservation. For the first time an unrestricted faith in all that
+is and in the issues of all that happens has burst forth triumphantly into
+song.
+
+  "... The rapture of the hallelujah sent
+  From all that breathes and is ..."
+
+rings through these poems. They carry up into the region of Imagination
+and Passion those vaster and more profound conceptions of the universe and
+of man reached by centuries of that indomitably patient organized search
+for knowledge, that "skilful cross-questioning of things" called science.
+
+  "O truth of the earth I am determined to press my way toward you.
+  Sound your voice! I scale the mountains, I dive in the sea after you,"
+
+cried science; and the earth and the sky have answered, and continue
+inexhaustibly to answer her appeal. And now at last the day dawns which
+Wordsworth prophesied of: "The man of science," he wrote, "seeks truth as
+a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his
+solitude. The Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with
+him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly
+companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is
+the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science, it
+is the first and last of all knowledge; it is immortal as the heart of
+man. If the labours of men of science should ever create any material
+revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions
+which we habitually receive, the Poet will then sleep no more than at
+present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science not
+only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side
+carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of science itself. If the
+time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized
+to man, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood,
+the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will
+welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the
+household of man." That time approaches: a new heaven and a new earth
+await us when the knowledge grasped by science is realized, conceived as a
+whole, related to the world within us by the shaping spirit of
+imagination. Not in vain, already, for this Poet have they pierced the
+darkness of the past, and read here and there a word of the earth's
+history before human eyes beheld it; each word of infinite significance,
+because involving in it secrets of the whole. A new anthem of the slow,
+vast, mystic dawn of life he sings in the name of humanity.
+
+  "I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I am an encloser of things to
+      be.
+
+  "My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs;
+  On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps;
+  All below duly travell'd and still I mount and mount.
+
+  "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me:
+  Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know
+  I was even there;
+  I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
+  And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
+
+  "Long I was hugg'd close--long and long.
+
+  "Immense have been the preparations for me,
+  Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.
+  Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;
+  For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
+  They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
+
+  "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me;
+  My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it.
+
+  "For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
+  The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
+  Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
+  Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with
+      care.
+
+  "All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me;
+  Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul."
+
+Not in vain have they pierced space as well as time and found "a vast
+similitude interlocking all."
+
+  "I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
+  And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cypher, edge but the rim of
+      the farther systems.
+
+  "Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
+  Outward, and outward, and for ever outward.
+
+  "My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels,
+  He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
+  And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
+
+  "There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage;
+  If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were
+      this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in
+      the long run;
+  We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
+  And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther."
+
+Not in vain for him have they penetrated into the substances of things to
+find that what we thought poor, dead, inert matter is (in Clerk Maxwell's
+words) "a very sanctuary of minuteness and power where molecules obey the
+laws of their existence, and clash together in fierce collision, or
+grapple in yet more fierce embrace, building up in secret the forms of
+visible things"; each stock and stone a busy group of Ariels plying
+obediently their hidden tasks.
+
+  "Why! who makes much of a miracle?
+  As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
+  Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
+  Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
+      same, ...
+  Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
+      and all that concerns them,
+  All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles."
+
+The natural _is_ the supernatural, says Carlyle. It is the message that
+comes to our time from all quarters alike; from poetry, from science, from
+the deep brooding of the student of human history. Science materialistic?
+Rather it is the current theology that is materialistic in comparison.
+Science may truly be said to have annihilated our gross and brutish
+conceptions of matter, and to have revealed it to us as subtle, spiritual,
+energetic beyond our powers of realization. It is for the Poet to increase
+these powers of realization. He it is who must awaken us to the perception
+of a new heaven and a new earth here where we stand on this old earth. He
+it is who must, in Walt Whitman's words, indicate the path between reality
+and the soul.
+
+Above all is every thought and feeling in these poems touched by the light
+of the great revolutionary truth that man, unfolded through vast stretches
+of time out of lowly antecedents, is a rising, not a fallen creature;
+emerging slowly from purely animal life; as slowly as the strata are piled
+and the ocean beds hollowed; whole races still barely emerged, countless
+individuals in the foremost races barely emerged: "the wolf, the snake,
+the hog" yet lingering in the best; but new ideals achieved, and others
+come in sight, so that what once seemed fit is fit no longer, is adhered
+to uneasily and with shame; the conflicts and antagonisms between what we
+call good and evil, at once the sign and the means of emergence, and
+needing to account for them no supposed primeval disaster, no outside
+power thwarting and marring the Divine handiwork, the perfect fitness to
+its time and place of all that has proceeded from the Great Source. In a
+word that Evil is relative; is that which the slowly developing reason and
+conscience bid us leave behind. The prowess of the lion, the subtlety of
+the fox, are cruelty and duplicity in man.
+
+  "Silent and amazed, when a little boy,
+  I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements,
+  As contending against some being or influence."
+
+says the poet. And elsewhere, "Faith, very old now, scared away by
+science"--by the daylight science lets in upon our miserable, inadequate,
+idolatrous conceptions of God and of His works, and on the
+sophistications, subterfuges, moral impossibilities, by which we have
+endeavoured to reconcile the irreconcilable--the coexistence of omnipotent
+Goodness and an absolute Power of Evil--"Faith must be brought back by the
+same power that caused her departure: restored with new sway, deeper,
+wider, higher than ever." And what else, indeed, at bottom, is science so
+busy at? For what is Faith? "Faith," to borrow venerable and unsurpassed
+words, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
+seen." And how obtain evidence of things not seen but by a knowledge of
+things seen? And how know what we may hope for, but by knowing the truth
+of what is, here and now? For seen and unseen are parts of the Great
+Whole: all the parts interdependent, closely related; all alike have
+proceeded from and are manifestations of the Divine Source. Nature is not
+the barrier between us and the unseen but the link, the communication;
+she, too, has something behind appearances, has an unseen soul; she, too,
+is made of "innumerable energies." Knowledge is not faith, but it is
+faith's indispensable preliminary and starting ground. Faith runs ahead to
+fetch glad tidings for us; but if she start from a basis of ignorance and
+illusion, how can she but run in the wrong direction? "Suppose," said that
+impetuous lover and seeker of truth, Clifford, "Suppose all moving things
+to be suddenly stopped at some instant, and that we could be brought
+fresh, without any previous knowledge, to look at the petrified scene. The
+spectacle would be immensely absurd. Crowds of people would be senselessly
+standing on one leg in the street looking at one another's backs; others
+would be wasting their time by sitting in a train in a place difficult to
+get at, nearly all with their mouths open, and their bodies in some
+contorted, unrestful posture. Clocks would stand with their pendulums on
+one side. Everything would be disorderly, conflicting, in its wrong place.
+But once remember that the world is in motion, is going somewhere, and
+everything will be accounted for and found just as it should be. Just so
+great a change of view, just so complete an explanation is given to us
+when we recognize that the nature of man and beast and of all the world is
+_going somewhere_. The maladaptions in organic nature are seen to be steps
+toward the improvement or discarding of imperfect organs. The _baneful
+strife which lurketh inborn in us, and goeth on the way with us to hurt
+us_, is found to be the relic of a time of savage or even lower
+condition." "Going somewhere!" That is the meaning then of all our
+perplexities! That changes a mystery which stultified and contradicted the
+best we knew into a mystery which teaches, allures, elevates; which
+harmonizes what we know with what we hope. By it we begin to
+
+  "... see by the glad light,
+  And breathe the sweet air of futurity."
+
+The scornful laughter of Carlyle as he points with one hand to the
+baseness, ignorance, folly, cruelty around us, and with the other to the
+still unsurpassed poets, sages, heroes, saints of antiquity, whilst he
+utters the words "progress of the species!" touches us no longer when we
+have begun to realize "the amplitude of time"; when we know something of
+the scale by which Nature measures out the years to accomplish her
+smallest essential modification or development; know that to call a few
+thousands or tens of thousands of years antiquity, is to speak as a child,
+and that in her chronology the great days of Egypt and Syria, of Greece
+and Rome are affairs of yesterday.
+
+  "Each of us inevitable;
+  Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth;
+  Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth;
+  Each of us here as divinely as any are here.
+
+  "You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly hair'd hordes!
+  You own'd persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
+  You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of
+      brutes!
+  I dare not refuse you--the scope of the world, and of time and space are
+      upon me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "I do not prefer others so very much before you either;
+  I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand;
+  (You will come forward in due time to my side.)
+  My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole
+      earth;
+  I have look'd for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
+      lands;
+  I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
+
+  "O vapours! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
+      continents and fallen down there, for reasons;
+  I think I have blown with you, O winds;
+  O waters, I have finger'd every shore with you.
+
+  "I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run
+      through;
+  I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on the high
+      embedded rocks, to cry thence.
+
+      "_Salut au monde!_
+  What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities
+      myself;
+  All islands to which birds wing their way I wing my way myself.
+
+      "Toward all,
+  I raise high the perpendicular hand--I make the signal,
+  To remain after me in sight forever,
+  For all the haunts and homes of men."
+
+But "Hold!" says the reader, especially if he be one who loves science,
+who loves to feel the firm ground under his feet, "That the species has a
+great future before it we may well believe; already we see the
+indications. But that the individual has is quite another matter. We can
+but balance probabilities here, and the probabilities are very heavy on
+the wrong side; the poets must throw in weighty matter indeed to turn the
+scale the other way!" Be it so: but ponder a moment what science herself
+has to say bearing on this theme; what are the widest, deepest facts she
+has reached down to. INDESTRUCTIBILITY: Amidst ceaseless change and
+seeming decay all the elements, all the forces (if indeed they be not one
+and the same) which operate and substantiate those changes, imperishable;
+neither matter nor force capable of annihilation. Endless transformations,
+disappearances, new combinations, but diminution of the total amount
+never; missing in one place or shape to be found in another, disguised
+ever so long, ready always to re-emerge. "A particle of oxygen," wrote
+Faraday, "is ever a particle of oxygen; nothing can in the least wear it.
+If it enters into combination and disappears as oxygen, if it pass through
+a thousand combinations, animal, vegetable, mineral--if it lie hid for a
+thousand years and then be evolved, it is oxygen with its first qualities
+neither more nor less." So then out of the universe is no door. CONTINUITY
+again is one of Nature's irrevocable words; everything the result and
+outcome of what went before; no gaps, no jumps; always a connecting
+principle which carries forward the great scheme of things as a related
+whole, which subtly links past and present, like and unlike. Nothing
+breaks with its past. "It is not," says Helmholtz, "the definite mass of
+substance which now constitutes the body to which the continuance of the
+individual is attached. Just as the flame remains the same in appearance
+and continues to exist with the same form and structure although it draws
+every moment fresh combustible vapour and fresh oxygen from the air into
+the vortex of its ascending current; and just as the wave goes on in
+unaltered form and is yet being reconstructed every moment from fresh
+particles of water, so is it also in the living being. For the material of
+the body like that of flame is subject to continuous and comparatively
+rapid change--a change the more rapid the livelier the activity of the
+organs in question. Some constituents are renewed from day to day, some
+from month to month, and others only after years. That which continues to
+exist as a particular individual is, like the wave and the flame, only the
+_form of motion_ which continually attracts fresh matter into its vortex
+and expels the old. The observer with a deaf ear recognizes the vibration
+of sound as long as it is visible and can be felt, bound up with other
+heavy matter. Are our senses in reference to life like the deaf ear in
+this respect?"
+
+  "You are not thrown to the winds--you gather certainly and safely
+      around yourself;
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and
+      father--it is to identify you;
+  It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
+  Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form'd in you,
+  You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.
+
+  "O Death! the voyage of Death!
+  The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments for
+      reasons;
+  Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd or reduced to
+      powder or buried.
+  My real body doubtless left me for other spheres,
+  My voided body, nothing more to me, returning to the purifications,
+      farther offices, eternal uses of the earth."
+
+Yes, they go their way, those dismissed atoms with all their energies and
+affinities unimpaired. But they are not all; the will, the affections, the
+intellect are just as real as those affinities and energies, and there is
+strict account of all; nothing slips through; there is no door out of the
+universe. But they are qualities of a personality, of a self, not of an
+atom but of what uses and dismisses those atoms. If the qualities are
+indestructible so must the self be. The little heap of ashes, the puff of
+gas, do you pretend that is all that was Shakespeare? The rest of him
+lives in his works, you say? But he lived and was just the same man after
+those works were produced. The world gained, but he lost nothing of
+himself, rather grew and strengthened in the production of them.
+
+Still farther, those faculties with which we seek for knowledge are only a
+part of us, there is something behind which wields them, something that
+those faculties cannot turn themselves in upon and comprehend; for the
+part cannot compass the whole. Yet there it is with the irrefragable proof
+of consciousness. Who should be the mouthpiece of this whole? Who but the
+poet, the man most fully "possessed of his own soul," the man of the
+largest consciousness; fullest of love and sympathy which gather into his
+own life the experiences of others, fullest of imagination; that quality
+whereof Wordsworth says that it
+
+        "... in truth
+  Is but another name for absolute power,
+  And clearest insight, amplitude of mind
+  And reason in her most exalted mood."
+
+Let Walt Whitman speak for us:
+
+  "And I know I am solid and sound;
+  To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow:
+  All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
+
+  "I know I am deathless;
+  I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's compass;
+  I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick
+      at night.
+
+  "I know I am august;
+  I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood;
+  I see that the elementary laws never apologize;
+  (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after
+      all.)
+
+  "I exist as I am--that is enough;
+  If no other in the world be aware I sit content;
+  And if each one and all be aware, I sit content.
+
+  "One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself;
+  And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand or ten million
+      years,
+  I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
+
+  "My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite;
+  I laugh at what you call dissolution;
+  And I know the amplitude of time."
+
+What lies through the portal of death is hidden from us; but the laws that
+govern that unknown land are not all hidden from us, for they govern here
+and now; they are immutable, eternal.
+
+  "Of and in all these things
+  I have dream'd that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us
+      changed,
+  I have dream'd that heroes and good doers shall be under the present and
+      past law,
+  And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and
+      past law,
+  For I have dream'd that the law they are under now is enough."
+
+And the law not to be eluded is the law of consequences, the law of silent
+teaching. That is the meaning of disease, pain, remorse. Slow to learn are
+we; but success is assured with limitless Beneficence as our teacher, with
+limitless time as our opportunity. Already we begin--
+
+  "To know the Universe itself as a road--as many roads
+  As roads for travelling souls.
+  For ever alive; for ever forward.
+  Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble,
+      dissatisfied;
+  Desperate, proud, fond, sick;
+  Accepted by men, rejected by men.
+  They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go.
+  But I know they go toward the best, toward something great;
+  The whole Universe indicates that it is good."
+
+Going somewhere! And if it is impossible for us to see whither, as in the
+nature of things it must be, how can we be adequate judges of the way? how
+can we but often grope and be full of perplexity? But we know that a
+smooth path, a paradise of a world, could only nurture fools, cowards,
+sluggards. "Joy is the great unfolder," but pain is the great enlightener,
+the great stimulus in certain directions, alike of man and beast. How else
+could the self-preserving instincts, and all that grows out of them, have
+been evoked? How else those wonders of the moral world, fortitude,
+patience, sympathy? And if the lesson be too hard comes Death, come "the
+sure-enwinding arms of Death" to end it, and speed us to the unknown land.
+
+      "... Man is only weak
+  Through his mistrust and want of hope,"
+
+wrote Wordsworth. But man's mistrust of himself is, at bottom, mistrust of
+the central Fount of power and goodness whence he has issued. Here comes
+one who plucks out of religion its heart of fear, and puts into it a heart
+of boundless faith and joy; a faith that beggars previous faiths because
+it sees that All is good, not part bad and part good; that there is no
+flaw in the scheme of things, no primeval disaster, no counteracting
+power; but orderly and sure growth and development, and that infinite
+Goodness and Wisdom embrace and ever lead forward all that exists. Are you
+troubled that He is an unknown God; that we cannot by searching find Him
+out? Why, it would be a poor prospect for the Universe if otherwise; if,
+embryos that we are, we could compass Him in our thoughts:
+
+  "I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the
+      least."
+
+It is the double misfortune of the churches that they do not study God in
+His works--man and Nature and their relations to each other; and that they
+do profess to set Him forth; that they worship therefore a God of man's
+devising, an idol made by men's minds it is true, not by their hands, but
+none the less an idol. "Leaves are not more shed out of trees than Bibles
+are shed out of you," says the poet. They were the best of their time, but
+not of all time; they need renewing as surely as there is such a thing as
+growth, as surely as knowledge nourishes and sustains to further
+development; as surely as time unrolls new pages of the mighty scheme of
+existence. Nobly has George Sand, too, written: "Everything is divine,
+even matter; everything is superhuman, even man. God is everywhere. He is
+in me in a measure proportioned to the little that I am. My present life
+separates me from Him just in the degree determined by the actual state of
+childhood of our race. Let me content myself in all my seeking to feel
+after Him, and to possess of Him as much as this imperfect soul can take
+in with the intellectual sense I have. The day will come when we shall no
+longer talk about God idly; nay, when we shall talk about Him as little
+as possible. We shall cease to set Him forth dogmatically, to dispute
+about His nature. We shall put compulsion on no one to pray to Him, we
+shall leave the whole business of worship within the sanctuary of each
+man's conscience. And this will happen when we are really religious."
+
+In what sense may Walt Whitman be called the Poet of Democracy? It is as
+giving utterance to this profoundly religious faith in man. He is rather
+the prophet of what is to be than the celebrator of what is. "Democracy,"
+he writes, "is a word the real gist of which still sleeps quite
+unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out
+of which its syllables have come from pen or tongue. It is a great word,
+whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet
+to be enacted. It is in some sort younger brother of another great and
+often used word, Nature, whose history also waits unwritten." Political
+democracy, now taking shape, is the house to live in, and whilst what we
+demand of it is room for all, fair chances for all, none disregarded or
+left out as of no account, the main question, the kind of life that is to
+be led in that house is altogether beyond the ken of the statesmen as
+such, and is involved in those deepest facts of the nature and destiny of
+man which are the themes of Walt Whitman's writings. The practical outcome
+of that exalted and all-accepting faith in the scheme of things, and in
+man, toward whom all has led up and in whom all concentrates as the
+manifestation, the revelation of Divine Power is a changed estimate of
+himself; a higher reverence for, a loftier belief in the heritage of
+himself; a perception that pride, not humility, is the true homage to his
+Maker; that "noblesse oblige" is for the Race, not for a handful; that it
+is mankind and womankind and their high destiny which constrain to
+greatness, which can no longer stoop to meanness and lies and base aims,
+but must needs clothe themselves in "the majesty of honest dealing"
+(majestic because demanding courage as good as the soldier's, self-denial
+as good as the saint's for every-day affairs), and walk erect and
+fearless, a law to themselves, sternest of all lawgivers. Looking back to
+the palmy days of feudalism, especially as immortalized in Shakespeare's
+plays, what is it we find most admirable? what is it that fascinates? It
+is the noble pride, the lofty self-respect; the dignity, the courage and
+audacity of its great personages. But this pride, this dignity rested half
+upon a true, half upon a hollow foundation; half upon intrinsic qualities,
+half upon the ignorance and brutishness of the great masses of the people,
+whose helpless submission and easily dazzled imaginations made
+stepping-stones to the elevation of the few, and "hedged round kings,"
+with a specious kind of "divinity." But we have our faces turned toward a
+new day, and toward heights on which there is room for all.
+
+  "By God, I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart
+      of on the same terms"
+
+is the motto of the great personages, the great souls of to-day. _On the
+same terms_, for that is Nature's law and cannot be abrogated, the
+reaping as you sow. But all shall have the chance to sow well. This is
+pride indeed! Not a pride that isolates, but that can take no rest till
+our common humanity is lifted out of the mire everywhere, "a pride that
+cannot stretch too far because sympathy stretches with it":
+
+  "Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
+  These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you;
+  These immense meadows--these interminable rivers--
+  You are immense and interminable as they;
+  These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
+      dissolution--you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
+  Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
+      passion, dissolution.
+
+  "The hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency;
+  Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever
+      you are promulges itself;
+  Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is
+      scanted;
+  Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance and ennui, what you are
+      picks its way."
+
+This is indeed a pride that is "calming and excellent to the soul"; that
+"dissolves poverty from its need and riches from its conceit."
+
+And humility? Is there, then, no place for that virtue so much praised by
+the haughty? Humility is the sweet spontaneous grace of an aspiring,
+finely developed nature which sees always heights ahead still unclimbed,
+which outstrips itself in eager longing for excellence still unattained.
+Genuine humility takes good care of itself as men rise in the scale of
+being; for every height climbed discloses still new heights beyond. Or it
+is a wise caution in fortune's favourites lest they themselves should
+mistake, as the unthinking crowd around do, the glitter reflected back
+upon them by their surroundings for some superiority inherent in
+themselves. It befits them well if there be also due pride, pride of
+humanity behind. But to say to a man, 'Be humble' is like saying to one
+who has a battle to fight, a race to run, 'You are a poor, feeble
+creature; you are not likely to win and you do not deserve to.' Say rather
+to him, 'Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made
+for victory: go forward with a joyful confidence in that result sooner or
+later, and the sooner or the later depends mainly on yourself.'
+
+"What Christ appeared for in the moral-spiritual field for humankind,
+namely, that in respect to the absolute soul there is in the possession of
+such by each single individual something so transcendent, so incapable of
+gradations (like life) that to that extent it places all being on a common
+level, utterly regardless of the distinctions of intellect, virtue,
+station, or any height or lowliness whatever" is the secret source of that
+deathless sentiment of Equality which how many able heads imagine
+themselves to have slain with ridicule and contempt as Johnson, kicking a
+stone, imagined he had demolished Idealism when he had simply attributed
+to the word an impossible meaning. True, _In_equality is one of Nature's
+words: she moves forward always by means of the exceptional. But the
+moment the move is accomplished, then all her efforts are toward equality,
+toward bringing up the rear to that standpoint. But social inequalities,
+class distinctions, do not stand for or represent Nature's inequalities.
+Precisely the contrary in the long run. They are devices for holding up
+many that would else gravitate down and keeping down many who would else
+rise up; for providing that some should reap who have not sown, and many
+sow without reaping. But literature tallies the ways of Nature; for though
+itself the product of the exceptional, its aim is to draw all men up to
+its own level. The great writer is "hungry for equals day and night," for
+so only can he be fully understood. "The meal is equally set"; all are
+invited. Therefore is literature, whether consciously or not, the greatest
+of all forces on the side of Democracy.
+
+Carlyle has said there is no grand poem in the world but is at bottom a
+biography--the life of a man. Walt Whitman's poems are not the biography
+of a man, but they are his actual presence. It is no vain boast when he
+exclaims,
+
+  "Camerado! this is no book;
+  Who touches this touches a man."
+
+He has infused himself into words in a way that had not before seemed
+possible; and he causes each reader to feel that he himself or herself has
+an actual relationship to him, is a reality full of inexhaustible
+significance and interest to the poet. The power of his book, beyond even
+its great intellectual force, is the power with which he makes this felt;
+his words lay more hold than the grasp of a hand, strike deeper than the
+gaze or the flash of an eye; to those who comprehend him he stands "nigher
+than the nighest."
+
+America has had the shaping of Walt Whitman, and he repays the filial debt
+with a love that knows no stint. Her vast lands with their varied,
+brilliant climes and rich products, her political scheme, her achievements
+and her failures, all have contributed to make these poems what they are
+both directly and indirectly. Above all has that great conflict, the
+Secession War, found voice in him. And if the reader would understand the
+true causes and nature of that war, ostensibly waged between North and
+South, but underneath a tussle for supremacy between the good and the evil
+genius of America (for there were just as many secret sympathizers with
+the secession-slave-power in the North as in the South) he will find the
+clue in the pages of Walt Whitman. Rarely has he risen to a loftier height
+than in the poem which heralds that volcanic upheaval:--
+
+  "Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier and fiercer
+      sweep!
+  Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour'd what the earth gave
+      me;
+  Long I roam'd the woods of the north--long I watch'd Niagara pouring;
+  I travel'd the prairies over, and slept on their breast--
+  I cross'd the Nevadas, I cross'd the plateaus;
+  I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail'd out to sea;
+  I sail'd through the storm, I was refresh'd by the storm;
+  I watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves;
+  I mark'd the white combs where they career'd so high, curling over;
+  I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds;
+  Saw from below what arose and mounted (O superb! O wild as my heart,
+      and powerful!)
+  Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellow'd after the lightning;
+  Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast
+      amid the din they chased each other across the sky;
+  --These, and such as these, I, elate, saw--saw with wonder, yet pensive
+      and masterful;
+  All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me;
+  Yet there with my soul I fed--I fed content, supercilious.
+
+  "'Twas well, O soul! 'twas a good preparation you gave me!
+  Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill;
+  Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us;
+  Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities;
+  Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring;
+  Torrents of men (sources and rills of the Northwest, are you indeed
+      inexhaustible?)
+  What, to pavements and homesteads here--what were those storms of the
+      mountains and sea?
+  What, to passions I witness around me to-day? Was the sea risen?
+  Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?
+  Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage;
+  Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front--Cincinnati, Chicago,
+      unchain'd;
+  --What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here!
+  How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes!
+  How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes
+      of lightning!
+  How DEMOCRACY, with desperate, vengeful port strides on, shown through
+      the dark by those flashes of lightning!
+  (Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark,
+  In a lull of the deafening confusion.)
+
+  "Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! stride with vengeful stroke!
+  And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities!
+  Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good;
+  My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong
+      nutriment,
+  --Long had I walk'd my cities, my country roads, through farms, only
+      half satisfied;
+  One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the ground
+      before me,
+  Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing
+      low;
+  --The cities I loved so well, I abandon'd and left--I sped to the
+      certainties suitable to me;
+  Hungering, hungering, hungering for primal energies, and nature's
+      dauntlessness;
+  I refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish it only;
+  I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire--on the water and air I
+      waited long;
+  --But now I no longer wait--I am fully satisfied--I am glutted;
+  I have witness'd the true lightning--I have witness'd my cities
+      electric;
+  I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise;
+  Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,
+  No more on the mountain roam, or sail the stormy sea."
+
+But not for the poet a soldier's career. "To sit by the wounded and soothe
+them, or silently watch the dead" was the part he chose. During the whole
+war he remained with the army, but only to spend the days and nights,
+saddest, happiest of his life, in the hospital tents. It was a beautiful
+destiny for this lover of men, and a proud triumph for this believer in
+the People; for it was the People that he beheld, tried by severest tests.
+He saw them "of their own choice, fighting, dying for their own idea,
+insolently attacked by the secession-slave-power." From the workshop, the
+farm, the store, the desk, they poured forth, officered by men who had to
+blunder into knowledge at the cost of the wholesale slaughter of their
+troops. He saw them "tried long and long by hopelessness, mismanagement,
+defeat; advancing unhesitatingly through incredible slaughter; sinewy with
+unconquerable resolution. He saw them by tens of thousands in the
+hospitals tried by yet drearier, more fearful tests--the wound, the
+amputation, the shattered face, the slow hot fever, the long impatient
+anchorage in bed; he marked their fortitude, decorum, their religious
+nature and sweet affection." Finally, newest, most significant sight of
+all, victory achieved, the cause, the Union safe, he saw them return back
+to the workshop, the farm, the desk, the store, instantly reabsorbed into
+the peaceful industries of the land:--
+
+  "A pause--the armies wait.
+  A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait.
+  The world, too, waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn
+  They melt, they disappear."
+
+"Plentifully supplied, last-needed proof of Democracy in its
+personalities!" ratifying on the broadest scale Wordsworth's haughty claim
+for average man--"Such is the inherent dignity of human nature that there
+belong to it sublimities of virtue which all men may attain, and which no
+man can transcend."
+
+But, aware that peace and prosperity may be even still severer tests of
+national as of individual virtue and greatness of mind, Walt Whitman scans
+with anxious, questioning eye the America of to-day. He is no
+smooth-tongued prophet of easy greatness.
+
+  "I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue questioning every
+      one I meet;
+  Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
+  Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?"
+
+He sees clearly as any the incredible flippancy, the blind fury of
+parties, the lack of great leaders, the plentiful meanness and vulgarity;
+the labour question beginning to open like a yawning gulf.... "We sail a
+dangerous sea of seething currents, all so dark and untried.... It seems
+as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial
+destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep intestine difficulty,
+and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection saying lo! the roads! The
+only plans of development, long and varied, with all terrible balks and
+ebullitions! You said in your soul, I will be empire of empires, putting
+the history of old-world dynasties, conquests, behind me as of no
+account--making a new history, a history of democracy ... I alone
+inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of America,
+are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your soul, be it so. But
+behold the cost, and already specimens of the cost. Thought you greatness
+was to ripen for you like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that
+you must conquer it through ages ... must pay for it with proportionate
+price. For you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily
+person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the
+demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long
+postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions,
+prophets, thunderstorms, deaths, new projections and invigorations of
+ideas and men."
+
+"Yet I have dreamed, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our fate,
+whose long unravelling stretches mysteriously through time--dreamed,
+portrayed, hinted already--a little or a larger band, a band of brave and
+true, unprecedented yet, arm'd and equipt at every point, the members
+separated, it may be by different dates and states, or south or north, or
+east or west, a year, a century here, and other centuries there, but
+always one, compact in soul, conscience-conserving, God-inculcating,
+inspired achievers not only in literature, the greatest art, but achievers
+in all art--a new undying order, dynasty from age to age transmitted, a
+band, a class at least as fit to cope with current years, our dangers,
+needs, as those who, for their time, so long, so well, in armour or in
+cowl, upheld and made illustrious that far-back-feudal, priestly world."
+
+Of that band, is not Walt Whitman the pioneer? Of that New World
+literature, say, are not his poems the beginning? A rude beginning if you
+will. He claims no more and no less. But whatever else they may lack they
+do not lack vitality, initiative, sublimity. They do not lack that which
+makes life great and death, with its "transfers and promotions, its superb
+vistas," exhilarating--a resplendent faith in God and man which will
+kindle anew the faith of the world:--
+
+  "Poets to come! Orators, singers, musicians to come!
+  Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
+  But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before
+      known,
+
+  "Arouse! Arouse--for you must justify me--you must answer.
+
+  "I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
+  I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
+
+  "I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a
+      casual look upon you, and then averts his face,
+  Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
+  Expecting the main things from you."
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+[Illustration: ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+Photogravure from a painting by her son, made in 1882]
+
+
+
+
+LETTER I[3]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO W. M. ROSSETTI AND ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _Washington,
+  December 9, 1869._
+
+DEAR MR. ROSSETTI:
+
+Your letter of last summer to William O'Connor with the passages
+transcribed from a lady's correspondence, had been shown me by him, and
+copy lately furnished me, which I have just been rereading. I am deeply
+touched by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from
+England, and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to
+me to get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them to Mr.
+O'Connor but approve that action. I realize indeed of this emphatic and
+smiling _well done_ from the heart and conscience of a true wife and
+mother, and one too whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your
+letter, after flowing through the heart and conscience, must also move
+through and satisfy science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto
+received no eulogium so magnificent.
+
+I send by same mail with this, same address as this letter, two
+photographs, taken within a few months. One is intended for the lady (if I
+may be permitted to send it her)--and will you please accept the other,
+with my respects and love? The picture is by some criticised very severely
+indeed, but I hope you will not dislike it, for I confess to myself a
+perhaps capricious fondness for it, as my own portrait, over some scores
+that have been made or taken at one time or another.
+
+I am still employed in the Attorney General's office. My p. o. address
+remains the same. I am quite well and hearty. My new editions,
+considerably expanded, with what suggestions &c. I have to offer,
+presented I hope in more definite form, will probably get printed the
+coming spring. I shall forward you early copies. I send my love to Moncuré
+Conway, if you see him. I wish he would write to me. If the pictures don't
+come, or get injured on the way, I will try again by express. I want you
+to loan this letter to the lady, or if she wishes it, give it to her to
+keep.
+
+WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER II
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+_September 3, 1871._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+At last the beloved books have reached my hand--but now I have them, my
+heart is so rent with anguish, my eyes so blinded, I cannot read in them.
+I try again and again, but too great waves come swaying up & suffocate me.
+I will struggle to tell you my story. It seems to me a death struggle.
+When I was eighteen I met a lad of nineteen[4] who loved me then, and
+always for the remainder of his life. After we had known each other about
+a year he asked me to be his wife. But I said that I liked him well as my
+friend, but could not love him as a wife should love & felt deeply
+convinced I never should. He was not turned aside, but went on just the
+same as if that conversation had never passed. After a year he asked me
+again, and I, deeply moved by and grateful for his steady love, and so
+sorry for him, said yes. But next day, terrified at what I had done and
+painfully conscious of the dreary absence from my heart of any faintest
+gleam of true, tender, wifely love,[5] said no again. This too he bore
+without desisting & at the end of some months once more asked me with
+passionate entreaties. Then, dear friend, I prayed very earnestly, and it
+seemed to me (that) that I should continue to mar & thwart his life so was
+not right, if he was content to accept what I could give. I knew I could
+lead a good and wholesome life beside him--his aims were noble--his heart
+a deep, beautiful, true Poet's heart; but he had not the Poet's great
+brain. His path was a very arduous one, and I knew I could smooth it for
+him--cheer him along it. It seemed to me God's will that I should marry
+him. So I told him the whole truth, and he said he would rather have me on
+those terms than not have me at all. He said to me many times, "Ah, Annie,
+it is not you who are so loved that is rich; it is I who so love." And I
+knew this was true, felt as if my nature were poor & barren beside his.
+But it was not so, it was only slumbering--undeveloped. For, dear Friend,
+my soul was so passionately aspiring--it so thirsted & pined for light, it
+had not power to reach alone and he could not help me on my way. And a
+woman is so made that she cannot give the tender passionate devotion of
+her whole nature save to the great conquering soul, stronger in its
+powers, though not in its aspirations, than her own, that can lead her
+forever & forever up and on. It is for her soul exactly as it is for her
+body. The strong divine soul of the man embracing hers with passionate
+love--so alone the precious germs within her soul can be quickened into
+life. And the time will come when man will understand that a woman's soul
+is as dear and needful to his and as different from his as her body to his
+body. This was what happened to me when I had read for a few days, nay,
+hours, in your books. It was the divine soul embracing mine. I never
+before dreamed what love meant: not what life meant. Never was alive
+before--no words but those of "new birth" can hint the meaning of what
+then happened to me.
+
+The first few months of my marriage were dark and gloomy to me within, and
+sometimes I had misgivings whether I had judged aright, but when I knew
+there was a dear baby coming my heart grew light, and when it was born,
+such a superb child--all gloom & fear forever vanished. I knew it was
+God's seal to the marriage, and my heart was full of gratitude and joy. It
+was a happy and a good life we led together for ten short years, he ever
+tender and affectionate to me--loving his children so, working earnestly
+in the wholesome, bracing atmosphere of poverty--for it was but just
+possible with the most strenuous frugality and industry to pay our way. I
+learned to cook & to turn my hand to all household occupation--found it
+bracing, healthful, cheerful. Now I think it more even now that I
+understand the divineness & sacredness of the Body. I think there is no
+more beautiful task for a woman than ministering all ways to the health &
+comfort & enjoyment of the dear bodies of those she loves: no material
+that will work sweeter, more beautifully into that making of a perfect
+poem of a man's life which is her true vocation.
+
+In 1861 my children took scarlet fever badly: I thought I should have lost
+my dear oldest girl. Then my husband took it--and in five days it carried
+him from me. I think, dear friend, my sorrow was far more bitter, though
+not so deep, as that of a loving tender wife. As I stood by him in the
+coffin I felt such remorse I had not, could not have, been more tender to
+him--such a conviction that if I had loved him as he deserved to be loved
+he would not have been taken from us. To the last my soul dwelt apart &
+unmated & his soul dwelt apart unmated. I do not fear the look of his dear
+silent eyes. I do not think he would even be grieved with me now. My
+youngest was then a baby. I have had much sweet tranquil happiness, much
+strenuous work and endeavour raising my darlings.
+
+In May, 1869, came the voice over the Atlantic to me--O, the voice of my
+Mate: it must be so--my love rises up out of the very depths of the grief
+& tramples upon despair. I can wait--any time, a lifetime, many
+lifetimes--I can suffer, I can dare, I can learn, grow, toil, but nothing
+in life or death can tear out of my heart the passionate belief that one
+day I shall hear that voice say to me, "My Mate. The one I so much want.
+Bride, Wife, indissoluble eternal!" It is not happiness I plead with God
+for--it is the very life of my Soul, my love is its life. Dear Walt. It is
+a sweet & precious thing, this love; it clings so close, so close to the
+Soul and Body, all so tenderly dear, so beautiful, so sacred; it yearns
+with such passion to soothe and comfort & fill thee with sweet tender joy;
+it aspires as grandly as gloriously as thy own soul. Strong to soar--soft
+& tender to nestle and caress. If God were to say to me, "See--he that you
+love you shall not be given to in this life--he is going to set sail on
+the unknown sea--will you go with him?" never yet has bride sprung into
+her husband's arms with the joy with which I would take thy hand & spring
+from the shore.
+
+Understand aright, dear love, the reason of my silence. I was obeying the
+voice of conscience. I thought I was to wait. For it is the instinct of a
+woman's nature to wait to be sought--not to seek. And when that May & June
+I was longing so irrepressibly to write I resolutely restrained myself,
+believing if I were only patient the right opening would occur. And so it
+did through Rossetti. And when he, liking what I said, suggested my
+printing something, it met and enabled me to carry into execution what I
+was brooding over. For I had, and still have, a strong conviction that it
+was necessary for a woman to speak--that finally and decisively only a
+woman can judge a man, only a man a woman, on the subject of their
+relations. What is blameless, what is good in its effect on her, is
+good--however it may have seemed to men. She is the test. And I never for
+a moment feared any hard words against myself because I know these things
+are not judged by the intellect but by the unerring instincts of the soul.
+I knew any man could not but feel that it would be a happy and ennobling
+thing for him that his wife should think & feel as I do on that
+subject--knew that what had filled me with such great and beautiful
+thoughts towards men in that writing could not fail to give them good &
+happy thoughts towards women in the reading. The cause of my consenting to
+Rossetti's[6] urgent advice that I should not put my name, he so kindly
+solicitous, yet not altogether understanding me & it aright, was that I
+did not rightly understand how it might be with my dear Boy if it came
+before him. I thought perhaps he was not old enough to judge and
+understand me aright; nor young enough to let it altogether alone. But it
+has been very bitter & hateful to me this not standing to what I have said
+as it were, with my own personality, better because of my utter love and
+faithfulness to the cause & longing to stand openly and proudly in the
+ranks of its friends; & for the lower reason that my nature is proud and
+as defiant as thine own and immeasurably disdains any faintest appearance
+of being afraid of what I had done.
+
+And, my darling, above all because I love thee so tenderly that if hateful
+words had been spoken against me I could have taken joy in it for thy dear
+sake. There never yet was the woman who loved that would not joyfully bare
+her breast to wrest the blows aimed at her beloved.
+
+I know not what fiend made me write those meaningless words in my letter,
+"it is pleasantest to me" &c., but it was not fear or faithlessness--& it
+is not pleasantest but hateful to me. Now let me come to beautiful joyous
+things again. O dear Walt, did you not feel in every word the breath of a
+woman's love? did you not see as through a transparent veil a soul all
+radiant and trembling with love stretching out its arms towards you? I
+was so sure you would speak, would send me some sign: that I was to
+wait--wait. So I fed my heart with sweet hopes: strengthened it with
+looking into the eyes of thy picture. O surely in the ineffable tenderness
+of thy look speaks the yearning of thy man-soul towards my woman-soul? But
+now I will wait no longer. A higher instinct dominates that other, the
+instinct for perfect truth. I would if I could lay every thought and
+action and feeling of my whole life open to thee as it lies to the eye of
+God. But that cannot be all at once. O come. Come, my darling: look into
+these eyes and see the loving ardent aspiring soul in them. Easily, easily
+will you learn to love all the rest of me for the sake of that and take me
+to your breasts for ever and ever. Out of its great anguish my love has
+risen stronger, more triumphant than ever: it cannot doubt, cannot fear,
+is strong, divine, immortal, sure of its fruition this side the grave or
+the other. "O agonistic throes," tender, passionate yearnings, pinings,
+triumphant joys, sweet dreams--I took from you all. But, dear love, the
+sinews of a woman's outer heart are not twisted so strong as a man's: but
+the heart within is strong & great & loving. So the strain is very
+terrible. O heart of flesh, hold on yet a few years to the great heart
+within thee, if it may be. But if not all is assured, all is safe.
+
+This time last year when I seemed dying I could have no secrets between me
+& my dear children. I told them of my love: told them all they could
+rightly understand, and laid upon them my earnest injunction that as soon
+as my mother's life no longer held them here, they should go fearlessly to
+America, as I should have planted them down there--Land of Promise, my
+Canaan, to which my soul sings, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come & the
+glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." After the 29th of this month I
+shall be in my own home; dear friend--it is at Brookebank, Haslemere,
+Surrey. Haslemere is on the main line between Portsmouth & London.
+
+  Good-bye, dear Walt,
+  ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+_Sept. 6._
+
+The new portrait also is a sweet joy & comfort to my longing, pining heart
+& eyes. How have I brooded & brooded with thankfulness on that one word in
+thy letter[7] "the comfort it has been to me to get her words," for always
+day & night these two years has hovered on my lips & in my heart the one
+prayer: "Dear God, let me comfort him!" Let me comfort thee with my whole
+being, dear love. I feel much better & stronger now.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER III
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Brookebank, Shotter Mill
+  Haslemere, Surrey
+  October 23, 1871._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+I wrote you a letter the 6th September & would fain know whether it has
+reached your hand. If it have not, I will write its contents again quickly
+to you--if it have, I will wait your time with courage with patience for
+an answer; but spare me the needless suffering of uncertainty on this
+point & let me have one line, one word, of assurance that I am no longer
+hidden from you by a thick cloud--I from thee--not thou from me: for I
+that have never set eyes upon thee, all the Atlantic flowing between us,
+yet cleave closer than those that stand nearest & dearest around
+thee--love thee day & night:--last thoughts, first thoughts, my soul's
+passionate yearning toward thy divine Soul, every hour, every deed and
+thought--my love for my children, my hopes, aspirations for them, all
+taking new shape, new height through this great love. My Soul has staked
+all upon it. In dull dark moods when I cannot, as it were, see thee,
+still, still always a dumb, blind yearning towards thee--still it comforts
+me to touch, to press to me the beloved books--like a child holding some
+hand in the dark--it knows not whose--but knows it is enough--knows it is
+a dear, strong, comforting hand. Do not say I am forward, or that I lack
+pride because I tell this love to thee who have never sought or made sign
+of desiring to seek me. Oh, for all that, this love is my pride my glory.
+Source of sufferings and joys that cannot put themselves into words.
+Besides, it is not true thou hast not sought or loved me. For when I read
+the divine poems I feel all folded round in thy love: I feel often as if
+thou wast pleading so passionately for the love of the woman that can
+understand thee--that I know not how to bear the yearning answering
+tenderness that fills my breast. I know that a woman may without hurt to
+her pride--without stain or blame--tell her love to thee. I feel for a
+certainty that she may. Try me for this life, my darling--see if I cannot
+so live, so grow, so learn, so love, that when I die you will say, "This
+woman has grown to be a very part of me. My soul must have her loving
+companionship everywhere & in all things. I alone & she alone are not
+complete identities--it is I and she together in a new, divine, perfect
+union that form the one complete identity."
+
+I am yet young enough to bear thee children, my darling, if God should so
+bless me. And would yield my life for this cause with serene joy if it
+were so appointed, if that were the price for thy having a "perfect
+child"--knowing my darlings would all be safe & happy in thy loving
+care--planted down in America.
+
+Let me have a few words directly, dear Friend. I shall get them by the
+middle of November. I shall have to go to London about then or a little
+later--to find a house for us--I only came to the old home here from which
+I have been absent most four years to wind up matters and prepare for a
+move, for there is nothing to be had in the way of educational advantages
+here--it has been a beautiful survey for the children, but it is not what
+they want now. But we leave with regret, for it is one of the sweetest,
+wildest spots in England, though only 40 miles from London.
+
+  Good-bye, dear friend,
+  ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER IV[8]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _Washington, D. C.
+  November 3, 1871._
+
+(TO A. G., EARL'S COLNE, HALSTED, ESSEX, ENG.)
+
+I have been waiting quite a while for time and the right mood, to answer
+your letter in a spirit as serious as its own, and in the same unmitigated
+trust and affection. But more daily work than ever has fallen to me to do
+the present season, and though I am well and contented, my best moods seem
+to shun me. I wish to give to it a day, a sort of Sabbath, or holy day,
+apart to itself, under serene and propitious influences, confident that I
+could then write you a letter which would do you good, and me too. But I
+must at least show without further delay that I am not insensible to your
+love. I too send you my love. And do you feel no disappointment because I
+now write so briefly. My book is my best letter, my response, my truest
+explanation of all. In it I have put my body and spirit. You understand
+this better and fuller and clearer than any one else. And I too fully and
+clearly understand the loving letter it has evoked. Enough that there
+surely exists so beautiful and a delicate relation, accepted by both of us
+with joy.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER V
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+_27 November '71._
+
+DEAR FRIEND.
+
+Your long waited for letter brought me both joy & pain; but the pain was
+not of your giving. I gather from it that a long letter[9] which I wrote
+you Sept. 6th after I had received the precious packet, a letter in which
+I opened all my heart to you, never reached your hands: nor yet a shorter
+one[10] which, tortured by anxiety & suspense about its predecessor, I
+wrote Oct. 15, it, too, written out of such stress & intensity of painful
+emotion as wrenches from us inmost truth. I cannot face the thought of
+these words of uttermost trust & love having fallen into other hands. Can
+both be simply lost? Could any man suffer a base curiosity, to make him so
+meanly, treacherously cruel? It seems to cut and then burn me.
+
+I was not disappointed at the shortness of your letter & I do not ask nor
+even wish you to write save when you are inwardly impelled & desirous of
+doing so. I only want leave and security to write freely to you. Your book
+does indeed say all--book that is not a book, for the first time a man
+complete, godlike, august, standing revealed the only way possible,
+through the garment of speech. Do you know, dear Friend, what it means for
+a woman, what it means for me, to understand these poems? It means for her
+whole nature to be then first kindled; quickened into life through such
+love, such sympathy, such resistless attraction, that thenceforth she
+cannot choose but live & die striving to become worthy to share this
+divine man's life--to be his dear companion, closer, nearer, dearer than
+any man can be--for ever so. Her soul stakes all on this. It is the
+meaning, the fulfilment, the only perfect development & consummation of
+her nature--of her passionate, high, immortal aspirations--her Soul to
+mate with his for ever & ever. O I know the terms are obdurate--I know how
+hard to attain to this greatness, the grandest lot ever aspired to by
+woman. I know too my own shortcomings, faults, flaws. You might not be
+able to give me your great love yet--to take me to your breast with joy.
+But I can wait. I can grow great & beautiful through sorrow & suffering,
+working, struggling, yearning, loving so, all alone, as I have done now
+nearly three years--it will be three in May since I first read the book,
+first knew what the word _love_ meant. Love & Hope are so strong in me, my
+soul's high aspirations are of such tenacious, passionate intensity, are
+so conscious of their own deathless reality, that what would starve them
+out of any other woman only makes them strike out deeper roots, grow more
+resolute & sturdy, in me. I know that "greatness will not ripen for me
+like a pear." But I could face, I could joyfully accept, the fiercest
+anguish, the hardest toil, the longest, sternest probation, to make me fit
+to be your mate--so that at the last you should say, "This is the woman I
+have waited for, the woman prepared for me: this is my dear eternal
+comrade, wife--the one I so much want." Life has no other meaning for me
+than that--all things have led up to help prepare me for that. Death is
+more welcome to me than life if it means that--if thou, dear sailor, thou
+sailing upon thy endless cruise, takest me on board--me, daring, all with
+thee, steering for the deep waters, bound where mariner has not yet dared
+to go: hand in hand with thee, nestled close--one with thee. Ah, that word
+"enough" was like a blow on the breast to me--breast that often & often is
+so full of yearning tenderness I know not how to draw my breath. The tie
+between us would not grow less but more beautiful, dear friend, if you
+knew me _better_: if I could stand as real & near to you as you do to me.
+But I cannot, like you, clothe my nature in divine poems & so make it
+visible to you. Ah, foolish me! I thought you would catch a glimpse of it
+in those words I wrote--I thought you would say to yourself, "Perhaps this
+is the voice of my mate," and would seek me a little to make sure if it
+were so or not. O the sweet dreams I have fed on these three years nearly,
+pervading my waking moments, influencing every thought & action. I was so
+sure, so sure if I waited silently, patiently, you would send me some
+sign: so full of joyful hope I could not doubt nor fear. When I lay dying
+as it seemed, [I was] still full of the radiant certainty that you would
+seek me, would not lose [me], that we should as surely find one another
+there as here. And when the ebb ceased & life began to flow back into me,
+O never doubting but it was for you. Never doubting but that the sweetest,
+noblest, closest, tenderest companionship ever yet tasted by man & woman
+was to begin for us here & now. Then came the long, long waiting, the hope
+deferred: each morning so sure the book would come & with it a word from
+you that should give me leave to speak: no longer to shut down in stern
+silence the love, the yearning, the thoughts that seemed to strain & crush
+my heart. I knew what that means--"if thou wast not gifted to sing thou
+wouldst surely die." I felt as if my silence must kill me sometimes. Then
+when the Book came but with it no word for me alone, there was such a
+storm in [my] heart I could not for weeks read in it. I wrote that long
+letter out in the Autumn fields for dear life's sake. I knew I might, and
+must, speak then. Then I felt relieved, joyful, buoyant once more. Then
+again months of heart-wearying disappointment as I looked in vain for a
+letter-O the anguish at times, the scalding tears, the feeling within as
+if my heart were crushed & doubled up--but always afterwards saying to
+myself "If this suffering is to make my love which was born & grew up &
+blossomed all in a moment strike deep root down in the dark & cold,
+penetrate with painful intensity every fibre of my being, make it a love
+such as he himself is capable of giving, then welcome this anguish, these
+bitter deferments: let its roots be watered as long as God pleases with my
+tears."
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+  _50 Marquis Road
+  London
+  Camden Sqr. N. W._
+
+
+
+
+LETTER VI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Road, Camden Sqre.
+  London, N. W.,
+  January 24, '72._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+I send you photographs of my oldest and youngest children, I wish I had
+some worth sending of the other two. That of myself done in 1850 is a copy
+of a daguerrotype. The recent one was taken just a week or so before I
+broke down in my long illness & when I was struggling against a terrible
+sense of inward prostration; so it has not my natural expression, but I
+think you will like to have [it] rather than none, & the weather here is
+too gloomy for there to be any chance of a good one if I were to try
+again. Your few words lifted a heavy weight off me. Very few they are,
+dear friend: but knowing that I may give to every word you speak its
+fullest, truest meaning, the more I brood over them the sweeter do they
+taste. Still I am not as happy & content as I thought I should be if I
+could only know my words reached you & were welcome to you,--but restless,
+anxious, impatient, looking so wistfully towards the letters each
+morning--above all, longing, longing so for you to come--to come & see if
+you feel happy beside me: no more this painful struggle to put myself into
+words, but to let what I am & all my life speak to you. Only so can you
+judge whether I am indeed the woman capable of rising to the full height
+of great destiny, of justifying & fulfilling your grand thoughts of
+women. And see my faults, flaws, shortcomings too, dear Friend. I feel an
+earnest wish you should do this too that there may be the broad unmovable
+foundation-rock of perfect truth and candour for our love. I do not fear.
+I believe in a large all-accepting, because all-comprehending, love, a
+boundless faith in growth & development--in your judging "not as the judge
+judges but as the sunshine falling around me." To have you in the midst of
+us! we clustered round you, shone upon, vivified, strengthened by your
+presence, surrounding you with an atmosphere of love & cheerful life.
+
+When I wrote to you in Nov. I was in lodgings in London, having just
+accomplished the difficult task of finding a house for us in London, where
+rents are so high. And I have succeeded better than I anticipated, for we
+find this a comfortable, dear, little home--small, indeed, but not so
+small as to interfere with health or comfort, and at rent that I may
+safely undertake. My Husband was taken from us too young to be able to
+have made any provision for his children. I have a little of my own--about
+£80 a year; & for the rest depend upon my Mother, whose only surviving
+child I am. And she, by nature generous & self-denying as well as prudent,
+has never made anything but a pleasure of this & as long as she was able
+to see to her own affairs, was such a capital manager that she used to
+spare me about £150 out of an income of £350. But now though she retains
+her faculties in a wonderful degree for her years (just upon 86), she is
+no longer able to do this & has put the management of the whole into my
+hands. And I, feeling that she needs, and ought to have, now an easier
+scale of expenditure at Colne, have to manage a little more cleverly still
+to make a less sum serve for us. But I succeed capitally, dear friend--do
+not want a better home, never get behind hand & find it no hardship, but
+quite the contrary to have to spend a good deal of time & pains in
+domestic management. And then, just to help me through at the right
+moment, dear Percy[11] obtained in November a good opening in some large
+copper & iron mining & smelting works in South Wales at a salary upon
+which he can comfortably live; & he likes his work well--writes very
+cheerfully--lodges in a farmhouse in the midst of grand scenery, within a
+walk of the sea. So this enables me to give the girls a turn in education,
+for hitherto they have had hardly any teaching but mine. And I chose this
+part because there is a capital day school for them handy. And Herby[12]
+walks in to the best drawing school in London & is very diligent and happy
+at his work. His bent is unmistakably strong. It was well I have had to be
+so busy this autumn & winter, dear Walt, for I suffered keenly, sometimes
+overwhelmingly, through the delay in my letters' reaching you. What caused
+it? And when did you get the Sept. & Oct. letters & did you get the two
+copies that I, baffled & almost despairing, sent off in Nov.? Good-bye,
+dear Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER VII[13]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _(Washington, D. C.)
+  Feb. 8 '72._
+
+I send by same mail with this my latest piece copied in a newspaper--and
+write you just a line. I suppose you only received my former letters
+(two)--I ought to have written something about your children (described to
+me in your letter of last summer--[July 23d] which I have just been
+reading again.) Dear boys and girls--how my heart goes out to them.
+
+Did I tell you that I had received letters from Tennyson, and that he
+cordially invites me to visit him? Sometimes I dream of coming to Old
+England, on such visit.--& thus of seeing you & your children----But it is
+a dream only.
+
+I am still living here in employment in a Government office. My health is
+good. Life is rather sluggish here--yet not without the sunshine. Your
+letters too were bright rays of it. I am going on to New York soon, to
+stay a few weeks, but my address will still be here. I wrote lately to Mr.
+Rossetti quite a long letter. Dear friend, best love & remembrance to you
+& to the young folk.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER VIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq. N. W.
+  April 12th, '72._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+I was to tell you about my acquaintanceship with Tennyson, which was a
+pleasant episode in my life at Haslemere. Hearing of the extreme beauty of
+the scenery thereabouts & specially of its comparative wildness &
+seclusion, he thought he would like to find or build a house, to escape
+from the obtrusive curiosity of the multitudes who flock to the Isle of
+Wight at certain seasons of the year. He is even morbidly sensitive on
+this point & will not stir beyond his own grounds from week's end to
+week's end to avoid his admiring or inquisitive persecutors. So, knowing
+an old friend of mine, he called on me for particulars as to the resources
+of the neighbourhood. And I, a good walker & familiar with every least
+frequent spot of hill & dale for some miles round, took him long ambles in
+quest of a site. Very pleasant rambles they were; Tennyson, under the
+influence of the fresh, outdoor, quite unconstrained life in new scenery &
+with a cheerful aim, shaking off the languid ennuyé air, as of a man to
+whom nothing has any longer a relish--bodily or mental--that too often
+hangs about him. And we found something quite to his mind--a coppice of 40
+acres hanging on the south side two thirds of the way up a hill some 1000
+ft. high so as to be sheltered from the cold & yet have the light, dry,
+elastic hill air--& with, of course, a glorious outlook over the wooded
+weald of Sussex so richly green & fertile & looking almost as boundless as
+the great sweep of sky over it--the South Downs to Surrey Hills & near at
+hand the hill curving round a fir-covered promontory, standing out very
+black & grand between him & the sunset. Underfoot too a wilderness of
+beauty--fox gloves (I wonder if they grow in America) ferns, purple heath
+&c &c. I don't suppose I shall see much more of him now I have left
+Haslemere, though I have had very friendly invitations; for I am a home
+bird--don't like staying out--wanted at home and happiest there. And I
+should not enjoy being with them in the grand mansion half so much as I
+did pic-nicing in the road & watching the builders as we did. It is
+pleasant to see T--with children--little girls at least--he does not take
+to boys but one of my girls was mostly on his knee when they were in the
+room & he liked them very much. His two sons are now both 6 ft. high. I
+have received your letters of March 20 from Brooklyn: but the one you
+speak of as having acknowledged the photograph never came to hand--a sore
+disappointment to me, dear Friend. I can ill afford to lose the long &
+eagerly watched for pleasure of a letter. If it seems to you there must
+needs be something unreal, illusive, in a love that has grown up entirely
+without the basis of personal intercourse, dear Friend, then you do not
+yourself realize your own power nor understand the full meaning of your
+own words, "whoso touches this, touches a man"--"I have put my Soul & Body
+into these Poems." Real effects imply real causes. Do you suppose that an
+ideal figure conjured up by her own fancy could, in a perfectly sound,
+healthy woman of my age, so happy in her children, so busy & content,
+practical, earnest, produce such real & tremendous effect--saturating her
+whole life, colouring every waking moment--filling her with such joys,
+such pains that the strain of them has been well nigh too much even for a
+strong frame, coming as it does, after twenty years of hard work?
+
+Therefore please, dear Friend, do not "warn" me any more--it hurts so, as
+seeming to distrust my love. Time only can show how needlessly. My love,
+flowing ever fresh & fresh out of my heart, will go with you in all your
+wanderings, dear Friend, enfolding you day and night, soul & body, with
+tenderness that tries so vainly to utter itself in these poor, helpless
+words, that clings closer than any man's love can cling. O, I could not
+live if I did not believe that sooner or later you will not be able to
+help stretching out your arms towards me & saying "Come, my Darling." When
+you get this will you post me an American newspaper (any one you have done
+with) as a token it has reached you--& so on at intervals during your
+wanderings; it will serve as a token that you are well, & the postmark
+will tell me where you are. And thus you will feel free only to write when
+you have leisure & inclination--& I shall be spared [the] feeling I have
+when I fancy my letters have not reached you--as if I were so hopelessly,
+helplessly cut off from you, which is more than I can stand. We all read
+American news eagerly too. The children are so well & working on with all
+their might. The school turns out more what I desire for them than I had
+ventured to hope. Good-bye, dearest Friend.
+
+ANN GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER IX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden, Sqre.
+  June 3d, 1872._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+The newspapers have both come to hand & been gladly welcomed. I shall
+realize you on the 26th sending living impulses into those young men, with
+results not to cease--their kindled hearts sending back response through
+glowing eyes that will be warmer to you than the June sunshine. Perhaps,
+too, you will have pleasant talks with the eminent astronomers there.
+Prof. Young, who is so skilful a worker with that most subtle of tidings
+from the stars, the spectroscope--always, it seems hitherto bringing word
+of the "vast similitude that interlocks all," nay, of the absolute
+identity of the stuff they are made of with the stuff we are made of. The
+news from Dartmouth that too, is a great pleasure.
+
+It has been what seems to me a very long while since last writing, because
+it has been a troubled time within & what I wrote I tore up again,
+believing it was best, wisest so. You said in your first letter that if
+you had leisure you could write one that "would do me good & you too";
+write that letter dear Friend after you have been to Dartmouth[14]--for I
+sorely need it. Perhaps the letters that I have sent you since that first,
+have given you a feeling of constraint towards me because you cannot
+respond to them. I will not write any more such letters; or, if I write
+them because my heart is so full it cannot bear it, they shall not find
+their way to the Post. But do not, because I give you more than
+friendship, think that it would not be a very dear & happy thing to me to
+have friendship only from you. I do not want you to write what it is any
+effort to write--do not ask for deep thoughts, deep feelings--know well
+those must choose their own time & mode--but for the simplest current
+details--for any thing that helps my eyes to pierce the distance & see you
+as you live & move to-day. I dearly like to hear about your Mother--want
+to know if all your sisters are married, & if you have plenty of little
+nephews & nieces--I like to hear anything about Mr. O'Connor[15] & Mr.
+Burroughs,[16] towards both of whom I feel as toward friends. (Has Mr.
+O'Connor succeeded in getting practically adopted his new method of making
+cast steel? Percy[17] being a worker in the field of metallurgy makes me
+specially glad to hear about this.) Then, I need not tell you how deep an
+interest I feel in American politics & want to know if you are satisfied
+with the result of the Cincinnati Convention & what of Mr. Greely?[18] &
+what you augur as to his success--I am sure dear friend, if you realize
+the joy it is to me to receive a few words from you--about anything that
+is passing in your thoughts & around--how beaming bright & happy the day a
+letter comes & many days after--how light hearted & alert I set about my
+daily tasks, it would not seem irksome to you to write. And if you say,
+"Read my books, & be content--you have me in them," I say, it is because I
+read them so that I am not content. It is an effort to me to turn to any
+other reading; as to highest literature what I felt three years ago is
+more than ever true now, with all their precious augmentations. I want
+nothing else--am fully fed & satisfied there. I sit alone many hours busy
+with my needle; this used to be tedious; but it is not so now--for always
+close at hand lie the books that are so dear, so dear, I brooding over the
+poems, sunning myself in them, pondering the vistas--all the experience of
+my past life & all its aspirations corroborating them--all my future & so
+far as in me lies the future of my children to be shaped modified
+vitalized by & through these--outwardly & inwardly. How can I be content
+to live wholly isolated from you? I am sure it is not possible for any
+one,--man or woman, it does not matter which, to receive these books, not
+merely with the intellect critically admiring their power & beauty, but
+with an understanding responsive heart, without feeling it drawn out of
+their breasts so that they must leave all & come to be with you sometimes
+without a resistless yearning for personal intercourse that will take no
+denial. When we come to America I shall not want you to talk to me, shall
+not be any way importunate. To settle down where there are some that love
+you & understand your poems, somewhere that you would be sure to come
+pretty often--to have you sit with me while I worked, you silent, or
+reading to yourself, I don't mind how: to let my children grow fond of
+you--to take food with us; if my music pleased you, to let me play & sing
+to you of an evening. Do your needlework for you--talk freely of all that
+occupied my thoughts concerning the children's welfare &c--I could be very
+happy so. But silence with the living presence and silence with all the
+ocean in between are two different things. Therefore, these years stretch
+out your hand cordially, trustfully, that I may feel its warm grasp.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER X
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq. London
+  July 14, '72._
+
+The 3d July was my rejoicing day, dearest Friend,--the day the packet from
+America reached me, scattering for a while the clouds of pain and
+humiliation & filling me through & through with light & warmth; indeed I
+believe I am often as happy reading, as you were writing, your Poems. The
+long new one "As a Strong Bird" of itself answers the question hinted in
+your preface & nobly fulfils the promise of its opening lines. We want
+again & again in fresh words & from the new impetus & standpoint of new
+days the vision that sweeps ahead, the tones that fill us with faith & joy
+in our present share of life & work--prophetic of the splendid issues. It
+does not need to be American born to believe & passionately rejoice in the
+belief of what is preparing in America. It is for humanity. And it comes
+through England. The noblest souls the most heroic hearts of England were
+called to be the nucleus of the race that (enriched with the blood &
+qualities of other races & planted down in the new half of the world
+reserved in all its fresh beauty & exhaustless riches to be the arena) is
+to fulfil, justify, outstrip the vision of the poets, the quenchless
+aspirations of all the ardent souls that have ever struggled forward upon
+this earth. For me, the most precious page in the book is that which
+contains the Democratic Souvenirs. I respond to that as one to whom it
+means the life of her Soul. It comforts me very much. You speak in the
+Preface of the imperious & resistless command from within out of which
+"Leaves of Grass" issued. This carried with it no doubt the secret of a
+corresponding resistless power over the reader wholly unprecedented,
+unapproached in literature, as I believe, & to be compared only with that
+of Christ. I speak out of my own experience when I say that no myth, no
+"miracle" embodying the notion of a direct communication between God & a
+human creature, goes beyond the effect, soul & body, of those Poems on me:
+& that were I to put into Oriental forms of speech what I experienced it
+would read like one of those old "miracles" or myths. Thus of many things
+that used to appear to me incomprehensible lies, I now perceive the germ
+of truth & understand that what was called the supernatural was merely an
+inadequate & too timid way of conceiving the natural. Had I died the
+following year, it would have been the simple truth to say I died of joy.
+The doctor called it nervous exhaustion falling with tremendous violence
+on the heart which "seemed to have been strained": & was much puzzled how
+that could have come to pass. I left him in his puzzle--but it was none to
+me. How could such a dazzling radiance of light flooding the soul,
+suddenly, kindling it to such intense life, but put a tremendous strain on
+the vital organs? how could the muscles of the heart suddenly grow
+adequate to such new work? O the passionate tender gratitude that flooded
+my breast, the yearnings that seemed to strain the heart beyond endurance
+that I might repay with all my life & soul & body this debt--that I might
+give joy to him who filled me with such joy, that I might make his outward
+life sweeter & more beautiful who made my inner life so divinely sweet &
+beautiful. But, dear friend, I have certainly to see that this is not to
+be so, now: that for me too love & death are folded inseparably together:
+Death that will renew my youth.
+
+I have had the paper from Burlington[19]--with the details a woman likes
+so to have. I wish I had known for certain whether you went on to Boston &
+were enjoying the music there. My youngest boy has gone to spend his
+holiday with his brother in South Wales & he writes me such good news of
+Per., that he is "looking as brown as a nut & very jolly"; his home in a
+"clean airy old farm house half way up a mountain in the midst of wild
+rough grand scenery, sea in sight near enough to hear the sound of it
+about as loud as the rustling of leaves"--so the boys will have a good
+time together, and the girls are going with me for the holiday to their
+grandmother at Colne. W. Rossetti does not take his till October this
+year. I suppose it will be long & long before this letter reaches you as
+you will be gone to California--may it be a time full of enjoyment--full
+to the brim.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend,
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+What a noble achievement is Mr. Stanley's:[20] it fills me with pleasure
+that Americans should thus have been the rescuer of our large-hearted,
+heroic traveller. We have just got his letters with account of the five
+races in Central Africa copied from N. Y. _Herald_, July 29.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Road
+  Camden Sqre.
+  Novr. 12, 1872._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I must write not because I have anything to tell you--but because I want
+so, by help of a few loving words, to come into your presence as it
+were--into your remembrance. Not more do the things that grow want the
+sun.
+
+I have received all the papers--& each has made a day very bright for me.
+
+I hope the trip to California has not again had to be postponed--I realize
+well the enjoyment of it, & what it would be to California & the fresh
+impulses of thought & emotion that would shape themselves, melodiously,
+out of that for the new volume.
+
+My children are all well. Beatrice is working hard to get through the
+requisite amount of Latin, &c. that is required in the preliminary
+examination--before entering on medical studies. Percy, my eldest, whom I
+have not seen for a year, is coming to spend Xmas with us.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Road
+  Camden Sq. London
+  Jan. 31, '73._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Shall you never find it in your heart to say a kind word to me again? or a
+word of some sort? Surely I must have written what displeased you very
+much that you should turn away from me as the tone of your last letter &
+the ten months' silence which have followed seem to express to me with
+such emphasis. But if so, tell me of it, tell me how--with perfect
+candour, I am worthy of that--a willing learner & striver; not afraid of
+the pain of looking my own faults & shortcomings steadily in the face. It
+may be my words have led you to do me some kind of injustice in thought--I
+then could defend myself. But if it is simply that you are preoccupied,
+too busy, perhaps very eagerly beset by hundreds like myself whose hearts
+are so drawn out of their breasts by your Poems that they cannot rest
+without striving, some way or other, to draw near to you personally--then
+write once more & tell me so & I will learn to be content. But please let
+it be a letter just like the first three you wrote: & do not fear that I
+shall take it to mean anything it doesn't mean. I shall never do that
+again, though it was natural enough at first, with the deep unquestioning
+belief I had that I did but answer a call; that I not only might but
+ought, on pain of being untrue to the greatest, sweetest instincts &
+aspirations of my own soul, to answer it with all my heart & strength &
+life. I say to myself, I say to you as I did in my first letters, "This
+voice that has come to me from over the Atlantic is the one divine voice
+that has penetrated to my soul: is the utterance of a nature that sends
+out life-giving warmth & light to my inward self as actually as the Sun
+does to my body, & draws me to it and shapes & shall shape my course just
+as the sun shapes the earth's." "Interlocked in a vast similitude" indeed
+are these inner & outer truths of our lives. It may be that this shaping
+of my life course toward you will have to be all inward--that to feed upon
+your words till they pass into the very substance & action of my soul is
+all that will be given to me & the grateful, yearning, tender love growing
+ever deeper & stronger out of that will have to go dumb & actionless all
+my days here. But I can wait long, wait patiently; know well, realize more
+clearly indeed that this wingless, clouded, half-developed soul of me has
+a long, long novitiate to live through before it can meet & answer yours
+on equal terms so as fully to satisfy you, to be in very truth & deed a
+dear Friend, a chosen companion, a source of joy to you as you of light &
+life to me. But that is what I will live & die hoping & striving for. That
+covers & includes all the aspirations all the high hopes I am capable of.
+And were I to fall away from this belief it would be a fall into utter
+blackness & despair, as one for whom the Sun in Heaven is blotted out.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  50 Marquis Road
+  Camden Sq. N. W.
+  May 20th, '73.
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Such a joyful surprise was that last paper you sent me with the Poem
+celebrating the great events in Spain--the new hopes the new life wakening
+in the breasts of that fine People which has slumbered so long, weighed
+down & tormented with hideous nightmares of superstition. Are you indeed
+getting strong & well again? able to drink in draughts of pleasure from
+the sights & sounds & perfumes of this delicious time, "lilac
+time"--according to your wont? Sleeping well--eating well, dear friend?
+
+William Rossetti is coming to see me Thursday, before starting for his
+holiday trip to Naples. His father was a Neapolitan, so he narrowly
+escaped a lifelong dungeon for having written some patriotic songs--he
+fled in disguise by help of English friends & spent the rest of his life
+here. So this, his first visit to Naples, will be specially full of
+interest & delight to our friend. He is also in great spirits at having
+discovered a large number of hitherto unknown early letters of Shelley's.
+Of modern English Poets Shelley is the one he loves & admires incomparably
+the most. Perhaps this letter will just reach you on your birthday. What
+can I send you? What can I tell you but the same old story of a heart
+fast anchored--of a soul to whom your soul is as the sun & the fresh,
+sweet air, and the nourishing, sustaining earth wherein the other one
+breathes free & feeds & expands & delights itself. There is no occupation
+of the day however homely that is not coloured, elevated, made more
+cheerful to me by thoughts of you & by thoughts you have given me blent in
+& suffusing all: No hope or aim or practical endeavour for my dear
+children that has not taken a higher, larger, more joyous scope through
+you. No immortal aspiration, no thoughts of what lies beyond death, but
+centre in you. And in moods of pain and discouragement, dear Friend, I
+turn to that Poem beginning "Whoever you are holding me now in hand," and
+I don't know but that that one revives and strengthens me more than any.
+For there is not a line nor a word in it at which my spirit does not rise
+up instinctively and fearlessly say--"So be it." And then I read other
+poems & drink in the draught that I know is for me, because it is for
+all--the love that you give me on the broad ground of my humanity and
+womanhood. And I understand the reality & preciousness of that. Then I say
+to myself, "Souls are not made to be frustrated--to have their greatest &
+best & sweetest impulses and aspirations & yearnings made abortive.
+Therefore we shall not be 'carried diverse' forever. This dumb soul of
+mine will not always remain hidden from you--but some way will be given me
+for this love, this passion of gratitude, this set of all the nerves of my
+being toward you, to bring joy & comfort to you. I do not ask the When or
+the How."
+
+I shall be thinking of your great & dear Mother in her beautiful old age,
+too, on your birthday--happiest woman in all the world that she was & is:
+forever sacred & dear to America & to all who feed on the Poems of her
+Son.
+
+Good-bye, my best beloved Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+I suppose you see all that you care to see in the way of English
+newspapers. I often long to send you one when there is anything in that I
+feel sure would interest you, but am withheld by fearing it would be quite
+superfluous or troublesome even.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Earls Colne
+  Halstead
+  August 12, 1873._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The paper has just been forwarded here which tells me you are still
+suffering and not, as I was fondly believing, already quite emerged from
+the cloud of sickness. My Darling, let me use that tender caressing word
+once more--for how can I help it, with heart so full & no outlet but
+words? My darling--I say it over & over to myself with voice, with eyes so
+full of love, of tender yearning, sorrowful, longing love. I would give
+all the world if I might come (but am held here yet awhile by a duty
+nothing may supersede) & soothe & tend & wait on you & with such cheerful
+loving companionship lift off some of the weight of the long hours & days
+& perhaps months that must still go over while nature slowly,
+imperceptibly, but still so surely repairs the mischief within: result of
+the tremendous ordeal to your frame of those great over-brimming years of
+life spent in the Army Hospitals. You see dear Friend, a woman who is a
+mother has thenceforth something of that feeling toward other men who are
+dear to her. A cherishing, fostering instinct that rejoices so in tending,
+nursing, caretaking & I should be so happy it needs must diffuse a
+reviving, comforting, vivifying warmth around you. Might but these words
+breathed out of the heart of a woman who loves you with her whole soul &
+life & strength fulfil their errand & comfort the sorrowful heart, if
+ever so little--& through that revive the drooping frame. This love that
+has grown up, far away over here, unhelped by the sweet influences of
+personal intercourse, penetrating the whole substance of a woman's life,
+swallowing up into itself all her aspirations, hopes, longings, regardless
+of Death, looking earnestly, confidently beyond that for its fruition,
+blending more or less with every thought & act of her life--a guiding star
+that her feet cannot choose but follow resolutely--what can be more real
+than this, dear Friend? What can have deeper roots, or a more immortal
+growing power? But I do not ask any longer whether this love is believed
+in & welcomed & precious to you. For I know that what has real roots
+cannot fail to bear real flowers & fruits that will in the end be sweet &
+joyful to you; and that if I am indeed capable of being your eternal
+comrade, climbing whereon you climb, daring all that you dare, learning
+all that you learn, suffering all that you suffer (pressing closest then)
+loving, enjoying all that you love & enjoy--you will want me. You will not
+be able to help stretching out your hand & drawing me to you. I have
+written this mostly out in the fields, as I am so fond of doing--the
+serene, beautiful harvest landscape spread around--returned once more as I
+have every summer for five & twenty years to this old village where my
+mother's family have lived in unbroken succession three hundred years,
+ever since, in fact, the old Priory which they have inhabited, ceased to
+be a Priory. My Mother's health is still good--wonderful indeed for 88,
+though she has been 30 years crippled with rheumatism. Still she enjoys
+getting out in the sunshine in her Bath chair, & is able to take pleasure
+in seeing her friends & in having us all with her. Her father was a hale
+man at 90. These eastern counties are flat & tame, but yet under this
+soft, smiling, summer sky lovely enough too--with their rich green meadows
+& abundant golden corn crops, now being well got in. Even the sluggish
+little river Colne one cannot find fault with, it nourishes such a
+luxuriant border of wild flowers as it creeps along--& turns & twists from
+sunshine into shade & from shade into sunshine so as to make the very best
+& most of itself. But as to the human growth here, I think that more than
+anywhere else in England perhaps it struggled along choked & poisoned by
+dead things of the past, still holding their place above ground. Carlyle
+calls the clergy "black dragoons"--in these rural parishes they are black
+Squires, making it their chief business to instruct the labourer that his
+grinding poverty & excessive toil, & the Squire's affluence & ease are
+equally part of the sacred order of Providence. When I have been here a
+little I wish myself in London again, dearly as I love outdoor life &
+companionship with nature. For though the same terrible & cruel facts are
+there as here, they are not choked down your throat by any one, as a
+beautiful & perfect ideal. Even in England light is unmistakably breaking
+through the darkness for the toilers.
+
+I did not see William Rossetti before I came down, but heard he had had a
+very happy time in Italy & splendid weather all the while. Mr. Conway &
+his wife are going to spend their holiday in Brittany. Do not think me
+childish dear friend if I send a copy of this letter to Washington as well
+as to Camden. I want it so to get to you--long & so long to speak with
+you--& the Camden one may never come to hand--or the Washington one might
+remain months unforwarded--it is easy to tear up.
+
+I hope it will find you by the sea shore!--getting on so fast toward
+health & strength again--refreshed & tranquillized, soul & body. Good-bye,
+beloved Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XV[21]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  I must write
+  friend once more at
+  Since I last wrote, clouds have darkened over me, and still remain.
+
+On the night of 3d January last I was paralyzed, left side, and have
+remained so since. Feb. 19 I lost a dear dear sister, who died in St.
+Louis leaving two young daughters. May 23d, my dear inexpressibly beloved
+mother died in Camden, N. J. I was just able to get from Washington to her
+dying bed & sit there. I thought I was bearing it all stoutly, but I find
+it affecting the progress of my recovery since and now. I am still feeble,
+palsied & have spells of great distress in the head. But there are points
+more favourable.
+
+I am up & dressed every day, sleep & eat middling well & do not change
+much yet, in flesh & face, only look very old.
+
+Though I can move slowly very short distances, I walk with difficulty &
+have to stay in the house nearly all the time. As I write to-day, I feel
+that I shall probably get well--though I may not.
+
+Many times during the past year have I thought of you & your children.
+Many times indeed have I been going to write, but did not. I have just
+been reading over again several of this & last year's letters from you &
+looking at the pictures sent in the one of Jan. 24, '72. (Your letters
+of Jan. 24, June 3 & July 14, of last year and of Jan. 31, and May 20,
+this year, with certainly one other, maybe two) all came safe. Do not
+think hard of me for not writing in reply. If you could look into my
+spirit & emotion you would be entirely satisfied & at peace. I am at
+present temporarily here at Camden, on the Delaware river, opposite
+Philadelphia, at the house of my brother, and I am occupying, as I write,
+the rooms wherein my mother died. You must not be unhappy about me, as I
+am as comfortably situated as can be--& many things--indeed every
+thing--in my case might be so much worse. Though my plans are not
+definite, my intention as far as anything is on getting stronger, and
+after the hot season passes, to get back to Washington for the fall &
+winter.
+
+My post office address continues at Washington. I send my love to Percy &
+all your dear children.
+
+The enclosed ring I have just taken from my finger, & send to you, with my
+love.
+
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A TYPICAL WHITMAN LETTER.
+
+FROM THOMAS B. HARNED'S COLLECTION]
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Earls Colne
+  Sept. 4, 1873._
+
+I am entirely satisfied & at peace, my Beloved--no words can say how
+divine a peace.
+
+Pain and joy struggle together in me (but joy getting the mastery, because
+its portion is eternal). O the precious letter, bearing to me the living
+touch of your hand, vibrating through & through me as I feel the pressure
+of the ring that pressed your flesh--& now will press mine so long as I
+draw breath. My Darling! take comfort & strength & joy from me that you
+have made so rich & strong. Perhaps it will yet be given us to see each
+other, to travel the last stage of this journey side by side, hand in
+hand--so completing the preparation for the fresh start on the greater
+journey; me loving and blessing her you mourn, now for your dear
+sake--then growing to know & love her in full unison with you.
+
+I hope you will soon get to the sea--as soon as you are strong enough,
+that is--& if you could have all needful care & comfort & a dear friend
+with you there. For I believe you would get on faster away from Camden--&
+that it tends so to keep the wound open & quivering to be where the blow
+fell on you--where every object speaks of her last hours & is laden with
+heart-stirring associations; though I realize, dearest Friend, that in the
+midst of the poignant sorrow come immortal sweet moments--communings, rapt
+anticipations. But these would come the same in nature's great soothing
+arms by the seashore, with her reviving, invigorating breath playing
+freely over you. If only you could get just strong enough prudently to
+undertake the journey. When my eyes first open in the morning, often such
+tender thoughts, yearning ineffably, pitying, sorrowful, sweet thoughts
+flow into my breast that longs & longs to pillow on itself the suffering
+head (with white hair more beautiful to me than the silvery clouds which
+always make me think of it.) My hands want to be so helpful, tending,
+soothing, serving my whole frame to support his stricken side--O to
+comfort his heart--to diffuse round him such warm sunshine of love,
+helping time & the inborn vigour of each organ that the disease could not
+withstand the influences, but healthful life begin to flow again through
+every part. My children send their love, their earnest sympathy. Do not
+feel anyways called on to write except when inwardly impelled. Your
+silence is not dumb to me now--will never again cloud or pain, or be
+misconstrued by me. I can feast & feast, & still have wherewithal to
+satisfy myself with the sweet & precious words that have now come & with
+the feel of my ring, only send any old paper that comes to hand (never
+mind whether there is anything to read in it or not) just as a sign that
+the breath of love & hope these poor words try to bear to you, has reached
+you. And just one word literally that, dearest, when you begin to feel you
+are really getting on--to make me so joyful with the news.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend,
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Back again in Marquis Road.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  Nov. 3, '73 London_
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+All the papers have reached me--3 separate packets (with the handwriting
+on them that makes my heart give a glad bound). I look through them full
+of interest & curiosity, wanting to realize as I do, in things small as
+well as things large, my Land of Promise--the land where I hope to plant
+down my children--so strong in the faith that they, & perhaps still more
+those that come after them will bless me for that (consciously or
+unconsciously, it doesn't matter which) I should set out with a cheerful
+heart on that errand if I knew the first breath I drew on American soil
+would be my last in life. I searched hopeful for a few words telling of
+improvement in your health in the last paper. But perhaps it does not
+follow from there being no much mention that there is no progress. May you
+be steadily though ever so slowly gaining ground, my Darling! Now that I
+understand the nature of the malady (a deficient flow of blood to the
+brain, if it has been rightly explained to me) I realize that recovery
+must be very gradual: as the coming on of it must have been slow &
+insidious. And perhaps that, & also even from before the war time with its
+tremendous strain, emotional & physical, is part of the price paid for the
+greatness of the Poems & for their immortal destiny--the rapt exaltation
+the intensity of joy & sorrow & struggle--all that went to give them
+their life-giving power. For I have felt many times in reading them as if
+the light and heat of their sacred fire must needs have consumed the vital
+energies of him in whose breast it was generated, faster then even the
+most splendid physique could renew itself. For our sakes, for humanity's
+sake, you suffer now, I do not doubt it, every bit as much as the
+soldier's wounds are for his country's sake. The more precious, the more
+tenderly cherished, the more drawing the hearts that understand with
+ineffable yearnings, for this.
+
+My children all continue well in the main, I am thankful to say, though
+Beatrice (the eldest girl) looks paler than I could wish and is working
+her brains too much and the rest of her too little just at present, with
+the hope of getting through the Apothecaries Hall exam. in Arts next
+Sept., which involves a good bit of Latin and mathematics. This is all
+women can do in England toward getting into the medical profession & as
+the Apoth. Hall certificate is accepted for the preliminary studies at
+Paris & Zurich, I make no doubt it is also at Philadelphia & New York; so
+that she would be able to enter on medical studies, the virtual
+preliminary work, when we come. For she continues steadfastly desirous to
+win her way into that field of usefulness, & I believe is well fitted to
+work there, with her grave, earnest, thoughtful, feeling nature & strong
+bodily frame. She is able to enjoy your Poems & the vistas; broods over
+them a great deal. Percy is bending his energies now to mastering the
+processes that go to the production of the very best quality of copper
+such as is used for telegraph wires &c. No easy matter, copper being the
+most difficult, in a metallurgical point of view, of all the metals to
+deal with & the Company in whose employ he is having hitherto been
+unsuccessful in this branch. His looks, too, do not quite satisfy me--it
+is partly rather too long hours of work--but still more not getting a good
+meal till the end of it. It is so hard to make the young believe that the
+stomach shares the fatigue of the rest of the body and that there is not
+nervous energy enough left for it to do all its principal work to
+perfection after a long, exhausting day. But I hope now I, or rather his
+own experience and I together, have convinced him in time, and he promises
+me faithfully to arrange for a good meal in the middle of the day however
+much grudging the time. My little artist Herby is still chiefly working
+from the antique, but tries his hand at home occasionally with oils & to
+life & has made an oil sketch of me which, though imperfect in drawing
+&c., gives far more the real character & expression of my face than the
+photographs. Have you heard, I wonder, of William Rossetti's approaching
+marriage? It is to take place early in the New Year. The lady is Lucy
+Brown, daughter of one of our most eminent artists (he was the friend who
+first put into my hand the "Selections" from your Poems). Lucy is a very
+sweet-tempered, cultivated, lovable woman, well fitted, I should say, to
+make William Rossetti happy. They are to continue in the old home, Euston
+Sq., with Mrs. Rossetti & the sisters, who are one and all fond of Lucy. I
+am glad he is going to be married for I think he is a man capable both of
+giving and receiving a large measure of domestic happiness. I hope the
+dear little girls at St. Louis are well. And you, my Darling, O surely the
+sun is piercing through the dark clouds once more and strength & health
+and gladness returning. O fill yourself with happy thoughts for you have
+filled others with joy & strength & will do so for countless generations,
+& from these hearts flows back, and will ever flow, a steady current of
+love & the beautiful fruits of love.
+
+When you next send me a paper, if you feel that you are getting on ever so
+little, dearest friend, just a dash under the word _London_. I have looked
+back at all your old addresses & I see you never do put any lines, so I
+shall know it was not done absently but really means you are better. And
+how that line will gladden my eyes, Darling!
+
+Love from us all. Good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq., N. W.
+  Dec. 8, 1873._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The papers with Prof. Young's speech came safely & I read it, my hand in
+yours, happy and full of interest. Are you getting on, my Darling? When I
+know that you no longer suffer from distressing sensations in the head &
+can move without such effort and difficulty, a hymn of thankfulness will
+go up from my heart. Perhaps this week I shall get the paper with the line
+on it that is to tell me so much--or at least that you are well on your
+way towards it. And what shall I tell you about? The quiet tenor of our
+daily lives here? but that is very restricted, though, I trust, as far as
+it goes, good & healthful. O the thoughts and hopes that leap from across
+the ocean & the years! But they hide themselves away when I want to put
+them into words. Do not think I live in dreams. I know very well it is
+strictly in proportion as the present & the past have been busy shaping &
+preparing the materials of a beautiful future, that it really will be
+beautiful when it comes to exist as a present, seeing how it needs must be
+entirely a growth from all that has preceded it & that there are no sudden
+creations of flowers of happiness in men & women any more than in the
+fields. But if the buds lie ready folded, ah, what the sunshine will do!
+What fills me with such deep joy in your poems is the sense of the large
+complete acceptiveness--the full & perfect faith in humanity--in _every
+individual unit of humanity_--thus for the first time uttered. That alone
+satisfies the sense of justice in the soul, responds to what its own
+nature compels it to believe of the Infinite Source of all. That too
+includes within its scope the lot as well as the man. His infinite,
+undying self must achieve and fulfil itself out of any & all experiences.
+Why, if it takes such ages & such vicissitudes to compact a bit of
+rock--fierce heat, & icy cold, storms, deluges, crushing pressure & slow
+subsidences, as if it were like a handful of grass & all sunshine--what
+would it do for a man!
+
+
+_Dec. 18._
+
+The longed-for paper has come to hand. O it _is_ a slow struggle back to
+health, my Darling! I believe in the main it is good news that is
+come--and there is the little stroke I wanted so on the address. But for
+all that, I feel troubled & conscious--for I believe you have been a great
+deal worse since you wrote--and that you have still such a steep, steep
+hill to climb.
+
+Perhaps if my hand were in yours, dear Walt, you would get along faster.
+Dearer and sweeter that lot than even to have been your bride in the full
+flush & strength and glory of your youth. I turn my face to the westward
+sky before I lie down to sleep, deep & steadfast within me the silent
+aspiration that every year, every month & week, may help something to
+prepare and make fitter me and mine to be your comfort and joy. We are
+full of imperfections, short-comings but half developed, but half
+"possessing our own souls." But we grow, we learn, we strive--that is the
+best of us. I think in the sunshine of your presence we shall grow fast--I
+too, my years notwithstanding. May the New Year lead you out into the
+sunshine again--shed out of its days health & strength, so that you tread
+the earth in gladness again. This with love from us all. Good-bye, dearest
+Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Herby was at a Conversation last night where were many distinguished men &
+beautiful women. Among the works of art displayed on the walls was a fine
+photograph of you.
+
+
+19th, afternoon.
+
+And now a later post has brought me the other No. of the _Graphic_ with
+your own writing in it--so full of life and spirit, so fresh & cheerful &
+vivid, dear Friend, it seems to scatter all anxious sad thoughts to the
+winds. And are you then really back at Washington, I wonder, or have you
+only visited it in spirit, & written the recollection of former evenings?
+
+I shall have none but cheerful thoughts now. I shall reread it
+carefully--read it to the young folk at tea to-night.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  London
+  26 Feb., 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Glad am I when the time comes round for writing to you again--though I
+can't please myself with my letters, poor little echoes that they are of
+the loving, hoping, far-journeying thoughts so busy within. It has been a
+happy time since I received the paper with the joyful news you were back
+at Washington, well on your way to recovery, able partially to resume
+work--scenting from afar the fresh breeze & sunshine of perfect health--by
+this time, not from afar, perhaps. The thought of that makes dull days
+bright & bright days glorious to me too. I note in the New York _Graphic_
+that a new edition of "Leaves of Grass" was called for--sign truly that
+America is not so very slowly & now absorbing the precious food she needs
+above all else? Perhaps, dear Friend, even during your lifetime will begin
+to come the proof you will alone accept--that "your country absorbs you as
+affectionately as you have absorbed it." I have had two great pleasures
+since I last wrote you. One is that Herby has read with a large measure of
+responsive delight "Leaves of Grass" quite through, so that he now sees
+you with his own eyes & has in his heart the living, growing germs of a
+loving admiration that will grow with his growth & strengthen every fibre
+of good in him. Also he read & took much pride in my "letters," now shown
+him for the first time. Percy has had a fortnight's holiday with us, and
+looks better in health, though still not altogether as I could wish. He
+says he is getting such good experience he would not care just yet to
+change his post even for better pay. Music is his greatest pleasure--he
+seems to get more enjoyment out of that than out of literature, & is
+acquiring some practical skill.
+
+To-day (Feb. 25th) is my birthday, dearest Friend--a day my children
+always make very bright & happy to me: and on it they make me promise to
+"do nothing but what I like all day." So I shall spend it with you--partly
+in finishing this letter, partly reading in the book that is so dear to
+me--for that is indeed my soul coming into the presence of your
+soul--filled by it with strength & warmth & joy. In discouraged moods,
+when oppressed with the consciousness of my own limitations, failures,
+lack of many beautiful gifts, I say to myself, "What sort of a bird with
+unfledged wings are you that would mate with an eagle? Can your eyes look
+the sun in the face like his? Can you sustain your long, lifelong flights
+upward? Can you rest in dizzy rocks overhanging dark, tempestuous abysses?
+Is your heart like his, a great glowing sun of Love?" Then I answer, "Give
+me Time." I can bide my time--a long, long growing & unfolding time. That
+he draws me with such power, that my soul has found the meaning of itself
+in him--the object of all its deep, deathless aspirations in comradeship
+with him, means, if life is not a mockery clean ended by death, that the
+germs are in me, that through cleaving & loving & ever striving up & on I
+shall grow like him--like but different--the correlative--what his soul
+needs & desires; and if when I reach America he is not so drawn towards
+me,--if seeing how often I disappoint myself, needs must that he too is
+disappointed, still I can hold bravely, lovingly on to this
+inextinguishable faith & hope--with the added joy of his presence,
+sometimes winning from him more & more a dear friendship, yielding him
+some joy & comfort--for he too turns with hope, with yearning, towards
+me--bids me be "satisfied & at peace!" So I am, so I will be, my darling.
+Surely, surely, sooner or later I shall justify that hope, satisfy that
+yearning. This is what I say to myself & to you this 46th birthday. Have I
+said it over & over again? That is because it is the undercurrent of my
+whole life. The _Tribune_ with Proctor's "Lecture on the Sun" (& a great
+deal besides that interests me) came safe. A masterly lecture. And two
+days ago came the Philadelphia paper with Prof. Morton's speech--deeply
+interesting. And as I read these things, the feeling that they have come
+from, & been read by, you turns them into Poems for me.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+W. Rossetti's marriage is to be the end of next month. Had a pleasant chat
+with Mr. Conway, who took supper with us a week or two ago.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+_March 9th, 1874._
+
+With full heart, with eyes wet with tears of joy & I know not what other
+deep emotion--pain of yearning pity blent with the sense of
+grandeur--dearest Friend, have I read and reread the great, sacred Poem
+just come to me.[22] O august Columbus! whose sorrows, sufferings,
+struggles are more to be envied than any triumph of conquering warrior--as
+I see him in your poem his figure merges into yours, brother of Columbus.
+Completer of his work, discoverer of the spiritual, the ideal America--you
+too have sailed over stormy seas to your goal--surrounded with mocking
+disbelievers--you too have paid the great price of health--our Columbus.
+
+Your accents pierce me through & through.
+
+Your loving ANNIE.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  May 14, 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Two papers have come to hand since I last wrote, one containing the
+memoranda made during the war--precious records, eagerly read & treasured
+& reread by me.
+
+How the busy days slip by one so like another, yet each with its own fresh
+& pleasant flavour & scent, as like and as different as the leaves on a
+tree, or the plants in the hedgerows. Days they are busy with humble
+enough occupations, but lit up for me not only with the light of hope, but
+with the half-hidden joy of one who knows she has found what she sought
+and laid such strong hold upon it that she fears nothing, questions
+nothing--no life, or death, nor in the end, in her own imperfections,
+flaws, shortcomings. For to be so conscious of these, and to love and
+understand you so, are proofs [that] the germs of all are in her, &
+perhaps in the warmth & joyous sunshine of your presence would grow fast.
+Anyhow, distance has not baffled her, and time will not. A great deal of
+needlework to be done at this time of year; for my girls have not time for
+any at present; it is not a good contrast or the right thing after longish
+hours of study--much better household activity of any sort. If they would
+but understand this in schools & colleges for girls & young women. No
+healthier or more cheerful occupation as a relief from study, could be
+found than household work--sweeping, scrubbing, washing, ironing,
+cooking--in the variety of it, & equable development of the muscles, I
+should think equal to the most elaborate gymnastics. I know very well how
+I have felt, & still feel, the want of having been put to these things
+when a girl. Then the importance afterwards of doing them easily & well &
+without undue fatigue, to all who aim to give practical shape to their
+ardent belief in equality & fair play for all. In domestic life under one
+roof, at all events, it is already feasible to make the disposals without
+ignominious distinctions--not all the rough bodily work, never ending,
+leisure all to the other; but a wholesome interchange and sharing of
+these. Not least too among the advantages of taking an active share in
+these duties is the zest, the keen relish, it gives to the hours not too
+easily secured for reading & music. Besides, I often think that just as
+the Poem Nature is made up half of rude, rough realities and homely
+materials & processes, so it is necessary for women to construct their
+Poem, Home, on a groundwork of homeliest details & occupations, providing
+for the bodily wants & comforts of their household, and that without
+putting their own hands to this, their Poem will lack the vital, fresh,
+growing, nature-like quality that alone endures, and that of this soil
+will grow, with fitting preparation & culture, noble & more vigorous
+intellectual life in women, fit to embody itself in wider spheres
+afterwards--if the call comes.
+
+This month of May that comes to you so laden with great and sorrowful &
+beautiful & tender memories, and that is your birth-month too, I cannot
+say that I think of you more than at any other time, for there is no month
+nor day that my thoughts do not habitually & spontaneously turn to you,
+refer all to you--yet I seem to come closer because of the Poems that tell
+me of what relates to that time; but most of all when I think of your
+beloved Mother, because then I often yearn, more than I know how to bear,
+to comfort you with love and tender care and silent companionship. May is
+in a sense (& a very real one) my birth-month too, for in it were your
+Poems first put into my hand. I wish I were _quite sure_ that you no
+longer suffer in your head, and that you can move about without effort or
+difficulty--perhaps before long there will be a paper with some paragraph
+about your health, for though we say to ourselves no news is good news, it
+is a very different thing to have the absolute affirmation of good news.
+
+My children are all well and hearty, I am thankful to say, & working
+industriously. Grace means to study the best system of kindergarten
+teaching--I fancy she is well suited for kindergarten teaching & that it
+is very excellent work.
+
+Herby is still drawing from the antique in the British Museum. I hope he
+will get into the Academy this summer. He is going to spend his holidays
+with his brother in South Wales--and we as usual at Colne, but that will
+not be till August.
+
+Did I tell you William Rossetti and his bride were spending their
+honeymoon at Naples? & have found it bitterly cold there, I learn. Mr. &
+Mrs. Conway & their children are well. Eustace is coming to spend the
+afternoon with Herby to-morrow.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  July 4, 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Are you well and happy, and enjoying this beautiful summer? London is, in
+one sense, a sort of big prison at this time of year: but still at a wide
+open window, with the blue sky opening to me & a soft breeze blowing in &
+the Book that is so dear--my life-giving treasure--open on my lap, I have
+very happy times. No one hundreds of years hence will find deeper joy in
+these poems than I--breathe the fresh, sweet, exhilarating air of them,
+bathe in it, drink in what nourishes & delights the whole being, body,
+intellect & soul, more than I. Nor could you, when writing them, have
+desired to come nearer to a human being & be more to them forever &
+forever than you are & will be to me. O I take the hand you stretch out
+each day--I put mine into it with a sense of utter fulfilment: I ask
+nothing more of time and of eternity but to live and grow up to that
+companionship that includes all.
+
+6th. This very morning has come the answer to my question. First I only
+saw the Poem--read it so elate--soared with it to joyous heights, said to
+myself: "He is so well again, he is able to take the journey into
+Massachusetts & speak the kindling words." Then I turned over and my joy
+was dashed. My Darling; such patience yet needed along the tedious path!
+Oh, it makes me long, with passionate longings, with yearnings I know not
+how to bear, to come, to be your loving, cheerful companion, the one to
+take such care, to do all for you--to beguile the time, to give you of my
+health as you have done to tens of thousands. I do not doubt, either, but
+that you will get well. I feel sure, sure, it will be given me to see you;
+and perhaps a very slow, gradual recovery is safest--is the only way in
+this as in other matters to thoroughness; & a very speedy rally would be
+specious, treacherous, in the end, leading you to do what you were not yet
+fit for. I believe if I could only make you conscious of the love, the
+enfolding love, my heart breathes out toward you it would do you physical
+good; many-sided love--Mother's love that cherishes, that delights so in
+personal service, that sees in sickness & suffering such dear appeals to
+an answering, limitless tenderness--wife's love--ah, you draw that from me
+too, resistlessly--I have no choice--comrade's love, so happy in sharing
+all, pain, sorrow, toil, effort, enjoyments, thoughts, hopes, aims,
+struggles, disappointment, beliefs, aspirations. Child's love, too, that
+trusts utterly, confides unquestioningly. Not more spontaneously, & wholly
+without effort or volition on my part, does the sunlight flow into my eyes
+when I open them in the morning than does the sense of your existence
+enter like bright light into my awaking soul. And then I send to you
+thoughts--tender, caressing thoughts--that would fain nestle so close--ah,
+if you could feel them, take them in, let them lie in your breast, each
+morning.
+
+My children are all well, dear Friend. Herbert is going to spend his
+holidays with his brother in Wales--& we shall all go to Colne as usual
+the end of this month & remain there through August and September; so if
+you think of it, address any paper you may send [to] Earls Colne,
+Halstead, because I should get it a day sooner. But it does not signify if
+you forget & send it here; it will be forwarded all right. Beatrice has
+just got through one of the Govern. Exams. in elementary mathematics; and
+I hope Herby has got into the Academy, but do not know for certain yet. He
+works away zealously and with great delight in his work. William Rossetti
+and his wife are coming to dine with us Wednesday--they look so well and
+happy, it does one good to see them. The Conways are going to Ostend, I
+think, for their holiday, & when they come back [are] going to move into a
+larger house. I heard an American lady, Miss Whitman, sing at a concert
+the other day, who delighted me, fascinated me--I longed to kiss her after
+each song, though some of them were poor enough Verdi stuff--but she
+contrived to impart genuineness & beauty to them. I hope you will hear her
+when she returns to America, which will be soon, I believe.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend. Beatrice, Herby & Grace join their love with
+mine. I had the sweet little Bridal Poem all safe, & by the bye I liked
+that Springfield paper very much.
+
+Your loving ANNIE.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Earls Colne
+  Sept. 3, 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The change down here has refreshed me more than usual and I find my Mother
+still wonderful for her years (the 89th), able to get out daily in her
+Bath chair for two or three hours--to enjoy our being with her, and
+suffering little or no pain from rheumatism now. I hope you have had as
+glorious a summer & harvest as we have, and that you are able to be much
+out of doors and absorb the health-giving influences, dear Friend. Such
+mornings! So fresh and invigourating. I have been before breakfast mostly
+in a beautiful garden (the old Priory garden) with my beloved Poems and
+the dew-laden flowers and liquid light and sweet, fresh air; & the sparkle
+of the pond & delicious greenness of the meadows beyond & rustling trees,
+and had a joyful time with you, my Darling--sometimes with thoughts that
+lay hold on "the solid prizes of the Universe," sometimes so busy building
+up a home in America, thinking, dreaming, hoping, loving, groping among
+dim shadows, straining wistful eyes into the dim distance--then to my
+poems again--ah! not groping then, but hand in hand with you, breathing
+the air you breathe, with eyes ardently fixed in the same direction your
+eyes look, heart beating strong with the same hopes, aspirations, yours
+beats with. It does not need to be American to love America and to believe
+in the great future of humanity there; it is curious to be human, still
+more English to do that. I love & believe in & understand her in & through
+you: but was always drawn towards her, always a believer, though in a
+vaguer way, that a new glorious day for men & women was dawning there, and
+recognized a new, distinctive American quality, very congenial to me, even
+in American virtues, which you not perhaps rate highly or retard as
+decisively national, not adequately or commandingly so, at any rate. Did I
+ever tell you the cousin of mine[23] who owns the priory here fought for
+two years in the Secession war in the army of the Potomac when Burnside &
+McClellan were at the head? John Cowardine was Major in a Cavalry
+regiment--was at Vicksburg, Frederickburg, &c. Never wounded, or but
+slightly--had a good deal of outpost duty, being just the right sort of a
+man for that, & has letters of approval from his generals of which he is
+not a little proud. Before that fought under the Stars & Stripes in Mexico
+& has had a curiously adventurous career, which he commenced by running
+away from a military college, where he was being prepared for a cadetship,
+& enlisting as a private--getting out of that by & bye and working his way
+before the mast as a sailor--then mining in California--then in Australia,
+riding steeplechases, keeper of the Melrose hounds, market gardening,
+hotel keeping, then on his way back to California, cast ashore on one of
+the Navigator Islands, where he remained for six months, the only white
+man among savages, who were friendly & made much of him--now, come into a
+good estate, married to a woman who seems to suit him well & is healthy,
+cheerful rich & handsome, he has fallen into indifferent health &
+considerable depression of spirits. Perhaps he finds the atmosphere of
+Squirearchical gentility very stagnant, the bed of roses
+stifling--perhaps, too, the severe privations he has at different times
+undergone have injured him. I often think he was perhaps one of those
+your eyes rested on with pride & admiration--"handsome, tan-faced, dressed
+in blue." He is the very ideal of a soldier in appearance & bearing--has
+now some fine children, of whom he is very fond.
+
+It was just this time of year I received the precious letter and ring that
+put peace and joy, and yet such pain of yearning, into my heart--pain for
+you, my Darling. O sorrowing helpless love that waits, and must wait,
+useless, afar off, while you suffer. But trying every day of my life to
+grow fitter, more capable of being your comfort and joy and true
+comrade--never to cease trying this side death or the other--rejoicing in
+my children more than I ever rejoiced in them before, now that in and
+through you I for the first time see and understand humanity (myself
+included)--its divine nature, its possibilities, nay, its certainties. How
+I do long for you to see my children, dear Friend, and for them to see and
+love you as they will love you, and all their nature unfold and grow more
+vigorously and joyously under your influence. Gracie, of whom you have
+photographs, grows fast,--is such a fine, blooming girl. I hope soon to
+send you one of Beatrice too. They have been enjoying their visit here and
+are now gone home. Gracie for school, Beatrice for the examination at
+Apoth. Hall she is hoping to get through. Then she is coming here to be
+with my Mother, & I going back to London. We mean now one or other of us
+always to be with my Mother here. Herby has had such a happy time with his
+brother in Wales--& is looking as brown as a nut & full of health &
+life--he had a swim in the sea every day. He did succeed in getting into
+the Academy, & will begin work there Oct. 1st! Be sure, dear Friend, if
+there is a word about your health in any paper to send it me--that is what
+I search for so eagerly--to have the joyful news you are getting on--but
+even if it is but so very very slowly, still I would rather know the
+truth? I do not like thinking of you mistakenly. I want to send you the
+thoughts, the yearnings, that belong to you, the cherishing love that
+enfolds you most tenderly of all when you suffer. O if I could send it!
+and the cheerful companionship, beguiling the time while strength creeps
+back. I hope your little nieces at St. Louis are well.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend. Herby, the only one here with me, would like
+to join his love with mine.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+I go back the beginning of October.
+
+_Sep. 14th._
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq. London
+  Dec. 9, 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+It did me much good to get your Poem--beautiful, earnest, eloquent words
+from the soul whose dear companionship mine seeks with persistent
+longing--wrestling with distance & time. It seems to me, too, from your
+having spoken the Poem yourself I may conclude you have made fair
+progress. What I would fain know is whether you have recovered the use of
+the left side so far as to get about pretty freely and to have as much
+open-air life as you need & like; and also whether you have quite ceased
+to suffer distressing sensations in the head. If you can say yes to the
+first question, will you in sign of it put a dash under the word _London_,
+and if yes to the second under _England_, when you next send me a paper?
+Unless indeed the paper itself contain a notice of your health. But if it
+does not, that would be an easy way of gladdening me with good news, if
+good news there is. I wish I could send you good letters, dearest Friend,
+making myself the vehicle of what is stirring around me in life & thought
+that would interest you; for there is plenty. But that is very hard to
+do--though I watch, hear, read eagerly, full of interest. Everything stirs
+in me a cloud of questions, makes me want to see its relationship to what
+I hold already. I am forever brooding, pondering, sifting, testing--but
+that is not the bent of mind that enables one to reproduce one's
+impressions in compact & lively form. So please, dear Friend, be
+indulgent, as indeed I know you will be, of these poor letters of mine
+with their details of my children & their iterated and reiterated
+expressions of the love and hope and aspiration you have called into life
+within me--take them not for what they are, but for all they have to stand
+for. Beatrice is at Colne (having got well through the exam. we were
+anxious about in the autumn) and is a very great comfort to my Mother--as
+I well knew she would be; for a more affectionate, devoted, care-taking
+nature does not breathe--with a strong active mental life of her own too.
+So, though missing her sorely, I am well satisfied she should be there;
+and the country life and rest are doing her a world of good. My artist boy
+is working away cheerily at the R. Academy, his heart in his work. Percy
+is coming to spend Xmas with us--he, too, continues well content with his
+work and in good health. Gracie is blooming. The Rossettis have had a
+heavy affliction this first year of their married life in the premature
+death of her only brother--a young man of considerable promise--barely 20.
+
+The Conways are well. I feel more completely myself than I have done since
+my illness--so you see, dear friend, if it has taken me quite four years
+to recover the lost ground, one must not be discouraged if two do not
+accomplish it in your case. I hope your little nieces[24] at St. Louis are
+well--and the brothers you are with, and that you have many dear friends
+round you at Camden.
+
+I think my thoughts fly to you on strongest and most joyous wings when I
+am out walking in the clear, cold, elastic air I enjoy so much.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+A cheerful Christmas, a New Year of which each day brings its share of
+restorative influence, be yours.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  Dec. 30, 1874._
+
+I see, my dearest Friend, I must not look for those dashes under the words
+I thought were going to convey a joyful confirmation of my hopes. I see
+how the dark clouds linger. Full of pain & indignation. I read the
+paragraph--but fuller still of yearning tenderness & trust and hope. I
+believe, my dear love, that what you need to help on your recovery is a
+woman's tender, cherishing love and care, and that in that warm, genial
+atmosphere the spring of life will be quickened once more and flow full
+and strong through all its channels as of old, gradually, not quickly,
+even so. I dare say: but with plenty of patience; with utmost intelligent
+care of all conditions favourable to health, of diet, of abundant oxygen
+in the rooms you inhabit, of as much outdoor life as possible, of happy,
+cheerful companionship, & all the homely everyday domestic joys which are
+so helpful in their influences. America is doing what nations in all times
+have done towards that which is profoundly new & great, that which
+discredits their old ideals and offers them strange fruits & flowers from
+another world than that they have been content to dwell in all their
+lives. But for all that I do not believe the precious seed is lying
+dormant even now--everywhere a few in whose hearts it is treasured &
+yields a noble growth. Since it is America that has produced you nourished
+your soul and body, she is silently, unnoticed, producing men & women who
+will justify you, who will understand the meaning of all and respond with
+a love that will quicken & exalt humanity as Christ's influence once did.
+Still it is inscrutable to me that the heart of America is not now
+passionately drawn toward the great heart that beats & glows in these
+Poems--that "Drum Taps," at any rate, are not as dear to her as the memory
+of her dead heroes, sons, brothers, husbands. It must be that they really
+do not reach the hands of the American people at large--that the
+professedly literary, cultivated class asking for nothing better than the
+pretty sing-song sentimentalities which "join them in their nonsense," or
+else slavishly prostrating their judgments before the models of the past
+(so perfect for their day, so wholly inadequate for ours), raise their
+voices so loud in newspapers & magazines as to prevent or everywhere check
+the circulation.
+
+_Jan. 1._ The New Year has come in bleakly & keenly to the inner as well
+as to the outer sense, with the papers full of the details of the dark
+fate of the emigrant ship & of the terrible railway accidents. Percy was
+not able to join us at Xmas (through business) but I am expecting him
+to-night. My mother bears up against the cold wonderfully--& even
+continues to go out in her chair. Bee's letters are very bright &
+cheerful--she & indeed all my children enjoy the cold much, provided they
+have plenty of out-door exercise--above all skating, which they are now
+enjoying. I too like it, but am so haunted by the thought of the increased
+misery it brings to our hundreds of thousands of ill-fed, ill-clothed,
+ill-housed. I trust the family circle round you & your nieces at St. Louis
+& all near & dear to you are well, and that you have felt the warm grasp
+of many loving friends this wintry, cloudy time, my dearest--and that
+there may breathe out of these poor words a warm, bright glow of love and
+hope & unrestricted trust in the future.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Earls Colne, Halstead
+  Feb. 21, 1875._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I have run down to Colne for a glimpse of my dear Bee, whom I had not seen
+for five months, and of my Mother; & now I am alone with the latter,
+Beatrice taking my place at home with her brother & sister for a week or
+two. A wonderful evergreen my Mother continues; still able to face the
+keen winds & the frost daily in her Bath chair--well swathed, of course in
+eiderdown & flannels. Beatrice takes beautiful care of her & is happy &
+content with her life here, loving the country as dearly as I do & having
+time enough for study & reading, as well as for domestic activities, to
+keep her mind as busy as her body. How I do long for you to see my
+children, dearest Friend. I wonder if you are surrounded with any in your
+brother's home--young, growing, blossoming plants that gladden you. And I
+wonder if the winter, which I hear is so severe in America this year,
+tries you--whether you can yet move briskly enough to keep up the
+circulation--and whether you have as many dear friends round you as you
+had at Washington. In my walks I keep thinking of these things. Write me a
+little letter once more, it would do me such good. No one of all your
+friends so easy as I to write to because none to whom any & every little
+detail is so welcome, so precious--lifting a tiny corner of the great vast
+of space between us, giving me for a moment to feel the friendly grasp of
+your hand--I that long for it so. Two years are over since your illness
+began, or seemed to begin, dearest friend--so slow & stealthy in its
+approaches, so slow & stealthy in its retreat--may the spring that is
+coming (the birds have already caught sight of it, cold & brown & bare as
+the landscape still is)--may it but come laden with healing,
+strengthening, refreshing influences--so that you begin to feel again the
+joyous freedom of health, warbling once more a song of joy for lilac time.
+True, I know indeed, my dearest, that anyhow you are content, not grudging
+the price paid for your life work, but even some way or other the richer
+for paying it--garnering precious equivalents for pain & privation of
+health in your inmost soul. I cannot choose but believe this
+earnestly--the resplendent faith that there is not "one cause nor result
+lamentable, at last, in the Universe" which glows throughout the Poems is
+for me an exhaustless source of strength & comfort.--I see every now &
+then & like the more each time the Conways. I am half afraid Mr. Conway
+works too incessantly--that is, does not like well enough the
+indispensable supplement of close mental work--plenty of air & exercise,
+&c.,--hates walking, & indeed it is not to be wondered at in great, smoky
+London (I shall be fond enough & proud enough of it too when I am over the
+Atlantic). Unless one has a real passion for open air & the sense of sky
+overhead, like me. I hear Mr. Conway is coming to America for six months
+in October.
+
+_Feb. 25_--I kept my letter till to-day that I might have the happiness of
+speaking to you on my birthday. See me this evening in the bright,
+cheerful parlour of our cottage, which stands just in the middle of the
+old village (it has been a village & jogged on through all change at its
+own sober, sleepy pace this 800 years)--my mother in her arm chair by the
+fire; I chatting with her & working or playing to her when she is awake; &
+with the Poems I love beside me, reading, musing, wondering while she
+dozes. Ah, shall I ever attain to the Ideal that burst upon me with such
+splendour of light & joy in those Poems in 1869--so filling, so possessing
+me, I seemed as if I had by one bound attained to that ideal--as if I were
+already a very twin of the soul from whom they emanated. But now I know
+that divine foretaste indicated what was possible for me, not what was
+accomplished--I know the slow growth--the standstill winters that follow
+the growing joyous springs & ripening summers. I believe it will take more
+lives than this one to reach that mountain on which I was transfigured
+again, never to descend more, but to start thence for new heights, fresh
+glories. Ah, dear friend, will you be able to have patience with me, for
+me?
+
+Good-bye, my dearest.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq.
+  London,
+  May 18, 1875._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Since last I wrote to you at the beginning of April (enclosing a little
+photograph of that avenue just by our cottage at Colne) I have been into
+Wales for a fortnight to see Percy, & have looked for the first time in my
+life on the Atlantic--the ocean my mental eyes travel over & beyond so
+often and that your eyes and ears & heart have been fed by, have communed
+with and interpreted, as in a new tongue, to the soul of man. Looking upon
+that, watching the tides ebb & flow on your shores, sharing, through my
+beloved book, in those greatest movements you have spent alone with
+it--that was a new joyful experience, a fresh kind of communing with
+you.--I went to Wales because I felt anxious about Percy, who is not happy
+just now. I must not tell friends here about it (except his brother &
+sisters) but I am sure I may tell you, for you will listen with sympathy.
+He has attached himself very deeply, I think it will prove, to a girl, &
+she to him, whose parents welcomed him cordially to their house for a year
+or two & allowed plenty of intercourse till they became aware through
+Percy himself (who thought it right to tell the father as soon as he was
+fully aware of his own feelings & more than suspected Norah's response to
+them) that there was a strong affection growing up between the two. Then
+they peremptorily forbade all intercourse--not because they have any
+objection to Percy--quite the contrary, they say; but solely and simply
+because he is not yet earning money enough to marry on, & they hold that a
+man has no right to engage a girl's affections till he can do so. As if
+these things could be timed to the moment the money comes in! Percy was in
+hopes, & so was I, that if I went down, I might get sense enough into
+their heads, if not kindness & sympathy into their hearts, to see that the
+sole effect of such arbitrary & narrow-sighted conduct would be to
+alienate & embitter the young people's feelings toward them, while it
+would make them more restless & anxious to marry without adequate means.
+Whereas if a reasonable amount of intercourse were allowed, it would be a
+happy time with them, & Norah being still so young (18), & Percy working
+away with all his might, doing very well for his age & sure,
+conscientious, thorough, capable, & well trained worker that he is (for
+the L. School of Mais gives a first rate scientific preparation for his
+profession) to be making a modest sufficiency in a year or two. Well, they
+were very courteous & indeed friendly to me, & I think I have won over the
+mother; but the father remains obdurate, & Percy feels bitterly the
+separation--all the more trying as they live almost within sight of each
+other. So Beatrice & Grace are going to spend their holidays with him this
+summer to cheer him up. Meanwhile, dear friend, I am on the whole happier
+than not about him. I liked what I saw of Norah & believe he has found a
+very sweet, affectionate girl of quiet, domestic nature, practical,
+industrious, sensible--thoroughly well to suit him, & that there is true &
+deep love between them--also, she took to me very much, & I feel will be
+quite another child to me. It is besides no little joy to me to find how
+Percy has confided in me in this & chooses me as the friend to whom he
+tells all--far from being any separation, as sometimes happens, this love
+of his seems to draw us closer together. Only I am very, very anxious for
+his sake to see him in a better berth--they would let her marry him on
+£300 a year; now he has only £175. He is quite competent to manage iron or
+copper or tin works, only he looks so young, not having yet any beard or
+moustache to speak of. That is the end of my long story.
+
+This will reach you on your birthday perhaps, my dearest Friend; at any
+rate it must bear you a greeting of love and fond remembrance for that
+dear day such as my heart will send you when it actually comes: patiently
+waiting heart, with the fibres of love and boundless trust & joy & hope
+which bind me to you bedded deep, grown to be, during these long years, a
+very part of its immortal substance, untouchable by age or varying moods
+or sickness, or death itself, as I surely believe. I long more than words
+can tell to know how it fares with you now in health and spirit. My
+children are all well & growing & unfolding to my heart's content.
+Beatrice & Herbert deeply influenced by your Poems. Good-bye, my dearest
+Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Address
+  1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Road, N. W.
+  London
+
+  Earls Colne
+  Aug. 28, 1875._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Your letter came to me just when I most needed the comfort of it--when I
+was watching and tending my dear Mother as she gently, slowly, with but
+little suffering, sank to rest. There was no sick bed to sit by--we got
+her up and out into the air and sunshine for an hour or two even the day
+before she died--No disease, only the stomach could not do its work any
+longer & for the last three weeks she lived wholly on stimulants,
+suffering somewhat from sickness. She drew her last breath very gently
+before daybreak on the 15th inst., in her 90th year, which she had entered
+in Jan. She looked very beautiful in death, notwithstanding her great
+age--as well she might--tranquil sunset that it was of a beautiful day--a
+fulfilled life--joy & delight of her father in youth (who used to call her
+the apple of his eye), good wife, devoted, self-sacrificing, wise
+mother--patient, courageous sufferer through thirty years of chronic
+rheumatism, which, however, neutralized & ceased its pains the last few
+years--unsurpassed, & indeed I think unsurpassable, in
+conscientiousness--in the strong sense of duty & perfect obedience to that
+highest sense--she is one of those who amply justify your large faith in
+women.
+
+I do not need to tell you anything, my dearest friend--you know all--I
+feel your strong comforting hand--I press it very close.
+
+I had all my children with me at the funeral.
+
+O the comfort your dear letter was & is to me. Thinking over & over the
+few words you say of yourself--& what is said in the paper (so eagerly
+read--every word so welcome) I cannot help fancying that the return of the
+distressing sensations in the head must be caused by your having worked at
+the book--the "Two Rivulets" (I dearly like the title & the idea of
+bringing the Poems & Prose together so)--that you must be more patient
+with yourself and submit still to perfect rest--& that perhaps in regard
+to the stomach--you have not enough adapted your diet to the privation of
+exercise--that you must be more indulgent to the stomach too in the sense
+of giving it only the very easiest & simplest work to do. My children join
+their love with mine.
+
+Your own loving
+
+ANNE.
+
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ONE OF ANNE GILCHRIST'S LETTERS TO WALT
+WHITMAN]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ONE OF ANNE GILCHRIST'S LETTERS TO WALT
+WHITMAN]
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd., Nov. 16, 1875.
+  London_
+
+I have been wanting the comfort of a talk with you, dearest Friend, for
+weeks & weeks, without being able to get leisure & tranquillity enough to
+do it to my heart's content--indeed, heart's content is not for me at
+present--but restless, eager, longing to come--& the struggle to do
+patiently & completely & wisely what remains for me here before I am free
+to obey the deep faith and love which govern me--so let me sit close
+beside you, my Darling--& feel your presence & take comfort & strength &
+serenity from it as I do, as I can when with all my heart & soul I draw
+close to you, realizing your living presence with all my might.--First,
+about Percy--things are beginning to look a little brighter for him. He is
+just entering upon a new engagement with some very large & successful
+works--the Blenavon Iron Co.--where, though his salary will not be higher
+at first, his opportunities of improvement will be better & he is also to
+be allowed to take private practice (in assaying & analyzing). The manager
+there believes in Science & is friendly to Percy & will give him every
+facility for showing what he can do, so that he hopes to prove to the
+Directors before long that he is worth a good salary. The parents of Norah
+(whom he loves) have released from their unfriendly attitude since my
+Beatrice has been staying with them; the two girls have attached
+themselves to one another & Per. has had delightful opportunities of
+being with Norah, & best of all, she is to return here with Beatrice (they
+are coming to-morrow), & Per. is to have a week's holiday & come up, so
+that he & Norah will be wholly together & have, I suspect, the happiest
+week they have yet had in their lives. Then I have stored away for them
+the furniture of the dear old home at Colne, & I really think that by the
+time '76 is out they will be able to marry. I see, and indeed I have known
+ever since he formed this attachment, that I must not look for him to come
+to America with me. But what I build upon, Dearest Friend, is that when I
+have been a little while in America & have made friends & had time to look
+about me I might hear of a good certainty for him--his excellent training
+at the School of Mines, large experience at Blenavon, energy, ability, &
+sturdy uprightness will make him a first-rate manager of works by & bye.
+But the leaving him so happy with his young wife will make it easier for
+us to part. _Nov. 26_--Beatrice has begun to work at anatomy at the School
+of Medicine for Women lately founded, & seems to delight in her work. She
+will not enter on the full course all at once--I am for taking things
+gently. Women have plenty of strength but it is of a different kind from
+men's & must work by gentler & slower means--Above all I do not like what
+pushes violently aside domestic duties & pleasures. The special work must
+combine itself with these; I am sure it can. Herby is getting on very
+nicely--never did student love his work better. He is eager, & by making
+the best use of present opportunities & advantages yet looking towards
+America full of cheerful hopes & sympathy. Grace is less developed in
+intellect but not less in character than the others. I can't describe her
+but send you her photograph. There is a freshness & independence of
+character about her--yet withal a certain waywardness & reserve. She is a
+good, instinctive judge of character--more influenced by it than by
+books--yet with a growing taste for them too. She comes to America with a
+gay and buoyant curiosity, declining to make up her mind about anything
+till she gets there. We want, as far as possible, to transplant our home
+bodily--to bring as much as we can of our own furniture because we have
+beautiful old things precious in Herby's eyes & that we are all fond of.
+And [by] coming straight to Philadelphia & taking a house somewhere on the
+outskirts of it or Camden immediately we fancy this might be practicable,
+but have not yet launched into the matter. I have just heard from Mr.
+Rossetti, and also from Mrs. Conway of her husband having seen you, & if
+his report be not too sanguine it is a cheering one & would comfort me
+much, dearest Friend. But what he says is so favourable I am afraid to
+believe it altogether, knowing that you would make the very best of
+yourself & indeed be probably at your best with the pleasure of seeing an
+old friend fresh from England. _Nov._ 30. And now, dear Friend, I have had
+a very great pleasure indeed, thanks to you--a visit from Mr. Marvin--& I
+hope to have another when he returns from Paris. And the account he gives
+of you is so cheerful--so vivid--it seems to part asunder a gloomy cloud
+that was brooding in my mind. And though I know that for the short hours
+that you feel bright & well are many long hours when you are far
+otherwise, still I feel sure those short hours are the earnest of perfect
+recovery--with a fine patience--boundless patience. And now I can picture
+you sitting in your favourite window, having a friendly word with
+passers-by--& feel quite sure that you are happy & comfortable in your
+surroundings. And a great deal else full of interest Mr. Marvin told me. I
+was loth for him to go, but one hour is so small, we have noticed, for a
+friend, I am sorry to say.
+
+William Rossetti has a little girl which is a great delight to him. Miss
+Hillard of Brooklyn has also paid me a visit & spoken to me of you. She
+charmed me much--only I felt a little cross with her for giving Herby such
+a dismal account of his chances as an artist in America. However, we both
+refused to be discouraged, for after all he can send his pictures to
+England to be established &c., having plenty of friends who would see to
+it; & we are both firm in the faith that if you can only paint the really
+good pictures the rest will take care of itself, somehow or other--& that
+can be done as well in America as in England, but of course he must finish
+his training here.
+
+With best love from us all, good-bye, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd., London
+  Dec. 4, 1875._
+
+Though it is but a few days since I posted a letter, my dearest friend, I
+must write you again--because I cannot help it, my heart is so full--so
+full of love & sorrow & struggle. The day before yesterday I saw Mr.
+Conway's printed account of you, & instead of the cheerful report I had
+been told of, he speaks of your having given up hope of recovery. Those
+words were like a sharp knife plunged into me--they choked me with bitter
+tears. _Don't give up that hope_ for the sake of those that so tenderly,
+passionately, love you--would give their lives with joy for you. Why, who
+knows better than you how much hope & the will have to do with it, & I
+know quite well that the belief does not depress you--that you are ready
+to accept either lot with calmness, cheerfulness, perfect faith, perhaps
+with equal joy. But for all that, it does you harm. Ideas always have a
+tendency to accomplish themselves. And what right have the Doctors to
+utter gloomy prophecies? The wisest of them know the best how profoundly
+in the dark they are as to much that goes on within us, especially in
+maladies like yours. O cling to life with a resolute hold, my beloved, to
+bless us with your presence unspeakably dear, beneficent presence--me to
+taste of it before so very long now--thirsting, pining, loving me. Take
+through these poor words of mine some breath of the tender, tender,
+ineffable love that fills my heart and soul and body--take of it to
+strengthen the very springs of your life: it is capable of that; O its
+cherishing warmth and joy, if it could only get to you, only fold you
+round close enough, would help, I know. Soon, soon as ever my boy has one
+to love & care for him all his own, I will come; I may not before, not if
+it should break my heart to stop away from you, for his welfare is my
+sacred charge & nearer & dearer than all to me. Verily, my God, strengthen
+me, comfort me, stay for me--let that have a little beginning on this dear
+earth which is for all eternity, which will live & grow immortally into a
+diviner reality than the heart of man has conceived.
+
+I am well satisfied with Norah, dear Friend. She is very affectionate,
+loveable, prudent, & clear in all practical matters, well suited to Percy
+in tastes, &c.
+
+  Your own
+  ANNIE.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Blaenavon
+  Routzpool
+  Mon. England
+  Jan. 18, '76._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Do not think me too wilful or headstrong, but I have taken our tickets &
+we shall sail Aug. 30 for Philadelphia. I found if I did not come to a
+decision now, we could not well arrange it before next summer. And since
+we _have_ come to a decision my mind has been quite at rest. Do not feel
+any anxiety or misgivings about us. I have a clear and strong conviction I
+am doing what is right & best for us all. After a busy anxious time I am
+having a week or two of rest with Percy, who I find fairly well in health
+& prospering in his business--indeed, he bids fair to have a large private
+practice as an analyst here, & is already making income enough to marry
+on, only there is to build the nest--& I think he will have actually to
+_build_ it, for there seem no eligible houses--& to furnish--so that the
+wedding will not be till next spring or early summer. Nevertheless, with a
+definite goal & a definite time & the way between not so very rugged,
+though rather dull and lonely, I think he will be pretty cheery. This
+little town (of 11,000 inhabitants, all miners, smelters &c.) lies up
+among the hills 1100 ft. above the sea--glorious hills here, spreading,
+then converging, with wooded flanks, & swift brooklets leaping over stones
+in the hollows--the air, too, of course deliciously light & pure. I have
+heard through a friend of ours of Bee's fellow student who lives in Camden
+(Mr. Suerkrop, I think his name is) that we shall be able to get a very
+comfortable home with pleasant garden there for about £55 per an. I think
+I can manage that very well--so all I need is to hear of a comfortable
+lodging or boarding house (the former preferred) where we can be, avoiding
+hotels even while we hunt for the house. I have arranged for my goods to
+sail a week later than we do, so as to give us time.
+
+Good-bye for a short while, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Bee has obtained a very satisfactory account of the Women's Medical
+College in Philadelphia & introductions to the Head, &c.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd.
+  London
+  Feb. 25, '76._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I received the paper & enclosed slip Saturday week, filling me so full of
+emotion I could not write, for I am too bitterly impatient of mere words.
+Soon, very soon, I come, my darling. I am not lingering, but held yet a
+little while by the firm grip of conscience--this is the last spring we
+shall be asunder--O I passionately believe there are years in store for
+us, years of tranquil, tender happiness--me making your outward life
+serene & sweet--you making my inward life so rich--me learning, growing,
+loving--we shedding benign influences round us out of our happiness and
+fulfilled life--Hold on but a little longer for me, my Walt--I am
+straining every nerve to hasten the day--I have enough for us all (with
+the simple, unpretending ways we both love best).
+
+Percy is battling slowly--doing as well as we could expect in the time. I
+think he will soon build the nest for his mate. I think he never in his
+heart believed I really should go to America, and so it comes as a great
+blow to him now. You must be very indulgent towards him for my sake, dear
+friend.
+
+I am glad we know about those rascally book agents--for many of us are
+wanting a goodish number of copies of the new edition & it is important
+to understand we may have them straight from you. Rossetti is making a
+list of the friends & the number, so that they may all come together.
+
+Perhaps, dearest friend, you may be having a great difficulty in getting
+the books out for want of funds--if so, let me help a little--show your
+trust in me and my love thus generously.
+
+  Your own loving
+  ANNIE.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  March 11, '76._
+
+I have had such joy this morning, my Darling--Poems of yours given in the
+_Daily News_--sublime Poems one of them reaching dizzy heights, filling my
+soul with strong delight. These prefaced by a few words, timid enough yet
+kindly in tone, & better than nothing. The days, the weeks, are slipping
+by, my beloved, bearing me swiftly, surely to you--before the beauty of
+the year begins to fade we shall come. The young folk too are full of
+bright anticipation & eagerness now, I am thankful to say; and Percy
+getting on with, I trust, such near & definite prospect of his happiness
+that he will be able to pull along cheerily towards it after we are gone,
+in spite of loneliness.
+
+I expect, Darling, we must go to some little town or village ten or twenty
+miles short of Philadelphia till the tremendous influx of visitors to the
+Centennial has ceased, else we shall not be able to find a corner
+there.--By the bye, I feel a little sulky at your always taking a fling at
+the poor piano. I see I have got to try & show you it too is capable of
+waking deep chords in the human soul when it is the vehicle of a great
+master's thought & emotions--if only my poor fingers prove equal to the
+task! (All my heart shall go into them.) Take from my picture a long, long
+look of tender love and joy and faith, deathless, ever young, ever
+growing, ever learning, aspiring love, tender, cherishing, domestic love.
+
+Oh, may I be full of sweet comfort for my Beloved's Soul and Body through
+life, through and after death.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXIV
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _Camden, New Jersey
+  March, 1876._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+To your good & comforting letter of Feb. 25th I at once answer, at least
+with a few lines. I have already written this morning a pretty full letter
+to Mr. Rossetti (to answer one just rec'd from him) & requested him to
+loan it you for perusal. In that I have described my situation fully &
+candidly.
+
+My new edition is printed & ready. Upon receipt of your letter I sent you
+a set, two Vols. (by Mail, March 15) which you must have rec'd by this
+time. I wish you to send me word soon as they arrive.
+
+My health, I am encouraged to think, is perhaps a shade better--certainly
+as well as any time of late.
+
+I even already vaguely contemplate plans (they may never be fulfilled, but
+yet again they may) of changes, journeys--even of coming to London &
+seeing you, visiting my friends, &c. My dearest friend, _I do not approve
+your American trans-settlement. I see so many things here you have no idea
+of--the social, and almost every other kind of crudeness, meagreness, here
+(at least in appearance)._
+
+_Don't do anything towards it nor resolve in it nor make any move at all
+in it without further advice from me. If I should get well enough to
+voyage, we will talk about it yet in London._
+
+You must not be uneasy about me--dearest friend, I get along much better
+than you think for. As to the literary situation here, my rejection by the
+coteries and the poverty (which is the least of my troubles), am not sure
+but I enjoy them all--besides, as to the latter, I am not in want.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd., London
+  March 30, '76._
+
+Yesterday _was_ a day for me, dearest Friend. In the morning your letter,
+strong, cheerful, reassuring--dear letter. In the afternoon the books. I
+don't know how to settle down my thoughts calmly enough to write, nor how
+to lay down the books (with delicate yet serviceable exterior, with
+inscription making me so proud, so joyous). But there are a few things I
+want to say to you at once in regard to our coming to America. I will not
+act without "further advice from you"; but as to not resolving on it, dear
+friend, I can't exactly obey that, for it has been my settled, steady
+purpose (resting on a deep, strong faith) ever since 1869. Nor do I feel
+discouraged or surprised at what you say of American "crudeness," &c. (of
+which, in truth, one hears not a little in England). I have not shut my
+eyes to the difficulties and trials & responsibilities (for the children's
+sake) of the enterprise. I am not urged on by any discontent with old
+England or by any adverse circumstances here which I might hope to better
+there: my reasons, emotions, the sources of my strength and courage for
+the uprooting & transplanting--all are inclosed in those two volumes that
+lie before me on the table. That America has brought them forth makes me
+want to plant some, at least, of my children on her soil. I understand &
+believe in & love her in & through them. They teach me to look beneath
+the surface & to get hints of the great future that is shaping itself out
+of the crude present, & I believe we shall prove to be of the right sort
+to plant down there.--O to talk it all over with you, dearest Friend, here
+in London first; I feel as if that would really be--the joy, the comfort,
+of that. I cannot finish this to-day but send what I have written without
+delay that you may know of the safe arrival of the books. With reverent,
+grateful love from us all.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd. London
+  April 21, 1876._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I must write again, out of a full heart. For the reading of this book,
+"The Two Rivulets," has filled it very full. Ever the deep inward assent,
+rising up strong, exultant my immortal self recognizing, responding to
+your immortal self. Ever the sense of dearness, the sweet, subtle perfume,
+pervading every page, every line, to my sense--O I cannot put into any
+words what I perceive nor what answering emotion pervades me, flows out
+towards you--sweetest, deepest, greatest experience of my life--what I was
+made for--surely I was made as the soil in which the precious seed of your
+thoughts & emotions should be planted--try to fulfil themselves in me,
+that I might by & bye blossom into beauty & bring forth rich
+fruits--immortal fruits. So no doubt other women feel, and future women
+will.
+
+Do not dissuade me from coming this autumn, my dearest Friend. I have
+waited patiently--7 years--patiently, yet often, especially since your
+illness, with such painful yearning your heart would yearn towards me if
+you realized it--I cannot wait any longer. Nor ought I to--that would
+indeed be sacrificing the prudence that concerns itself with immortal
+things to the prudence that concerns itself only with temporary ones. But,
+indeed, even so far as this latter is concerned, there is no sacrifice
+for any. It is by far the best step, for instance, I could take on
+Beatrice's account. She is heartily in earnest in her medical studies. I
+am persuaded, too, it is a splendid training for her whether or no she
+ever makes a money-earning profession of it. And in England women have at
+present no means of obtaining a complete medical education. They cannot
+get admission to any Hospital for the clinical part of the course. So that
+she is exceedingly anxious to come where it is possible for her to follow
+out her aims effectually. Then, I am confident she will find America
+congenial to her--that she is in her essential nature democratic--& that
+she has the intelligence, the sympathies, earnestness, affectionateness,
+unconventionality needed to pierce through appearances surface "crudeness"
+& see & love the great reality unfolding below. So I believe has Herby.
+Then an artist is as free as an author to work where he pleases & reaps as
+much from fresh and widened experiences. He does not contemplate cutting
+himself off from England--will exhibit here--very likely take a studio in
+London for a season, a couple of years hence to work among old friends &
+associations & so have double chance & opportunities. Then above all,
+dearest friend, they too see America in & through you--they too would fain
+be near you. Have no anxiety or misgivings for us. Let us come & be near
+you--& see if we are made of the right sort of stuff for transplanting to
+American soil. Only advise us where. If it be Philadelphia (which as far
+as offering facilities for Beatrice would, as far as I can learn, suit us
+very well). We must not come, I think, till the end of October, because of
+its being so full. Perhaps indeed, dearest Friend (but dare not build on
+it) we shall talk this over in England. If you are able to take the
+journey, it might, and would, be sure to do you good as well as to rejoice
+the hearts of English friends. But if not, if we are not able to talk over
+our coming, do not feel the least anxious about us. We shall light on our
+feet & do very well. Percy seems getting on fairly well, considering what
+a bad time it is in his line of business. I think he will be able to marry
+this autumn or following winter. I shall go and spend a month with him in
+July. Perhaps, indeed, if, as many are prophecying, the iron trade does
+not recover its old pre-eminence here, he may be glad by & bye that I have
+gone over to America & opened a way for him. But if he does not follow me
+then, if I live, I hope to spend a few months with him every three or four
+years, instead of as now a few weeks once a year. Anyhow we have to live
+widely apart. Thanks for the papers just received. Specially welcome the
+account of some stranger's interview with you--for me too before very long
+now the joy of hearing the "strong musical voice" read the "Wound Dresser"
+or speak.
+
+I have happy thoughts for my companions all day long, helping me over
+every difficulty--strengthening me. Good-bye, dearest Friend. Love from us
+all.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd., London
+  May 18, 1876._
+
+Just a line of birthday greeting, my dearest Friend. May it find you
+enjoying the beautiful spring-time & the grand sights of people & products
+& the music at Philadelphia, notwithstanding drawbacks (but lessening
+drawbacks, I earnestly hope) of health, lameness. Rejoiced, too, perhaps
+with the sight of many dear old friends occasion has brought to your city.
+May all that will do you good come, my dearest Friend. And not least the
+sense of relief & joy in having fulfilled the great task, in the teeth of
+such difficulties relaunched safely, more fully, richly equipt, the ship
+to sail down the great ocean of Time, bearing precious, precious freight
+of seed to be planted in countless successions of human souls, helping
+forward more than even the best lovers of your poems dream, the great
+future of humanity. That is what I believe as surely as I believe in my
+own existence.
+
+The "low star," the great star drooping low in the west, has been
+unusually resplendent of a night here lately & by day lilacs & the
+labernums wonderfully brightening dear old smoky London, constant
+reminders all, if I needed any, of the Poet & the Poems, so dear to me.
+
+If I do not hear from you to the contrary I am to take our passage by one
+of the "States" Line of Steamers that come straight to Philadelphia
+sailing about the 1st Sept.--& I am told one ought to secure one's cabin a
+couple of months or so beforehand. But if there be indeed an increasing
+hope of your coming here in the course of the summer, or if you think it
+would be best for us to go to New York (only I want to go at once where we
+are likely to stop, because of my furniture), let me hear as soon as may
+be, dear Friend. Looking at it purely as concerns the young ones, for some
+reasons it is very desirable to come this year & for others to wait till
+next. With Bee, for instance, we are both losing time & wasting money by
+going over another winter here when there is no complete & satisfactory
+medical course to be had. Then as regards dear Percy, he writes me now
+that though he is doing fairly well, he does not think he will be able to
+take a house & marry till next summer--& that I am very sorry for. But
+then I think that as I could not be with him nor help him forward, the
+balance goes down on Beatrice's side, if I am able to accomplish it.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend. Loving, tender thoughts shall I send you on
+the 30th. Solemn thoughts outleaping life, immortal aspirations of my soul
+toward your soul. The children's love too, please, dearest Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Round Hill, Northampton, Mass.
+  Monday, Sept., '77._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I have had joyful news to-day! Percy's wife has a fine little boy--it was
+born on the 10th, and Norah got through well & is doing nicely; so I feel
+very happy.
+
+Since then Per. has gone to Paris where he is to read a paper before the
+"Iron and Steel Institute" on the Elimination of phosphorus from
+Iron--which is also a little triumph of another kind for him--for the
+Council which accepted his paper is composed of eminent English
+scientists, & eminent foreign ones will hear it.--I need not tell you it
+is indescribably lovely here now--no doubt Kirkwood is the same--the light
+so brilliant, and yet soft--the rich autumn tints just beginning to
+appear--the temperature delicious--crisp & bracing, yet genial.
+
+The throng of people is gone--but a few of the pleasantest of the old set
+remain--& a few interesting new ones have come!--among them Mrs. Dexter
+from Boston, who was a Miss Ticnor, daughter of the author of the book on
+Spanish literature--she and her husband full of interesting talk. Also Mr.
+Martin B---- and his wife--a fine specimen of a leading Bostonian. Besides
+these also a physician from Florida whom I much admire--with a beautiful
+firm tenor voice--very handsome & graceful too, a true southerner, I
+should say--(but of Scotch extraction).
+
+Next week we go to Boston.
+
+I went over the Lunatic Asylum here the other day & saw some strange, sad
+sights--some figures crouched down in attitudes of such profound dejection
+I shall never forget them--some very bright and talkative. It is said to
+be the best managed in America. Dr. Earle, who is at the head, is a man of
+splendid capacity for the post--a noble-looking old man (uncle of those
+Miss Chases you met at our house).
+
+I can't settle to anything or think of any thing since I received Percy's
+letter but the baby & Norah. Love to you & to Mrs. Whitman[25] &
+Hattie[26] & Jessie.[27]
+
+Good-bye, dear Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXIX
+
+BEATRICE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _New England Hospital
+  Codman Avenue
+  Boston Highlands_
+
+DEAR WALT:
+
+Hospital life is beginning to seem a long-accustomed life. I enjoy all the
+duties involved & all the human relations. Even getting up in the night is
+compensated for by yielding a sense of importance & independence. I sleep
+in a large room with three windows, & three beds in a row. Breakfast at 7,
+& we are supposed to have seen all our patients before breakfast, but do
+not keep to that rule.
+
+After breakfast, round to count pulses & respirations, note condition,
+dress any wound, in charge, etc. At 1/2 past 8 o'clock go the rounds with
+the resident physician (Dr. Berlin), all the students, & superintendent of
+nurses. Then put up medicine, each for her own patients (about 8 in no.),
+give electricity, etc. If one's patient has an ache or pain, the nurse
+whistles for the student (my whistle is 2). She sees the patient orders
+what is necessary, or if serious reports to Dr. Berlin. Then there is some
+microscopic work, & copying out the history & daily record of the case &
+making out the temperature charts more than fills in the day. At 8 o'clock
+we all in conclave report about our patients & talk over any interesting
+case. One of my patients has empyema following pleurisy. I inject into her
+chest about a doz. of different preparations. Several of my patients (I
+have all the very sick just now) require very careful watching.
+
+In the evening we go round again & count pulses & respirations & note
+temperatures. If a very sick patient, in the middle of the day; also take
+pulse, etc. The number of visits depending on the need & the competency of
+the nurse. I like introducing lint into wounds (such simple ones as an
+incised abscess of the breast) with the probe, because if I take trouble
+enough I can do it without hurting the patient, much to the patient's
+surprise.
+
+The other day Mr. & Mrs. Marvin called to see me with Mrs. & Miss
+Callender--I enjoyed their visit much. To-day Mr. Marvin drove over to
+fetch me to lunch, & I had a beautiful drive over to Dorchester; in the
+afternoon a game of lawn tennis, a stroll down to the creek, & drive home
+by Forest Hill Cemetery & Jamaica Pond. The air was fresh after a shower &
+golden-tinted, & the drive through beautiful lanes & country. All were
+friendly & it was refreshing to emerge from the little hospital world. Mr.
+Marvin's cordial face greeted me when I was speaking to some patients in
+hammocks, under the trees, the day he called, much to my surprise.
+
+I was to-day feeling the need of a little change of air & scene, so that
+the visit was most opportune.
+
+Mr. Morse[28] is working away desperately at the bust of you; he feels as
+if he would get on famously if he could only catch a glimpse of you. Now
+might not you come to Boston on your way to Chesterfield, ride up in the
+open horsecars (a very pleasant ride) to see me also and give Mr. Morse
+the benefit of a sitting? How I wish we could get Mrs. Stafford in here;
+the patients get most excellent care. I have great confidence in Dr.
+Berlin & in the attending physician. I do not want her to come for a
+month, because Dr. Berlin has just gone away for a vacation.
+
+I fear no mere visiting once a day of a doctor will do her any good--she
+needs hygienic treatment--massage (a woman works here every day on the
+patients who need rubbing & massage), feeding up (I have never yet seen a
+patient whom we could not make eat, appetite or not, by aid of beef-tea &
+milk), perfect rest, & judicious treatment.
+
+Dr. Berlin is a learned, charming woman of 28--she takes advanced views,
+gives no medicine at all in some cases, & if any, few at a time, but
+efficient. She is perfectly unaffected, very intelligent, & has been
+thoroughly trained. She is a Russian.
+
+Please give my love to Mrs. Whitman & remember me to Colonel Whitman. This
+afternoon, when driving with Mr. Marvin, I thought of the pleasant drives
+I have had with Colonel Whitman.
+
+  Yours affectionately,
+  BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+If it were not for records accumulating mountain high I should have time
+to write to my friends.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XL
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Sept. 3, '78.
+  Chesterfield, Mass._
+
+  I am half afraid Herby has got a malarious place by his description.
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I had a lingering hope--till Herby went south again--that I should have a
+letter from you, in answer to mine, saying you were coming up to see us
+here. In truth, it was a great disappointment to me, his going back to
+Philadelphia instead of your joining us, or him, either here or somewhere
+near to New York. I wonder where that North Amboyna is that you once
+mentioned to me--and what kind of a place it is. I have had a long, quiet
+time here, and have enjoyed it very much--never did I breathe such sweet,
+light, pure air as is always blowing freely over these rocky hills. Rocky
+as they are--and their sides & ravines are strewn with huge boulders of
+every conceivable size & shape--they nourish an abundant growth of woods,
+and I fancy the farmers here do a great deal better with their winter
+crops of lumber and bark and maple sugar than with their summer one of
+grain & corn. I expect Herby has described our neighbours to
+you--specially Levi Bryant, the father of my hostess--a farmer who lives
+just opposite and has put such heart & soul and muscle & sinew into his
+farming that he has continued to win quite a handsome competence from this
+barren soil (it isn't muscle & industry only that are wanted here--but
+pluck and endurance) hauling his timber up & down over the snow & through
+the drifts, along roads that are pretty nearly vertical. I am never tired
+of hearing his stories (nor he of telling them) of hairbreadth escapes for
+him & his cattle--when the harness or the shafts have broken under the
+tremendous strain--& nothing but coolness & daring have got him or them
+out of it alive. Generally, as he sits talking, his little boy of eleven
+who bids fair to be like him and can now manage a team or a yoke of oxen
+as well as any man in the parish--and work almost as hard--sits close by
+him leaning his head on his father's shoulder or breast--for the rugged
+old fellow has a vein of great gentleness and affectionateness in him & I
+notice the child nestles up to him always rather than to the mother--who
+is all the same a very kind, amiable, good mother. Then there are
+neighbours of another sort up at the "Centre"--Mr. Chadwick, &c., from New
+York, with whom I have pleasant chats daily when I trudge up to fetch my
+letters--now & then I get a delightful drive or go on a blackberrying
+party with the folks round--I expect Giddy over to-day & we shall remain
+here together for about a fortnight--then back to Round Hill--where I am
+to meet the Miss Chase whom you may remember taking tea with &
+liking--then on to Boston to see dear Bee--& then to New York, where we
+shall meet again at last, I hope ere long. Love to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman--I
+enjoy her letters. Also to Hattie & Jessie--who will hear from me by &
+bye. With love to you, dear Friend.
+
+  Good-bye.
+  A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Concord, Mass.
+  Oct. 25th._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The days are slipping away so pleasantly here that weeks are gone before I
+know it. The Concord folk are as friendly as they are intellectual, and
+there is really no end to the kindness received. We are rowed on the
+beautiful river every day that it is warm enough--a very winding river not
+much broader than your favourite creek--flowing sometimes through level
+meadows, sometimes round rocky promontories & steep wooded hills which,
+with their wonderful autumn tints, are like a gay flower border mirrored
+in the water. Never in my life have I enjoyed outdoor pleasures more--I
+hardly think, so much--enhanced as they are by the companionship of very
+lovable men and women. They lead an easy-going life here--seem to spend
+half their time floating about on the river--or meeting in the evening to
+talk & read aloud. Judge Hoar says it is a good place to live and die in,
+but a very bad place to make a living in. Beatrice spent one Sunday with
+us here. We walked to Hawthorne's old house in the morning, & in the
+afternoon to the "Old Manse" and to Sleepy Hollow, most beautiful of last
+resting places. Tuesday we go on to Boston for a week very loth to leave
+Concord--at least, I am!--but Giddy begins to long for city life again.
+And then to New York about the 5th Nov. Herby told you, no doubt, that I
+spent an hour or two with Emerson--and that he looked very beautiful--and
+talked in a friendly, pleasant manner. A long letter from my sister in
+England tells me Per. looks well and happy & is so proud of his little
+boy--and that Norah is really a perfect wife to him--affectionate,
+devoted, and the best of housewives. How glad I am Herby is painting you.
+I wonder if you like the landscape he is working on as well as you did
+"Timber Creek." Miss Hillard has undertaken the charge of a young lady's
+education, and is very much pleased with her task. She is in a delightful
+family who make her quite one with them--live in the best part of New
+York, and pay her a handsome salary. She has the afternoons and Saturday &
+Sunday to herself.--Concord boasts of having been first to recognize your
+genius. Mr. Alcott & Mr. Sanborn say so. Good-bye, dear Friend.
+
+A. G.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _39 Somerset St.
+  Boston
+  Nov. 13, '78._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I feel as if I didn't a bit deserve the glorious budget you sent me
+yesterday, for I have been a laggard, dull correspondent of late, because,
+leading such an unsettled kind of life, I don't seem to have got well hold
+of myself. Beautiful is the title prose poem--the glimpse of the autumn
+cornfield: one smells the sweet fragrance, basks in the sunshine with
+you--tastes all the varied, subtle outdoor pleasures, just as you want us
+to. A lady who has just been calling on me--Miss Hillard--no relation of
+the odious Dr. H.--said, "Have you seen a lovely little bit about a
+cornfield by Walt Whitman in a New York paper?" She did not know your
+poems, but was so taken with this. By the bye, I am not quite American
+enough yet to enjoy the sound of the locusts & big grasshoppers--ours are
+modest little things that only make a gentle sort of whirr--not that loud
+brassy sound--couldn't help wishing for more birds & less insects when I
+was at Chesterfield--but I like our English name "ladybird" better than
+"ladybug". Do your children always say when they see one, as ours do,
+"Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home: your house is on fire, your children
+are flown"? But for the rest--I believe I am growing a very good American;
+indeed, certain am I there is no more lovable people to live amongst
+anywhere in the world--and in this respect it has been good to give up
+having a home of my own here for awhile--for I have been thrown amongst
+many more intimately than I could have been otherwise. What you say of
+Herby's picture delights me, dear Friend. I have been grieving he was not
+with us, sharing the pleasant times we have had and enlarging his circle
+of friends--but after all he could not have been doing better--he must
+come on here by & bye. I wonder if you are as satisfied with his portrait
+of you as with the landscape. I suppose he is gone on to New York to-day.
+I have sighed for dear little Concord many times since I came
+away--beautiful city as Boston is & many the interesting & kindly people I
+am seeing here: but the outdoor life & the entirely simple, unpretending,
+cordial, friendly ways of Concord & its inhabitants won my heart
+altogether--one of them came to see me to-day & to ask us to go and spend
+a couple of days with them there again before we leave & I could not say
+nay, though our time is short. There are some portraits in the Art Museum
+here, which interested me a good deal--of Adams, Hancock, Quincy, &c.,--&
+of some of the women of that time--they would form an excellent nucleus of
+a national portrait gallery, which (together with good biographies while
+yet materials & recollections are fresh & abundant) would be a very
+interesting & important contribution to the world's history.--Tennyson's
+letter is a pleasure to me to see--considering his age & the imperfection
+of his sight through life, matters are better rather than worse with him
+than one could have expected. Since that was written a friend (Walter
+White) tells me they--the Tennysons--have taken a house in Eaton Sq.,
+London, for the winter. And last, not least, thanks for Mr. Burroughs's
+beautiful letter--that young man is indeed, as he says, like a bit out of
+your poems.
+
+There are two or three fine young men boarding here, & Giddy & I enjoy
+their society not a little. Love to your Brothers & Sister. I shall write
+soon as I am settled down in New York to her or Hattie. Love to Mrs.
+Stafford. And most of all to you.
+
+Good-bye, dear friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+I will send T's letter in a day or two.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.
+  New York
+  Jan. 5, '79._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Herby has told you of our difficulties in getting comfortable quarters
+here--and also that we seem now to have succeeded--not indeed in the way I
+most wished & hoped we had--in 19th St., taking rooms & boarding
+ourselves--so that we could have a friend with us when & as we pleased. It
+seems as if that were not practicable unless we were to furnish for
+ourselves. Certainly our experiences there of using another's kitchen were
+discouraging--it was so dirty and uncomfortable that we were glad to take
+refuge in a regular boarding house again before one week was out. It seems
+to me more difficult to get anything of a medium kind in New York than
+elsewhere I have been--if it isn't the best, it is very uninviting indeed.
+Herby is enjoying his work and companionship at the League very much. We
+stand the cold well--how does it suit you? Is your arm free from rheumatic
+pains? When you come to Mr. J. H. Johnstons, which will be very soon I
+hope, we shall be quite handy, and have a pretty, sunny room--a sitting
+room by day!--with a handsome piece of furniture which is metamorphosed
+into a bed at night--and a large dressing closet with hot & cold water
+adjoining--all very comfortable. O how wistfully do I think of one evening
+in Philadelphia, last winter. I shan't begin really to like New York till
+you come and we have had some chats together. I have news from England
+which makes me rather anxious. The Blaenavon Co., to which Per. is
+chemist, has gone into liquidation--& I don't know whether it will
+continue to exist--or how soon in these dull times he may find a good
+opening elsewhere. Should things go badly for him, either Giddy and I will
+return to England to share [our] home with him there, or else I want him
+to take into serious consideration coming out here, instead of our going
+back. Of course it would be a risky thing for him to do with wife & child,
+in these times, unless some definite opening presented itself, but I
+cannot help thinking that, being an expert in his profession, with first
+rate training & experience, and iron work & metallurgy promising here to
+have such enormous developments, he would be sure to do well in the end;
+and meanwhile we could rub on together somehow. However, we shall see. I
+have laid the matter before him, he & his dear little wife wrote me a very
+brave, cheery letter when they told me the bad news--& I shall have an
+answer to mine, I suppose, by the end of the month. Kate Hillard read an
+amusing paper on Swinburne at a meeting of the Woman's Club in Brooklyn--&
+we had some fine music too. For the rest, I have not yet presented any
+introductions here.
+
+Have had some beautiful glimpses of the North & East River effects of the
+shipping at sunset, &c.--Have subscribed to the Mercantile library,--& are
+beginning to feel at home. Herby & Giddy had been to hear Mr. Frothingham
+this morning, & were much interested. Bee missed us sorely at first--but
+writes--when she does write, which is but seldom--pretty cheerily.
+Friendly remembrance to your brother & sister. I wonder where Hattie &
+Jessie are spending their holidays. Love from us all. Good-bye, dear
+friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Had a letter from Mr. Marvin--all well--he is doing the Washington letter
+of a N. Eng. paper. Hopes & trusts you are really going to Washington.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.
+  14 Jan., '79._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The pleasantest event since I last wrote has been a visit from Mr.
+Eldridge. We had a long, friendly chat that did me good. Saturday evening
+we went to one of Miss Booth's receptions--met Joaquin Miller there, who
+is just back from Europe--of course we talked of you. Mrs. Moulton too is
+hoping so you will come to New York during her stay here, which is to last
+a week or two longer. John Burroughs has just sent me a post card to say
+he has returned from a 3-weeks stay with his folks in Delaware Co.--that
+he hopes to come here soon--wants Mrs. Burroughs to come too & board for a
+month or so--wants also "Walt to come--& lecture"--but "Walt will not be
+hurried." Did I tell you that we found boarding here a young man, Mr.
+Arthur Holland, one of the family who were so very friendly to me & made
+my stay so pleasant both in Concord & Cambridge? He often comes to our
+room of an evening for an hour or two's chat, & by the bye, being
+connected with the iron trade he has been able to make some enquiries for
+me as to what Per's chances as a scientific metallurgist would be in this
+country--& I am sorry to say he thinks they would be very poor indeed.
+Prof. Lesley said the same thing; so it is clear I must not urge him to
+try the experiment, seeing he has a wife & child. Herby & Giddy both well.
+Love from us all. Good bye, Dear Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Friendly greeting to your brother & sister.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.,
+  Jan. 27, '79._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Are you never coming? I do long & long to see you. I am beginning to like
+New York better than I did and to have pleasant times. Had some friendly
+chats with Kate Hillard last week, & went with her to call on Mrs. Putman
+Jacobi, who has a little baby 3 weeks old & is still in her room, but has
+got through very nicely--She talks well, doesn't she? & has a face with
+plenty of individuality in it. Also we went together on Saturday again to
+one of Miss Booth's receptions, & there met Mrs. Croly, & had the best
+talk about you I have had this long while. I like her cordiality--we are
+going to her reception on Sunday & to one at Mrs. Bigelow's Wednesday. It
+is true there is not much that can be called social enjoyment at these
+crowded receptions, but they enable you to start many acquaintanceships,
+some of which turn out lasting good. We had some fine harp playing & a
+witty recital at Miss Booth's. Miss Selous is back in America. I should
+not wonder if she comes on here soon. Bee is living at the Dispensary now,
+instead of in the Hospital, & finds the comparatively outdoor life--& the
+freedom from being "whistled" for all hours of the day and night as she
+was there--a wonderful refreshment. That coloured lady, Mrs. Wiley, whom
+you met once at our house, is her fellow labourer & room mate at the
+Dispensary. Bee likes her much. I am not sure whether you know the
+Gilders? We spent a couple of hours delightfully with them yesterday
+afternoon. She has a very attractive face, a musical voice, & such a sweet
+smile. They are going to Europe for a four months' holiday this spring. I
+admire the simple, unconventional way in which they live. Herby is working
+away in the best spirits. He is going to paint that bowling alley subject
+on a large scale. Giddy is sitting by me with her nose in the French
+Dictionary, working away at a novel of Balzac's. I have had scarcely any
+letters from England lately!--and the papers bring none but dismal
+tidings; nevertheless I don't believe our sun is going down yet awhile--we
+shall emerge from this dark crisis the better, not the worse, because
+compelled to grapple with the evils that have caused it, instead of
+passively enduring them. Please give friendly remembrance from me to your
+brothers & sister. Have you been at Kirkwood lately, I wonder? I suppose
+Timber Creek is frozen over. Good-bye, dear Friend. Write soon, or better
+still Come!
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLVI
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _New York
+  112 Madison Avenue
+  February 2nd, 1879._
+
+DEAR DARLING WALT:
+
+I read your long piece in the Philadelphia _Times_ with ever so much
+interest, & with especial delight the delicately told bit about the dear
+old Pond, artistic, because so true. I know that it will please you to
+hear that I have gained tenfold facility with my brush since the autumn.
+It has agreed uncommonly well with me having enlisted under such an
+experienced & able painter as Chase; as a manipulator of the brush he is
+agreed by the experts (Eaton) to have no rival. I may yet be able to paint
+a head of you in _one_ sitting that will do justice to you. Three of my
+pictures are nicely hung at the Water Colour Exhibition Academy of Design,
+the first time that I have exhibited in New York. We had two & three
+engagements every night (with one exception) last week, & go to Mrs.
+Croley's to-night. Your friend John Burroughs called last Wednesday--came
+to try Turkish baths for his malarious trouble, but it seemed to bring on
+his attacks of neuralgia worse. I am sorry that I can report but poorly of
+his health, so painfully excruciating was his neuralgia about his arms at
+times that a Dr. was sent for & morphia injected in his wrist, but I am
+glad to say he reported himself a little better. He hopes that you will
+come and give the lecture on Lincoln this winter; why not, confound it, it
+would be most interesting.
+
+Quite often we go to Miss Booth's receptions. Saturday evening, they are
+gay & amusing. Met Mr. Bliss, the gentleman that talked like "a house
+afire" one Sunday at your house last winter, you remember.
+
+Last Wednesday I, mother, Giddy, & Kate Hillard went to Mrs. Bigelow's
+reception. Miss H. was asked to recite & she recited the "Swineherd"
+(Anderson's) charmingly, & "The Faithful Lovers," which took every one.
+"Walk in" Miller was there (I can't spell his name) & lots more.
+
+This morning being Sunday, I took my skates to the Park. The wind was high
+& whirled us about fantastically; ladies seated in wicker chairs were
+pushed rapidly along the Pond's smooth icy surface by their gentlemen
+escorts, tall men kissed the ice or sprawled full length on their backs,
+while others flew by like swallows; all this with a church spire peeping
+behind hills dappled with snow & sunshine: what more inspiriting than
+this?
+
+And now dear Walt.
+
+Good-bye for the present.
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLVII
+
+BEATRICE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _33 Warrenton St.
+  Feb. 16, 1879._
+
+DEAR MR. WHITMAN:
+
+Although not in word, I have thanked you for your letter & papers by
+enjoying them thoroughly.
+
+Down at this Dispensary we work just as hard as at the Hospital, but our
+spare minutes are our own (no records to write out); our work is under our
+own control; we are out in fresh air half the day, sometimes half the
+night, making intimate acquaintance with all sorts of people & places &
+with far distant parts of Boston.
+
+We have all the responsibility that it is good for young doctors to have,
+i. e., in all difficult or obscure & dangerous cases we are obliged to
+call in older heads & are obliged to report verbally to the visiting
+physician of the month all our cases & our treatment. Only two students
+live at the Dispensary--Dr. Wiley (the coloured Philadelphia student you
+saw) & myself. In tastes we have much in common & on the whole I prefer to
+live with her rather than with any of the other students. We share rooms.
+We have a bedroom, a drug-room, a treatment room, waiting room for
+patients, & take our meals in the kitchen.
+
+A widow woman with two children housekeeps.
+
+I think Boston a very beautiful city. The public Gardens & Commons in the
+busiest part, sloping down from the gilt domed state house on Beacon
+hill, threaded by paths in all directions, traversed by the business men,
+the fine ladies, the beggars, etc., etc. One broad, sloping path is given
+up to the boys who want to coast, temporary wooden bridges being thrown
+over the cross paths. Then, crossing South Bay to South Boston is a
+beautiful walk I take from one to four times a day. South Boston looks
+rather dingy; it is inhabited mostly by artisans & mill hands & fishermen,
+but walking up 3rd St., as you cross the lettered streets A, B, C, D,
+etc., you look down upon the harbour--on bright days bright blue, & a few
+sails to be seen--at sunset the colours of course are reflected
+gorgeously.
+
+Somehow or other the sea looks doubly beautiful set in dingy S. Boston.
+
+Far over in the West End too we have patients. Last Tuesday I had twins
+all by myself; only one, however, was born alive; the other had been dead
+a week. How delightful that you are feeling so much better. Shall you not
+be coming to Boston sometime before I leave, 1st June?
+
+The Boston I know is not the Boston I knew in books; I am as far off from
+that as if I lived in England--is not the "hub"--I was reminded of that
+last Sunday when I had time for once to go to church & went to hear Mr. E.
+E. Hale preach and went home to dinner with him....
+
+I like his daughter whom we knew in Philadelphia. She is a clever young
+artist. Dr. Wiley is very popular with her patients, far more so than I.
+
+Please remember me to all the Staffords & give my especial love to Mrs.
+Stafford. Also to Mrs. Whitman.
+
+Yours affectionately,
+
+BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.
+  March 18, 1879._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I hope you are enjoying this splendid, sunshiny weather as much as we
+are--the atmosphere here is delicious. In the morning Giddy and I set at
+home busy with needle work, letter writing, and reading. After lunch we go
+out for a walk or to pay visits--and of an evening very often to
+receptions (but they are not half so jolly as our evenings at
+Philadelphia). Still we have a lively, pleasant time. I like Miss Booth
+very much, with her kindly, generous character and active practical mind.
+So I do Mrs. Croly--she is more impulsive and enthusiastic. Kate Hillard
+often goes with us, & she is always good company. I had a note from Edward
+Carpenter the other day brought by a lady who had been living near him at
+Sheffield--an American lady with two very fine little girls who has lately
+lost her husband in England and was on her way back to her parents' home
+in Pennsylvania--somewhere beyond Pittsburg. She is one who loves your
+poems, & has great hopes of seeing you in New York. She told me her little
+girls were so fond of Carpenter he of them--he is first rate with
+children. I hope you will not put off coming to New York till we are
+returning to Philadelphia, which will be some time in May. I find Beatrice
+is so anxious to get further advantages for study in England or Paris
+before she begins to practise, and Herby is so strongly advised by Mr.
+Eaton, of whose judgment & experience he thinks very highly, to study in
+Duron's Studio in Paris for a year, that I have made up my mind to go
+back, for a time at any rate, this summer; but I shall leave my furniture
+here, and the question of where our future home is to be, open. Herby is
+making great progress. I wish you could see the head of an old woman he
+has just painted--and I wish he had had as much power when he had such
+splendid chances of painting you. I cannot tell you how vividly and
+pleasantly Chestnut St. on a sunny day rose before me in your jottings.
+Love from us all. Tell your sister I often think of her & shall enjoy a
+chat ever so.
+
+A. G.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.
+  March 26, '79._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+It seems quite a long while since I wrote, & a _very long_ while since you
+wrote. I am beginning to turn my thoughts Philadelphia-wards that we may
+have some weeks near you before we set out on fresh wanderings across the
+sea; and though I feel quite cheery about them, I look eagerly forward to
+the time beyond that when we have a fixed, final nest of our own again,
+where we can welcome you just when and as you please. Whichever side the
+Atlantic it is, you will come surely? for you belong to the one country as
+much as to the other. And I shall always feel that I do too. I take back
+with me a deep and hearty love for America--I came indeed with a good deal
+of that, but what I take back is different--stronger, more real. I went
+over to see friends in Brooklyn yesterday, & it was more lovely than I can
+tell you on the Ferry--in fact, it was just your poem, "Crossing Brooklyn
+Ferry". Herby still painting away _con amore_, & making good progress. I
+met Joaquin Miller at the Bigelows last week, & he was very pleasant
+(which isn't always the case) and said some very good things to me.
+Thursday we are going to lunch with Mrs. Albert Brown--perhaps you may
+have heard of her as Bessie Griffiths. She was a Southern lady who, when
+she was about 18, freed all her slaves & left herself penniless. On Sunday
+we take tea at Prof. Rood's of Columbia College. Kate Hillard we often
+see & have lively chats with. We meet also & see a good deal of General
+Edward Lee--a fine soldierly looking man, & I believe he distinguished
+himself in the war & was afterwards sent to organize the new Territory of
+Wyoming, & was the first governor. I wish very much that if you or your
+brother knew him or know anything about him, you would tell me--for
+reasons that I will tell you by & bye. Bee is seeing a great deal of the
+educated coloured people at Boston--was at the meeting of a literary
+club--the only white among 20 or 30 coloured ladies--likes them much.
+
+Write soon, dear Friend. Meanwhile, best love & good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+No letters from England this long while.
+
+Please give friendly greetings from me to your brother & sister.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER L
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Glasgow
+  Friday, June 20, 1879._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+We set foot on dry land again Wednesday morning after a good passage--not
+a very smooth one--and not without four or five days of seasickness, but
+after that we really enjoyed the sea & the sky--it was mostly cloudy, but
+such lovely lights and shades & invigorating breezes! and as we got up
+into northern latitudes, daylight in the sky all night through. The last
+three days we had glorious scenery--sailed close in under the Giant's
+Causeway on the north coast of Ireland--great sort of natural ramparts &
+bastions or rock, wonderfully grand. Then we sailed on Lough Fozle to land
+a group of Irish folk at Moville--some of them old people who had not seen
+Ireland for forty years, and who were so happy they did not know what to
+do with themselves. And what with this human interest, and the first
+getting near land again and the rich green-and-golden gorse-covered hills
+& the setting sun streaming along the beautiful lough with golden light,
+it was a sight & a time I shall never forget. Then we entered the Firth of
+Clyde & sailed among the islands--mountainous Arran, level Bute--& on the
+other hand the green hills of Ayr, with pleasant towns nestled under them,
+sloping to the Clyde--this was during the night--we did not go to bed at
+all it was so beautiful--& then came a gorgeous sunrise--& then the
+landing at Greenock & a short railway journey to Glasgow, the tide not
+serving to bring our big ship up so far. We had very pleasant (& learned
+withal) companions on the voyage--the Professor of Greek & of Philosophy
+from Harvard and a young student from Concord, all of whom we have seen
+since we landed and hope to see often again, especially the young student,
+Frank Bigelow, who is a very nice fellow. Herby enjoyed the voyage much &
+so did Giddy. Glasgow is a great, solidly built city, very pleasant [in]
+spite of smoky atmosphere--full of sturdy, rosy-cheeked people with broad
+Scotch accent. We have been rushing about shopping--have not yet seen
+Per.--shall meet him at Durham in a week's time & spend a month together
+there where he will be superintending your works. Meanwhile we are going
+to Edinburgh for a few days. I kept thinking of you on the voyage, dear
+friend, & wondering how you would like it--& whether you could stand being
+stowed away in the little box-like berth at night. I should recommend any
+American friend coming over to try this line--we had a fine ship--fine
+officers & crew--& the latter part, fine scenery. Love to your Brother &
+Sister & to Mr. Burroughs. Address to me for the present.
+
+  Care Percy C. Gilchrist
+  Blaenavon
+  Poutzpool
+  Mon.
+
+Love from us all. I shall write soon again. Good-bye dear Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Lower Shincliffe
+  Durham
+  August 2d, '79._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I am sitting in my room with my dear little grandson, the sweetest little
+fellow you ever saw, asleep beside me. Giddy and Norah (my 3d daughter)
+are gone into Durham to do some shopping. Bee is up in London on her way
+to Berne in Switzerland, where she has finally decided to complete her
+medical studies. Herby is, I think, staying with Eustace Conway at
+Hammersmith just now. He has been spending a week at Brighton with Edward
+Carpenter & his family--but I will leave him to tell his own news. We are
+lodging in this little village with its red-tiled roofs & gray stone
+walls, lying among wooded hills, corn fields, meadows, and collieries on
+the banks of the Weir, for the sake of being near Percy & his wife. He is
+superintending here the erection of some kilns for making the peculiar
+kind of basic firebricks needed in his dephosphorization process. Durham
+Cathedral, which was mainly built soon after the Norman conquest, is in
+sight, crowning a wooded hill that rises abruptly from the river-side. It
+looks as solid, majestic, venerable as the rocks & hills--the interior is
+of wonderful grandeur & beauty. When you enter one of these cathedrals you
+are tempted to say architecture is a lost art with us moderns so far as
+sublimity is concerned--except in vast engineering works. You would not
+dignify the Weir with the name of a river in America--it is no bigger than
+Timber Creek--but it winds about so capriciously through the picturesque
+little city as to make almost an island of the hill on which the castle &
+cathedral stand & to need three great solid stone bridges within a quarter
+of a mile of each other, & with its steep wooded sides carrying nature
+right into the heart of the old town. But the rainy season (we have
+scarcely seen the sun since we have been in England & I believe it is the
+same in France & Italy) and the great depression in trade, especially the
+coal & iron, which chiefly concerns this district, seem to cast a gloom
+over everything. There are whole rows of colliers' cottages in this
+village empty. Where they go to no one knows, but as soon as the
+collieries reopen they will all reappear. We often meet Colliers returning
+from work--they look as if they had just emerged from Hades, poor
+fellows--their faces black as soot--their lean, bowed legs bare--I believe
+the mines are hot here; they work with little on--but they are really the
+cleanest of all workmen, as they take a bath every night on their return
+before supping. The speech here is almost like a foreign tongue to any one
+from the south or middle of England. I wonder if you have yet read Dr.
+Bucke's book.[29] It is about the only thing I have read since my return.
+It suggests deeply interesting trains of thought.
+
+I wonder if you are at Camden, taking your daily trips across the ferry &
+strolls up Chestnut St. I hardly realized till I left it how dearly I love
+America--great sunny land of hope and progress--or how my whole life has
+been enriched with the human intercourse I had there. Give my love to
+those of our friends whom you know & tell them not to forget us. I have
+had a long letter from Emma Lazarus. I suppose Hattie and Jessie are
+spending their holidays at Camden & that Hattie has pretty well done with
+school. We have been chiefly busy with needlework since we came--preparing
+dear Bee for Berne. I miss her sadly--had quite hoped we should have all
+been together at Paris this winter--but it seems the course is much longer
+& more arduous [there]. We spent a week in Edinburgh before we came on
+here. It is by far the most beautiful city I have ever seen. The journey
+between it and Berwick-on-Tweed lies through the richest & best cultivated
+farm land in Britain--the sea sparkling on one side of us & these fertile
+fields dotted with splendid flocks & herds--with large comfortable-looking
+farmhouses, & here & there an old castle; it was singularly enjoyable. How
+I have wished everywhere that you were with us to share the sight--and the
+best is that you would return home more than ever proud & rejoicing in
+America. It is a land where humanity is having, and is going to have, such
+chances as never before. Giddy sends her love. Mine also & to your brother
+& sister. Good-bye, dear Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Please write soon; I am longing for a letter.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LII[30]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _(Camden, New Jersey.)
+  (August, 1879.)_
+
+Thank you, dear friend, for your letter; how I should indeed like to see
+that _Cathedral_[31], I don't know which I should go for first, the
+Cathedral or _that baby_.[32] I write in haste, but I am determined you
+shall have a word, at least, promptly in response.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Elm Villas, Elm Row, Heath St.
+  Hampstead, Dec. 5, '79, London, England._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+You could not easily realize the strong emotion with which I read your
+last note and traced on the little map[33]--a most precious possession
+which I would not part with for the whole world--all your
+journeyings--both in youth & now. Mingled emotions! for I cannot but feel
+anxious about your health, & if I didn't know it was very naught to ask
+you questions, should beg you [to] tell me in what way your health has
+failed--whether it is the rheumatic & neuralgic affection that troubled
+you the last spring we were in Philadelphia, or whether the fatigues &
+excitements & the very enjoyments & full life, & burst of prophetic joy,
+as it were, had proved too great a strain. But you have accomplished
+another thing, that had to be done in your life & I exult with you--have
+seen the vast magnificent theatre, the free, unfettered conditions whereon
+humanity will enact a new drama, with the parts all so differently cast!
+the rest--the moving spirit of it all--hints of this, at least--flashes,
+glimpses, I find in your greatest poems. But, dear Friend, I think
+humanity moves forward [slowly] even under splendid conditions--you must
+give it a century or two instead of 50 years--before at least the crowning
+glories of a corresponding literature & art will develope
+themselves--Nature has got plenty of time before her, & obstinately
+refuses to be hurried; witness her dealings with the mere rocks & stones.
+
+Bee is at Berne, working away merrily, rejoicing in the really splendid
+advantage for medical study there open to her. She mastered German so as
+to be able to speak & understand it--lectures & all--with ease during the
+two months at Wiesbaden & she has found a thoroughly comfortable home with
+some excellent, intelligent ladies who are fond of her & see to her bodily
+welfare in every possible way. I have my dear little grandson with me
+here--as engaging a little toddler as the sun ever shone upon--so
+affectionate & sweet-tempered & bright. I wish I could see him sitting on
+your knee. You will certainly have to come to us as soon as ever we have a
+comfortable home, won't you? Giddy is well & as rosy as ever. She & Herby
+send their love. I have seen Rossetti--he was full of enquiries &
+affectionate interest in all that concerns you--& loth we were to break
+off our conversation & hurry back--but Hampstead, the pleasantest &
+prettiest of all our suburbs, is terribly inaccessible & cuts us off a
+good deal from the intercourse with old friends I had looked forward to.
+It is on the top of a high hill (as high as the top of St. Pauls), & looks
+down on one side over the great city with its canopy of smoke, & on the
+other over a wide, pleasant stretch of green & fertile Middlesex--has
+moreover pleasant lanes, solid old houses, shaded by big elms, & other
+picturesque features & such an abundance of keen, fresh air this cold
+weather too! We sigh for the warmth of an American house indoors often &
+for American sunshine out of doors. Rossetti has a beautiful little group
+of children growing up around him--I think the eldest girl will grow up a
+real beauty & the boy too is a noble little fellow. I meet numbers so
+delighted to hear about you. I believe Addington Symonds is preparing a
+book which treats largely of your Poems.
+
+Glad to hear that Brother & Sister & nieces are all well. I wish I could
+write to some of them, but what with needlework, an avalanche of letters,
+the care of my dear little man--the re-editing of my husband's life of
+Blake, to which there will be a considerable addition of letters newly
+come to light, I hardly know which way to turn. Per. & my nephew & the
+"Process" have made a great stride forward. Won two important law suits at
+Berlin, where the Bessemer ring & Krupp at their head were trying to oust
+them of their patent rights. Also it is practically making good way in
+England. So by & bye the money will begin to flow in, I suppose--but has
+not done so yet.
+
+I trust, dearest Friend, this will find you safe & fairly well again at
+Camden, with plenty of great, happy thoughts to brood over for the winter.
+
+Love from us all. Good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _5 Mount Vernon
+  Hampstead
+  Jan. 25, '80._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Welcome was your postcard announcing recovered health & return to Camden!
+May this find you safe there, well & hearty, able to go freely to & fro on
+the ferries & streets. I wish one of those old red Market Ferry cars were
+going to land you at our door once more! What you would have to tell us of
+western scenes & life! What teas & what evenings we would have--you would
+certainly have to say "there is a point beyond which"--& would have pretty
+late trips back of moonlight. Strange episode in my life! so unlike what
+went before & what comes after--those evenings in Philadelphia--yet so
+natural, familiar, dear! If I were American-born, I certainly should not
+want to change it for any country in the world, and if as you have
+dreamed--as I too have dreamed--it is given us hereafter to have another
+spell of life on this old earth, may my lot be cast there when the great
+time dimly preparing is actually come. But meanwhile, dear Friend, my work
+lies here: innumerable are the ties that bind us. And I can only hope &
+dream that you will come & stay with us awhile when we have a home of our
+own. That dear little grandson stayed with me two months till I really
+didn't know how to part with him, & grew more & more engaging & pretty in
+his ways every day--rapid indeed is the opening of the little bud at that
+age--between 1 & 3--& the way he had of looking up & giving you little
+kisses of his own accord would win anybody's heart. Bee's letters continue
+as cheery as ever--she is heartily enjoying work & life, and accomplishing
+the purpose she has set her heart upon, & the people she is with are so
+good and kindly, it is quite a home. She is working a good deal with the
+microscope. Her outdoor recreation is skating. Herby is getting on very
+nicely. He has had a commission to make some designs for a new kind of
+painted tapestry--and his figures "Audrey & Touchstone" are very much
+admired & have been bought by a rich American, & he has a commission for
+more. But the summer work he has set his heart upon is a portrait of you
+from all the material he brought with him--the many attempts he made
+there--handled with his present improved skill with the brush. I hope you
+will be able by & bye to send him the photograph he asked for--but no
+hurry. Edward Carpenter came up from Sheffield and spent an evening with
+us--which we all heartily enjoyed--he is a dear fellow. We talked much of
+you. He has been giving lectures this winter on the Lives of the Great
+Discoverers in Science. Carpenter knows intimately, goes freely among, a
+greater range & variety of men than any Englishman I know--he has a way of
+making himself thoroughly welcome by the firesides of mechanics & factory
+workers--his own kith & kin are aristocratic.
+
+Giddy is taking singing lessons again, & hoping by the time you next see
+her to be able to contribute her share of the evening's pleasure. Percy is
+still working away indomitably at the "process," which is gaining ground
+rapidly on the continent, & I hope I may say slowly & surely in England. I
+see the Gilders now & then--indeed they are coming up to lunch with us
+to-morrow--Mr. Gilder[34] is the better for rest--& they seem to enjoy
+England; but England has done her very worst in the way of climate ever
+since they have been here. O I do long for a little American sunshine. We
+met Henry James at the Conways last Sunday & found him one of the
+pleasantest of talkers. Rossetti & all your friends are well. Please give
+my love to your brothers & sister. Were Jessie & Hattie at home in St.
+Louis, I wonder, when you were there? Love from us all.
+
+Good-bye, Dearest Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Please give my love to John Burroughs when you write or see him.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Marley, Haslemere
+  England
+  Aug. 22, '80._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I have had all the welcome papers with accounts of your doings, and to-day
+a nice long letter from Mrs. Whitman, which I much enjoyed, giving me
+better account of your health again, & of your great enjoyment of the
+water travel through Canada. So I hope, spite of drawbacks, you will
+return to Camden for the winter quite set up in body, as well as full of
+delightful memories. If only we were at 22nd St. to welcome you back &
+talk it all over at tea! Ah, those evenings! My friends told me I looked
+ten years younger when I came back from America than when I went. And I am
+not yet quite re-acclimatized; & what with missing the sunshine & working
+a little too hard, was feeling quite knocked up: so Bee insisted on my
+coming down, or rather up, here to stay with some very kind & dear
+friends. The house stands all alone on a great heath-covered hill, and
+below & around are endless coppices, so that you step from the lawn into
+[a] winding wood-path, along which I wander by the hour: and from my
+window I look over much such a view as we had at Round Hill Hotel,
+Northampton, this time two years, only that with the soft haze that is so
+often spread over our landscape, the distant hill looks more ghostly in
+the moonlight. My friend is a noble, large-hearted, capable woman, who
+devotes all her life and energies to keeping alive an invalid husband; and
+he well deserves her care, for he has a beautiful nature, too, & their
+mutual affection is unbounded. He is just ordered by the doctors to leave
+the home they have made for themselves up here--which is as lovely as it
+can be--& to spend two years at least in Italy. So it is a sorrowful time
+with them--they have no children, but have adopted a little niece. Our new
+house is just ready & we are daily expecting our furniture from America.
+Herby has been working as usual, making good progress & has just done a
+beautiful little drawing for the new edition of his father's book. Bee,
+you will be glad to hear, has decided to continue her medical studies & is
+going to be assistant to a lady doctor at Edinburgh, who is to pay her
+sufficient salary to cover all remaining expenses. Meanwhile we have got
+her at home for a few weeks to help us through with the move in, and a sad
+pinch it will be to part with her again. Giddy has been paying a
+delightful visit to some friends of Carpenter's near Leeds--a Quaker
+family--the daughter very lovable & admirable. We do not forget the
+Staffords[35] nor they us. Mont. often sends Herby a magazine or a token.
+Love to them when you see them, & to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie
+& kindest remembrance to Dr. Bucke. Send me a line soon, dear Friend--I
+think of you continually & know that somewhere & somehow we are to meet
+again, & that there is a tie of love between us that time & change & death
+itself cannot touch.
+
+With love,
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LVI
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner, England
+  12 Well Road, Hampstead, London
+  November 30th, 1880._
+
+MY DEAR WALT:
+
+Your postcard came to hand some little time ago. I was pleased to get it,
+to hear of your being well, & with your friends. I have been extremely
+busy seeing after the new edition of my father's book;[36] the work of
+seeing such a richly illustrated "edition de luxe" through the press was
+enormous, but it is done! The binders are now doing their work, & next
+Tuesday the reviewers will be doing theirs--I defy them to find any fault
+with the book. I dare say you think it "tall" talk, but I think that it is
+the most perfectly gotten up book that I ever have seen. My mother has
+written an admirable memoir of my father at the end of the second vol.
+
+         POND MUSINGS
+  (Pen sketch of a butterfly)
+             by
+         WALT WHITMAN
+
+I thought that this was to be the title of your prose volume. I will
+undertake the illustrations, choosing the paper (hand made), everything
+except the expense of reproducing, etc. I should say London is the place
+to have things executed in: if you wish to give photos they must be drawn
+by an artist and reproduced; no photo ever looked well in a book yet! they
+haven't decorative importance and don't blend with type. I should suggest
+that we should imitate the artistic size & style of your earliest edition
+of "Leaves of G.," a large, thin, flat volume, a fanciful, but as
+inexpensive as possible, cover written in gold on blue, a waterlily say:
+but I could think this over. I will design fanciful tailpieces to be woven
+in with the text; as a frontispiece the drawing that I gave you, retouched
+by me, and reproduced by the Typographic Etching Company, 23 Farringdon
+street, London, E. C. All these are only suggestions, which I am prepared
+to execute in right earnest thought. I read your letter to mother with
+interest. We like our new house so much, & I am sure that you would. You
+must come and stay with us & stroll on Hampstead Heath, & ride down into
+London upon an omnibus & sit to some good sculptor here in London (Boem
+say). And you yourself could make arrangements with the publishers. With
+remembrance to friends,
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Well Rd., Hampstead
+  Apr. 18, '81._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I have just been sauntering in our little but sunny garden which slopes to
+the South--surveying with much satisfaction some fruit trees--plum, green
+gage, pear, cherry, apple--which we have just had planted to train up
+against the house and fence--in which fashion fruit ripens much better
+with our English modicum of sunshine, besides taking no room & casting no
+shade over your little bit of ground--Then we have filled our large window
+with flowers in pots which make the room smell as delicious as a garden.
+Giddy is assiduous in keeping them well watered & tended.--Welcome was
+your postcard--with the little rain-bird's coy note in it. But I had not
+before heard of your illness, dear friend--the letter before, you spoke of
+being unusually well, as I trust you are again now, & enjoying the spring.
+I am well again so far as digestion &c. goes; but bronchitis asthma of a
+chronic kind still trouble me. My breath is so short I cannot walk, which
+is a privation. I am going, at the beginning of June, to stay with Bee in
+Edinburgh, as she will not have any holiday or be able to come & see us
+this year, & much am I longing to be with her. Have you begun to have any
+summer thoughts, dear Walt? And do they turn towards England, & our nest
+therein? Yes, I have received & have enjoyed all the papers &
+cuttings--dearly like what you said of Carlyle. Everyone here is speaking
+bitterly of the harsh judgments & sarcastic descriptions of people in the
+"reminiscenses." But I know that at bottom his heart was genial and good &
+that he wrote those in a miserable mood--& never looked at them again
+afterwards. I hope you received the little memoir of my husband all right.
+Herby is very busy with a drawing of you--hopes that with the many
+sketches he made, & the vivid impress on his memory & the help of
+photographs, it will be good. I wish he had possessed as much power with
+the brush when he was in America as he has now--he is making very great
+progress in mastery of the technique. I observe, too, that he reads &
+dwells upon your poems--especially the "Walt Whitman"--with growing
+frequency & delight. We often say, "Won't Walt like sitting in that sunny
+window?" or "by that cheery open fire" or "sauntering on the heath"--&
+picture you here in a thousand different ways. I believe Maggie Lesley is
+coming from Paris, where she is studying art in good earnest, at the
+beginning of May, & then will come and spend a few days with us. Welcome
+are American friends! The Buxton Forman's took tea with us last week & we
+had pleasant talk of you & of Dr. Bucke. Mrs. Forman is a sincere,
+sympathetic, motherly woman whom you would like. The Rossetti's too have
+been to see us--we didn't think William in the best health or spirits--&
+his wife was not looking well either, but then another baby is just
+coming.
+
+This Easter time the poorest of London working folk flock in enormous
+numbers to Hampstead Heath; it is a sight that would interest you--they
+are rougher & noisier & poorer than such folks in America--& the men more
+prone to get the worse for drink--but there is a good deal of fun &
+merriment too--the girls & boys racing about on donkeys (who have a pretty
+hard time of it)--plenty of merry-go-rounds--& enjoyment of the pure air
+& sunshine, & such sights, more than they know. The light is failing,
+dearest friend; so with love from us all, good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Friendliest greeting to your brother & sister & to Hattie & Jessie when
+you write & to the Staffords.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LVIII
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner, Well Road
+  North London
+  Hampstead, England
+  June 5th, 1881, Sunday afternoon_
+  5 P. M.
+
+MY DEAR WALT:
+
+You don't write me a letter nor take any notice of my magnificent offers
+concerning "Pond Musings", etc. however, I will forgive you this
+oft-repeated offence. I often think of you, very often of America and
+things generally there, and nearly always with pleasure.
+
+My mother is away staying with Beatrice in Edinburgh city, recruiting her
+health, which has most sadly needed it of late. So I and Grace & a new
+Scotch lassie, one Margaret, who officiates as servant most efficaciously
+too, I can tell you (such scrubbing & cleaning as you never saw the like)
+we three, I say, are alone at Keats Corner; cool sitting here in our long
+drawing-room (hung with innumerable pictures as of yore), although it has
+been scorchingly hot this past month. The morning I spend sketching on
+Hampstead Heath, which is lovely just now, all the May-trees are in full
+bloom the gorse & broom are a blaze of yellow, the rooks fly constantly by
+a quarter of a mile (seemingly) overhead, the sly fellows giving some side
+like dart when you look up at them even at that height. I am painting one
+of them; so I have to look up pretty often. In the early morning the
+nightingale sings, oh, so sweetly, long trills & roulades in the most
+accomplished manner.
+
+Last Wednesday Miss Ellen Terry, whose name you are doubtless familiar
+with as being the leading actress in London, well, she called upon me to
+ask my advice or opinion of a drawing connected with my father's book.
+Ellen Terry expressed herself highly interested in our house, pictures,
+decorations and so forth. Her manner was a little stagey, but graceful to
+the extreme, and you could see peeping out of this theatric manner a kind,
+good heart, oh, so kind, I feel as if I would do anything for her, her
+manners were so winning. "Will you come to the stage entrance of the
+Lyceum some day soon and you shall have stalls for two; now will you come?
+Do." Were her last words to Grace. I called on her at Kensington last
+week, returning the drawing, and I was so charmed with two beautiful
+children of hers, a tall, fair girl, a pretty mixture of shyness and
+self-possession that quite won me. She too I should fancy will be a great
+actress some day, she has such a bright face. The boy, Master Ted, was
+nice too.
+
+Well, I gave Ellen Terry a proof of a drawing that I have just completed
+for Dr. Bucke's book--a job I got through Buxton Forman, a great friend of
+Bucke's, done _con amore_ on my part. This drawing has been beautifully
+reproduced by the new photo intaglio-process. I hope Dr. Bucke will like
+it, but I should not expect great things from him in that line, judging
+from the twopenny hapenny little pen & ink sketch by Waters which he sent
+over in the first instance; however, Forman rescued him from that & so far
+he has been guided by his friend. Whether he will when he sees my drawing,
+we neither of us know; but both feel to have done our best in the matter.
+I said that Ellen Terry must ask for you when she goes to America, which
+she contemplates some day. I have sold the last drawing I made in New
+York of you for £10. 10s to Buxton Forman ($50. odd). Church bells have
+just commenced chiming in the distance, a sound I like better than the
+parsons. I hear that the young American artists are doing capitally
+filling their pockets. My cousin Sidney Thomas is, or was, in America, a
+good deal lionized, I understand. If at any time you favour me with a
+letter let it be a letter and not a postcard please. I have been reading
+Carlyle's reminiscences--good stuff in them, brilliant touches, but
+dreadfully morbid, don't you think? & one shuts the book up with a feeling
+that in some respect one Carlyle is enough in the world: & yet in some
+respects a million wouldn't be too many. I often think of your remark to
+us one day that tolerance is the rarest quality in the world.
+
+Interested in those Boston scraps you send my mother. You have always been
+pretty well received in Boston, have you not--I mean in the Emerson days?
+Pity that when Emerson is no more there will be no fine portrait of him in
+existence; there was a nobility stamped upon his face that I never saw the
+like of, and which should have been caught and stamped forever on canvas.
+
+We all see something of the Formans & all like them; they have so much
+character, rather unusual in literary folk of the lighter sort, I fancy;
+but there is something very fresh and original about Forman. Nice children
+they have, too. Miss Blind is bringing out a volume of poems; why will
+people all imagine they can write poetry? William Rossetti is writing a
+hundred sonnets--writes one a day; one about John Brown is not bad: and
+many are instructive, but are in no sense poems. I am going down to tea &
+must not keep Grace waiting any longer. Love to you.
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Road, Hampstead
+  London, Dec. 14, '81._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Your welcome letter to hand. I have longed for a word from you--could not
+write myself[37]--was stricken dumb--nay, there is nothing but silence for
+me still. Herby wrote to Mrs. Stafford first, thinking that so the shock
+would come less abruptly to you.
+
+I heard of you at Concord in a kind long letter from Frederick Holland,
+with whose wife you had some conversation. Indeed all that sympathy and
+warm & true words of love & sorrow & highest admiration & esteem for my
+darling could do to comfort me I have had--and most & best from America.
+And many of her poor patients at Edinburgh went sobbing from the door when
+they heard they should see her no more.
+
+The report of your health is comforting dear friend. Mine too is better--I
+am able to take walks again--though still liable to sudden attacks of
+difficult breathing.
+
+Herby is working hard--has just been disappointed over a competition
+design which he sent in to the Royal Academy--a very poor & specious work
+obtaining the premium--but is no whit discouraged & has no need to be, for
+he is making great progress--works hard, loves his work & is of the stuff
+where of great painters are made, I am persuaded--so he can afford to
+wait. Giddy is not quite so well & strong as I could wish, but there
+seems nothing serious. She is working diligently at the development of her
+voice--& is learning German. Dr. Bucke's friend, Mr. Buxton Forman, & his
+wife are very warm, staunch friends of Herby's.
+
+Please give my love to your sister, and tell her that her good letter
+spoke the right words to me & that I shall write before very long. Thanks
+for the paper, dear friend--& for those that came when I was too
+overwhelmed but which I have since read with deep interest--those about
+your visit to your birthplace. With love from us all--good-bye, dearest
+Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Road
+  Jan 29, '82._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Your letter to Herby was a real talk with you. I don't know why I punish
+myself by writing to you so seldom now, for indeed to be near you, even in
+that way would do me good--often & often do I wish we were back in America
+near you. As I write this I am sitting to Herby for my portrait again--he
+has never satisfied himself yet: but this one seems coming on nicely--and
+so is the Consuelo picture. Another one he has in his mind is to be called
+"The tea-party," and it is to be the old group round our table in
+Philadelphia--you & me and dear Bee & Giddy & himself. He thinks that what
+with memory & photograph & the studies he made when with you, he will be
+able to put you & my darling on the canvas.
+
+Giddy's voice is developing into a really fine contralto & she has the
+work in her to become an artist, I think & will turn out one of the
+tortoises who outstrip the hares. Percy and Norah are spending the winter
+in London (at Kensington)--and we can get round by train in half an hour;
+so I often see them and the dear little man. Do you remember the Miss
+Chases--two pleasant maiden ladies who took tea with us once in
+Philadelphia & talked about Sojourner Truth? One of the sisters is in
+London this winter & has been several times to see us. The birds are
+beginning to sing very sweetly here--& our room is full of the perfume of
+spring flowers--indoor ones. Did dear Bee tell you, in the long letter she
+once wrote you, how much she loved the Swiss ladies with whom she made her
+home while in Berne? A more tender & beautiful love and sorrow than that
+with which they cherish the memory of her never grew in any heart. I think
+you will like to see some of their letters--please return them, for they
+are very precious to me (the little matters they thank me for are some of
+dear Bee's things which I sent them for tokens). Love to your sister &
+brother. How are Mr. Marvin & Mr. Burroughs? Best love from us all.
+Good-bye, dear Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Road
+  Hampstead
+  May 8th, '82._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Herby went to David Bognes[38] about a week ago: he himself was out, but
+H. saw the head man, who reported that the sale of "Leaves of Grass" was
+progressing satisfactorily. I hope you have received, or will receive,
+tangible proof of the same. Bognes is a young publisher, but, I believe
+from what I hear, a man to be relied on. His father was the publisher of
+my husband's first literary venture & behaved honourably. Herby brought
+away for me a copy of the new edition. I like the type like that of '73, &
+the pale green leaf it is folded in so to speak. I find a few new friends
+to love--perhaps I have not yet found them all out. But you must not
+expect me to take kindly to any changes in the titles or arrangement of
+the old beloved friends. I love them too dearly--every word & _look_ of
+them--for that. For instance, I want "Walt Whitman" instead of "Myself" at
+the top of the page. Also my own longing is always for a chronological
+arrangement, if change at all there is to be; for that at once makes
+biography of the best kind. What deaths, dear Friend! As for me, my heart
+is already gone over to the other side of the river, so that sometimes I
+feel a kind of rejoicing in the swelling of the ranks of the great company
+there. Darwin, with his splendid day's work here gently closed; Rossetti,
+whose brilliant genius had got entangled in a premature physical decay, so
+that _his_ day's work was over too! In a letter to me, William, who was
+the best, most faithful & loving of brothers to him, says, "I doubt
+whether he would ever have regained that energy of body & concentration of
+mental resource which could have enabled him to resume work at his full &
+wonted power. Without these faculties at ready command my dear Gabriel
+would not have been himself." Edward Carpenter's father, too, is gone, but
+he at a ripe age without disease--sank gently.
+
+The photographs I enclose are but poor suggestions--please give one to
+Mrs. Whitman with my love, or if you prefer to keep both, I will send her
+others. Does the idea ever come into your head, dear Friend, of spending a
+little time this summer or autumn in your English home at Hampstead?
+
+Herby is well and working happily. So is Grace. Little grandson & his
+parents away in Worcestershire.
+
+It is indescribably lovely spring weather here just now. A carpenter near
+us has a sky-lark in a cage which sings as jubilantly as if it were
+mounting into the sky, & is so tame that when he takes it out of the cage
+to wash its little claws, which are apt to get choked up with earth, in
+warm water, it breaks out singing in his hand! Love from us all, dearest
+Friend. Good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Affectionate greetings to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.
+
+Do you ever see Mr. Marvin? If so, give our love, we hope to see him one
+day.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Well Rd., Hampstead, London
+  Nov. 24, '82._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+You have long ere this, I hope, received Herby's letter telling of the
+safe arrival of the precious copy of "Specimen Days," with the portraits:
+it makes me very proud. Your father had a fine face too--there is
+something in it that takes hold of me & that seems to be a kind of natural
+background or substratum to the radiant sweetness of that other sacred &
+beloved face completing your parentage. I like heartily too the new
+portraits of you: they are all wanted as different aspects: but the two
+that remain my favourites are the portrait taken about 30 without coat of
+any kind, and the one you sent me in '69 next to those I love these two
+latest--& in some respects better, because they are the Walt I saw & had
+such happy hours with. The second copy of book & my lending one, has come
+safe--too--and the card that told of your attack of illness, & the welcome
+news of your recovery in the Paper; & I have been fretting with impatience
+at my own dumbness--but tied to as many hours a day writing as I could
+possibly manage, at my little book now (last night)--finished, all but
+proofs, so that I can take my pleasure in "Specimen Days" at last; but
+before doing that must have a few words with you, dearest Friend. First a
+gossip. Do you remember Maggie Lesley? She came to see us on her way to
+Paris, where she is working all alone & very earnestly to get through
+training as an artist--then going to start in a studio of her own in
+Philadelphia. She, like my mother's sister, are to me fine, lovable
+samples of American women--in whom, I mean, I detect, like the distinctive
+aroma of a flower, something special--that is American--a decisive new
+quality to old-world perceptions. Herby is working away still chiefly at
+the Consuelo picture--has got a very beautiful model to-day sitting to
+him. His summer work was down in Warwickshire, making sketches--& very
+charming ones they are, of George Eliot's native scenes--one of a
+garden-nook--up steep, old, worn stone steps bordered with flowers that is
+enticing--it will make a lovely background for a figure picture.--Giddy's
+voice is growing in richness & strength--& she works with all her heart,
+hoping one day to be a real artist vocally--in church & oratorio music.
+She will not have power or dramatic ability for opera--nor can I wish that
+she had; there are so many thorns with the roses in that path. I fear you
+will be a loser by Bogne's bankruptcy. Did I tell you that among our
+friends one of your warmest admirers is Henry Holmes, the great violinist
+(equal [to] Joachim some think--we among them). Per. & wife & little
+grandson all well. My love to brother & sister & to Hattie [&] Jessie.
+Good-bye, dear Walt. I hope to write more & better soon.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Greetings to the Staffords.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Rd.
+  Hampstead
+  Jan. 27, '83._
+
+It is not for want of thinking of you, dear Walt, that I write but seldom:
+for indeed my thoughts are chiefly occupied with you & your other
+self--your Poems--& with struggles to say a few words that I think want
+saying about them; that might help some to their birthright who now stand
+off, either ignorant or misapprehending.
+
+We all go on much as usual.
+
+_Feb. 13._ I wonder if you will like a true story of Lady Dilke that I
+heard the other day--I do: It was before her marriage. She was a handsome
+young heiress, a daring horsewoman, fond of hunting. There was a man,
+weakly & of good position, who had behaved very basely & cruelly to a
+young girl in her neighbourhood, & when (as is the case in England) half
+the county was assembled on the hunting field, Lady D. faced him & said in
+a voice that could be heard afar, "Sir you are a black-guard, & if these
+gentlemen had the right spirit in them they would horsewhip you." He
+looked at her with effrontery & made a mocking bow. "But," she continued,
+"since they won't, I will"--and she cut him across the face with her
+riding whip; upon which he turned and rode off the field, like a dog with
+his tail between his legs, & reappeared in that neighbourhood no more. She
+was a woman much beloved--died at the birth of her first child (from too
+much chloroform having been given her). Her husband was heart-broken. I
+see you, too, are having floods. With us it pours five days out of seven,
+& so in Germany & France. We have made the acquaintance of Arabella
+Buckley, who has just written an interesting article about Darwin, whom
+she knew well, for the _Century_. She says his was the most entirely
+beautiful & perfect nature she ever came in contact with. How I wish we
+could have a glimpse of each other, dear Friend--half an hour talk--nay, a
+good long look & a hand-shake. Herby is overhead painting in his
+studio--such a pleasant room. How is John Burroughs? We owe him a letter &
+thanks for a good art. on Carlyle. Love to you, dearest friend.
+
+Hearty remembrances to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.
+
+A. G.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXIV
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Well Road, Hampstead, London, England
+  April 29th, '83._
+
+MY DEAR WALT:
+
+Your card to hand last night, with its sad account of dear Mrs. Stafford's
+health; but what the doctor says is cheering. I wonder, though, what the
+doctor would call good weather--mild spring, I suppose.
+
+Very glad, my dear old Walt, to see your strong familiar handwriting
+again; it does one good, it's so individual that it is next to seeing you.
+Right glad to hear of your good health--had an idea that you were not so
+well again this winter. John Burroughs was very violent against my
+intaglio; on the other hand, Alma Tadema--our great painter here--liked it
+very much. I take violent criticism pretty philosophically, now that I see
+how unreliable it nearly always is. John Burroughs has got a fixed idea
+about your personality, and that is that the top of your head is a foot
+high and any portrait that doesn't develop the "dome" is no
+portrait.--Curious what eyes a man may have for everything except a
+picture. I finished lately a life-size portrait of James Simmons, J.P., a
+hunting (fox) squire of the old school--such a fine old fellow. My
+portrait represents him standing firmly, in a scarlet hunting-coat well
+stained with many a wet chase, his great whip tucked under his arm whilst
+buttoning on his left glove, white buckskin trousers in shade relieving
+the scarlet coat, black velvet hunting cap, dark rich blue background to
+qualify and cool the scarlet. I wish you could see it. Then I have painted
+a subject "The Good Gray Poet's Gift." I have long meant to build up
+something of you from my studies, adding colour. You play a prominent part
+in this picture--seated at table bending over a nosegay of flowers,
+poetizing, before presenting them to mother. I am standing up bending over
+the tea-pot, with the kettle, filling it up; opposite you sits Giddy; out
+of the window a pretty view of Cannon place, Hampstead. Mater thinks it a
+pretty picture and a good likeness of you, just as you used to sit at tea
+with us at 1729 N. 22nd St. Now I am going out for a stroll on Hampstead
+Heath. Have just come in from a long ramble over the Heaths--a lovely soft
+spring day, innumerable birds in full song. I think J. B. is right when he
+says that your birds are more plaintive than ours--it's nature's way of
+compensating us for a loss of sunshine: what would England be without the
+merry lark, the very embodiment of cheeriness. Are not the Carlyle &
+Emerson letters interesting? It seems to me to be one of the most
+beautiful and pathetic things in literature, C's fondness for E. But all
+Englishmen, I must tell you, are not grumblers like Carlyle; he stands
+quite alone in that quality--look at Darwin!
+
+I should be grateful for another postcard. With all love,
+
+HERB. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead
+  May 6, '83._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I feel as if this beautiful spring morning here in England must send you
+greetings through me. Our sunny little mound of garden, which runs down
+toward the south, is fragrant with hyacinths and wall-flowers (beautiful,
+tawny, reddish, yellow fellows laden with rich perfume)--and at the bottom
+is a big old cherry tree--one mass of snowy blossom; in a neighbour's gay
+garden & beyond is a distant glimpse of some tall elms just putting on
+their first tender green: our little breakfast room where I always sit of
+a morning opens with glass doors into this garden. Herby is gone with the
+"Sunday Tramps," of whom he is a member, for a ten or fifteen-mile walk.
+Said tramps are some half dozen friends & neighbours, some of them very
+learned professors but genial good fellows withal, who agree to spend
+every other Sunday morning in taking one of their long walks together--& a
+very good time they have. Giddy is gone to hear a lecture; our bonnie
+Scotch girl is roasting the beef for dinner, singing the while in the
+kitchen; and pussy & I are sitting very companionable & meditative in the
+little room before described.
+
+You cannot think, dear friend, what a pleasure it was to have a whole big
+letter from you (not that I despise Postcards--they are good stop-gaps,
+but not the real thing). Yes, I have & prize the article on the Hebrew
+Scriptures. How I wish you could make up your mind to spend your summer
+holiday with us.
+
+I am still struggling along, striving to say something which, if I can say
+it to my mind, will be useful--will clear away a little of the rubbish
+that hides you from men's eyes. I hear the "Eminent Women Series" is
+having quite a large sale in America. Good-bye. Love to Mrs. Whitman.
+Greetings to your brother. Love from us all to you.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead, Jul. 30, 1883._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Lazy me, that have been thinking letters to you instead of writing them!
+We have Dr. Bucke's book at last; could not succeed in buying one at
+Türbner's--I believe they all sold directly--but he has sent us one. There
+are some things in it I prize very highly--namely, Helen Price's
+"Memoranda" and Thomas A. Gere's. These I like far better than any
+personal reminiscences of you I have ever read & I feel much drawn to the
+writers of them. Also your letter to Mrs. Price from the Hospitals, dear
+Friend. That makes one hand-in-hand with you--then & there--& gives one a
+glimpse of a very beautiful friendship. But why & why did Dr. Bucke set
+himself to counteract that beneficient law of nature's by which the dust
+tends to lay itself? And carefully gathering together again all the
+rubbish stupid or malevolent that has been written of you, toss it up in
+the air again to choke and blind or disgust as many as it may? What a
+curious piece of perversity to mistake this for candour & a judicial
+spirit.[39] Then again, how do I hate all that unmeaning, irrelevant
+clatter about what Rabelais or Shakespeare or the ancients & their times
+tolerated in the way of coarseness or plainness of speech. As if you
+wanted apologizing for or could be apologized for on that ground! If these
+poems are to be _tolerated_, I, for one, could not tolerate them. If they
+are not the highest lesson that has yet been taught in refinement &
+purity, if they do not banish all possibility of coarseness of thought &
+feeling, there would be nothing to be said for them. But they do: I am as
+sure of that as of my own existence. When will men begin to understand
+them?
+
+We have had pleasant glimpses of several American friends this summer--of
+Kate Hillard for instance, who, by the bye narrowly escaped a bad accident
+just at our door--the harness broke & the cab came down on the horse &
+frightened him so that he bolted--struck the cab against a lamp-post
+(happily, else it would have been worse)--overturned them & it--but when
+they crawled out no worse harm was done than a few cuts from the glass--&
+Kate & her friend behaved very pluckily, & we had a pleasant evening
+together after all. Then there was Arthur Peterson, looking much as in the
+old Philadelphia days: and Emma & Annie Lazarus--who, owing to some
+letters of introduction from James the novelist, have had a very gay time
+indeed--been quite lionized--and last, not least, Mr. Dalton Dorr, the
+curator of the Pennsylvania Museum in Fairmount Park--whom we all liked
+much. He is enjoying his visit here with all his heart--is a great
+enthusiast for our old Gothic Cathedrals, and for everything
+beautiful--but says there is nothing such a source of unceasing wonder &
+delight as riding about London & over the bridges &c on the top of an
+omnibus watching the endless flow of people--it is indeed a kind of human
+Mississippi or Niagara.
+
+The young folks are busy packing up to start for the seaside. Herby wants
+a background for a picture in which green turf & trees and all the
+richness of vegetation come down to the very edge of the sea and I seem to
+remember such a place near Lynn Regis, where I was thirty years ago, when
+my eldest child was born, so they are going to look it up. We hear the
+heat is very tremendous in America this year. I hope you are as well as
+ever able to stand it & enjoy it? I wonder where you are. Friendly
+greetings to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie & the Staffords. Love to
+you, dear Friend, from us all.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+My little book on Mary Lamb just out--will send you a copy in a day or
+two.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead
+  Oct. 13, '83._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Long & long does it seem since I have had any word or sign from you. I
+hope all goes well & that you have had a pleasant, refreshing summer trip
+somewhere. All goes on much as usual with us.
+
+_Hythe. Kent. Oct. 21._ Not having felt very well the last month or two,
+and Giddy also seeming to need a little bracing up, we came down to this
+ancient town by the sea--one of the Cinque Ports--on Wednesday, and much
+we like it--a fine open sea--a delicious "briny odour"--and inland much
+that is curious and interesting--for this part of the Kentish Coast--so
+near to France--has innumerable old castles, forts, moats, traces
+everywhere of centuries of warfare and of means of defence against our
+great neighbour. It is a fine hilly, woody country, too, and very
+picturesque these gray massive ruins, many of them used now as farm
+houses, look. The men of Kent are very proud of their country and are
+reckoned a fine race--tall, muscular, ruddy-complexioned, and often too
+with thick, tawny-red beards--curious how in our little island the
+differences of race-stock are still so discernible--keep along this same
+coast to the west only about a couple of hundred miles & you come to such
+a different type--dark--blackest and Cornish men.--I get a nice letter
+now & then from John Burroughs. I also saw this summer two women doctors
+who were very kind & good friends to my darling Bee--Drs. Pope--twin
+sisters from Boston, whom it did me good to see. They work hard--have a
+good practice--& say they don't know what a day's illness means so far as
+they themselves are concerned. They tell me also that the women doctors
+are doing capital work in America--and that one of them, who was with dear
+Beatrice at the Penn. Med. Col., Dr. Alice Bennett, is the efficient head
+of the woman's department of a large lunatic asylum. We are getting on in
+England too--but the field where English women doctors find the most work
+& the best position is India, where as the women are not allowed by their
+male relatives to be attended by men, the mortality was immense.--Herby
+has taken a better studio than our house afforded--both as to light &
+size--& finds the advantage great. I expect he is having a delightful walk
+this brilliant morning with the "Hampstead Tramps"--of whom I think I have
+told you. They often walk fifteen miles or so on Sunday morning.
+
+Such a glorious afternoon it has been by the sea--sapphire colour--the air
+brisk & elastic, yet soft. To-morrow Gran goes home & I shall be all alone
+here.--I hear of "Specimen Days" in a letter from Australia--there will be
+a large audience for you there some day, dear Friend. I like what John
+Burroughs has been writing about Carlyle much. We have had nothing but
+stupidities of late about him here--but there will come a great reaction
+from all this abuse, I have no doubt--he did put so much gall in his ink
+sometimes, human nature can't be expected to take it altogether meekly. I
+hope you received my little book safely. I should be a hypocrite if I
+pretended not to care whether you found patience to read it--for I grew to
+love Mary & Charles Lamb so much during my task that I want you to love
+them too--& to see what a beautiful friendship was theirs with Coleridge.
+
+How are Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie? Send me a few words soon.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend.
+
+ANN GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead
+  April 5, '84._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Those few words of yours to Herby "tasted good" to us--few, but enough,
+seeing that we can fill out between the lines with what you have given us
+of yourself forever & always in your books--& that is how I comfort myself
+for having so few letters. But I turn many wistful thoughts toward
+America, and were not I & mine bound here by unseverable ties, did we not
+seem to grow & belong here as by a kind of natural destiny that has to be
+fulfilled very cheerfully, could I make America my home for the sake of
+being near you in body as I am in heart & soul--but Time has good things
+in store for us sooner or later, I doubt not. I could hardly express to
+you how welcome is the thought of death to me--not in the sense of any
+discontent with life--but as life with fresh energies & wider horizon &
+hand in hand again with those that are gone on first.
+
+Herby found the little bit of gray cloth very useful--but one day _save
+him an old suit_. Your figure in the picture is, I think, a fair
+suggestion of one aspect of you; but not, could not of course be, an
+adequate portrait. He will never rest till he has done his best to achieve
+that. As soon as he can afford it (for it is a very slow business indeed
+for a young artist to make money in England, though when he does begin he
+is better paid than in America) he means to run over to see you. He says
+he should like always to spend his winters in New York. I say how very
+highly I prize that last slip you sent me, "A backward glance on my own
+road"? It both corroborates & explains much that I feel very deeply.--If
+you are seeing Mrs. Whitman, please say her letter was a pleasure & that I
+shall write again before very long. I feel as if this letter would never
+find you--be sure & let us know your whereabouts.
+
+Remembrance & love.
+
+Good-bye, dear Walt.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Hampstead
+  May 2, '84._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Your card (your very voice & touch, drawing me across the Atlantic close
+beside you) was put into my hand just as I was busy copying out "With
+husky, haughty lips O sea" to pin into my "Leaves of Grass." I hardly
+think there is anything grander there. I think surely they must see that
+that is the very Soul of Nature uttering itself sublimely.
+
+Who do you think came to see us on Sunday? Professor Dowden.[40] And I
+know not when I have set eyes on a more beautiful personality. I think you
+would be as much attracted towards him as I was. It was he who told me
+(full of enthusiasm) of the Poems in _Harper's_ which I had not seen or
+heard of. We had a very happy two or three hours together, talking of you
+& looking through Blake's drawings. He is a tall man, complexion tanned &
+healthy, nose finely modelled, dark eyes with plenty of life & meaning in
+them, hair grayish--I should think he was between forty & fifty--but says
+his father is still a fine hale old man.
+
+Herby disappointed again this year of getting anything into the R.
+Academy.
+
+I think I like the idea of the shanty, if you have any one to take good
+care of you, to cook nicely, keep all neat & clean &c. I wonder if I have
+ever been in Mickle St. I, still busy, still hammering away to see if I
+can help those that "balk" at "Leaves of Grass". Perhaps you will smile at
+me--at any rate it bears good fruit to me--I seem to be in a manner living
+with you the while.
+
+Everything full of beauty just now here, as no doubt it is with you.
+
+Good-bye, dearest friend--don't forget the letter that is to come soon.
+Love from us all, love & again love from
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Aug. 5, '84._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The notion [that] one is going to write a nice long letter is fatal to
+writing at all. And so I mean to scribble something, somehow, a little
+oftener & make up in quantity for quality! For after all the great thing,
+the thing one wants, is to _meet_--if not in the flesh--then in the
+spirit. A word will do it. I am getting on--my heart is in my work--&
+though I have been long about it, it won't be long--but I think & hope it
+will be strong. Quite a sprinkling of American friends--some new ones this
+spring--among them Mr. & Mrs. Pennell[41] from Philadelphia--whom you
+know--we like them well--hope to see them again & again. Also Miss Keyse
+(her sister married Emerson's son) from Concord, and the Lesleys--Mary
+Lesley has married & gone to the West--St. Paul--has just got a little
+son.
+
+How does the "little shanty" answer, I wonder? Herby has been painting
+some charming little bits in an old terraced garden here. I do wish you
+could hear Giddy sing now; I am sure her voice would "go to the right
+spot," as you used to say. Good-bye, dearest friend. Love from all & most
+from
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Wolverhampton
+  Oct. 26, '84._
+
+DEAR WALT:
+
+I don't suppose the enclosed will give you nearly so much pleasure as it
+gives me. But Villiers Stanford is, I think, the best composer England has
+produced since the days of Purcell & Blow, and your words will be sent
+home to hundreds & thousands who had not before seen them. How lovely the
+words read as themes for great music!
+
+I have been staying with old friends who have a house you would enjoy--it
+stands all alone on the top of a heath-clad hill, with miles of coppice
+(young woods) below it, and spread out beyond is a rich valley with more
+wooded hills jutting out into it--and you see the storms a long way off
+travelling up from the sea, and you can wander for miles & miles through
+the woods or over the breezy hill--or, as you sit at your window, feel
+yourself in the very heart of a great, beautiful solitude. Very kind, warm
+friends, too, they are, who leave you as free as a bird to do what you
+like. I have had all the papers, dear friend, & have enjoyed them.
+
+Now I am in the heart of the "Black Country," as we call it--black with
+the smoke of thousands of foundries & works of all kinds--staying with
+Percy & his wife. Percy is having a very arduous time here starting some
+Steel Works--& what with his men being inexperienced & times bad & the
+machinery not yet perfectly adjusted, he seems harassed night & day--for
+these things have to be kept going all night too--but I hope he will get
+into smoother waters soon. The little son is rosy & bright & healthy--goes
+to school now, which, being an only child, he enjoys mightily for the sake
+of the companionship of other boys.
+
+Love from us all, dear friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Grace & Herby well & busy when I left.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead
+  Dec. 17, '84._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+At last I have extracted a little bit of news about you from friend
+Carpenter, who never comes to see us and is [as] reluctant to write
+letters as--somebody else that I know. That you have a comfortable,
+elderly couple to keep house for you was a good hearing--for "the old
+shanty" had risen before my eyes as somewhat lonely, & perhaps the
+cooking, &c., not well attended to.--There seems a curious kind of ebb and
+flow about the recognition of you in England--just now there are signs of
+the flow--of a steadily gathering great wave, one indication of which is
+the little pamphlet just published in Edinburgh--one of the "Round Table"
+Series--no doubt a copy has been sent you. If not and you would care to
+see it, I will send you one. On the whole I like it (barring one or two
+stupidities)--at any rate, as compared with what has hitherto been
+written. My poor article has so far been rejected by editors--so I have
+laid it by for a little, to come with a fresh eye & see if I can make it
+in any way more likely to win a hearing--though I often say to myself, "If
+they have not ears to hear you, how is it likely one can unstop their
+ears?" But on the other hand there is always the chance of leading some
+to read the Poems who had not else done so.--Percy & Norah and Archie, now
+grown a very sturdy active little fellow, are coming to spend Xmas with
+us, which is a great pleasure.
+
+I am deep in Froude's last volumes of "Carlyle's Life in London". Folks
+are grumbling that they have had enough & too much of Carlyle & _his_
+grumblings and sarcasms. But he is an inexhaustibly interesting figure to
+me, & will remain so in the long run to the world, I am persuaded. It
+grieves me that he should have been so cruelly unjust to himself as a
+husband--that remorse, those bitter self-reproaches, were undeserved, were
+altogether morbid: he was not only an infinitely better husband than she
+was wife: he was wonderfully affectionate & tender & just--& as to his
+temper & irritable nerves, she knew what she was about when she married
+him. Herby was walking through the British Museum the other day with a
+friend when a group, a ready-made picture, struck him--it was a young
+student-sculptress, a graceful girl high on a pile of boxes modelling in
+clay a copy of an antique statue, & standing below, looking up at her, was
+a young sculptor in his blouse, criticising her work with much animation &
+gesture; the background of the group, a part of the Elgin Marbles. So this
+is what Herby is painting & I think he will make a very jolly little
+picture out of it. I have been much a prisoner to the house with bad colds
+ever since I returned from Wolverhampton, but am beginning to get out
+again--which puts new life into me. I have never envied anything in this
+world but a man's strong legs & powers of tramping, tramping, over hill &
+dale as long as he pleases--legs would content me and a sound breathing
+apparatus! I am in no hurry for wings. Giddy's voice, too, is just now
+eclipsed by cold.
+
+I hope you have escaped this evil and are able to jaunt to & fro on the
+ferries as freely as ever. And I hope the pleasant Quaker friends are
+well--and Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie--there is a fellow
+student of Giddy's at the Guild Hall music school who so reminds her of
+Hattie.
+
+Love from us all, dear friend. Most from me.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead, England
+  Feb. 27, '85._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+How has the winter passed with you I wonder? Me it has imprisoned very
+much with bronchial & asthmatic troubles--and the four walls of the house
+& the ceiling seem to close in upon one's spirit as well as one's body,
+all too much. I hope you have been able to wend to and fro daily on the
+great ferry boats & enjoy the beautiful broad river & the sky & the
+throngs of people as of old--you are in my thoughts as constantly as ever,
+though I have been so silent. Percy & his wife & the little son spent some
+weeks with us at Christmas & now they have taken a house quite near, into
+which they will be moving in a week or two. I can't tell you what a dear,
+affectionate, reasonable, companionable little fellow Archie is--now six
+years old. Perhaps you will have seen in the American papers that Sidney
+Thomas, the cousin with whom Percy was associated in the discovery of the
+Basic process, is dead--he spent his strength too freely--wore himself out
+at 35--he was much loved by all with whom he had to do. His mother &
+sister have been watching & hoping against hope & taking him to warm
+climates, he himself full of hope--the mind bright and active to the
+last--& now he is gone--& his eldest brother died only two months before
+him.--I cannot help grieving over public affairs too--never in my lifetime
+has old England been in such a bad way--no honest & capable man seemingly
+to take the helm--& what Carlyle was fond of describing as the attempt to
+guide the ship by the shouts of the bystanders on shore--the newspapers
+&c. prospering very ill. A government that tries perpetually how to do it
+and how not to do it at the same moment! The best comfort is that I do not
+think there is any, the smallest sign, of deterioration in the English
+race; so we shall pull through somehow, after tremendous disasters. How
+many things should I like to sit and chat with you about, dear Walt--above
+all to see you again! I could not get my article into any of the magazines
+I most wished. I believe it is coming out in _To-Day_. Giddy was so
+pleased at your sending her a paper--a very capital article too it is of
+Miss Kellogg. I was interested also in a little paragraph I found about
+Pullman town, near Chicago, which confirmed my suspicion that it was not a
+thing with healthy roots--but only a benevolent despotism. I am seeing a
+good deal of your socialists just now--& I confess that though they mean
+well, I think they have less sense in their heads than any people I ever
+saw.
+
+I am going to pay a little visit to those friends (friendliest of friends)
+who live on the lonely top of a heath-covered hill--with such an outlook,
+such wooded slopes and broad valleys--and the storms travelling up hours
+before they arrive--such sweeps of sunshine too!--& they mean to drive me
+about till I am quite strong again. So the next letter I write, dear
+Friend, shall be more cheery. I am afraid to look back lest this one
+should read too grumbly to send. I don't feel grumbly however--only shut
+in. Herby has been working hard at getting up an exhibition here to help
+along our Public Library. It is so very hard to stir up anything like
+public spirit & unity of action in London or its suburbs--I suppose
+because of its vastness--& alas! also the social cliques & gentilities &
+snobbishnesses. Good-bye, dearest Walt, with love from all.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Hampstead
+  May 4, '85._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Delays of Editors--there is no end to them! I am promised now that the
+art. shall appear in the June No., & if it does I will send you at once
+the number of copies you name. And if it does not, I think I had best get
+it back & have done with the editors of _To-day_ & try for some other &
+better opening again.
+
+I have been reading & re-reading & pondering over Froude's 9 vols of
+Carlyle--"The Reminiscences," "Letters," &c. &c.--and am pretty well at
+boiling point with indignation against Froude--boiling point of anger &
+freezing point of contempt. His betrayal at every point of a sacred trust!
+lazy, slip-shod editing! not even taking the pains to put letters and
+their answers together--but printing the one in 1882 & the others three or
+four years after--so that half the meaning and all the _mutuality_ of the
+letters are lost! And then the sly malignity of the comments with which
+they are preceded! If I live I will do my utmost to expose all this & to
+show that Mrs. Carlyle was no injured heroine, nor he a selfish &
+neglected husband. Both had their faults, but the balance of affection &
+tenderness was largely on his side, as well as of other great qualities:
+though I like her too--& think she would have scorned Froude's ignoble
+championship.
+
+Herby has had rather better luck with his pictures this year. Has
+one--"The Sculptor's Lesson"--fairly well hung at the Royal Academy--where
+it shines out very cheerfully & holds its own modestly, I may say without
+maternal vanity. I think I described to you the little bit of actual life
+it depicts--a young girl he saw at the British Museum modelling a copy of
+an antique statue & young sculptor in his blouse standing below & giving
+her some animated criticism--a little bit of the Elgin marbles in the
+background. Herb. has also a little picture he calls "Midsummer"--a bit of
+a very old & buttressed wall hung with roses in full bloom, & Giddy's
+figure standing above--at the Grosvenor. Now if he has the luck to sell
+too! He has a commission also to paint a small portrait of me for our
+friends at Marley, on which he is busy just now. As soon as he has a
+little spare money in his pocket I think his first use of it will be a run
+across the Atlantic & a glimpse of you, dear Friend. Giddy is going to
+sing at a Soiree of socialists & revolutionary folk in general on
+Wednesday. Her songs are to be "The Wearing of the Green"--& "Poland
+Dirge" & the "Marseillaise". You will think we are getting pretty red hot!
+But alas! though our sympathy with the Cause--the cause of suffering
+millions--is warm, our faith in the wisdom & ability of those who are
+aspiring to be the leaders, so far as we know anything of them--is
+infinitesimal.
+
+What a burst of beauty we have had during the last ten days! We look out
+just now on a sea of apple & pear blossoms, from the deepest pink to
+dazzling white--& the tenderest green intermingled with all. I hope you
+are able to be out nearly all day & enjoy all--and that home affairs go
+smoothly & comfortably & that Mrs. Davis[42] is attentive & good & every
+way adequate as care-taker.
+
+I am looking forward very much to the "After Songs" and "Letters of
+Parting". Does the sale of "Leaves of Grass" continue pretty steady? I
+look forward with a sort of dread to seeing my article in proof, lest I
+should feel very disappointed with it.
+
+Your loving friend,
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Do you ever see or hear from Mr. Marvin? He is a favourite with all of us.
+Do you remember how we laughed at his dramatic presentation of a negro
+prayer meeting?
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Hampstead, London
+  Jan. 21, 85._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I hope the _To-days_ have come safe to hand. I am thinking a great deal
+about the new edition; and cannot help hoping you are going to revert to
+the plan of the Centennial Edition, which issued your writings in two
+independent volumes. May I, without being presumptuous, dear Walt, tell
+you how I should dearly like to see them arranged? I want "Crossing
+Brooklyn Ferry," "Song at Sunset," "Song of the Open Road," "Starting from
+Paumanok," "Carol of Words," "Carol of Occupations" and either as "As I
+Sat by Blue Ontario's Shore" or the Preface to edit. 55 put into "Two
+Rivulets"--you could make room for them that the volumes might balance in
+size by making them exchange places with the "Centennial Songs" and the
+"Memoranda During the War"; not that these are not precious to me, but I
+want it dearest because I want in the Two Rivulet Volume what will best
+prepare the reader, lift him up to the true point of view, and make him
+all your own, before he comes to the inner sanctuary of "Calamus" & "Walt
+Whitman" & "Children of Adam."
+
+Monday morn. Your letter just to hand. It gives me deep joy, dear Friend.
+I have sent copies of _To-Day_ to Dr. Bucke & John Burroughs but did not
+know of his change of address; so fear it has miscarried. I will send
+another, and also one to W. O'Connor.--You did not tell me about your
+fall--unless indeed a letter has been lost. It fills me with concern
+because of the difficulty it increases in getting that free out-door life
+that is so dear & essential to your soul & body, and because, too, I still
+cherished in my heart a hope that I should yet see you again--here in my
+own home--& now it seems next to an impossibility. Right thankful am I to
+hear about Mrs. Davis--that she takes good care of you--please give her a
+friendly greeting from me. I am going to have rather a bothersome
+summer--first of all, the house full of workmen to make all clean & tidy;
+& then my Scotch lassie, friend & factotum rather than servant, must have
+a holiday & go to her friends in Scotland for a month. I shall heartily
+welcome your friend, no need to say, & be sure to like her. Love from
+Grace & Herb. & most of all from me. I have plenty more to say but won't
+delay this.
+
+Good-bye, dear Walt.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Rd., Hampstead, Eng.
+  July 20, '85._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+A kind of anxiety has for some time past weighed upon me and upon others,
+I find, who love & admire you, that you do not have all the comforts you
+ought to have; that you are perhaps sometimes straightened for means. We
+have had letters from several young men, almost or quite strangers to us,
+asking questions on this subject; and we hoped & thought that if this were
+so, you would permit those who have received such priceless gifts from you
+to put their gratitude into some tangible shape, some "free-will
+offering." Hence the paragraph was put into the _Athenaeum_ which I send
+with this, and we were proceeding to organize our forces when your paper
+came to hand this morning (the _Camden Post_, July 3), which seems
+decisively to bid us desist. Or at all events wait till we had told you of
+our wishes and plan. One thing would, I feel sure, give you pleasure in
+any case; and that is to know that there is over here a little
+band--perhaps indeed it is now quite a considerable one, for we had not
+yet had time to ascertain how considerable--who would joyfully respond to
+that Poem of yours, "To Rich Givers."
+
+A friend and near neighbour of ours, Frederick Wedmore, is coming over to
+America this autumn, and counts much on coming to see you. He is a
+well-known writer on Art here--a friendly, candid, open-minded man with
+whom, I think, you will enjoy a talk.
+
+I am on the lookout for Miss Smith[43]--shall indeed enjoy a talk with a
+special friend of yours, dear Walt. I hope she will not fail to come.
+Giddy is away at Haslemere. Herby just going to write for himself to you.
+
+That is a very graphic bit in the _Post_--the portrait of Hugo, the canary
+& the kitten--I like to know all that--as well as to hear the talk.
+
+My love, dear Walt.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+So far as can be ascertained this is the last letter. Anne Gilchrist died
+Nov. 29th, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+[1] Reprinted from the _Radical_ for May, 1870.
+
+[2] Reprinted from "Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings," by her son
+Herbert H. Gilchrist--London, 1887.
+
+[3] Reprinted from Horace Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in Camden," I,
+219-220. Although addressed to Rossetti, this letter is evidently intended
+as much for Mrs. Gilchrist, whose name was not at this time known to
+Whitman.
+
+[4] Alexander Gilchrist.
+
+[5] Mrs. Gilchrist's emotion here apparently prevents her memory from
+doing complete justice to her own past. For a very different expression of
+her feelings toward Alexander Gilchrist, written at the time of her
+betrothal, see her letter announcing the engagement which she sent to her
+friend, Julia Newton, and which is to be found on pp. 30-31 of her son's
+biography.
+
+[6] William Michael Rossetti.
+
+[7] To W. M. Rossetti. See _ante_, p. x.
+
+[8] First printed in Horace Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in Camden," III,
+513.
+
+[9] Evidently meaning the letter of September 3d.
+
+[10] Missing.
+
+[11] Percy Carlyle Gilchrist who became an inventive metallurgist.
+
+[12] Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist, who became an artist.
+
+[13] Printed from copy retained by Whitman.
+
+[14] To deliver his Dartmouth College ode.
+
+[15] William Douglas O'Connor, an ardent Washington friend of Whitman.
+
+[16] John Burroughs, the naturalist, then a young author and disciple of
+Whitman.
+
+[17] Anne Gilchrist's son.
+
+[18] Horace Greeley, nominated by the Democrats as their candidate for the
+Presidency.
+
+[19] Burlington, Vermont, where Whitman's sister, Mrs. Heyde, lived.
+
+[20] Henry M. Stanley, African Explorer.
+
+[21] Undated. Made up from copy among Whitman's papers. This letter
+evidently belongs to the summer of 1873.
+
+[22] The "Prayer of Columbus" was first published in _Harper's Magazine_
+in March, 1874.
+
+[23] John Cowardine. See "Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings," pp. 149
+ff.
+
+[24] Daughters of Thomas Jefferson Whitman.
+
+[25] Mrs. George Whitman.
+
+[26] Sister.
+
+[27] Niece.
+
+[28] Sidney Morse, the sculptor.
+
+[29] "Man's Moral Nature," by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke.
+
+[30] This extract (?) is taken from H. H. Gilchrist's "Anne Gilchrist," p.
+252. It is undated, but it is clearly a reply to the foregoing letter from
+Mrs. Gilchrist.
+
+[31] Durham Cathedral.
+
+[32] Anne Gilchrist's grandchild.
+
+[33] Reproduced in "Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings," facing p. 253.
+
+[34] Richard Watson Gilder.
+
+[35] Of Timber Creek, Camden County, New Jersey, whose hospitality helped
+Whitman to improve his health.
+
+[36] The second edition of Alexander Gilchrist's "William Blake."
+
+[37] Because of the death of her daughter Beatrice.
+
+[38] Whitman's London publisher.
+
+[39] Dr. Bucke, in his "Life of Whitman," had reprinted at the end of the
+volume many criticisms of the poet, adverse as well as favourable;
+likewise W. D. O'Connor's "Good Gray Poet."
+
+[40] Edward Dowden, of the University of Dublin.
+
+[41] Artists, famous for their etchings. Mr. Pennell made several etchings
+for Dr. Bucke's biography of Whitman.
+
+[42] Mrs. Mary Davis, who was Whitman's housekeeper until his death.
+
+[43] Daughter of Pearsall Smith, of Philadelphia.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt
+Whitman, by Walt Whitman and Anne Burrows Gilchrist
+
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman, Edited by Thomas B. Harned.
+    </title>
+
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+
+    body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;}
+
+    .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; font-style: normal;}
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;}
+
+    hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;}
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+    .huge {font-size: 150%}
+    .big {font-size: 125%}
+
+    .poem {margin-left:15%;}
+    .note {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;}
+
+    .right {text-align: right;}
+    .center {text-align: center;}
+
+    .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
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+    .spacer {padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em;}
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+    ins.correction {text-decoration:none; border-bottom: thin solid gray;}
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+  </head>
+<body>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt
+Whitman, by Walt Whitman and Anne Burrows Gilchrist
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman
+
+Author: Walt Whitman
+        Anne Burrows Gilchrist
+
+Editor: Thomas B. Harned
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35395]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS--ANNE GILCHRIST, WALT WHITMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE LETTERS</span><br />
+<span class="big"><i>OF</i></span><br />
+<span class="giant">ANNE GILCHRIST</span><br />
+<span class="big"><i>AND</i></span><br />
+<span class="giant">WALT WHITMAN</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="" /><br /><img src="images/sigline.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photograph taken about the year 1870</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE LETTERS</span><br />
+<span class="big"><i>OF</i></span><br />
+<span class="giant">ANNE GILCHRIST</span><br />
+<span class="big"><i>AND</i></span><br />
+<span class="giant">WALT WHITMAN</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">Edited<br />
+With an Introduction<br />
+BY<br />
+<span class="huge">THOMAS B. HARNED</span><br />
+One of Walt Whitman&#8217;s Literary Executors</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/printer.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">Illustrated</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Garden City</span><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span><span class="smcap">New York</span><br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />1918</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY<br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br /><br />
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF<br />
+TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,<br />
+INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">In Memoriam<br />
+AUGUSTA TRAUBEL HARNED<br />
+1856-1914</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="smcap">Preface</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_xix">xix</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_xxiii"><ins class="correction" title="original: xxi">xxiii</ins></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="smcap">A Woman&#8217;s Estimate of Walt Whitman</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="smcap">A Confession of Faith</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><small>LETTER</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_I">I.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman to William Michael<br />Rossetti and Anne Gilchrist</span></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_II">II.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Earl&#8217;s Colne September 3, 1871</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_III">III.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Shotter Mill, Haslemere, Surrey<br />October 23, 1871</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_IV">IV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman to Anne Gilchrist</span><br /><i>Washington, D. C.<br />November 3, 1871</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_V">V.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W.,<br />London<br />November 27, 1871</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_VI">VI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W.,<br />London<br />January 24, 1872</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span><a href="#LETTER_VII">VII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman to Anne Gilchrist</span><br /><i>Washington, D. C.<br />February 8, 1872</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W.,<br />London<br />April 12, 1872</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_IX">IX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W.,<br />London<br />June 3, 1872</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_X">X.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W.,<br />London<br />July 14, 1872</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XI">XI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq.<br />November 12, 1872</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XII">XII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London,<br />N. W.<br />January 31, 1873</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London,<br />N. W.<br />May 20, 1873</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Earl&#8217;s Colne, Halstead<br />August 12, 1873</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span><a href="#LETTER_XV">XV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman to Anne Gilchrist</span><br /><i>Camden, New Jersey<br />Undated. Summer of 1873</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Earl&#8217;s Colne, Halstead<br />September 4, 1873</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Square,<br />London, N. W.<br />November 3, 1873</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XVIII">XVIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Square,<br />London, N. W.<br />December 8, 1873</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XIX">XIX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Square,<br />London, N. W.<br />February 26, 1874</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XX">XX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Square,<br />London, N. W.<br />March 9, 1874</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXI">XXI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Square,<br />London, N. W.<br />May 14, 1874</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXII">XXII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist To Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Square,<br />London, N. W.<br />July, 4, 1874</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span><a href="#LETTER_XXIII">XXIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Earl&#8217;s Colne<br />September 3, 1874</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXIV">XXIV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Square,<br />London, N. W.<br />December 9, 1874</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXV">XXV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Square,<br />London, N. W.<br />December 30, 1874</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXVI">XXVI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Earl&#8217;s Colne, Halstead<br />February 21, 1875</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXVII">XXVII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Square,<br />London, N. W.<br />May 18, 1875</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXVIII">XXVIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Earl&#8217;s Colne<br />August 28, 1875</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXIX">XXIX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Square,<br />London<br />November 16, 1875</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXX">XXX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road,<br />London<br />December 4, 1875</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span><a href="#LETTER_XXXI">XXXI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Blaenavon, Routzpool, Mon., England<br />January 18, 1876</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXXII">XXXII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road,<br />London<br />February 25, 1876</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXXIII">XXXIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road,<br />London, March 11, 1876</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXXIV">XXXIV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman to Anne Gilchrist</span><br /><i>Camden, New Jersey.<br />Undated, March, 1876</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXXV">XXXV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road,<br />London<br />March 30, 1876</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXXVI">XXXVI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road,<br />London<br />April 21, 1876</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXXVII">XXXVII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road,<br />London<br />May 18, 1876</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XXXVIII">XXXVIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Round Hill, Northampton, Massachusetts<br />September, 1877</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span><a href="#LETTER_XXXIX">XXXIX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Beatrice C. Gilchrist to Walt<br />Whitman</span><br /><i>New England Hospital, Codman Avenue,<br />Boston Highlands<br />Undated</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XL">XL.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Chesterfield, Massachusetts<br />September 3, 1878</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XLI">XLI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Concord, Massachusetts<br />October 25 (1878)</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XLII">XLII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>39 Somerset Street, Boston<br />November 13, 1878</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XLIII">XLIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>112 Madison Avenue, New York<br />January 5, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XLIV">XLIV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>112 Madison Avenue, New York<br />January 14, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XLV">XLV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>112 Madison Avenue, New York<br />January 27, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XLVI">XLVI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Herbert H. Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>112 Madison Avenue, New York<br />February, 2, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span><br /><a href="#LETTER_XLVII">XLVII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Beatrice C. Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>33 Warrenton Street, Boston<br />February 16, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XLVIII">XLVIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>112 Madison Avenue, New York<br />March 18, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_177">177</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_XLIX">XLIX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>112 Madison Avenue, New York<br />March 26, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_L">L.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Glasgow, Scotland<br />June 20, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LI">LI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Lower Shincliffe, Durham<br />August 2, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LII">LII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman to Anne Gilchrist</span><br /><i>Camden, New Jersey<br />Undated, August, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LIII">LIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>1 Elm Villas, Elm Row, Heath Street,<br />Hampstead, London<br />December 5, 1879</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LIV">LIV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>5 Mount Vernon, Hampstead<br />January 25, 1880</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LV">LV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Marley, Haslemere, England<br />August 22, 1880</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span><a href="#LETTER_LVI">LVI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Herbert H. Gilchrist to Walt<br />Whitman</span><br /><i>12 Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead,<br />London<br />November 30, 1880</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LVII">LVII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead,<br />London<br />April 18, 1881</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LVIII">LVIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Herbert H. Gilchrist to Walt<br />Whitman</span><br /><i>Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead,<br />North London<br />June 5, 1881</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LIX">LIX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>12 Well Road, Hampstead, London<br />December 14, 1881</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LX">LX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>12 Well Road, Hampstead, London<br />January 29 and February 6, 1882</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXI">LXI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>12 Well Road, Hampstead, London<br />May 8, 1882</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXII">LXII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead,<br />London<br />November 24, 1882</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span><a href="#LETTER_LXIII">LXIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>12 Well Road, Hampstead, London<br />January 27, 1883</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXIV">LXIV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Herbert H. Gilchrist to Walt<br />Whitman</span><br /><i>Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead,<br />London<br />April 29, 1883</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXV">LXV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Keats Corner, Hampstead, London<br />May 6, 1883</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXVI">LXVI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Keats Corner, Hampstead, London<br />July 30, 1883</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXVII">LXVII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Keats Corner, Hampstead, London<br />October 13, 1883</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXVIII">LXVIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Keats Corner, Hampstead, London<br />April 5, 1884</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXIX">LXIX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Hampstead, London<br />May 2, 1884</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXX">LXX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Keats Corner, London<br />August 5, 1884</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXXI">LXXI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Wolverhampton<br />October 26, 1884</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span><a href="#LETTER_LXXII">LXXII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Keats Corner, Hampstead, London<br />December 17, 1884</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXXIII">LXXIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Keats Corner, Hampstead, London<br />February 27, 1885</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXXIV">LXXIV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Hampstead, London<br />May 4, 1885</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXXV">LXXV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>Hampstead, London<br />June 21, 1885</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#LETTER_LXXVI">LXXVI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman</span><br /><i>12 Well Road, Hampstead, London<br />July 20, 1885</i></td>
+    <td valign="top" align="right"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>Walt Whitman</td><td align="right"><a href="#frontis"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>FACING PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Anne Gilchrist</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_55">54</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Facsimile of a typical Whitman letter</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Facsimile of one of Anne Gilchrist&#8217;s letters to Walt Whitman</td><td align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>in the text pages</i> <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>Probably there are few who to-day question the propriety of publishing the
+love-letters of eminent persons a generation after the deaths of both
+parties to the correspondence. When one recalls the published love-letters
+of Abelard, of Dorothy Osborne, of Lady Hamilton, of Mary Wollstonecraft,
+of Margaret Fuller, of George Sand, Bismarck, Shelley, Victor Hugo, Edgar
+Allan Poe, and&mdash;to mention only one more illustrious example&mdash;of the
+Brownings, one must needs look upon this form of presenting biographical
+material as a well-established, if not a valuable, convention of letters.</p>
+
+<p>As to the particular set of letters presented to the reader in this
+volume, a word of explanation and history may be required. Most of these
+letters are from Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman, a few are replies to her
+letters, and a few are letters from her children to Whitman. Mrs.
+Gilchrist died in 1885. When, two years later, her son, Herbert
+Harlakenden Gilchrist, was collecting material for his interesting
+biography of his mother, Whitman was asked for the letters that she had
+written to him&mdash;or rather for extracts from them. In reply to this request
+the poet said, &#8220;I do not know that I can furnish any good reason, but I
+feel to keep these utterances exclusively to myself. But I cannot let your
+book go to press without at least saying&mdash;and wishing it put on
+record&mdash;that among the perfect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span> women I have met (and it has been my
+unspeakably good fortune to have had the very best, for mother, sisters,
+and friends) I have known none more perfect in every relation, than my
+dear, dear friend, Anne Gilchrist.&#8221; But since Whitman carefully preserved
+them for twenty years, refusing to destroy them as he had destroyed such
+other written matter as he did not care to have preserved, it would appear
+that he intended that so beautiful a tribute to the poetry that he had
+written, no less than to the personality of the poet, should be included
+in that complete biography which is being slowly written, by many hands,
+of America&#8217;s most unique man of genius. In any case, when these letters
+came into my hands in the apportionment of Whitman&#8217;s literary legacy under
+the will which named me as one of his three literary executors, there were
+but three things which I could honourably do with them&mdash;rather, on closer
+analysis, there seemed to be but one. To leave them in <i>my</i> will or to
+place them in some public repository would have been to shift a
+responsibility which was evidently mine to the shoulders of others who,
+perhaps, would be in possession of fewer facts in the light of which to
+discharge that responsibility. To destroy them would be to do what Whitman
+should have done if it was to be done at all, and to erase forever one of
+the finest tributes that either the man or the poet ever received, one of
+the most touching self-revelations that a noble soul ever &#8220;poured out on
+paper.&#8221; The remaining alternative was to edit and publish them (after
+keeping them a proper length of time), for the benefit, not only of the
+general reader, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span> as an aid to the future biographer who from the
+proper perspective will write the life of America&#8217;s great poet and
+prophet. In this determination my judgment has been confirmed by that of
+the few sympathetic friends who, during the twenty-five years that the
+letters have been in my possession, have been allowed to read them.</p>
+
+<p>It is a matter of regret that so few of Whitman&#8217;s letters to Mrs.
+Gilchrist are available. Those included in this volume, sometimes in
+fragmentary form, have been taken from loose copies found among his papers
+after his death, or, in a few instances, are reprinted from Herbert
+Harlakenden Gilchrist&#8217;s &#8220;Anne Gilchrist&#8221; or Horace Traubel&#8217;s &#8220;With Walt
+Whitman in Camden.&#8221; Acknowledgment of these latter is made in each
+instance. But though Whitman&#8217;s letters printed in this correspondence will
+not compare with Mrs. Gilchrist&#8217;s in point of number, enough are presented
+to suggest the tenor of them all.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the first love-letter from Anne Gilchrist to Walt
+Whitman was in the form of an essay written in his defense called &#8220;An
+Englishwoman&#8217;s Estimate of Walt Whitman.&#8221; For that reason this well-known
+essay is reprinted in this volume; and &#8220;A Confession of Faith,&#8221; in reality
+an amplification of the &#8220;Estimate&#8221; written several years after the
+publication of the latter, is included. The reader who desires to follow
+the story of this friendship in a chronological order will do well to read
+at least the former of these tributes before beginning the letters.
+Indebtedness is acknowledged to Prof. Emory Halloway of Brooklyn, New
+York, for valuable suggestions.</p>
+
+<p class="right">T. B. H.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[Pg xxiii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly Mrs. Gilchrist&#8217;s &#8220;Estimate of Walt Whitman,&#8221; published in the
+(Boston) <i>Radical</i> in May, 1870, was the finest, as it was the first,
+public tribute ever paid to the poet by a woman. Whitman himself so
+considered it&mdash;&#8220;the proudest word that ever came to me from a woman&mdash;if
+not the proudest word of all from any source.&#8221; But a finer tribute was to
+follow, in the sacred privacy of the love-letters which are now made
+public forty years and more after they were written. The purpose of this
+Introduction is not to interpret those letters, but to sketch the story in
+the light of which they are to be read. And since both Anne Gilchrist and
+Walt Whitman have had sympathetic and painstaking biographers, it will not
+be necessary here to mention at length the already known facts of their
+respective lives.</p>
+
+<p>The story naturally begins with Whitman. He was born at West Hills, Long
+Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. His father was of English descent, and
+came of a family of sailors and farmers. His mother, to whom he himself
+attributed most of his personal qualities, was of excellent Hollandic
+stock. Moving to Brooklyn while still in frocks, he there passed his
+boyhood and youth, but took many summer trips to visit relatives in the
+country. He early left the public<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[Pg xxiv]</a></span> school for the printing offices of
+local newspapers, picking enough general knowledge to enable him, when
+about seventeen years of age, to teach schools in the rural districts of
+his native island. Very early in life he became a writer, chiefly of short
+prose tales and essays, which were accepted by the best New York
+magazines. His literary and journalistic work was not confined to the
+metropolis, but took him, for a few months in 1848, so far away from home
+as New Orleans. In 1851-54, besides writing for and editing newspapers, he
+was engaged in housebuilding, the trade of his father. Although this was,
+it is said, a profitable business, he gave it up to write poetry, and
+issued his first volume, &#8220;Leaves of Grass,&#8221; in 1855. The book had been
+written with great pains, according to a preconceived plan of the author
+to be stated in the preface; and it was finally set up (by his own hands,
+for want of a publisher) only, as he tells us, after many &#8220;doings and
+undoings, leaving out the stock &#8216;poetical&#8217; touches.&#8221; Its publication was
+the occasion of probably the most voluminous controversy of American
+letters&mdash;mostly abuse, ridicule, and condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>In 1862 Whitman&#8217;s brother George, who had volunteered in the Union Army,
+was reported badly wounded in the Fredericksburg fight. Walt, going at
+once to the war front in Virginia, found that his brother&#8217;s wound was not
+serious enough to require his ministrations, but gradually he became
+engaged in nursing other wounded soldiers, until this work, as a volunteer
+hospital missionary in Washington, engrossed the major part of his time.
+This continued until<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[Pg xxv]</a></span> and for some years after the end of the war.
+Whitman&#8217;s own needs were supplied by occasional literary work and from his
+earnings as a clerk first in the Interior and later in the Attorney
+General&#8217;s Department. He had gone to Washington a man of strong and
+majestic physique, but his untiring devotion, fidelity, and vigilance in
+nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the army hospitals in and about
+Washington was soon to shatter that constitution which was ever a marvel
+to its possessor, and to condemn him to pass the last two decades of his
+life in unaccustomed invalidism. The history of the Civil War in America
+presents no instance of nobler fulfilment of duty or of sublimer
+sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile his muse was not neglected. His book had gone through four
+editions, and, with the increment of the noble war poetry of &#8220;Drum Taps,&#8221;
+had become a volume of size. At a very early period &#8220;Leaves of Grass&#8221; had
+been hailed as an important literary contribution by a few of the best
+thinkers in this country and in England but, generally speaking, nearly
+all literary persons received it with much criticism and many
+qualifications. In Washington devoted disciples like William Douglas
+O&#8217;Connor and John Burroughs never varied in their uncompromising adherence
+to the book and its author. This appreciation only by the few was likewise
+encountered in England. The book had made a stir among the literary
+classes, but its importance was not at all generally recognized. Men like
+John Addington Symonds, Edward Dowden, and William Michael Rossetti were,
+however, almost unrestricted in their praise.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[Pg xxvi]</a></span>It was William Rossetti who planned, in 1867, to bring out in England a
+volume of selections from Whitman&#8217;s poetry, in the belief that it was
+better to leave out the poems that had provoked such adverse criticism, in
+order to get Whitman a foothold among those who might prefer to have an
+expurgated edition. Whitman&#8217;s attitude toward the plan at the time is
+given in a letter which he wrote to Rossetti on December 3, 1867: &#8220;I
+cannot and will not consent of my own volition to countenance an
+expurgated edition of my pieces. I have steadily refused to do so under
+seductive offers, here in my own country, and must not do so in another
+country.&#8221; It appeared, however, that Rossetti had already advanced his
+project, and Whitman graciously added: &#8220;If, before the arrival of this
+letter, you have practically invested in, and accomplished, or partially
+accomplished, any plan, even contrary to this letter, I do not expect you
+to abandon it, at loss of outlay; but shall <i>bona fide</i> consider you
+blameless if you let it go on, and be carried out, as you may have
+arranged. It is the question of the authorization of an expurgated edition
+proceeding from me, that deepest engages me. The facts of the different
+ways, one way or another way, in which the book may appear in England, out
+of influences not under the shelter of my umbrage, are of much less
+importance to me. After making the foregoing explanation, I shall, I
+think, accept kindly whatever happens. For I feel, indeed know, that I am
+in the hands of a friend, and that my pieces will receive that truest,
+brightest of light and perception coming from love. In that, all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[Pg xxvii]</a></span> other
+and lesser requisites become pale....&#8221; The Rossetti &#8220;Selections&#8221; duly
+appeared&mdash;with what momentous influence upon the two persons whose
+friendship we are tracing will presently be shown.</p>
+
+<p>On June 22, 1869, Anne Gilchrist, writing to Rossetti, said: &#8220;I was
+calling on Madox Brown a fortnight ago, and he put into my hands your
+edition of Walt Whitman&#8217;s poems. I shall not cease to thank him for that.
+Since I have had it, I can read no other book: it holds me entirely
+spellbound, and I go through it again and again with deepening delight and
+wonder. How can one refrain from expressing gratitude to you for what you
+have so admirably done?...&#8221; To this Rossetti promptly responded: &#8220;Your
+letter has given me keen pleasure this morning. That glorious man Whitman
+will one day be known as one of the greatest sons of Earth, a few steps
+below Shakespeare on the throne of immortality. What a tearing-away of the
+obscuring veil of use and wont from the visage of man and of life! I am
+doing myself the pleasure of at once ordering a copy of the &#8220;Selections&#8221;
+for you, which you will be so kind as to accept. Genuine&mdash;i. e.,
+<i>enthusiastic</i>&mdash;appreciators are not so common, and must be cultivated
+when they appear.... Anybody who values Whitman as you do ought to read
+the whole of him....&#8221; At a later date Rossetti gave Mrs. Gilchrist a copy
+of the complete &#8220;Leaves of Grass,&#8221; in acknowledging which she said, &#8220;The
+gift of yours I have not any words to tell you how priceless it will be to
+me....&#8221; This lengthy letter was later, at Rossetti&#8217;s solicitation, worked
+over for publication<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[Pg xxviii]</a></span> as the &#8220;Estimate of Walt Whitman&#8221; to which reference
+has already been made.</p>
+
+<p>Anne Gilchrist was primarily a woman of letters. Though her natural bent
+was toward science and philosophy, her marriage threw her into association
+with artists and writers of <i>belles lettres</i>. She was born in London on
+February 25, 1828. She came of excellent ancestry, and received a good
+education, particularly in music. She had a profoundly religious nature,
+although it appears that she was never a believer in many of the orthodox
+Christian doctrines. Very early in life she recognized the greatness of
+such men as Emerson and Comte. In 1851, at the age of twenty-three, she
+married Alexander Gilchrist, two months her junior. Though of limited
+means, he possessed literary ability and was then preparing for the bar.
+His early writings secured for him the friendship of Carlyle, who for
+years lived next door to the Gilchrists in Cheyne Row. This friendship led
+to others, and the Gilchrists were soon introduced into that supreme
+literary circle which included Ruskin, Herbert Spencer, George Eliot, the
+Rossettis, Tennyson, and many another great mind of that illustrious age.</p>
+
+<p>Within ten years of their marriage the Gilchrists had four children, in
+whom they were very happy. But in the year 1861, when Anne was
+thirty-three years of age, her husband died. It was a terrible blow, but
+she faced the future unflinchingly, and reared her children, giving to
+each of them a profession. At the time of her husband&#8217;s death his life of
+William<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[Pg xxix]</a></span> Blake was nearing completion. With the assistance of William and
+Gabriel Rossetti Mrs. Gilchrist finished the work on this excellent
+biography, and it was published by Macmillan. Whitman has paid a fitting
+tribute to the pluck exhibited in this achievement: &#8220;Do you know much of
+Blake?&#8221; said Whitman to Horace Traubel, who records the conversation in
+his remarkable book &#8220;With Walt Whitman in Camden.&#8221; &#8220;You know, this is Mrs.
+Gilchrist&#8217;s book&mdash;the book she completed. They had made up their minds to
+do the work&mdash;her husband had it well under way: he caught a fever and was
+carried off. Mrs. Gilchrist was left with four young children, alone: her
+perplexities were great. Have you noticed that the time to look for the
+best things in best people is the moment of their greatest need? Look at
+Lincoln: he is our proudest example: he proved to be big as, bigger than,
+any emergency&mdash;his grasp was a giant&#8217;s grasp&mdash;made dark things light, made
+hard things easy.... (Mrs. Gilchrist) belonged to the same noble breed:
+seized the reins, was competent; her head was clear, her hand was firm.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The circumstances under which she first read Whitman&#8217;s poetry have been
+narrated. When in 1869 Whitman became aware of the Rossetti
+correspondence, he felt greatly honoured, and through Rossetti he sent his
+portrait to the as yet anonymous lady. In acknowledging this communication
+his English friend has a grateful word from &#8220;the lady&#8221; to return: &#8220;I gave
+your letter, and the second copy of your portrait, to the lady you refer
+to, and need scarcely say how truly delighted she was. She has asked me to
+say<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx">[Pg xxx]</a></span> that you could not have devised for her a more welcome pleasure, and
+that she feels grateful to me for having sent to America the extracts from
+what she had written, since they have been a satisfaction to you....&#8221;
+Early in 1870 the &#8220;Estimate&#8221; appeared in the <i>Radical</i>, still more than a
+year before Mrs. Gilchrist addressed her first letter to Whitman. He
+welcomed the essay, and its author as a new and peculiarly powerful
+champion of &#8220;Leaves of Grass.&#8221; To Rossetti he wrote: &#8220;I am deeply touched
+by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from England,
+and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to me to
+get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them but approve
+that action. I realize indeed of this smiling and emphatic <i>well done</i>
+from the heart and conscience of a true wife and mother, and one, too,
+whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your letter, after flowing
+through the heart and conscience, must also move through and satisfy
+science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto received no eulogium
+so magnificent.&#8221; Concerning this experience Whitman said to Horace
+Traubel, at a much later period: &#8220;You can imagine what such a thing as her
+&#8216;Estimate&#8217; meant to me at that time. Almost everybody was against me&mdash;the
+papers, the preachers, the literary gentlemen&mdash;nearly everybody with only
+here and there a dissenting voice&mdash;when it looked on the surface as if my
+enterprise was bound to fail ... then this wonderful woman. Such things
+stagger a man ... I had got so used to being ignored or denounced that the
+appearance of a friend was always accompanied with a sort of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxi" id="Page_xxxi">[Pg xxxi]</a></span> shock....
+There are shocks that knock you up, shocks that knock you down. Mrs.
+Gilchrist never wavered from her first decision. I have that sort of
+feeling about her which cannot easily be spoken of&mdash;...: love (strong
+personal love, too), reverence, respect&mdash;you see, it won&#8217;t go into words:
+all the words are weak and formal.&#8221; Speaking again of her first criticism
+of his work, he said: &#8220;I remember well how one of my noblest, best
+friends&mdash;one of my wisest, cutest, profoundest, most candid critics&mdash;how
+Mrs. Gilchrist, even to the last, insisted that &#8220;Leaves of Grass&#8221; was not
+the mouthpiece of parlours, refinements&mdash;no&mdash;but the language of strength,
+power, passion, intensity, absorption, sincerity....&#8221; He claimed a closer
+relationship to her than he allowed to Rossetti: &#8220;Rossetti mentions Mrs.
+Gilchrist. Well, he had a right to&mdash;almost as much right as I had: a sort
+of brother&#8217;s right: she was his friend, she was more than my friend. I
+feel like Hamlet when he said forty thousand brothers could not feel what
+he felt for Ophelia. After all ... we were a family&mdash;a happy family: the
+few of us who got together, going with love the same way&mdash;we were a happy
+family. The crowd was on the other side but we were on our side&mdash;we: a few
+of us, just a few: and despite our paucity of numbers we made ourselves
+tell for the good cause.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>From these expressions it is quite clear that Whitman&#8217;s attitude toward
+Mrs. Gilchrist was at first that of the unpopular prophet who finds a
+worthy and welcome disciple in an unexpected place. And that he should
+have so felt was but natural, for she had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxii" id="Page_xxxii">[Pg xxxii]</a></span> drawn to him, as she
+confided to him in one of her letters, by what he had written rather than
+and not by her knowledge of the man. There can be no doubt, however, that
+on Mrs. Gilchrist&#8217;s part something more than the friendship of her
+new-found liberator was desired. When she read the &#8220;Leaves of Grass&#8221; she
+was forty-one years of age, in the full vigour of womanhood. To her the
+reading meant a new birth, causing her to pour out her soul to the prophet
+and poet across the seas with a freedom and abandon that were phenomenal.
+This was in the first letter printed in this volume, under date of
+September 3, 1871, and about the time that Whitman had sent to his new
+supporter a copy of his poems. Perhaps the strongest reason why Whitman
+did not reply to passion with passion lies in the fact that his heart was,
+so far as attachments of that sort were concerned, already bestowed
+elsewhere. I am indebted to Professor Holloway for the information that
+Whitman was, in 1864, the unfortunate lover of a certain lady whose
+previous marriage to another, while it did not dim their mutual devotion,
+did serve to keep them apart. To her Whitman wrote that heart-wrung lyric
+of separation, &#8220;Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd.&#8221; This suggests that
+there was probably a double tragedy, so ironical is the fate of the
+affections, Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman both passionately yearning for
+personal love yet unable to quench the one desire in the other.</p>
+
+<p>But if there could not be between them the love which leads to marriage,
+there could be a noble and tender and life-long friendship. Over this
+Whitman&#8217;s loss of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxiii" id="Page_xxxiii">[Pg xxxiii]</a></span> his magnificent health, to be followed by an invalidism
+of twenty years, had no power. In 1873 Whitman was stricken with
+paralysis, which rendered him so helpless that he had to give up his work
+and finally his position, and to go to live for the rest of his life in
+Camden, New Jersey. Mrs. Gilchrist&#8217;s affection for him did not waver when
+this trial was made of it. Indeed, his illness had the effect, as these
+letters show, of quickening the desire which she had had for several years
+(since 1869) of coming to live in America, that she might be near him to
+lighten his burdens, and, if she could not hope to cherish him as a wife,
+that she might at least care for him as a mother. Whitman, it will be
+noted, strongly advised against this plan. Just why he wished to keep her
+away from America is unclear, possibly because he dared not put so
+idealistic a friendship and discipleship to the test of personal
+acquaintance with a prematurely broken old man. Nevertheless, on August
+30, 1876, Mrs. Gilchrist set sail, with three of her children, for
+Philadelphia. They arrived in September. From that date until the spring
+of 1878 the Gilchrists kept house at 1929 North Twenty-second street,
+Philadelphia, where Whitman was a frequent and regular visitor.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to note that Mrs. Gilchrist&#8217;s appreciation of Whitman
+did not lessen after she had met and known him in the intimacy of that
+tea-table circle which at her house discussed the same great variety of
+topics&mdash;literature, religion, science, politics&mdash;that had enlivened the
+O&#8217;Connor breakfast table in Washington. She shall describe it and him
+herself. In a letter to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxiv" id="Page_xxxiv">[Pg xxxiv]</a></span> Rossetti, under date of December 22, 1876, she
+writes: &#8220;But I need not tell you that our greatest pleasure is the society
+of Mr. Whitman, who fully realizes the ideal I had formed from his poems,
+and brings such an atmosphere of cordiality and geniality with him as is
+indescribable. He is really making slow but, I trust, steady progress
+toward recovery, having been much cheered (and no doubt that acted
+favourably upon his health) by the sympathy manifested toward him in
+England and the pleasure of finding so many buyers of his poems there. It
+must be a deep satisfaction to you to have been the channel through which
+this help and comfort flowed....&#8221; And a year later she writes to the same
+correspondent: &#8220;We are having delightful evenings this winter; how often
+do I wish you could make one in the circle around our tea table where sits
+on my right hand every evening but Sunday Walt Whitman. He has made great
+progress in health and recovered powers of getting about during the year
+we have been here: nevertheless the lameness&mdash;the dragging instead of
+lifting the left leg continues; and this together with his white hair and
+beard give him a look of age curiously contradicted by his face, which has
+not only the ruddy freshness but the full, rounded contours of youth,
+nowhere drawn or wrinkled or sunk; it is a face as indicative of serenity
+and goodness and of mental and bodily health as the brow is of
+intellectual power. But I notice he occasionally speaks of himself as
+having a &#8216;wounded brain,&#8217; and of being still quite altered from his former
+self.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Whitman, on his part, thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxv" id="Page_xxxv">[Pg xxxv]</a></span> sunshine of such
+friendly hospitality, for he considered Mrs. Gilchrist even more gifted as
+a conversationalist than as a writer. For hints of the sort of talk that
+flowed with Mrs. Gilchrist&#8217;s tea I must refer the reader to her son&#8217;s
+realistic biography.</p>
+
+<p>After two years of residence in Philadelphia, the Gilchrists went to dwell
+in Boston and later in New York City, and met the leaders in the two
+literary capitals. From these addresses the letters begin again, after the
+natural interruption of two years. It is at this time that the first
+letters from Herbert and Beatrice Gilchrist were written. These are given
+in this volume to complete the chain and to show how completely they were
+in sympathy with their mother in their love and appreciation of Whitman.
+From New York they all sailed for their old home in England on June 7,
+1879. Whitman came the day before to wish them good voyage. The chief
+reason for the return to England seems to have been the desire to send
+Beatrice to Berne to complete her medical education. After the return to
+England, or rather while they are still en route at Glasgow, the letters
+begin again.</p>
+
+<p>Several years of literary work yet remained to Mrs. Gilchrist. The chief
+writings of these years were a new edition of the Blake, a life of Mary
+Lamb for the Eminent Women Series, an article on Blake for the Dictionary
+of National Biography, several essays including &#8220;Three Glimpses of a New
+England Village,&#8221; and the &#8220;Confession of Faith.&#8221; She was beginning a
+careful study of the life and writings of Carlyle, with the intention of
+writing a life of her old friend to reply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxvi" id="Page_xxxvi">[Pg xxxvi]</a></span> to the aspersions of Freude.
+This last work was, however, never completed, for early in 1882 some
+malady which rendered her breathing difficult had already begun to cast
+the shadow of death upon her. But her faith, long schooled in the optimism
+of &#8220;Leaves of Grass,&#8221; looked upon the steadily approaching end with
+calmness. On November 29, 1885, she died.</p>
+
+<p>When Whitman was informed of her death by Herbert Gilchrist, he could find
+words for only the following brief reply:</p>
+
+<div class="note">
+<p class="right"><i>15th December 1885.<br />
+Camden, United States, America.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Herbert</span>:</p>
+
+<p>I have received your letter. Nothing now remains but a sweet and rich
+memory&mdash;none more beautiful all time, all life all the earth&mdash;I
+cannot write anything of a letter to-day. I must sit alone and think.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Later, in conversations with Horace Traubel which the latter has preserved
+in his minute biography of Whitman, he was able to express his regard for
+Mrs. Gilchrist more fully&mdash;&#8220;a supreme character of whom the world knows
+too little for its own good ... If her sayings had been recorded&mdash;I do not
+say she would pale, but I do say she would equal the best of the women of
+our century&mdash;add something as great as any to the testimony on the side of
+her sex.&#8221; And at another time: &#8220;Oh! she was strangely different from the
+average; entirely herself; as simple as nature; true, honest; beautiful as
+a tree is tall, leafy, rich, full,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxvii" id="Page_xxxvii">[Pg xxxvii]</a></span> free&mdash;<i>is</i> a tree. Yet, free as she
+was by nature, bound by no conventionalisms, she was the most courageous
+of women; more than queenly; of high aspect in the best sense. She was not
+cold; she had her passions; I have known her to warm up&mdash;to resent
+something that was said; some impeachment of good things&mdash;great things; of
+a person sometimes; she had the largest charity, the sweetest fondest
+optimism.... She was a radical of radicals; enjoyed all sorts of high
+enthusiasms: was exquisitely sensitized; belonged to the times yet to
+come; her vision went on and on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This searching interpretation of her character wants only her artist son&#8217;s
+description of her personal appearance to make the final picture complete:
+&#8220;A little above the average height, she walked with an even, light step.
+Brown hair concealed a full and finely chiselled brow, and her hazel eyes
+bent upon you a bright and penetrating gaze. Whilst conversing her face
+became radiant as with an experience of golden years; humour was present
+in her conversation&mdash;flecks of sunshine, such as sometimes play about the
+minds of deeply religious natures. Her animated manner seldom flagged, and
+charmed the taciturn to talking in his or her best humour.&#8221; Once, when
+speaking to Walt Whitman of the beauty of the human speaking voice, he
+replied: &#8220;The voice indicates the soul. Hers, with its varied modulations
+and blended tones, was the tenderest, most musical voice ever to bless our
+ears.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her death was a long-lasting shock to Whitman. &#8220;She was a wonderful
+woman&mdash;a sort of human miracle to me.... Her taking off ... was a great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxviii" id="Page_xxxviii">[Pg xxxviii]</a></span>
+shock to me: I have never quite got over it: she was near to me: she was
+subtle: her grasp on my work was tremendous&mdash;so sure, so all around, so
+adequate.&#8221; If this sounds a trifle self-centred in its criticism, not so
+was the poem which, in memory of her, he wrote as a fitting epitaph from
+the poet she had loved.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<p><span style="margin-left: 12em;">&#8220;GOING SOMEWHERE&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend (Now buried in an English grave&mdash;and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake),<br />
+Ended our talk&mdash;&#8220;The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern learning, intuitions deep,<br />
+Of all Geologies&mdash;Histories&mdash;of all Astronomy&mdash;of Evolution, Metaphysics all,<br />
+Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering,<br />
+Life, life an endless march, an endless army (no halt, but, it is duly over),<br />
+The world, the race, the soul&mdash;in space and time the universes,<br />
+All bound as is befitting each&mdash;all surely going somewhere.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE LETTERS</span><br />
+<span class="big"><i>OF</i></span><br />
+<span class="giant">ANNE GILCHRIST</span><br />
+<span class="big"><i>AND</i></span><br />
+<span class="giant">WALT WHITMAN</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A WOMAN&#8217;S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN<span class="foot"><a name="f1.1" id="f1.1" href="#f1">[1]</a></span></h2>
+<h3>[FROM LETTERS BY ANNE GILCHRIST TO W. M. ROSSETTI.]</h3>
+
+<p><i>June 23, 1869.</i>&mdash;I am very sure you are right in your estimate of Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him that I shall ever let go my hold of. For
+me the reading of his poems is truly a new birth of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>I shall quite fearlessly accept your kind offer of the loan of a complete
+edition, certain that great and divinely beautiful nature has not, could
+not infuse any poison into the wine he has poured out for us. And as for
+what you specially allude to, who so well able to bear it&mdash;I will say, to
+judge wisely of it&mdash;as one who, having been a happy wife and mother, has
+learned to accept all things with tenderness, to feel a sacredness in all?
+Perhaps Walt Whitman has forgotten&mdash;or, through some theory in his head,
+has overridden&mdash;the truth that our instincts are beautiful facts of
+nature, as well as our bodies; and that we have a strong instinct of
+silence about some things.</p>
+
+<p><i>July 11.</i>&mdash;I think it was very manly and kind of you to put the whole of
+Walt Whitman&#8217;s poems into my hands; and that I have no other friend who
+would have judged them and me so wisely and generously.</p>
+
+<p>I had not dreamed that words could cease to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> words, and become electric
+streams like these. I do assure you that, strong as I am, I feel sometimes
+as if I had not bodily strength to read many of these poems. In the series
+headed &#8220;Calamus,&#8221; for instance, in some of the &#8220;Songs of Parting,&#8221; the
+&#8220;Voice out of the Sea,&#8221; the poem beginning &#8220;Tears, Tears,&#8221; &amp;c., there is
+such a weight of emotion, such a tension of the heart, that mine refuses
+to beat under it,&mdash;stands quite still,&mdash;and I am obliged to lay the book
+down for a while. Or again, in the piece called &#8220;Walt Whitman,&#8221; and one or
+two others of that type, I am as one hurried through stormy seas, over
+high mountains, dazed with sunlight, stunned with a crowd and tumult of
+faces and voices, till I am breathless, bewildered, half dead. Then come
+parts and whole poems in which there is such calm wisdom and strength of
+thought, such a cheerful breadth of sunshine, that the soul bathes in them
+renewed and strengthened. Living impulses flow out of these that make me
+exult in life, yet look longingly towards &#8220;the superb vistas of Death.&#8221;
+Those who admire this poem, and don&#8217;t care for that, and talk of
+formlessness, absence of metre, &amp;c., are quite as far from any genuine
+recognition of Walt Whitman as his bitter detractors. Not, of course, that
+all the pieces are equal in power and beauty, but that all are vital; they
+grew&mdash;they were not made. We criticise a palace or a cathedral; but what
+is the good of criticising a forest? Are not the hitherto-accepted
+masterpieces of literature akin rather to noble architecture; built up of
+material rendered precious by elaboration; planned with subtile art that
+makes beauty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> go hand in hand with rule and measure, and knows where the
+last stone will come, before the first is laid; the result stately, fixed,
+yet such as might, in every particular, have been different from what it
+is (therefore inviting criticism), contrasting proudly with the careless
+freedom of nature, opposing its own rigid adherence to symmetry to her
+willful dallying with it? But not such is this book. Seeds brought by the
+winds from north, south, east, and west, lying long in the earth, not
+resting on it like the stately building, but hid in and assimilating it,
+shooting upwards to be nourished by the air and the sunshine and the rain
+which beat idly against that,&mdash;each bough and twig and leaf growing in
+strength and beauty its own way, a law to itself, yet, with all this
+freedom of spontaneous growth, the result inevitable, unalterable
+(therefore setting criticism at naught), above all things, vital,&mdash;that
+is, a source of ever-generating vitality: such are these poems.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,<br />
+Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and from the pondside,<br />
+Breast sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than vines,<br />
+Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the sun is risen,<br />
+Breezes of land and love, breezes set from living shores out to you on the living sea,&mdash;to you, O sailors!<br />
+Frost-mellowed berries and Third-month twigs, offered fresh to young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>Love-buds put before you and within you, whoever you are,<br />
+Buds to be unfolded on the old terms.<br />
+If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, colour, perfume, to you:<br />
+If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall branches and trees.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And the music takes good care of itself, too. As if it <i>could</i> be
+otherwise! As if those &#8220;large, melodious thoughts,&#8221; those emotions, now so
+stormy and wild, now of unfathomed tenderness and gentleness, could fail
+to vibrate through the words in strong, sweeping, long-sustained chords,
+with lovely melodies winding in and out fitfully amongst them! Listen, for
+instance, to the penetrating sweetness, set in the midst of rugged
+grandeur, of the passage beginning,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;<br />
+I call to the earth and sea half held by the night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I see that no counting of syllables will reveal the mechanism of the
+music; and that this rushing spontaneity could not stay to bind itself
+with the fetters of metre. But I know that the music is there, and that I
+would not for something change ears with those who cannot hear it. And I
+know that poetry must do one of two things,&mdash;either own this man as equal
+with her highest completest manifestors, or stand aside, and admit that
+there is something come into the world nobler, diviner than herself, one
+that is free of the universe, and can tell its secrets as none before.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>I do not think or believe this; but see it with the same unmistakable
+definiteness of perception and full consciousness that I see the sun at
+this moment in the noonday sky, and feel his rays glowing down upon me as
+I write in the open air. What more can you ask of the works of a man&#8217;s
+mouth than that they should &#8220;absorb into you as food and air, to appear
+again in your strength, gait, face,&#8221;&mdash;that they should be &#8220;fibre and
+filter to your blood,&#8221; joy and gladness to your whole nature?</p>
+
+<p>I am persuaded that one great source of this kindling, vitalizing power&mdash;I
+suppose <i>the</i> great source&mdash;is the grasp laid upon the present, the
+fearless and comprehensive dealing with reality. Hitherto the leaders of
+thought have (except in science) been men with their faces resolutely
+turned backwards; men who have made of the past a tyrant that beggars and
+scorns the present, hardly seeing any greatness but what is shrouded away
+in the twilight, underground past; naming the present only for disparaging
+comparisons, humiliating distrust that tends to create the very barrenness
+it complains of; bidding me warm myself at fires that went out to mortal
+eyes centuries ago; insisting, in religion above all, that I must either
+&#8220;look through dead men&#8217;s eyes,&#8221; or shut my own in helpless darkness. Poets
+fancying themselves so happy over the chill and faded beauty of the past,
+but not making me happy at all,&mdash;rebellious always at being dragged down
+out of the free air and sunshine of to-day.</p>
+
+<p>But this poet, this &#8220;athlete, full of rich words, full of joy,&#8221; takes you
+by the hand, and turns you with your face straight forwards. The present
+is great enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> for him, because he is great enough for it. It flows
+through him as a &#8220;vast oceanic tide,&#8221; lifting up a mighty voice. Earth,
+&#8220;the eloquent, dumb, great mother,&#8221; is not old, has lost none of her fresh
+charms, none of her divine meanings; still bears great sons and daughters,
+if only they would possess themselves and accept their birthright,&mdash;a
+richer, not a poorer, heritage than was ever provided before,&mdash;richer by
+all the toil and suffering of the generations that have preceded, and by
+the further unfolding of the eternal purposes. Here is one come at last
+who can show them how; whose songs are the breath of a glad, strong,
+beautiful life, nourished sufficingly, kindled to unsurpassed intensity
+and greatness by the gifts of the present.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;O the joy of my soul leaning poised on itself,&mdash;receiving identity through materials, and loving them,&mdash;observing characters, and absorbing them!<br />
+O my soul vibrated back to me from them!<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!<br />
+The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist, fresh stillness of the woods,<br />
+The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the forenoon.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;O to realize space!<br />
+The plenteousness of all&mdash;that there are no bounds;<br />
+To emerge, and be of the sky&mdash;of the sun and moon and the flying clouds, as one with them.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;O the joy of suffering,&mdash;<br />
+To struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted,<br />
+To be entirely alone with them&mdash;to find how much one can stand!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I used to think it was great to disregard happiness, to press on to a high
+goal, careless, disdainful of it. But now I see that there is nothing so
+great as to be capable of happiness; to pluck it out of &#8220;each moment and
+whatever happens&#8221;; to find that one can ride as gay and buoyant on the
+angry, menacing, tumultuous waves of life as on those that glide and
+glitter under a clear sky; that it is not defeat and wretchedness which
+come out of the storm of adversity, but strength and calmness.</p>
+
+<p>See, again, in the pieces gathered together under the title &#8220;Calamus,&#8221; and
+elsewhere, what it means for a man to love his fellow-man. Did you dream
+it before? These &#8220;evangel-poems of comrades and of love&#8221; speak, with the
+abiding, penetrating power of prophecy, of a &#8220;new and superb friendship&#8221;;
+speak not as beautiful dreams, unrealizable aspirations to be laid aside
+in sober moods, because they breathe out what now glows within the poet&#8217;s
+own breast, and flows out in action toward the men around him. Had ever
+any land before her poet, not only to concentrate within himself her life,
+and, when she kindled with anger against her children who were treacherous
+to the cause her life is bound up with, to announce and justify her
+terrible purpose in words of unsurpassable grandeur (as in the poem
+beginning, &#8220;Rise, O days, from your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> fathomless deeps&#8221;), but also to go
+and with his own hands dress the wounds, with his powerful presence soothe
+and sustain and nourish her suffering soldiers,&mdash;hundreds of them,
+thousands, tens of thousands,&mdash;by day and by night, for weeks, months,
+years?</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I sit by the restless all the dark night; some are so young,<br />
+Some suffer so much: I recall the experience sweet and sad.<br />
+Many a soldier&#8217;s loving arms about this neck have crossed and rested,<br />
+Many a soldier&#8217;s kiss dwells on these bearded lips:&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Kisses, that touched with the fire of a strange, new, undying eloquence
+the lips that received them! The most transcendent genius could not,
+untaught by that &#8220;experience sweet and sad,&#8221; have breathed out hymns for
+her dead soldiers of such ineffably tender, sorrowful, yet triumphant
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>But the present spreads before us other things besides those of which it
+is easy to see the greatness and beauty; and the poet would leave us to
+learn the hardest part of our lesson unhelped if he took no heed of these;
+and would be unfaithful to his calling, as interpreter of man to himself
+and of the scheme of things in relation to him, if he did not accept
+all&mdash;if he did not teach &#8220;the great lesson of reception, neither
+preference nor denial.&#8221; If he feared to stretch out the hand, not of
+condescending pity, but of fellowship, to the degraded, criminal, foolish,
+despised, knowing that they are only laggards in &#8220;the great procession
+winding along the roads of the universe,&#8221; &#8220;the far-behind to come on in
+their turn,&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> knowing the &#8220;amplitude of Time,&#8221; how could he roll the stone
+of contempt off the heart as he does, and cut the strangling knot of the
+problem of inherited viciousness and degradation? And, if he were not bold
+and true to the utmost, and did not own in himself the threads of darkness
+mixed in with the threads of light, and own it with the same strength and
+directness that he tells of the light, and not in those vague generalities
+that everybody uses, and nobody means, in speaking on this head,&mdash;in the
+worst, germs of all that is in the best; in the best, germs of all that is
+in the worst,&mdash;the <i>brotherhood</i> of the human race would be a mere
+flourish of rhetoric. And brotherhood is naught if it does not bring
+brother&#8217;s love along with it. If the poet&#8217;s heart were not &#8220;a measureless
+ocean of love&#8221; that seeks the lips and would quench the thirst of all, he
+were not the one we have waited for so long. Who but he could put at last
+the right meaning into that word &#8220;democracy,&#8221; which has been made to bear
+such a burthen of incongruous notions?</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;By God! I will have nothing that all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>flashing it forth like a banner, making it draw the instant allegiance of
+every man and woman who loves justice. All occupations, however homely,
+all developments of the activities of man, need the poet&#8217;s recognition,
+because every man needs the assurance that for him also the materials out
+of which to build up a great and satisfying life lie to hand, the sole
+magic in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> use of them, all of the right stuff in the right hands.
+Hence those patient enumerations of every conceivable kind of industry:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;In them far more than you estimated&mdash;in them far less also.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Far more as a means, next to nothing as an end: whereas we are wont to
+take it the other way, and think the result something, but the means a
+weariness. Out of all come strength, and the cheerfulness of strength. I
+murmured not a little, to say the truth, under these enumerations, at
+first. But now I think that not only is their purpose a justification, but
+that the musical ear and vividness of perception of the poet have enabled
+him to perform this task also with strength and grace, and that they are
+harmonious as well as necessary parts of the great whole.</p>
+
+<p>Nor do I sympathize with those who grumble at the unexpected words that
+turn up now and then. A quarrel with words is always, more or less, a
+quarrel with meanings; and here we are to be as genial and as wide as
+nature, and quarrel with nothing. If the thing a word stands for exists by
+divine appointment (and what does not so exist?), the word need never be
+ashamed of itself; the shorter and more direct, the better. It is a gain
+to make friends with it, and see it in good company. Here at all events,
+&#8220;poetic diction&#8221; would not serve,&mdash;not pretty, soft, colourless words,
+laid by in lavender for the special uses of poetry, that have had none of
+the wear and tear of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> daily life; but such as have stood most, as tell of
+human heart-beats, as fit closest to the sense, and have taken deep hues
+of association from the varied experiences of life&mdash;those are the words
+wanted here. We only ask to seize and be seized swiftly, over-masteringly,
+by the great meanings. We see with the eyes of the soul, listen with the
+ears of the soul; the poor old words that have served so many generations
+for purposes, good, bad, and indifferent, and become warped and blurred in
+the process, grow young again, regenerate, translucent. It is not mere
+delight they give us,&mdash;<i>that</i> the &#8220;sweet singers,&#8221; with their subtly
+wrought gifts, their mellifluous speech, can give too in their degree; it
+is such life and health as enable us to pluck delights for ourselves out
+of every hour of the day, and taste the sunshine that ripened the corn in
+the crust we eat (I often seem to myself to do that).</p>
+
+<p>Out of the scorn of the present came skepticism; and out of the large,
+loving acceptance of it comes faith. If <i>now</i> is so great and beautiful, I
+need no arguments to make me believe that the <i>nows</i> of the past and of
+the future were and will be great and beautiful, too.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I know I am deathless.<br />
+I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter&#8217;s compass.<br />
+I know I shall not pass, like a child&#8217;s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.<br />
+I know I am august.<br />
+I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite:<br />
+I laugh at what you call dissolution,<br />
+And I know the amplitude of Time.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and Death.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>You argued rightly that my confidence would not be betrayed by any of the
+poems in this book. None of them troubled me even for a moment; because I
+saw at a glance that it was not, as men had supposed, the heights brought
+down to the depths, but the depths lifted up level with the sunlit
+heights, that they might become clear and sunlit, too. Always, for a
+woman, a veil woven out of her own soul&mdash;never touched upon even, with a
+rough hand, by this poet. But, for a man, a daring, fearless pride in
+himself, not a mock-modesty woven out of delusions&mdash;a very poor imitation
+of a woman&#8217;s. Do they not see that this fearless pride, this complete
+acceptance of themselves, is needful for her pride, her justification?
+What! is it all so ignoble, so base, that it will not bear the honest
+light of speech from lips so gifted with &#8220;the divine power to use words?&#8221;
+Then what hateful, bitter humiliation for her, to have to give herself up
+to the reality! Do you think there is ever a bride who does not taste more
+or less this bitterness in her cup? But who put it there? It must surely
+be man&#8217;s fault, not God&#8217;s, that she has to say to herself, &#8220;Soul, look
+another way&mdash;you have no part in this. Motherhood is beautiful, fatherhood
+is beautiful; but the dawn of fatherhood and motherhood is not beautiful.&#8221;
+Do they really think that God is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> ashamed of what he has made and
+appointed? And, if not, surely it is somewhat superfluous that they should
+undertake to be so for him.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Of a woman above all. It is true that instinct of silence I spoke of is a
+beautiful, imperishable part of nature, too. But it is not beautiful when
+it means an ignominious shame brooding darkly. Shame is like a very
+flexible veil, that follows faithfully the shape of what it
+covers,&mdash;beautiful when it hides a beautiful thing, ugly when it hides an
+ugly one. It has not covered what was beautiful here; it has covered a
+mean distrust of a man&#8217;s self and of his Creator. It was needed that this
+silence, this evil spell, should for once be broken, and the daylight let
+in, that the dark cloud lying under might be scattered to the winds. It
+was needed that one who could here indicate for us &#8220;the path between
+reality and the soul&#8221; should speak. That is what these beautiful, despised
+poems, the &#8220;Children of Adam,&#8221; do, read by the light that glows out of the
+rest of the volume: light of a clear, strong faith in God, of an
+unfathomably deep and tender love for humanity,&mdash;light shed out of a soul
+that is &#8220;possessed of itself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Natural life of me faithfully praising things,<br />
+Corroborating for ever the triumph of things.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Now silence may brood again; but lovingly, happily, as protecting what is
+beautiful, not as hiding what is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> unbeautiful; consciously enfolding a
+sweet and sacred mystery&mdash;august even as the mystery of Death, the dawn as
+the setting: kindred grandeurs, which to eyes that are opened shed a
+hallowing beauty on all that surrounds and preludes them.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;O vast and well-veiled Death!<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;O the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for reasons!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He who can thus look with fearlessness at the beauty of Death may well
+dare to teach us to look with fearless, untroubled eyes at the perfect
+beauty of Love in all its appointed realizations. Now none need turn away
+their thoughts with pain or shame; though only lovers and poets may say
+what they will,&mdash;the lover to his own, the poet to all, because all are in
+a sense his own. None need fear that this will be harmful to the woman.
+How should there be such a flaw in the scheme of creation that, for the
+two with whom there is no complete life, save in closest sympathy, perfect
+union, what is natural and happy for the one should be baneful to the
+other? The utmost faithful freedom of speech, such as there is in these
+poems, creates in her no thought or feeling that shuns the light of
+heaven, none that are not as innocent and serenely fair as the flowers
+that grow; would lead, not to harm, but to such deep and tender affection
+as makes harm or the thought of harm simply impossible. Far more beautiful
+care than man is aware of has been taken in the making of her, to fit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> her
+to be his mate. God has taken such care that <i>he</i> need take none; none,
+that is, which consists in disguisement, insincerity, painful hushing-up
+of his true, grand, initiating nature. And, as regards the poet&#8217;s
+utterances, which, it might be thought, however harmless in themselves,
+would prove harmful by falling into the hands of those for whom they are
+manifestly unsuitable, I believe that even here fear is needless. For her
+innocence is folded round with such thick folds of ignorance, till the
+right way and time for it to accept knowledge, that what is unsuitable is
+also unintelligible to her; and, if no dark shadow from without be cast on
+the white page by misconstruction or by foolish mystery and hiding away of
+it, no hurt will ensue from its passing freely through her hands.</p>
+
+<p>This is so, though it is little understood or realized by men. Wives and
+mothers will learn through the poet that there is rejoicing grandeur and
+beauty there wherein their hearts have so longed to find it; where foolish
+men, traitors to themselves, poorly comprehending the grandeur of their
+own or the beauty of a woman&#8217;s nature, have taken such pains to make her
+believe there was none,&mdash;nothing but miserable discrepancy.</p>
+
+<p>One of the hardest things to make a child understand is, that down
+underneath your feet, if you go far enough, you come to blue sky and stars
+again; that there really is no &#8220;down&#8221; for the world, but only in every
+direction an &#8220;up.&#8221; And that this is an all-embracing truth, including
+within its scope every created thing, and, with deepest significance,
+every part, faculty, attribute, healthful impulse, mind, and body of a
+man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> (each and all facing towards and related to the Infinite on every
+side), is what we grown children find it hardest to realize, too. Novalis
+said, &#8220;We touch heaven when we lay our hand on the human body&#8221;; which, if
+it mean anything, must mean an ample justification of the poet who has
+dared to be the poet of the body as well as of the soul,&mdash;to treat it with
+the freedom and grandeur of an ancient sculptor.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy of the muse:&mdash;I say the form complete is worthier far.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;These are not parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;O, I say now these are soul.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But while Novalis&mdash;who gazed at the truth a long way off, up in the air,
+in a safe, comfortable, German fashion&mdash;has been admiringly quoted by high
+authorities, the great American who has dared to rise up and wrestle with
+it, and bring it alive and full of power in the midst of us, has been
+greeted with a very different kind of reception, as has happened a few
+times before in the world in similar cases. Yet I feel deeply persuaded
+that a perfectly fearless, candid, ennobling treatment of the life of the
+body (so inextricably intertwined with, so potent in its influence on the
+life of the soul) will prove of inestimable value to all earnest and
+aspiring natures, impatient of the folly of the long-prevalent belief that
+it is because of the greatness of the spirit that it has learned to
+despise the body, and to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> ignore its influences; knowing well that it is,
+on the contrary, just because the spirit is not great enough, not healthy
+and vigorous enough, to transfuse itself into the life of the body,
+elevating that and making it holy by its own triumphant intensity;
+knowing, too, how the body avenges this by dragging the soul down to the
+level assigned itself. Whereas the spirit must lovingly embrace the body,
+as the roots of a tree embrace the ground, drawing thence rich
+nourishment, warmth, impulse. Or, rather, the body is itself the root of
+the soul&mdash;that whereby it grows and feeds. The great tide of healthful
+life that carries all before it must surge through the whole man, not beat
+to and fro in one corner of his brain.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;O the life of my senses and flesh, transcending my senses and flesh!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For the sake of all that is highest, a truthful recognition of this life,
+and especially of that of it which underlies the fundamental ties of
+humanity&mdash;the love of husband and wife, fatherhood, motherhood&mdash;is needed.
+Religion needs it, now at last alive to the fact that the basis of all
+true worship is comprised in &#8220;the great lesson of reception, neither
+preference nor denial,&#8221; interpreting, loving, rejoicing in all that is
+created, fearing and despising nothing.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I accept reality, and dare not question it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The dignity of a man, the pride and affection of a woman, need it too. And
+so does the intellect. For science has opened up such elevating views of
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> mystery of material existence that, if poetry had not bestirred
+herself to handle this theme in her own way, she would have been left
+behind by her plodding sister. Science knows that matter is not, as we
+fancied, certain stolid atoms which the forces of nature vibrate through
+and push and pull about; but that the forces and the atoms are one
+mysterious, imperishable identity, neither conceivable without the other.
+She knows, as well as the poet, that destructibility is not one of
+nature&#8217;s words; that it is only the relationship of things&mdash;tangibility,
+visibility&mdash;that are transitory. She knows that body and soul are one, and
+proclaims it undauntedly, regardless, and rightly regardless, of
+inferences. Timid onlookers, aghast, think it means that soul is
+body&mdash;means death for the soul. But the poet knows it means body is
+soul&mdash;the great whole imperishable; in life and in death continually
+changing substance, always retaining identity. For, if the man of science
+is happy about the atoms, if he is not baulked or baffled by apparent
+decay or destruction, but can see far enough into the dimness to know that
+not only is each atom imperishable, but that its endowments,
+characteristics, affinities, electric and other attractions and
+repulsions&mdash;however suspended, hid, dormant, masked, when it enters into
+new combinations&mdash;remain unchanged, be it for thousands of years, and,
+when it is again set free, manifest themselves in the old way, shall not
+the poet be happy about the vital whole? shall the highest force, the
+vital, that controls and compels into complete subservience for its own
+purposes the rest, be the only one that is destructible? and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> the love and
+thought that endow the whole be less enduring than the gravitating,
+chemical, electric powers that endow its atoms? But identity is the
+essence of love and thought&mdash;I still I, you still you. Certainly no man
+need ever again be scared by the &#8220;dark hush&#8221; and the little handful of
+refuse.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;You are not scattered to the winds&mdash;you gather certainly and safely around yourself.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;All goes onward and outward: nothing collapses.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;What I am, I am of my body; and what I shall be, I shall be of my body.&#8221;<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;The body parts away at last for the journeys of the soul.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Science knows that whenever a thing passes from a solid to a subtle air,
+power is set free to a wider scope of action. The poet knows it too, and
+is dazzled as he turns his eyes toward &#8220;the superb vistas of death.&#8221; He
+knows that &#8220;the perpetual transfers and promotions&#8221; and &#8220;the amplitude of
+time&#8221; are for a man as well as for the earth. The man of science, with
+unwearied, self-denying toil, finds the letters and joins them into words.
+But the poet alone can make complete sentences. The man of science
+furnishes the premises; but it is the poet who draws the final conclusion.
+Both together are &#8220;swiftly and surely preparing a future greater than all
+the past.&#8221; But, while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> the man of science bequeaths to it the fruits of
+his toil, the poet, this mighty poet, bequeaths himself&mdash;&#8220;Death making him
+really undying.&#8221; He will &#8220;stand as nigh as the nighest&#8221; to these men and
+women. For he taught them, in words which breathe out his very heart and
+soul into theirs, that &#8220;love of comrades&#8221; which, like the &#8220;soft-born
+measureless light,&#8221; makes wholesome and fertile every spot it penetrates
+to, lighting up dark social and political problems, and kindling into a
+genial glow that great heart of justice which is the life-source of
+Democracy. He, the beloved friend of all, initiated for them a &#8220;new and
+superb friendship&#8221;; whispered that secret of a godlike pride in a man&#8217;s
+self, and a perfect trust in woman, whereby their love for each other, no
+longer poisoned and stifled, but basking in the light of God&#8217;s smile, and
+sending up to him a perfume of gratitude, attains at last a divine and
+tender completeness. He gave a faith-compelling utterance to that &#8220;wisdom
+which is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and of
+the excellence of things.&#8221; Happy America, that he should be her son! One
+sees, indeed, that only a young giant of a nation could produce this kind
+of greatness, so full of the ardour, the elasticity, the inexhaustible
+vigour and freshness, the joyousness, the audacity of youth. But I, for
+one, cannot grudge anything to America. For, after all, the young giant is
+the old English giant&mdash;the great English race renewing its youth in that
+magnificent land, &#8220;Mexican-breathed, Arctic-braced,&#8221; and girding up its
+loins to start on a new career that shall match with the greatness of the
+new home.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+<h2>A CONFESSION OF FAITH<span class="foot"><a name="f2.1" id="f2.1" href="#f2">[2]</a></span></h2>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of genius in the Fine Arts,&#8221; wrote Wordsworth, &#8220;the only infallible sign
+is the widening the sphere of human sensibility for the delight, honour,
+and benefit of human nature. Genius is the introduction of a new element
+into the intellectual universe, or, if that be not allowed, it is the
+application of powers to objects on which they had not before been
+exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce
+effects hitherto unknown. What is all this but an advance or conquest made
+by the soul of the poet? Is it to be supposed that the reader can make
+progress of this kind like an Indian prince or general stretched on his
+palanquin and borne by slaves? No; he is invigorated and inspirited by his
+leader in order that he may exert himself, for he cannot proceed in
+quiescence, he cannot be carried like a dead weight. Therefore to create
+taste is to call forth and bestow power.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A great poet, then, is &#8220;a challenge and summons&#8221;; and the question first
+of all is not whether we like or dislike him, but whether we are capable
+of meeting that challenge, of stepping out of our habitual selves to
+answer that summons. He works on Nature&#8217;s plan: Nature, who teaches
+nothing but supplies infinite material to learn from; who never preaches
+but drives<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> home her meanings by the resistless eloquence of effects.
+Therefore the poet makes greater demands upon his reader than any other
+man. For it is not a question of swallowing his ideas or admiring his
+handiwork merely, but of seeing, feeling, enjoying, as he sees, feels,
+enjoys. &#8220;The messages of great poems to each man and woman are,&#8221; says Walt
+Whitman, &#8220;come to us on equal terms, only then can you understand us. We
+are no better than you; what we enclose you enclose, what we enjoy you may
+enjoy&#8221;&mdash;no better than you potentially, that is; but if you would
+understand us the potential must become the actual, the dormant sympathies
+must awaken and broaden, the dulled perceptions clear themselves and let
+in undreamed of delights, the wonder-working imagination must respond, the
+ear attune itself, the languid soul inhale large draughts of love and hope
+and courage, those &#8220;empyreal airs&#8221; that vitalize the poet&#8217;s world. No
+wonder the poet is long in finding his audience; no wonder he has to abide
+the &#8220;inexorable tests of Time,&#8221; which, if indeed he be great, slowly turns
+the handful into hundreds, the hundreds into thousands, and at last having
+done its worst, grudgingly passes him on into the ranks of the Immortals.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile let not the handful who believe that such a destiny awaits a man
+of our time cease to give a reason for the faith that is in them.</p>
+
+<p>So far as the suffrages of his own generation go Walt Whitman may, like
+Wordsworth, tell of the &#8220;love, the admiration, the indifference, the
+slight, the aversion, and even the contempt&#8221; with which his poems have
+been received; but the love and admiration are from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> even a smaller
+number, the aversion, the contempt more vehement, more universal and
+persistent than Wordsworth ever encountered. For the American is a more
+daring innovator; he cuts loose from precedent, is a very Columbus who has
+sailed forth alone on perilous seas to seek new shores, to seek a new
+world for the soul, a world that shall give scope and elevation and beauty
+to the changed and changing events, aspirations, conditions of modern
+life. To new aims, new methods; therefore let not the reader approach
+these poems as a judge, comparing, testing, measuring by what has gone
+before, but as a willing learner, an unprejudiced seeker for whatever may
+delight and nourish and exalt the soul. Neither let him be abashed nor
+daunted by the weight of adverse opinion, the contempt and denial which
+have been heaped upon the great American even though it be the contempt
+and denial of the capable, the cultivated, the recognized authorities; for
+such is the usual lot of the pioneer in whatever field. In religion it is
+above all to the earnest and conscientious believer that the Reformer has
+appeared a blasphemer, and in the world of literature it is equally
+natural that the most careful student, that the warmest lover of the
+accepted masterpieces, should be the most hostile to one who forsakes the
+methods by which, or at any rate, in company with which, those triumphs
+have been achieved. &#8220;But,&#8221; said the wise Goethe, &#8220;I will listen to any
+man&#8217;s convictions; you may keep your doubts, your negations to yourself, I
+have plenty of my own.&#8221; For heartfelt convictions are rare things.
+Therefore I make bold to indicate the scope and source<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> of power in Walt
+Whitman&#8217;s writings, starting from no wider ground than their effect upon
+an individual mind. It is not criticism I have to offer; least of all any
+discussion of the question of form or formlessness in these poems, deeply
+convinced as I am that when great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please. But my aim is rather to suggest such trains of thought,
+such experience of life as having served to put me <i>en rapport</i> with this
+poet may haply find here and there a reader who is thereby helped to the
+same end. Hence I quote just as freely from the prose (especially from
+&#8220;Democratic Vistas&#8221; and the preface to the first issue of &#8220;Leaves of
+Grass,&#8221; 1855) as from his poems, and more freely, perhaps, from those
+parts that have proved a stumbling-block than from those whose conspicuous
+beauty assures them acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen years ago, with feelings partly of indifference, partly of
+antagonism&mdash;for I had heard none but ill words of them&mdash;I first opened
+Walt Whitman&#8217;s poems. But as I read I became conscious of receiving the
+most powerful influence that had ever come to me from any source. What was
+the spell? It was that in them humanity has, in a new sense, found itself;
+for the first time has dared to accept itself without disparagement,
+without reservation. For the first time an unrestricted faith in all that
+is and in the issues of all that happens has burst forth triumphantly into
+song.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;... The rapture of the hallelujah sent<br />
+From all that breathes and is ...&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>rings through these poems. They carry up into the region of Imagination
+and Passion those vaster and more profound conceptions of the universe and
+of man reached by centuries of that indomitably patient organized search
+for knowledge, that &#8220;skilful cross-questioning of things&#8221; called science.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;O truth of the earth I am determined to press my way toward you.<br />
+Sound your voice! I scale the mountains, I dive in the sea after you,&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>cried science; and the earth and the sky have answered, and continue
+inexhaustibly to answer her appeal. And now at last the day dawns which
+Wordsworth prophesied of: &#8220;The man of science,&#8221; he wrote, &#8220;seeks truth as
+a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his
+solitude. The Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with
+him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly
+companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is
+the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science, it
+is the first and last of all knowledge; it is immortal as the heart of
+man. If the labours of men of science should ever create any material
+revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions
+which we habitually receive, the Poet will then sleep no more than at
+present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science not
+only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side
+carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of science itself. If the
+time should ever come when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> what is now called science, thus familiarized
+to man, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood,
+the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will
+welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the
+household of man.&#8221; That time approaches: a new heaven and a new earth
+await us when the knowledge grasped by science is realized, conceived as a
+whole, related to the world within us by the shaping spirit of
+imagination. Not in vain, already, for this Poet have they pierced the
+darkness of the past, and read here and there a word of the earth&#8217;s
+history before human eyes beheld it; each word of infinite significance,
+because involving in it secrets of the whole. A new anthem of the slow,
+vast, mystic dawn of life he sings in the name of humanity.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I am an acme of things accomplish&#8217;d, and I am an encloser of things to be.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs;<br />
+On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps;<br />
+All below duly travell&#8217;d and still I mount and mount.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me:<br />
+Afar down I see the huge first Nothing&mdash;I know<br />
+I was even there;<br />
+I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,<br />
+And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Long I was hugg&#8217;d close&mdash;long and long.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;Immense have been the preparations for me,<br />
+Faithful and friendly the arms that have help&#8217;d me.<br />
+Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;<br />
+For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,<br />
+They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me;<br />
+My embryo has never been torpid&mdash;nothing could overlay it.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;For it the nebula cohered to an orb,<br />
+The long slow strata piled to rest it on,<br />
+Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,<br />
+Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;All forces have been steadily employ&#8217;d to complete and delight me;<br />
+Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Not in vain have they pierced space as well as time and found &#8220;a vast
+similitude interlocking all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,<br />
+And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cypher, edge but the rim of the farther systems.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,<br />
+Outward, and outward, and for ever outward.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels,<br />
+He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,<br />
+And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage;<br />
+If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run;<br />
+We should surely bring up again where we now stand,<br />
+And as surely go as much farther&mdash;and then farther and farther.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Not in vain for him have they penetrated into the substances of things to
+find that what we thought poor, dead, inert matter is (in Clerk Maxwell&#8217;s
+words) &#8220;a very sanctuary of minuteness and power where molecules obey the
+laws of their existence, and clash together in fierce collision, or
+grapple in yet more fierce embrace, building up in secret the forms of
+visible things&#8221;; each stock and stone a busy group of Ariels plying
+obediently their hidden tasks.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Why! who makes much of a miracle?<br />
+As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,<br />
+<span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><br />
+&#8220;To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,<br />
+Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,<br />
+Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, ...<br />
+Every spear of grass&mdash;the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them,<br />
+All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The natural <i>is</i> the supernatural, says Carlyle. It is the message that
+comes to our time from all quarters alike; from poetry, from science, from
+the deep brooding of the student of human history. Science materialistic?
+Rather it is the current theology that is materialistic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> in comparison.
+Science may truly be said to have annihilated our gross and brutish
+conceptions of matter, and to have revealed it to us as subtle, spiritual,
+energetic beyond our powers of realization. It is for the Poet to increase
+these powers of realization. He it is who must awaken us to the perception
+of a new heaven and a new earth here where we stand on this old earth. He
+it is who must, in Walt Whitman&#8217;s words, indicate the path between reality
+and the soul.</p>
+
+<p>Above all is every thought and feeling in these poems touched by the light
+of the great revolutionary truth that man, unfolded through vast stretches
+of time out of lowly antecedents, is a rising, not a fallen creature;
+emerging slowly from purely animal life; as slowly as the strata are piled
+and the ocean beds hollowed; whole races still barely emerged, countless
+individuals in the foremost races barely emerged: &#8220;the wolf, the snake,
+the hog&#8221; yet lingering in the best; but new ideals achieved, and others
+come in sight, so that what once seemed fit is fit no longer, is adhered
+to uneasily and with shame; the conflicts and antagonisms between what we
+call good and evil, at once the sign and the means of emergence, and
+needing to account for them no supposed primeval disaster, no outside
+power thwarting and marring the Divine handiwork, the perfect fitness to
+its time and place of all that has proceeded from the Great Source. In a
+word that Evil is relative; is that which the slowly developing reason and
+conscience bid us leave behind. The prowess of the lion, the subtlety of
+the fox, are cruelty and duplicity in man.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+&#8220;Silent and amazed, when a little boy,<br />
+I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements,<br />
+As contending against some being or influence.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>says the poet. And elsewhere, &#8220;Faith, very old now, scared away by
+science&#8221;&mdash;by the daylight science lets in upon our miserable, inadequate,
+idolatrous conceptions of God and of His works, and on the
+sophistications, subterfuges, moral impossibilities, by which we have
+endeavoured to reconcile the irreconcilable&mdash;the coexistence of omnipotent
+Goodness and an absolute Power of Evil&mdash;&#8220;Faith must be brought back by the
+same power that caused her departure: restored with new sway, deeper,
+wider, higher than ever.&#8221; And what else, indeed, at bottom, is science so
+busy at? For what is Faith? &#8220;Faith,&#8221; to borrow venerable and unsurpassed
+words, &#8220;is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
+seen.&#8221; And how obtain evidence of things not seen but by a knowledge of
+things seen? And how know what we may hope for, but by knowing the truth
+of what is, here and now? For seen and unseen are parts of the Great
+Whole: all the parts interdependent, closely related; all alike have
+proceeded from and are manifestations of the Divine Source. Nature is not
+the barrier between us and the unseen but the link, the communication;
+she, too, has something behind appearances, has an unseen soul; she, too,
+is made of &#8220;innumerable energies.&#8221; Knowledge is not faith, but it is
+faith&#8217;s indispensable preliminary and starting ground. Faith runs ahead to
+fetch glad tidings for us; but if she start from a basis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> of ignorance and
+illusion, how can she but run in the wrong direction? &#8220;Suppose,&#8221; said that
+impetuous lover and seeker of truth, Clifford, &#8220;Suppose all moving things
+to be suddenly stopped at some instant, and that we could be brought
+fresh, without any previous knowledge, to look at the petrified scene. The
+spectacle would be immensely absurd. Crowds of people would be senselessly
+standing on one leg in the street looking at one another&#8217;s backs; others
+would be wasting their time by sitting in a train in a place difficult to
+get at, nearly all with their mouths open, and their bodies in some
+contorted, unrestful posture. Clocks would stand with their pendulums on
+one side. Everything would be disorderly, conflicting, in its wrong place.
+But once remember that the world is in motion, is going somewhere, and
+everything will be accounted for and found just as it should be. Just so
+great a change of view, just so complete an explanation is given to us
+when we recognize that the nature of man and beast and of all the world is
+<i>going somewhere</i>. The maladaptions in organic nature are seen to be steps
+toward the improvement or discarding of imperfect organs. The <i>baneful
+strife which lurketh inborn in us, and goeth on the way with us to hurt
+us</i>, is found to be the relic of a time of savage or even lower
+condition.&#8221; &#8220;Going somewhere!&#8221; That is the meaning then of all our
+perplexities! That changes a mystery which stultified and contradicted the
+best we knew into a mystery which teaches, allures, elevates; which
+harmonizes what we know with what we hope. By it we begin to</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+&#8220;... see by the glad light,<br />
+And breathe the sweet air of futurity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The scornful laughter of Carlyle as he points with one hand to the
+baseness, ignorance, folly, cruelty around us, and with the other to the
+still unsurpassed poets, sages, heroes, saints of antiquity, whilst he
+utters the words &#8220;progress of the species!&#8221; touches us no longer when we
+have begun to realize &#8220;the amplitude of time&#8221;; when we know something of
+the scale by which Nature measures out the years to accomplish her
+smallest essential modification or development; know that to call a few
+thousands or tens of thousands of years antiquity, is to speak as a child,
+and that in her chronology the great days of Egypt and Syria, of Greece
+and Rome are affairs of yesterday.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Each of us inevitable;<br />
+Each of us limitless&mdash;each of us with his or her right upon the earth;<br />
+Each of us allow&#8217;d the eternal purports of the earth;<br />
+Each of us here as divinely as any are here.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly hair&#8217;d hordes!<br />
+You own&#8217;d persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!<br />
+You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes!<br />
+I dare not refuse you&mdash;the scope of the world, and of time and space are upon me.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+&#8220;I do not prefer others so very much before you either;<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand;<br />
+(You will come forward in due time to my side.)<br />
+My spirit has pass&#8217;d in compassion and determination around the whole earth;<br />
+I have look&#8217;d for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands;<br />
+I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;O vapours! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant continents and fallen down there, for reasons;<br />
+I think I have blown with you, O winds;<br />
+O waters, I have finger&#8217;d every shore with you.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through;<br />
+I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on the high embedded rocks, to cry thence.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&#8220;<i>Salut au monde!</i></span><br />
+What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities myself;<br />
+All islands to which birds wing their way I wing my way myself.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&#8220;Toward all,</span><br />
+I raise high the perpendicular hand&mdash;I make the signal,<br />
+To remain after me in sight forever,<br />
+For all the haunts and homes of men.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>But &#8220;Hold!&#8221; says the reader, especially if he be one who loves science,
+who loves to feel the firm ground under his feet, &#8220;That the species has a
+great future before it we may well believe; already we see the
+indications. But that the individual has is quite another matter. We can
+but balance probabilities here, and the probabilities are very heavy on
+the wrong side; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> poets must throw in weighty matter indeed to turn the
+scale the other way!&#8221; Be it so: but ponder a moment what science herself
+has to say bearing on this theme; what are the widest, deepest facts she
+has reached down to. <span class="smcap">Indestructibility</span>: Amidst ceaseless change and
+seeming decay all the elements, all the forces (if indeed they be not one
+and the same) which operate and substantiate those changes, imperishable;
+neither matter nor force capable of annihilation. Endless transformations,
+disappearances, new combinations, but diminution of the total amount
+never; missing in one place or shape to be found in another, disguised
+ever so long, ready always to re-emerge. &#8220;A particle of oxygen,&#8221; wrote
+Faraday, &#8220;is ever a particle of oxygen; nothing can in the least wear it.
+If it enters into combination and disappears as oxygen, if it pass through
+a thousand combinations, animal, vegetable, mineral&mdash;if it lie hid for a
+thousand years and then be evolved, it is oxygen with its first qualities
+neither more nor less.&#8221; So then out of the universe is no door. <span class="smcap">Continuity</span>
+again is one of Nature&#8217;s irrevocable words; everything the result and
+outcome of what went before; no gaps, no jumps; always a connecting
+principle which carries forward the great scheme of things as a related
+whole, which subtly links past and present, like and unlike. Nothing
+breaks with its past. &#8220;It is not,&#8221; says Helmholtz, &#8220;the definite mass of
+substance which now constitutes the body to which the continuance of the
+individual is attached. Just as the flame remains the same in appearance
+and continues to exist with the same form and structure although it draws
+every moment fresh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> combustible vapour and fresh oxygen from the air into
+the vortex of its ascending current; and just as the wave goes on in
+unaltered form and is yet being reconstructed every moment from fresh
+particles of water, so is it also in the living being. For the material of
+the body like that of flame is subject to continuous and comparatively
+rapid change&mdash;a change the more rapid the livelier the activity of the
+organs in question. Some constituents are renewed from day to day, some
+from month to month, and others only after years. That which continues to
+exist as a particular individual is, like the wave and the flame, only the
+<i>form of motion</i> which continually attracts fresh matter into its vortex
+and expels the old. The observer with a deaf ear recognizes the vibration
+of sound as long as it is visible and can be felt, bound up with other
+heavy matter. Are our senses in reference to life like the deaf ear in
+this respect?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;You are not thrown to the winds&mdash;you gather certainly and safely around yourself;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father&mdash;it is to identify you;<br />
+It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;<br />
+Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form&#8217;d in you,<br />
+You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;O Death! the voyage of Death!<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments for reasons;<br />
+Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn&#8217;d or reduced to powder or buried.<br />
+My real body doubtless left me for other spheres,<br />
+My voided body, nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, farther offices, eternal uses of the earth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Yes, they go their way, those dismissed atoms with all their energies and
+affinities unimpaired. But they are not all; the will, the affections, the
+intellect are just as real as those affinities and energies, and there is
+strict account of all; nothing slips through; there is no door out of the
+universe. But they are qualities of a personality, of a self, not of an
+atom but of what uses and dismisses those atoms. If the qualities are
+indestructible so must the self be. The little heap of ashes, the puff of
+gas, do you pretend that is all that was Shakespeare? The rest of him
+lives in his works, you say? But he lived and was just the same man after
+those works were produced. The world gained, but he lost nothing of
+himself, rather grew and strengthened in the production of them.</p>
+
+<p>Still farther, those faculties with which we seek for knowledge are only a
+part of us, there is something behind which wields them, something that
+those faculties cannot turn themselves in upon and comprehend; for the
+part cannot compass the whole. Yet there it is with the irrefragable proof
+of consciousness. Who should be the mouthpiece of this whole? Who but the
+poet, the man most fully &#8220;possessed of his own soul,&#8221; the man of the
+largest consciousness; fullest of love and sympathy which gather into his
+own life the experiences<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> of others, fullest of imagination; that quality
+whereof Wordsworth says that it</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">&#8220;... in truth</span><br />
+Is but another name for absolute power,<br />
+And clearest insight, amplitude of mind<br />
+And reason in her most exalted mood.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Let Walt Whitman speak for us:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;And I know I am solid and sound;<br />
+To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow:<br />
+All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;I know I am deathless;<br />
+I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter&#8217;s compass;<br />
+I know I shall not pass like a child&#8217;s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;I know I am august;<br />
+I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood;<br />
+I see that the elementary laws never apologize;<br />
+(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.)<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;I exist as I am&mdash;that is enough;<br />
+If no other in the world be aware I sit content;<br />
+And if each one and all be aware, I sit content.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself;<br />
+And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand or ten million years,<br />
+I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;My foothold is tenon&#8217;d and mortis&#8217;d in granite;<br />
+I laugh at what you call dissolution;<br />
+And I know the amplitude of time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>What lies through the portal of death is hidden from us; but the laws that
+govern that unknown land are not all hidden from us, for they govern here
+and now; they are immutable, eternal.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Of and in all these things<br />
+I have dream&#8217;d that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us changed,<br />
+I have dream&#8217;d that heroes and good doers shall be under the present and past law,<br />
+And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and past law,<br />
+For I have dream&#8217;d that the law they are under now is enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And the law not to be eluded is the law of consequences, the law of silent
+teaching. That is the meaning of disease, pain, remorse. Slow to learn are
+we; but success is assured with limitless Beneficence as our teacher, with
+limitless time as our opportunity. Already we begin&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;To know the Universe itself as a road&mdash;as many roads<br />
+As roads for travelling souls.<br />
+For ever alive; for ever forward.<br />
+Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied;<br />
+Desperate, proud, fond, sick;<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>Accepted by men, rejected by men.<br />
+They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go.<br />
+But I know they go toward the best, toward something great;<br />
+The whole Universe indicates that it is good.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Going somewhere! And if it is impossible for us to see whither, as in the
+nature of things it must be, how can we be adequate judges of the way? how
+can we but often grope and be full of perplexity? But we know that a
+smooth path, a paradise of a world, could only nurture fools, cowards,
+sluggards. &#8220;Joy is the great unfolder,&#8221; but pain is the great enlightener,
+the great stimulus in certain directions, alike of man and beast. How else
+could the self-preserving instincts, and all that grows out of them, have
+been evoked? How else those wonders of the moral world, fortitude,
+patience, sympathy? And if the lesson be too hard comes Death, come &#8220;the
+sure-enwinding arms of Death&#8221; to end it, and speed us to the unknown land.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">&#8220;... Man is only weak</span><br />
+Through his mistrust and want of hope,&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>wrote Wordsworth. But man&#8217;s mistrust of himself is, at bottom, mistrust of
+the central Fount of power and goodness whence he has issued. Here comes
+one who plucks out of religion its heart of fear, and puts into it a heart
+of boundless faith and joy; a faith that beggars previous faiths because
+it sees that All is good, not part bad and part good; that there is no
+flaw in the scheme of things, no primeval disaster, no counteracting
+power; but orderly and sure growth and development, and that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> infinite
+Goodness and Wisdom embrace and ever lead forward all that exists. Are you
+troubled that He is an unknown God; that we cannot by searching find Him
+out? Why, it would be a poor prospect for the Universe if otherwise; if,
+embryos that we are, we could compass Him in our thoughts:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is the double misfortune of the churches that they do not study God in
+His works&mdash;man and Nature and their relations to each other; and that they
+do profess to set Him forth; that they worship therefore a God of man&#8217;s
+devising, an idol made by men&#8217;s minds it is true, not by their hands, but
+none the less an idol. &#8220;Leaves are not more shed out of trees than Bibles
+are shed out of you,&#8221; says the poet. They were the best of their time, but
+not of all time; they need renewing as surely as there is such a thing as
+growth, as surely as knowledge nourishes and sustains to further
+development; as surely as time unrolls new pages of the mighty scheme of
+existence. Nobly has George Sand, too, written: &#8220;Everything is divine,
+even matter; everything is superhuman, even man. God is everywhere. He is
+in me in a measure proportioned to the little that I am. My present life
+separates me from Him just in the degree determined by the actual state of
+childhood of our race. Let me content myself in all my seeking to feel
+after Him, and to possess of Him as much as this imperfect soul can take
+in with the intellectual sense I have. The day will come when we shall no
+longer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> talk about God idly; nay, when we shall talk about Him as little
+as possible. We shall cease to set Him forth dogmatically, to dispute
+about His nature. We shall put compulsion on no one to pray to Him, we
+shall leave the whole business of worship within the sanctuary of each
+man&#8217;s conscience. And this will happen when we are really religious.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In what sense may Walt Whitman be called the Poet of Democracy? It is as
+giving utterance to this profoundly religious faith in man. He is rather
+the prophet of what is to be than the celebrator of what is. &#8220;Democracy,&#8221;
+he writes, &#8220;is a word the real gist of which still sleeps quite
+unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out
+of which its syllables have come from pen or tongue. It is a great word,
+whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet
+to be enacted. It is in some sort younger brother of another great and
+often used word, Nature, whose history also waits unwritten.&#8221; Political
+democracy, now taking shape, is the house to live in, and whilst what we
+demand of it is room for all, fair chances for all, none disregarded or
+left out as of no account, the main question, the kind of life that is to
+be led in that house is altogether beyond the ken of the statesmen as
+such, and is involved in those deepest facts of the nature and destiny of
+man which are the themes of Walt Whitman&#8217;s writings. The practical outcome
+of that exalted and all-accepting faith in the scheme of things, and in
+man, toward whom all has led up and in whom all concentrates as the
+manifestation, the revelation of Divine Power is a changed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> estimate of
+himself; a higher reverence for, a loftier belief in the heritage of
+himself; a perception that pride, not humility, is the true homage to his
+Maker; that &#8220;noblesse oblige&#8221; is for the Race, not for a handful; that it
+is mankind and womankind and their high destiny which constrain to
+greatness, which can no longer stoop to meanness and lies and base aims,
+but must needs clothe themselves in &#8220;the majesty of honest dealing&#8221;
+(majestic because demanding courage as good as the soldier&#8217;s, self-denial
+as good as the saint&#8217;s for every-day affairs), and walk erect and
+fearless, a law to themselves, sternest of all lawgivers. Looking back to
+the palmy days of feudalism, especially as immortalized in Shakespeare&#8217;s
+plays, what is it we find most admirable? what is it that fascinates? It
+is the noble pride, the lofty self-respect; the dignity, the courage and
+audacity of its great personages. But this pride, this dignity rested half
+upon a true, half upon a hollow foundation; half upon intrinsic qualities,
+half upon the ignorance and brutishness of the great masses of the people,
+whose helpless submission and easily dazzled imaginations made
+stepping-stones to the elevation of the few, and &#8220;hedged round kings,&#8221;
+with a specious kind of &#8220;divinity.&#8221; But we have our faces turned toward a
+new day, and toward heights on which there is room for all.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;By God, I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>is the motto of the great personages, the great souls of to-day. <i>On the
+same terms</i>, for that is Nature&#8217;s law<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> and cannot be abrogated, the
+reaping as you sow. But all shall have the chance to sow well. This is
+pride indeed! Not a pride that isolates, but that can take no rest till
+our common humanity is lifted out of the mire everywhere, &#8220;a pride that
+cannot stretch too far because sympathy stretches with it&#8221;:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!<br />
+These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you;<br />
+These immense meadows&mdash;these interminable rivers&mdash;<br />
+You are immense and interminable as they;<br />
+These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution&mdash;you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,<br />
+Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;The hopples fall from your ankles&mdash;you find an unfailing sufficiency;<br />
+Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself;<br />
+Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted;<br />
+Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance and ennui, what you are picks its way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This is indeed a pride that is &#8220;calming and excellent to the soul&#8221;; that
+&#8220;dissolves poverty from its need and riches from its conceit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And humility? Is there, then, no place for that virtue so much praised by
+the haughty? Humility is the sweet spontaneous grace of an aspiring,
+finely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> developed nature which sees always heights ahead still unclimbed,
+which outstrips itself in eager longing for excellence still unattained.
+Genuine humility takes good care of itself as men rise in the scale of
+being; for every height climbed discloses still new heights beyond. Or it
+is a wise caution in fortune&#8217;s favourites lest they themselves should
+mistake, as the unthinking crowd around do, the glitter reflected back
+upon them by their surroundings for some superiority inherent in
+themselves. It befits them well if there be also due pride, pride of
+humanity behind. But to say to a man, &#8216;Be humble&#8217; is like saying to one
+who has a battle to fight, a race to run, &#8216;You are a poor, feeble
+creature; you are not likely to win and you do not deserve to.&#8217; Say rather
+to him, &#8216;Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made
+for victory: go forward with a joyful confidence in that result sooner or
+later, and the sooner or the later depends mainly on yourself.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What Christ appeared for in the moral-spiritual field for humankind,
+namely, that in respect to the absolute soul there is in the possession of
+such by each single individual something so transcendent, so incapable of
+gradations (like life) that to that extent it places all being on a common
+level, utterly regardless of the distinctions of intellect, virtue,
+station, or any height or lowliness whatever&#8221; is the secret source of that
+deathless sentiment of Equality which how many able heads imagine
+themselves to have slain with ridicule and contempt as Johnson, kicking a
+stone, imagined he had demolished Idealism when he had simply attributed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+to the word an impossible meaning. True, <i>In</i>equality is one of Nature&#8217;s
+words: she moves forward always by means of the exceptional. But the
+moment the move is accomplished, then all her efforts are toward equality,
+toward bringing up the rear to that standpoint. But social inequalities,
+class distinctions, do not stand for or represent Nature&#8217;s inequalities.
+Precisely the contrary in the long run. They are devices for holding up
+many that would else gravitate down and keeping down many who would else
+rise up; for providing that some should reap who have not sown, and many
+sow without reaping. But literature tallies the ways of Nature; for though
+itself the product of the exceptional, its aim is to draw all men up to
+its own level. The great writer is &#8220;hungry for equals day and night,&#8221; for
+so only can he be fully understood. &#8220;The meal is equally set&#8221;; all are
+invited. Therefore is literature, whether consciously or not, the greatest
+of all forces on the side of Democracy.</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle has said there is no grand poem in the world but is at bottom a
+biography&mdash;the life of a man. Walt Whitman&#8217;s poems are not the biography
+of a man, but they are his actual presence. It is no vain boast when he
+exclaims,</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Camerado! this is no book;<br />
+Who touches this touches a man.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He has infused himself into words in a way that had not before seemed
+possible; and he causes each reader to feel that he himself or herself has
+an actual relationship to him, is a reality full of inexhaustible
+significance and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> interest to the poet. The power of his book, beyond even
+its great intellectual force, is the power with which he makes this felt;
+his words lay more hold than the grasp of a hand, strike deeper than the
+gaze or the flash of an eye; to those who comprehend him he stands &#8220;nigher
+than the nighest.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>America has had the shaping of Walt Whitman, and he repays the filial debt
+with a love that knows no stint. Her vast lands with their varied,
+brilliant climes and rich products, her political scheme, her achievements
+and her failures, all have contributed to make these poems what they are
+both directly and indirectly. Above all has that great conflict, the
+Secession War, found voice in him. And if the reader would understand the
+true causes and nature of that war, ostensibly waged between North and
+South, but underneath a tussle for supremacy between the good and the evil
+genius of America (for there were just as many secret sympathizers with
+the secession-slave-power in the North as in the South) he will find the
+clue in the pages of Walt Whitman. Rarely has he risen to a loftier height
+than in the poem which heralds that volcanic upheaval:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier and fiercer sweep!<br />
+Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour&#8217;d what the earth gave me;<br />
+Long I roam&#8217;d the woods of the north&mdash;long I watch&#8217;d Niagara pouring;<br />
+I travel&#8217;d the prairies over, and slept on their breast&mdash;<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>I cross&#8217;d the Nevadas, I cross&#8217;d the plateaus;<br />
+I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail&#8217;d out to sea;<br />
+I sail&#8217;d through the storm, I was refresh&#8217;d by the storm;<br />
+I watch&#8217;d with joy the threatening maws of the waves;<br />
+I mark&#8217;d the white combs where they career&#8217;d so high, curling over;<br />
+I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds;<br />
+Saw from below what arose and mounted (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!)<br />
+Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellow&#8217;d after the lightning;<br />
+Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky;<br />
+&mdash;These, and such as these, I, elate, saw&mdash;saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful;<br />
+All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me;<br />
+Yet there with my soul I fed&mdash;I fed content, supercilious.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;&#8217;Twas well, O soul! &#8217;twas a good preparation you gave me!<br />
+Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill;<br />
+Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us;<br />
+Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities;<br />
+Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring;<br />
+Torrents of men (sources and rills of the Northwest, are you indeed inexhaustible?)<br />
+What, to pavements and homesteads here&mdash;what were those storms of the mountains and sea?<br />
+What, to passions I witness around me to-day? Was the sea risen?<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?<br />
+Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage;<br />
+Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front&mdash;Cincinnati, Chicago, unchain&#8217;d;<br />
+&mdash;What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here!<br />
+How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes!<br />
+How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes of lightning!<br />
+How <span class="smcap">Democracy</span>, with desperate, vengeful port strides on, shown through the dark by those flashes of lightning!<br />
+(Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark,<br />
+In a lull of the deafening confusion.)<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! stride with vengeful stroke!<br />
+And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities!<br />
+Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good;<br />
+My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong nutriment,<br />
+&mdash;Long had I walk&#8217;d my cities, my country roads, through farms, only half satisfied;<br />
+One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawl&#8217;d on the ground before me,<br />
+Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low;<br />
+&mdash;The cities I loved so well, I abandon&#8217;d and left&mdash;I sped to the certainties suitable to me;<br />
+Hungering, hungering, hungering for primal energies, and nature&#8217;s dauntlessness;<br />
+I refresh&#8217;d myself with it only, I could relish it only;<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire&mdash;on the water and air I waited long;<br />
+&mdash;But now I no longer wait&mdash;I am fully satisfied&mdash;I am glutted;<br />
+I have witness&#8217;d the true lightning&mdash;I have witness&#8217;d my cities electric;<br />
+I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise;<br />
+Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,<br />
+No more on the mountain roam, or sail the stormy sea.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But not for the poet a soldier&#8217;s career. &#8220;To sit by the wounded and soothe
+them, or silently watch the dead&#8221; was the part he chose. During the whole
+war he remained with the army, but only to spend the days and nights,
+saddest, happiest of his life, in the hospital tents. It was a beautiful
+destiny for this lover of men, and a proud triumph for this believer in
+the People; for it was the People that he beheld, tried by severest tests.
+He saw them &#8220;of their own choice, fighting, dying for their own idea,
+insolently attacked by the secession-slave-power.&#8221; From the workshop, the
+farm, the store, the desk, they poured forth, officered by men who had to
+blunder into knowledge at the cost of the wholesale slaughter of their
+troops. He saw them &#8220;tried long and long by hopelessness, mismanagement,
+defeat; advancing unhesitatingly through incredible slaughter; sinewy with
+unconquerable resolution. He saw them by tens of thousands in the
+hospitals tried by yet drearier, more fearful tests&mdash;the wound, the
+amputation, the shattered face, the slow hot fever, the long impatient
+anchorage in bed; he marked their fortitude, decorum, their religious
+nature and sweet affection.&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> Finally, newest, most significant sight of
+all, victory achieved, the cause, the Union safe, he saw them return back
+to the workshop, the farm, the desk, the store, instantly reabsorbed into
+the peaceful industries of the land:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;A pause&mdash;the armies wait.<br />
+A million flush&#8217;d embattled conquerors wait.<br />
+The world, too, waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn<br />
+They melt, they disappear.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Plentifully supplied, last-needed proof of Democracy in its
+personalities!&#8221; ratifying on the broadest scale Wordsworth&#8217;s haughty claim
+for average man&mdash;&#8220;Such is the inherent dignity of human nature that there
+belong to it sublimities of virtue which all men may attain, and which no
+man can transcend.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But, aware that peace and prosperity may be even still severer tests of
+national as of individual virtue and greatness of mind, Walt Whitman scans
+with anxious, questioning eye the America of to-day. He is no
+smooth-tongued prophet of easy greatness.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I am he who walks the States with a barb&#8217;d tongue questioning every one I meet;<br />
+Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before?<br />
+Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He sees clearly as any the incredible flippancy, the blind fury of
+parties, the lack of great leaders, the plentiful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> meanness and vulgarity;
+the labour question beginning to open like a yawning gulf.... &#8220;We sail a
+dangerous sea of seething currents, all so dark and untried.... It seems
+as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial
+destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep intestine difficulty,
+and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection saying lo! the roads! The
+only plans of development, long and varied, with all terrible balks and
+ebullitions! You said in your soul, I will be empire of empires, putting
+the history of old-world dynasties, conquests, behind me as of no
+account&mdash;making a new history, a history of democracy ... I alone
+inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of America,
+are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your soul, be it so. But
+behold the cost, and already specimens of the cost. Thought you greatness
+was to ripen for you like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that
+you must conquer it through ages ... must pay for it with proportionate
+price. For you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily
+person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the
+demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long
+postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions,
+prophets, thunderstorms, deaths, new projections and invigorations of
+ideas and men.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yet I have dreamed, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our fate,
+whose long unravelling stretches mysteriously through time&mdash;dreamed,
+portrayed, hinted already&mdash;a little or a larger band, a band of brave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> and
+true, unprecedented yet, arm&#8217;d and equipt at every point, the members
+separated, it may be by different dates and states, or south or north, or
+east or west, a year, a century here, and other centuries there, but
+always one, compact in soul, conscience-conserving, God-inculcating,
+inspired achievers not only in literature, the greatest art, but achievers
+in all art&mdash;a new undying order, dynasty from age to age transmitted, a
+band, a class at least as fit to cope with current years, our dangers,
+needs, as those who, for their time, so long, so well, in armour or in
+cowl, upheld and made illustrious that far-back-feudal, priestly world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Of that band, is not Walt Whitman the pioneer? Of that New World
+literature, say, are not his poems the beginning? A rude beginning if you
+will. He claims no more and no less. But whatever else they may lack they
+do not lack vitality, initiative, sublimity. They do not lack that which
+makes life great and death, with its &#8220;transfers and promotions, its superb
+vistas,&#8221; exhilarating&mdash;a resplendent faith in God and man which will
+kindle anew the faith of the world:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Poets to come! Orators, singers, musicians to come!<br />
+Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;<br />
+But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Arouse! Arouse&mdash;for you must justify me&mdash;you must answer.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,<br />
+I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face,<br />
+Leaving it to you to prove and define it,<br />
+Expecting the main things from you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img01.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">ANNE GILCHRIST<br />Photogravure from a painting by her son, made in 1882</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_I" id="LETTER_I"></a>LETTER I<span class="foot"><a name="f3.1" id="f3.1" href="#f3">[3]</a></span></h2>
+<h3>WALT WHITMAN TO W. M. ROSSETTI AND ANNE GILCHRIST</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Washington,<br />
+December 9, 1869.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Rossetti:</span></p>
+
+<p>Your letter of last summer to William O&#8217;Connor with the passages
+transcribed from a lady&#8217;s correspondence, had been shown me by him, and
+copy lately furnished me, which I have just been rereading. I am deeply
+touched by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from
+England, and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to
+me to get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them to Mr.
+O&#8217;Connor but approve that action. I realize indeed of this emphatic and
+smiling <i>well done</i> from the heart and conscience of a true wife and
+mother, and one too whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your
+letter, after flowing through the heart and conscience, must also move
+through and satisfy science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto
+received no eulogium so magnificent.</p>
+
+<p>I send by same mail with this, same address as this letter, two
+photographs, taken within a few months. One is intended for the lady (if I
+may be permitted to send it her)&mdash;and will you please accept the other,
+with my respects and love? The picture is by some criticised very severely
+indeed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> but I hope you will not dislike it, for I confess to myself a
+perhaps capricious fondness for it, as my own portrait, over some scores
+that have been made or taken at one time or another.</p>
+
+<p>I am still employed in the Attorney General&#8217;s office. My p. o. address
+remains the same. I am quite well and hearty. My new editions,
+considerably expanded, with what suggestions &amp;c. I have to offer,
+presented I hope in more definite form, will probably get printed the
+coming spring. I shall forward you early copies. I send my love to Moncur&eacute;
+Conway, if you see him. I wish he would write to me. If the pictures don&#8217;t
+come, or get injured on the way, I will try again by express. I want you
+to loan this letter to the lady, or if she wishes it, give it to her to
+keep.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Walt Whitman.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_II" id="LETTER_II"></a>LETTER II</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>September 3, 1871.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>At last the beloved books have reached my hand&mdash;but now I have them, my
+heart is so rent with anguish, my eyes so blinded, I cannot read in them.
+I try again and again, but too great waves come swaying up &amp; suffocate me.
+I will struggle to tell you my story. It seems to me a death struggle.
+When I was eighteen I met a lad of nineteen<small><a name="f4.1" id="f4.1" href="#f4">[4]</a></small> who loved me then, and
+always for the remainder of his life. After we had known each other about
+a year he asked me to be his wife. But I said that I liked him well as my
+friend, but could not love him as a wife should love &amp; felt deeply
+convinced I never should. He was not turned aside, but went on just the
+same as if that conversation had never passed. After a year he asked me
+again, and I, deeply moved by and grateful for his steady love, and so
+sorry for him, said yes. But next day, terrified at what I had done and
+painfully conscious of the dreary absence from my heart of any faintest
+gleam of true, tender, wifely love,<small><a name="f5.1" id="f5.1" href="#f5">[5]</a></small> said no again. This too he bore
+without desisting &amp; at the end of some months once more asked me with
+passionate entreaties. Then, dear friend, I prayed very earnestly, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> it
+seemed to me (that) that I should continue to mar &amp; thwart his life so was
+not right, if he was content to accept what I could give. I knew I could
+lead a good and wholesome life beside him&mdash;his aims were noble&mdash;his heart
+a deep, beautiful, true Poet&#8217;s heart; but he had not the Poet&#8217;s great
+brain. His path was a very arduous one, and I knew I could smooth it for
+him&mdash;cheer him along it. It seemed to me God&#8217;s will that I should marry
+him. So I told him the whole truth, and he said he would rather have me on
+those terms than not have me at all. He said to me many times, &#8220;Ah, Annie,
+it is not you who are so loved that is rich; it is I who so love.&#8221; And I
+knew this was true, felt as if my nature were poor &amp; barren beside his.
+But it was not so, it was only slumbering&mdash;undeveloped. For, dear Friend,
+my soul was so passionately aspiring&mdash;it so thirsted &amp; pined for light, it
+had not power to reach alone and he could not help me on my way. And a
+woman is so made that she cannot give the tender passionate devotion of
+her whole nature save to the great conquering soul, stronger in its
+powers, though not in its aspirations, than her own, that can lead her
+forever &amp; forever up and on. It is for her soul exactly as it is for her
+body. The strong divine soul of the man embracing hers with passionate
+love&mdash;so alone the precious germs within her soul can be quickened into
+life. And the time will come when man will understand that a woman&#8217;s soul
+is as dear and needful to his and as different from his as her body to his
+body. This was what happened to me when I had read for a few days, nay,
+hours, in your books. It was the divine soul embracing mine. I never
+before dreamed what love meant: not what life meant. Never was alive
+before&mdash;no words but those of &#8220;new birth&#8221; can hint the meaning of what
+then happened to me.</p>
+
+<p>The first few months of my marriage were dark and gloomy to me within, and
+sometimes I had misgivings whether I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> judged aright, but when I knew
+there was a dear baby coming my heart grew light, and when it was born,
+such a superb child&mdash;all gloom &amp; fear forever vanished. I knew it was
+God&#8217;s seal to the marriage, and my heart was full of gratitude and joy. It
+was a happy and a good life we led together for ten short years, he ever
+tender and affectionate to me&mdash;loving his children so, working earnestly
+in the wholesome, bracing atmosphere of poverty&mdash;for it was but just
+possible with the most strenuous frugality and industry to pay our way. I
+learned to cook &amp; to turn my hand to all household occupation&mdash;found it
+bracing, healthful, cheerful. Now I think it more even now that I
+understand the divineness &amp; sacredness of the Body. I think there is no
+more beautiful task for a woman than ministering all ways to the health &amp;
+comfort &amp; enjoyment of the dear bodies of those she loves: no material
+that will work sweeter, more beautifully into that making of a perfect
+poem of a man&#8217;s life which is her true vocation.</p>
+
+<p>In 1861 my children took scarlet fever badly: I thought I should have lost
+my dear oldest girl. Then my husband took it&mdash;and in five days it carried
+him from me. I think, dear friend, my sorrow was far more bitter, though
+not so deep, as that of a loving tender wife. As I stood by him in the
+coffin I felt such remorse I had not, could not have, been more tender to
+him&mdash;such a conviction that if I had loved him as he deserved to be loved
+he would not have been taken from us. To the last my soul dwelt apart &amp;
+unmated &amp; his soul dwelt apart unmated. I do not fear the look of his dear
+silent eyes. I do not think he would even be grieved with me now. My
+youngest was then a baby. I have had much sweet tranquil happiness, much
+strenuous work and endeavour raising my darlings.</p>
+
+<p>In May, 1869, came the voice over the Atlantic to me&mdash;O, the voice of my
+Mate: it must be so&mdash;my love rises up out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> of the very depths of the grief
+&amp; tramples upon despair. I can wait&mdash;any time, a lifetime, many
+lifetimes&mdash;I can suffer, I can dare, I can learn, grow, toil, but nothing
+in life or death can tear out of my heart the passionate belief that one
+day I shall hear that voice say to me, &#8220;My Mate. The one I so much want.
+Bride, Wife, indissoluble eternal!&#8221; It is not happiness I plead with God
+for&mdash;it is the very life of my Soul, my love is its life. Dear Walt. It is
+a sweet &amp; precious thing, this love; it clings so close, so close to the
+Soul and Body, all so tenderly dear, so beautiful, so sacred; it yearns
+with such passion to soothe and comfort &amp; fill thee with sweet tender joy;
+it aspires as grandly as gloriously as thy own soul. Strong to soar&mdash;soft
+&amp; tender to nestle and caress. If God were to say to me, &#8220;See&mdash;he that you
+love you shall not be given to in this life&mdash;he is going to set sail on
+the unknown sea&mdash;will you go with him?&#8221; never yet has bride sprung into
+her husband&#8217;s arms with the joy with which I would take thy hand &amp; spring
+from the shore.</p>
+
+<p>Understand aright, dear love, the reason of my silence. I was obeying the
+voice of conscience. I thought I was to wait. For it is the instinct of a
+woman&#8217;s nature to wait to be sought&mdash;not to seek. And when that May &amp; June
+I was longing so irrepressibly to write I resolutely restrained myself,
+believing if I were only patient the right opening would occur. And so it
+did through Rossetti. And when he, liking what I said, suggested my
+printing something, it met and enabled me to carry into execution what I
+was brooding over. For I had, and still have, a strong conviction that it
+was necessary for a woman to speak&mdash;that finally and decisively only a
+woman can judge a man, only a man a woman, on the subject of their
+relations. What is blameless, what is good in its effect on her, is
+good&mdash;however it may have seemed to men. She is the test. And I never for
+a moment feared any hard words against myself because I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> know these things
+are not judged by the intellect but by the unerring instincts of the soul.
+I knew any man could not but feel that it would be a happy and ennobling
+thing for him that his wife should think &amp; feel as I do on that
+subject&mdash;knew that what had filled me with such great and beautiful
+thoughts towards men in that writing could not fail to give them good &amp;
+happy thoughts towards women in the reading. The cause of my consenting to
+Rossetti&#8217;s<small><a name="f6.1" id="f6.1" href="#f6">[6]</a></small> urgent advice that I should not put my name, he so kindly
+solicitous, yet not altogether understanding me &amp; it aright, was that I
+did not rightly understand how it might be with my dear Boy if it came
+before him. I thought perhaps he was not old enough to judge and
+understand me aright; nor young enough to let it altogether alone. But it
+has been very bitter &amp; hateful to me this not standing to what I have said
+as it were, with my own personality, better because of my utter love and
+faithfulness to the cause &amp; longing to stand openly and proudly in the
+ranks of its friends; &amp; for the lower reason that my nature is proud and
+as defiant as thine own and immeasurably disdains any faintest appearance
+of being afraid of what I had done.</p>
+
+<p>And, my darling, above all because I love thee so tenderly that if hateful
+words had been spoken against me I could have taken joy in it for thy dear
+sake. There never yet was the woman who loved that would not joyfully bare
+her breast to wrest the blows aimed at her beloved.</p>
+
+<p>I know not what fiend made me write those meaningless words in my letter,
+&#8220;it is pleasantest to me&#8221; &amp;c., but it was not fear or faithlessness&mdash;&amp; it
+is not pleasantest but hateful to me. Now let me come to beautiful joyous
+things again. O dear Walt, did you not feel in every word the breath of a
+woman&#8217;s love? did you not see as through a transparent veil a soul all
+radiant and trembling with love stretching out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> its arms towards you? I
+was so sure you would speak, would send me some sign: that I was to
+wait&mdash;wait. So I fed my heart with sweet hopes: strengthened it with
+looking into the eyes of thy picture. O surely in the ineffable tenderness
+of thy look speaks the yearning of thy man-soul towards my woman-soul? But
+now I will wait no longer. A higher instinct dominates that other, the
+instinct for perfect truth. I would if I could lay every thought and
+action and feeling of my whole life open to thee as it lies to the eye of
+God. But that cannot be all at once. O come. Come, my darling: look into
+these eyes and see the loving ardent aspiring soul in them. Easily, easily
+will you learn to love all the rest of me for the sake of that and take me
+to your breasts for ever and ever. Out of its great anguish my love has
+risen stronger, more triumphant than ever: it cannot doubt, cannot fear,
+is strong, divine, immortal, sure of its fruition this side the grave or
+the other. &#8220;O agonistic throes,&#8221; tender, passionate yearnings, pinings,
+triumphant joys, sweet dreams&mdash;I took from you all. But, dear love, the
+sinews of a woman&#8217;s outer heart are not twisted so strong as a man&#8217;s: but
+the heart within is strong &amp; great &amp; loving. So the strain is very
+terrible. O heart of flesh, hold on yet a few years to the great heart
+within thee, if it may be. But if not all is assured, all is safe.</p>
+
+<p>This time last year when I seemed dying I could have no secrets between me
+&amp; my dear children. I told them of my love: told them all they could
+rightly understand, and laid upon them my earnest injunction that as soon
+as my mother&#8217;s life no longer held them here, they should go fearlessly to
+America, as I should have planted them down there&mdash;Land of Promise, my
+Canaan, to which my soul sings, &#8220;Arise, shine, for thy light is come &amp; the
+glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.&#8221; After the 29th of this month I
+shall be in my own home; dear friend&mdash;it is at Brookebank, Haslemere,
+Surrey.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Haslemere is on the main line between Portsmouth &amp; London.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Good-bye, dear Walt,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="right"><br /><i>Sept. 6.</i></p>
+
+<p>The new portrait also is a sweet joy &amp; comfort to my longing, pining heart
+&amp; eyes. How have I brooded &amp; brooded with thankfulness on that one word in
+thy letter<small><a name="f7.1" id="f7.1" href="#f7">[7]</a></small> &#8220;the comfort it has been to me to get her words,&#8221; for always
+day &amp; night these two years has hovered on my lips &amp; in my heart the one
+prayer: &#8220;Dear God, let me comfort him!&#8221; Let me comfort thee with my whole
+being, dear love. I feel much better &amp; stronger now.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_III" id="LETTER_III"></a>LETTER III</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Brookebank, Shotter Mill<br />
+Haslemere, Surrey<br />
+October 23, 1871.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I wrote you a letter the 6th September &amp; would fain know whether it has
+reached your hand. If it have not, I will write its contents again quickly
+to you&mdash;if it have, I will wait your time with courage with patience for
+an answer; but spare me the needless suffering of uncertainty on this
+point &amp; let me have one line, one word, of assurance that I am no longer
+hidden from you by a thick cloud&mdash;I from thee&mdash;not thou from me: for I
+that have never set eyes upon thee, all the Atlantic flowing between us,
+yet cleave closer than those that stand nearest &amp; dearest around
+thee&mdash;love thee day &amp; night:&mdash;last thoughts, first thoughts, my soul&#8217;s
+passionate yearning toward thy divine Soul, every hour, every deed and
+thought&mdash;my love for my children, my hopes, aspirations for them, all
+taking new shape, new height through this great love. My Soul has staked
+all upon it. In dull dark moods when I cannot, as it were, see thee,
+still, still always a dumb, blind yearning towards thee&mdash;still it comforts
+me to touch, to press to me the beloved books&mdash;like a child holding some
+hand in the dark&mdash;it knows not whose&mdash;but knows it is enough&mdash;knows it is
+a dear, strong, comforting hand. Do not say I am forward, or that I lack
+pride because I tell this love to thee who have never sought or made sign
+of desiring to seek me. Oh, for all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> that, this love is my pride my glory.
+Source of sufferings and joys that cannot put themselves into words.
+Besides, it is not true thou hast not sought or loved me. For when I read
+the divine poems I feel all folded round in thy love: I feel often as if
+thou wast pleading so passionately for the love of the woman that can
+understand thee&mdash;that I know not how to bear the yearning answering
+tenderness that fills my breast. I know that a woman may without hurt to
+her pride&mdash;without stain or blame&mdash;tell her love to thee. I feel for a
+certainty that she may. Try me for this life, my darling&mdash;see if I cannot
+so live, so grow, so learn, so love, that when I die you will say, &#8220;This
+woman has grown to be a very part of me. My soul must have her loving
+companionship everywhere &amp; in all things. I alone &amp; she alone are not
+complete identities&mdash;it is I and she together in a new, divine, perfect
+union that form the one complete identity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I am yet young enough to bear thee children, my darling, if God should so
+bless me. And would yield my life for this cause with serene joy if it
+were so appointed, if that were the price for thy having a &#8220;perfect
+child&#8221;&mdash;knowing my darlings would all be safe &amp; happy in thy loving
+care&mdash;planted down in America.</p>
+
+<p>Let me have a few words directly, dear Friend. I shall get them by the
+middle of November. I shall have to go to London about then or a little
+later&mdash;to find a house for us&mdash;I only came to the old home here from which
+I have been absent most four years to wind up matters and prepare for a
+move, for there is nothing to be had in the way of educational advantages
+here&mdash;it has been a beautiful survey for the children, but it is not what
+they want now. But we leave with regret, for it is one of the sweetest,
+wildest spots in England, though only 40 miles from London.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Good-bye, dear friend,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_IV" id="LETTER_IV"></a>LETTER IV<span class="foot"><a name="f8.1" id="f8.1" href="#f8">[8]</a></span></h2>
+<h3>WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Washington, D. C.<br />
+November 3, 1871.</i></p>
+
+<p>(<span class="smcap">To A. G., Earl&#8217;s Colne, Halsted, Essex, Eng.</span>)</p>
+
+<p>I have been waiting quite a while for time and the right mood, to answer
+your letter in a spirit as serious as its own, and in the same unmitigated
+trust and affection. But more daily work than ever has fallen to me to do
+the present season, and though I am well and contented, my best moods seem
+to shun me. I wish to give to it a day, a sort of Sabbath, or holy day,
+apart to itself, under serene and propitious influences, confident that I
+could then write you a letter which would do you good, and me too. But I
+must at least show without further delay that I am not insensible to your
+love. I too send you my love. And do you feel no disappointment because I
+now write so briefly. My book is my best letter, my response, my truest
+explanation of all. In it I have put my body and spirit. You understand
+this better and fuller and clearer than any one else. And I too fully and
+clearly understand the loving letter it has evoked. Enough that there
+surely exists so beautiful and a delicate relation, accepted by both of us
+with joy.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_V" id="LETTER_V"></a>LETTER V</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>27 November &#8217;71.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Friend.</span></p>
+
+<p>Your long waited for letter brought me both joy &amp; pain; but the pain was
+not of your giving. I gather from it that a long letter<small><a name="f9.1" id="f9.1" href="#f9">[9]</a></small> which I wrote
+you Sept. 6th after I had received the precious packet, a letter in which
+I opened all my heart to you, never reached your hands: nor yet a shorter
+one<small><a name="f10.1" id="f10.1" href="#f10">[10]</a></small> which, tortured by anxiety &amp; suspense about its predecessor, I
+wrote Oct. 15, it, too, written out of such stress &amp; intensity of painful
+emotion as wrenches from us inmost truth. I cannot face the thought of
+these words of uttermost trust &amp; love having fallen into other hands. Can
+both be simply lost? Could any man suffer a base curiosity, to make him so
+meanly, treacherously cruel? It seems to cut and then burn me.</p>
+
+<p>I was not disappointed at the shortness of your letter &amp; I do not ask nor
+even wish you to write save when you are inwardly impelled &amp; desirous of
+doing so. I only want leave and security to write freely to you. Your book
+does indeed say all&mdash;book that is not a book, for the first time a man
+complete, godlike, august, standing revealed the only way possible,
+through the garment of speech. Do you know, dear Friend, what it means for
+a woman, what it means for me, to understand these poems? It means for her
+whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> nature to be then first kindled; quickened into life through such
+love, such sympathy, such resistless attraction, that thenceforth she
+cannot choose but live &amp; die striving to become worthy to share this
+divine man&#8217;s life&mdash;to be his dear companion, closer, nearer, dearer than
+any man can be&mdash;for ever so. Her soul stakes all on this. It is the
+meaning, the fulfilment, the only perfect development &amp; consummation of
+her nature&mdash;of her passionate, high, immortal aspirations&mdash;her Soul to
+mate with his for ever &amp; ever. O I know the terms are obdurate&mdash;I know how
+hard to attain to this greatness, the grandest lot ever aspired to by
+woman. I know too my own shortcomings, faults, flaws. You might not be
+able to give me your great love yet&mdash;to take me to your breast with joy.
+But I can wait. I can grow great &amp; beautiful through sorrow &amp; suffering,
+working, struggling, yearning, loving so, all alone, as I have done now
+nearly three years&mdash;it will be three in May since I first read the book,
+first knew what the word <i>love</i> meant. Love &amp; Hope are so strong in me, my
+soul&#8217;s high aspirations are of such tenacious, passionate intensity, are
+so conscious of their own deathless reality, that what would starve them
+out of any other woman only makes them strike out deeper roots, grow more
+resolute &amp; sturdy, in me. I know that &#8220;greatness will not ripen for me
+like a pear.&#8221; But I could face, I could joyfully accept, the fiercest
+anguish, the hardest toil, the longest, sternest probation, to make me fit
+to be your mate&mdash;so that at the last you should say, &#8220;This is the woman I
+have waited for, the woman prepared for me: this is my dear eternal
+comrade, wife&mdash;the one I so much want.&#8221; Life has no other meaning for me
+than that&mdash;all things have led up to help prepare me for that. Death is
+more welcome to me than life if it means that&mdash;if thou, dear sailor, thou
+sailing upon thy endless cruise, takest me on board&mdash;me, daring, all with
+thee, steering for the deep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> waters, bound where mariner has not yet dared
+to go: hand in hand with thee, nestled close&mdash;one with thee. Ah, that word
+&#8220;enough&#8221; was like a blow on the breast to me&mdash;breast that often &amp; often is
+so full of yearning tenderness I know not how to draw my breath. The tie
+between us would not grow less but more beautiful, dear friend, if you
+knew me <i>better</i>: if I could stand as real &amp; near to you as you do to me.
+But I cannot, like you, clothe my nature in divine poems &amp; so make it
+visible to you. Ah, foolish me! I thought you would catch a glimpse of it
+in those words I wrote&mdash;I thought you would say to yourself, &#8220;Perhaps this
+is the voice of my mate,&#8221; and would seek me a little to make sure if it
+were so or not. O the sweet dreams I have fed on these three years nearly,
+pervading my waking moments, influencing every thought &amp; action. I was so
+sure, so sure if I waited silently, patiently, you would send me some
+sign: so full of joyful hope I could not doubt nor fear. When I lay dying
+as it seemed, [I was] still full of the radiant certainty that you would
+seek me, would not lose [me], that we should as surely find one another
+there as here. And when the ebb ceased &amp; life began to flow back into me,
+O never doubting but it was for you. Never doubting but that the sweetest,
+noblest, closest, tenderest companionship ever yet tasted by man &amp; woman
+was to begin for us here &amp; now. Then came the long, long waiting, the hope
+deferred: each morning so sure the book would come &amp; with it a word from
+you that should give me leave to speak: no longer to shut down in stern
+silence the love, the yearning, the thoughts that seemed to strain &amp; crush
+my heart. I knew what that means&mdash;&#8220;if thou wast not gifted to sing thou
+wouldst surely die.&#8221; I felt as if my silence must kill me sometimes. Then
+when the Book came but with it no word for me alone, there was such a
+storm in [my] heart I could not for weeks read in it. I wrote that long
+letter out in the Autumn fields for dear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> life&#8217;s sake. I knew I might, and
+must, speak then. Then I felt relieved, joyful, buoyant once more. Then
+again months of heart-wearying disappointment as I looked in vain for a
+letter-O the anguish at times, the scalding tears, the feeling within as
+if my heart were crushed &amp; doubled up&mdash;but always afterwards saying to
+myself &#8220;If this suffering is to make my love which was born &amp; grew up &amp;
+blossomed all in a moment strike deep root down in the dark &amp; cold,
+penetrate with painful intensity every fibre of my being, make it a love
+such as he himself is capable of giving, then welcome this anguish, these
+bitter deferments: let its roots be watered as long as God pleases with my
+tears.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><i>50 Marquis Road</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>London</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Camden Sqr. N. W.</i></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_VI" id="LETTER_VI"></a>LETTER VI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Road, Camden Sqre.<br />
+London, N. W.,<br />
+January 24, &#8217;72.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I send you photographs of my oldest and youngest children, I wish I had
+some worth sending of the other two. That of myself done in 1850 is a copy
+of a daguerrotype. The recent one was taken just a week or so before I
+broke down in my long illness &amp; when I was struggling against a terrible
+sense of inward prostration; so it has not my natural expression, but I
+think you will like to have [it] rather than none, &amp; the weather here is
+too gloomy for there to be any chance of a good one if I were to try
+again. Your few words lifted a heavy weight off me. Very few they are,
+dear friend: but knowing that I may give to every word you speak its
+fullest, truest meaning, the more I brood over them the sweeter do they
+taste. Still I am not as happy &amp; content as I thought I should be if I
+could only know my words reached you &amp; were welcome to you,&mdash;but restless,
+anxious, impatient, looking so wistfully towards the letters each
+morning&mdash;above all, longing, longing so for you to come&mdash;to come &amp; see if
+you feel happy beside me: no more this painful struggle to put myself into
+words, but to let what I am &amp; all my life speak to you. Only so can you
+judge whether I am indeed the woman capable of rising to the full height
+of great destiny, of justifying &amp; fulfilling your grand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> thoughts of
+women. And see my faults, flaws, shortcomings too, dear Friend. I feel an
+earnest wish you should do this too that there may be the broad unmovable
+foundation-rock of perfect truth and candour for our love. I do not fear.
+I believe in a large all-accepting, because all-comprehending, love, a
+boundless faith in growth &amp; development&mdash;in your judging &#8220;not as the judge
+judges but as the sunshine falling around me.&#8221; To have you in the midst of
+us! we clustered round you, shone upon, vivified, strengthened by your
+presence, surrounding you with an atmosphere of love &amp; cheerful life.</p>
+
+<p>When I wrote to you in Nov. I was in lodgings in London, having just
+accomplished the difficult task of finding a house for us in London, where
+rents are so high. And I have succeeded better than I anticipated, for we
+find this a comfortable, dear, little home&mdash;small, indeed, but not so
+small as to interfere with health or comfort, and at rent that I may
+safely undertake. My Husband was taken from us too young to be able to
+have made any provision for his children. I have a little of my own&mdash;about
+&pound;80 a year; &amp; for the rest depend upon my Mother, whose only surviving
+child I am. And she, by nature generous &amp; self-denying as well as prudent,
+has never made anything but a pleasure of this &amp; as long as she was able
+to see to her own affairs, was such a capital manager that she used to
+spare me about &pound;150 out of an income of &pound;350. But now though she retains
+her faculties in a wonderful degree for her years (just upon 86), she is
+no longer able to do this &amp; has put the management of the whole into my
+hands. And I, feeling that she needs, and ought to have, now an easier
+scale of expenditure at Colne, have to manage a little more cleverly still
+to make a less sum serve for us. But I succeed capitally, dear friend&mdash;do
+not want a better home, never get behind hand &amp; find it no hardship, but
+quite the contrary to have to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> spend a good deal of time &amp; pains in
+domestic management. And then, just to help me through at the right
+moment, dear Percy<small><a name="f11.1" id="f11.1" href="#f11">[11]</a></small> obtained in November a good opening in some large
+copper &amp; iron mining &amp; smelting works in South Wales at a salary upon
+which he can comfortably live; &amp; he likes his work well&mdash;writes very
+cheerfully&mdash;lodges in a farmhouse in the midst of grand scenery, within a
+walk of the sea. So this enables me to give the girls a turn in education,
+for hitherto they have had hardly any teaching but mine. And I chose this
+part because there is a capital day school for them handy. And Herby<small><a name="f12.1" id="f12.1" href="#f12">[12]</a></small>
+walks in to the best drawing school in London &amp; is very diligent and happy
+at his work. His bent is unmistakably strong. It was well I have had to be
+so busy this autumn &amp; winter, dear Walt, for I suffered keenly, sometimes
+overwhelmingly, through the delay in my letters&#8217; reaching you. What caused
+it? And when did you get the Sept. &amp; Oct. letters &amp; did you get the two
+copies that I, baffled &amp; almost despairing, sent off in Nov.? Good-bye,
+dear Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_VII" id="LETTER_VII"></a>LETTER VII<span class="foot"><a name="f13.1" id="f13.1" href="#f13">[13]</a></span></h2>
+<h3>WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>(Washington, D. C.)<br />
+Feb. 8 &#8217;72.</i></p>
+
+<p>I send by same mail with this my latest piece copied in a newspaper&mdash;and
+write you just a line. I suppose you only received my former letters
+(two)&mdash;I ought to have written something about your children (described to
+me in your letter of last summer&mdash;[July 23d] which I have just been
+reading again.) Dear boys and girls&mdash;how my heart goes out to them.</p>
+
+<p>Did I tell you that I had received letters from Tennyson, and that he
+cordially invites me to visit him? Sometimes I dream of coming to Old
+England, on such visit.&mdash;&amp; thus of seeing you &amp; your children&mdash;&mdash;But it is
+a dream only.</p>
+
+<p>I am still living here in employment in a Government office. My health is
+good. Life is rather sluggish here&mdash;yet not without the sunshine. Your
+letters too were bright rays of it. I am going on to New York soon, to
+stay a few weeks, but my address will still be here. I wrote lately to Mr.
+Rossetti quite a long letter. Dear friend, best love &amp; remembrance to you
+&amp; to the young folk.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_VIII" id="LETTER_VIII"></a>LETTER VIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden Sq. N. W.<br />
+April 12th, &#8217;72.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I was to tell you about my acquaintanceship with Tennyson, which was a
+pleasant episode in my life at Haslemere. Hearing of the extreme beauty of
+the scenery thereabouts &amp; specially of its comparative wildness &amp;
+seclusion, he thought he would like to find or build a house, to escape
+from the obtrusive curiosity of the multitudes who flock to the Isle of
+Wight at certain seasons of the year. He is even morbidly sensitive on
+this point &amp; will not stir beyond his own grounds from week&#8217;s end to
+week&#8217;s end to avoid his admiring or inquisitive persecutors. So, knowing
+an old friend of mine, he called on me for particulars as to the resources
+of the neighbourhood. And I, a good walker &amp; familiar with every least
+frequent spot of hill &amp; dale for some miles round, took him long ambles in
+quest of a site. Very pleasant rambles they were; Tennyson, under the
+influence of the fresh, outdoor, quite unconstrained life in new scenery &amp;
+with a cheerful aim, shaking off the languid ennuy&eacute; air, as of a man to
+whom nothing has any longer a relish&mdash;bodily or mental&mdash;that too often
+hangs about him. And we found something quite to his mind&mdash;a coppice of 40
+acres hanging on the south side two thirds of the way up a hill some 1000
+ft. high so as to be sheltered from the cold &amp; yet have the light, dry,
+elastic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> hill air&mdash;&amp; with, of course, a glorious outlook over the wooded
+weald of Sussex so richly green &amp; fertile &amp; looking almost as boundless as
+the great sweep of sky over it&mdash;the South Downs to Surrey Hills &amp; near at
+hand the hill curving round a fir-covered promontory, standing out very
+black &amp; grand between him &amp; the sunset. Underfoot too a wilderness of
+beauty&mdash;fox gloves (I wonder if they grow in America) ferns, purple heath
+&amp;c. &amp;c. I don&#8217;t suppose I shall see much more of him now I have left
+Haslemere, though I have had very friendly invitations; for I am a home
+bird&mdash;don&#8217;t like staying out&mdash;wanted at home and happiest there. And I
+should not enjoy being with them in the grand mansion half so much as I
+did pic-nicing in the road &amp; watching the builders as we did. It is
+pleasant to see T&mdash;with children&mdash;little girls at least&mdash;he does not take
+to boys but one of my girls was mostly on his knee when they were in the
+room &amp; he liked them very much. His two sons are now both 6 ft. high. I
+have received your letters of March 20 from Brooklyn: but the one you
+speak of as having acknowledged the photograph never came to hand&mdash;a sore
+disappointment to me, dear Friend. I can ill afford to lose the long &amp;
+eagerly watched for pleasure of a letter. If it seems to you there must
+needs be something unreal, illusive, in a love that has grown up entirely
+without the basis of personal intercourse, dear Friend, then you do not
+yourself realize your own power nor understand the full meaning of your
+own words, &#8220;whoso touches this, touches a man&#8221;&mdash;&#8220;I have put my Soul &amp; Body
+into these Poems.&#8221; Real effects imply real causes. Do you suppose that an
+ideal figure conjured up by her own fancy could, in a perfectly sound,
+healthy woman of my age, so happy in her children, so busy &amp; content,
+practical, earnest, produce such real &amp; tremendous effect&mdash;saturating her
+whole life, colouring every waking moment&mdash;filling her with such joys,
+such pains that the strain of them has been well nigh too much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> even for a
+strong frame, coming as it does, after twenty years of hard work?</p>
+
+<p>Therefore please, dear Friend, do not &#8220;warn&#8221; me any more&mdash;it hurts so, as
+seeming to distrust my love. Time only can show how needlessly. My love,
+flowing ever fresh &amp; fresh out of my heart, will go with you in all your
+wanderings, dear Friend, enfolding you day and night, soul &amp; body, with
+tenderness that tries so vainly to utter itself in these poor, helpless
+words, that clings closer than any man&#8217;s love can cling. O, I could not
+live if I did not believe that sooner or later you will not be able to
+help stretching out your arms towards me &amp; saying &#8220;Come, my Darling.&#8221; When
+you get this will you post me an American newspaper (any one you have done
+with) as a token it has reached you&mdash;&amp; so on at intervals during your
+wanderings; it will serve as a token that you are well, &amp; the postmark
+will tell me where you are. And thus you will feel free only to write when
+you have leisure &amp; inclination&mdash;&amp; I shall be spared [the] feeling I have
+when I fancy my letters have not reached you&mdash;as if I were so hopelessly,
+helplessly cut off from you, which is more than I can stand. We all read
+American news eagerly too. The children are so well &amp; working on with all
+their might. The school turns out more what I desire for them than I had
+ventured to hope. Good-bye, dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Ann Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_IX" id="LETTER_IX"></a>LETTER IX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden, Sqre.<br />
+June 3d, 1872.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>The newspapers have both come to hand &amp; been gladly welcomed. I shall
+realize you on the 26th sending living impulses into those young men, with
+results not to cease&mdash;their kindled hearts sending back response through
+glowing eyes that will be warmer to you than the June sunshine. Perhaps,
+too, you will have pleasant talks with the eminent astronomers there.
+Prof. Young, who is so skilful a worker with that most subtle of tidings
+from the stars, the spectroscope&mdash;always, it seems hitherto bringing word
+of the &#8220;vast similitude that interlocks all,&#8221; nay, of the absolute
+identity of the stuff they are made of with the stuff we are made of. The
+news from Dartmouth that too, is a great pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>It has been what seems to me a very long while since last writing, because
+it has been a troubled time within &amp; what I wrote I tore up again,
+believing it was best, wisest so. You said in your first letter that if
+you had leisure you could write one that &#8220;would do me good &amp; you too&#8221;;
+write that letter dear Friend after you have been to Dartmouth<small><a name="f14.1" id="f14.1" href="#f14">[14]</a></small>&mdash;for I
+sorely need it. Perhaps the letters that I have sent you since that first,
+have given you a feeling of constraint towards me because you cannot
+respond to them. I will not write<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> any more such letters; or, if I write
+them because my heart is so full it cannot bear it, they shall not find
+their way to the Post. But do not, because I give you more than
+friendship, think that it would not be a very dear &amp; happy thing to me to
+have friendship only from you. I do not want you to write what it is any
+effort to write&mdash;do not ask for deep thoughts, deep feelings&mdash;know well
+those must choose their own time &amp; mode&mdash;but for the simplest current
+details&mdash;for any thing that helps my eyes to pierce the distance &amp; see you
+as you live &amp; move to-day. I dearly like to hear about your Mother&mdash;want
+to know if all your sisters are married, &amp; if you have plenty of little
+nephews &amp; nieces&mdash;I like to hear anything about Mr. O&#8217;Connor<small><a name="f15.1" id="f15.1" href="#f15">[15]</a></small> &amp; Mr.
+Burroughs,<small><a name="f16.1" id="f16.1" href="#f16">[16]</a></small> towards both of whom I feel as toward friends. (Has Mr.
+O&#8217;Connor succeeded in getting practically adopted his new method of making
+cast steel? Percy<small><a name="f17.1" id="f17.1" href="#f17">[17]</a></small> being a worker in the field of metallurgy makes me
+specially glad to hear about this.) Then, I need not tell you how deep an
+interest I feel in American politics &amp; want to know if you are satisfied
+with the result of the Cincinnati Convention &amp; what of Mr. Greely?<small><a name="f18.1" id="f18.1" href="#f18">[18]</a></small> &amp;
+what you augur as to his success&mdash;I am sure dear friend, if you realize
+the joy it is to me to receive a few words from you&mdash;about anything that
+is passing in your thoughts &amp; around&mdash;how beaming bright &amp; happy the day a
+letter comes &amp; many days after&mdash;how light hearted &amp; alert I set about my
+daily tasks, it would not seem irksome to you to write. And if you say,
+&#8220;Read my books, &amp; be content&mdash;you have me in them,&#8221; I say, it is because I
+read them so that I am not content. It is an effort to me to turn to any
+other reading; as to highest literature what I felt three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> years ago is
+more than ever true now, with all their precious augmentations. I want
+nothing else&mdash;am fully fed &amp; satisfied there. I sit alone many hours busy
+with my needle; this used to be tedious; but it is not so now&mdash;for always
+close at hand lie the books that are so dear, so dear, I brooding over the
+poems, sunning myself in them, pondering the vistas&mdash;all the experience of
+my past life &amp; all its aspirations corroborating them&mdash;all my future &amp; so
+far as in me lies the future of my children to be shaped modified
+vitalized by &amp; through these&mdash;outwardly &amp; inwardly. How can I be content
+to live wholly isolated from you? I am sure it is not possible for any
+one,&mdash;man or woman, it does not matter which, to receive these books, not
+merely with the intellect critically admiring their power &amp; beauty, but
+with an understanding responsive heart, without feeling it drawn out of
+their breasts so that they must leave all &amp; come to be with you sometimes
+without a resistless yearning for personal intercourse that will take no
+denial. When we come to America I shall not want you to talk to me, shall
+not be any way importunate. To settle down where there are some that love
+you &amp; understand your poems, somewhere that you would be sure to come
+pretty often&mdash;to have you sit with me while I worked, you silent, or
+reading to yourself, I don&#8217;t mind how: to let my children grow fond of
+you&mdash;to take food with us; if my music pleased you, to let me play &amp; sing
+to you of an evening. Do your needlework for you&mdash;talk freely of all that
+occupied my thoughts concerning the children&#8217;s welfare &amp;&mdash;I could be very
+happy so. But silence with the living presence and silence with all the
+ocean in between are two different things. Therefore, these years stretch
+out your hand cordially, trustfully, that I may feel its warm grasp.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, my dearest friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_X" id="LETTER_X"></a>LETTER X</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden Sq. London<br />
+July 14, &#8217;72.</i></p>
+
+<p>The 3d July was my rejoicing day, dearest Friend,&mdash;the day the packet from
+America reached me, scattering for a while the clouds of pain and
+humiliation &amp; filling me through &amp; through with light &amp; warmth; indeed I
+believe I am often as happy reading, as you were writing, your Poems. The
+long new one &#8220;As a Strong Bird&#8221; of itself answers the question hinted in
+your preface &amp; nobly fulfils the promise of its opening lines. We want
+again &amp; again in fresh words &amp; from the new impetus &amp; standpoint of new
+days the vision that sweeps ahead, the tones that fill us with faith &amp; joy
+in our present share of life &amp; work&mdash;prophetic of the splendid issues. It
+does not need to be American born to believe &amp; passionately rejoice in the
+belief of what is preparing in America. It is for humanity. And it comes
+through England. The noblest souls the most heroic hearts of England were
+called to be the nucleus of the race that (enriched with the blood &amp;
+qualities of other races &amp; planted down in the new half of the world
+reserved in all its fresh beauty &amp; exhaustless riches to be the arena) is
+to fulfil, justify, outstrip the vision of the poets, the quenchless
+aspirations of all the ardent souls that have ever struggled forward upon
+this earth. For me, the most precious page in the book is that which
+contains the Democratic Souvenirs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> I respond to that as one to whom it
+means the life of her Soul. It comforts me very much. You speak in the
+Preface of the imperious &amp; resistless command from within out of which
+&#8220;Leaves of Grass&#8221; issued. This carried with it no doubt the secret of a
+corresponding resistless power over the reader wholly unprecedented,
+unapproached in literature, as I believe, &amp; to be compared only with that
+of Christ. I speak out of my own experience when I say that no myth, no
+&#8220;miracle&#8221; embodying the notion of a direct communication between God &amp; a
+human creature, goes beyond the effect, soul &amp; body, of those Poems on me:
+&amp; that were I to put into Oriental forms of speech what I experienced it
+would read like one of those old &#8220;miracles&#8221; or myths. Thus of many things
+that used to appear to me incomprehensible lies, I now perceive the germ
+of truth &amp; understand that what was called the supernatural was merely an
+inadequate &amp; too timid way of conceiving the natural. Had I died the
+following year, it would have been the simple truth to say I died of joy.
+The doctor called it nervous exhaustion falling with tremendous violence
+on the heart which &#8220;seemed to have been strained&#8221;: &amp; was much puzzled how
+that could have come to pass. I left him in his puzzle&mdash;but it was none to
+me. How could such a dazzling radiance of light flooding the soul,
+suddenly, kindling it to such intense life, but put a tremendous strain on
+the vital organs? how could the muscles of the heart suddenly grow
+adequate to such new work? O the passionate tender gratitude that flooded
+my breast, the yearnings that seemed to strain the heart beyond endurance
+that I might repay with all my life &amp; soul &amp; body this debt&mdash;that I might
+give joy to him who filled me with such joy, that I might make his outward
+life sweeter &amp; more beautiful who made my inner life so divinely sweet &amp;
+beautiful. But, dear friend, I have certainly to see that this is not to
+be so, now: that for me too love &amp; death<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> are folded inseparably together:
+Death that will renew my youth.</p>
+
+<p>I have had the paper from Burlington<small><a name="f19.1" id="f19.1" href="#f19">[19]</a></small>&mdash;with the details a woman likes
+so to have. I wish I had known for certain whether you went on to Boston &amp;
+were enjoying the music there. My youngest boy has gone to spend his
+holiday with his brother in South Wales &amp; he writes me such good news of
+Per., that he is &#8220;looking as brown as a nut &amp; very jolly&#8221;; his home in a
+&#8220;clean airy old farm house half way up a mountain in the midst of wild
+rough grand scenery, sea in sight near enough to hear the sound of it
+about as loud as the rustling of leaves&#8221;&mdash;so the boys will have a good
+time together, and the girls are going with me for the holiday to their
+grandmother at Colne. W. Rossetti does not take his till October this
+year. I suppose it will be long &amp; long before this letter reaches you as
+you will be gone to California&mdash;may it be a time full of enjoyment&mdash;full
+to the brim.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dearest Friend,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />What a noble achievement is Mr. Stanley&#8217;s:<small><a name="f20.1" id="f20.1" href="#f20">[20]</a></small> it fills me with pleasure
+that Americans should thus have been the rescuer of our large-hearted,
+heroic traveller. We have just got his letters with account of the five
+races in Central Africa copied from N. Y. <i>Herald</i>, July 29.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XI" id="LETTER_XI"></a>LETTER XI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Road<br />
+Camden Sqre.<br />
+Novr. 12, 1872.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I must write not because I have anything to tell you&mdash;but because I want
+so, by help of a few loving words, to come into your presence as it
+were&mdash;into your remembrance. Not more do the things that grow want the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>I have received all the papers&mdash;&amp; each has made a day very bright for me.</p>
+
+<p>I hope the trip to California has not again had to be postponed&mdash;I realize
+well the enjoyment of it, &amp; what it would be to California &amp; the fresh
+impulses of thought &amp; emotion that would shape themselves, melodiously,
+out of that for the new volume.</p>
+
+<p>My children are all well. Beatrice is working hard to get through the
+requisite amount of Latin, &amp;c. that is required in the preliminary
+examination&mdash;before entering on medical studies. Percy, my eldest, whom I
+have not seen for a year, is coming to spend Xmas with us.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XII" id="LETTER_XII"></a>LETTER XII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Road<br />
+Camden Sq. London<br />
+Jan. 31, &#8217;73.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Shall you never find it in your heart to say a kind word to me again? or a
+word of some sort? Surely I must have written what displeased you very
+much that you should turn away from me as the tone of your last letter &amp;
+the ten months&#8217; silence which have followed seem to express to me with
+such emphasis. But if so, tell me of it, tell me how&mdash;with perfect
+candour, I am worthy of that&mdash;a willing learner &amp; striver; not afraid of
+the pain of looking my own faults &amp; shortcomings steadily in the face. It
+may be my words have led you to do me some kind of injustice in thought&mdash;I
+then could defend myself. But if it is simply that you are preoccupied,
+too busy, perhaps very eagerly beset by hundreds like myself whose hearts
+are so drawn out of their breasts by your Poems that they cannot rest
+without striving, some way or other, to draw near to you personally&mdash;then
+write once more &amp; tell me so &amp; I will learn to be content. But please let
+it be a letter just like the first three you wrote: &amp; do not fear that I
+shall take it to mean anything it doesn&#8217;t mean. I shall never do that
+again, though it was natural enough at first, with the deep unquestioning
+belief I had that I did but answer a call; that I not only might but
+ought, on pain of being untrue to the greatest, sweetest instincts <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>&amp;
+aspirations of my own soul, to answer it with all my heart &amp; strength &amp;
+life. I say to myself, I say to you as I did in my first letters, &#8220;This
+voice that has come to me from over the Atlantic is the one divine voice
+that has penetrated to my soul: is the utterance of a nature that sends
+out life-giving warmth &amp; light to my inward self as actually as the Sun
+does to my body, &amp; draws me to it and shapes &amp; shall shape my course just
+as the sun shapes the earth&#8217;s.&#8221; &#8220;Interlocked in a vast similitude&#8221; indeed
+are these inner &amp; outer truths of our lives. It may be that this shaping
+of my life course toward you will have to be all inward&mdash;that to feed upon
+your words till they pass into the very substance &amp; action of my soul is
+all that will be given to me &amp; the grateful, yearning, tender love growing
+ever deeper &amp; stronger out of that will have to go dumb &amp; actionless all
+my days here. But I can wait long, wait patiently; know well, realize more
+clearly indeed that this wingless, clouded, half-developed soul of me has
+a long, long novitiate to live through before it can meet &amp; answer yours
+on equal terms so as fully to satisfy you, to be in very truth &amp; deed a
+dear Friend, a chosen companion, a source of joy to you as you of light &amp;
+life to me. But that is what I will live &amp; die hoping &amp; striving for. That
+covers &amp; includes all the aspirations all the high hopes I am capable of.
+And were I to fall away from this belief it would be a fall into utter
+blackness &amp; despair, as one for whom the Sun in Heaven is blotted out.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XIII" id="LETTER_XIII"></a>LETTER XIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right">50 Marquis Road<br />
+Camden Sq. N. W.<br />
+May 20th, &#8217;73.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Such a joyful surprise was that last paper you sent me with the Poem
+celebrating the great events in Spain&mdash;the new hopes the new life wakening
+in the breasts of that fine People which has slumbered so long, weighed
+down &amp; tormented with hideous nightmares of superstition. Are you indeed
+getting strong &amp; well again? able to drink in draughts of pleasure from
+the sights &amp; sounds &amp; perfumes of this delicious time, &#8220;lilac
+time&#8221;&mdash;according to your wont? Sleeping well&mdash;eating well, dear friend?</p>
+
+<p>William Rossetti is coming to see me Thursday, before starting for his
+holiday trip to Naples. His father was a Neapolitan, so he narrowly
+escaped a lifelong dungeon for having written some patriotic songs&mdash;he
+fled in disguise by help of English friends &amp; spent the rest of his life
+here. So this, his first visit to Naples, will be specially full of
+interest &amp; delight to our friend. He is also in great spirits at having
+discovered a large number of hitherto unknown early letters of Shelley&#8217;s.
+Of modern English Poets Shelley is the one he loves &amp; admires incomparably
+the most. Perhaps this letter will just reach you on your birthday. What
+can I send you? What can I tell you but the same old story of a heart
+fast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> anchored&mdash;of a soul to whom your soul is as the sun &amp; the fresh,
+sweet air, and the nourishing, sustaining earth wherein the other one
+breathes free &amp; feeds &amp; expands &amp; delights itself. There is no occupation
+of the day however homely that is not coloured, elevated, made more
+cheerful to me by thoughts of you &amp; by thoughts you have given me blent in
+&amp; suffusing all: No hope or aim or practical endeavour for my dear
+children that has not taken a higher, larger, more joyous scope through
+you. No immortal aspiration, no thoughts of what lies beyond death, but
+centre in you. And in moods of pain and discouragement, dear Friend, I
+turn to that Poem beginning &#8220;Whoever you are holding me now in hand,&#8221; and
+I don&#8217;t know but that that one revives and strengthens me more than any.
+For there is not a line nor a word in it at which my spirit does not rise
+up instinctively and fearlessly say&mdash;&#8220;So be it.&#8221; And then I read other
+poems &amp; drink in the draught that I know is for me, because it is for
+all&mdash;the love that you give me on the broad ground of my humanity and
+womanhood. And I understand the reality &amp; preciousness of that. Then I say
+to myself, &#8220;Souls are not made to be frustrated&mdash;to have their greatest &amp;
+best &amp; sweetest impulses and aspirations &amp; yearnings made abortive.
+Therefore we shall not be &#8216;carried diverse&#8217; forever. This dumb soul of
+mine will not always remain hidden from you&mdash;but some way will be given me
+for this love, this passion of gratitude, this set of all the nerves of my
+being toward you, to bring joy &amp; comfort to you. I do not ask the When or
+the How.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I shall be thinking of your great &amp; dear Mother in her beautiful old age,
+too, on your birthday&mdash;happiest woman in all the world that she was &amp; is:
+forever sacred &amp; dear to America &amp; to all who feed on the Poems of her
+Son.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, my best beloved Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>I suppose you see all that you care to see in the way of English
+newspapers. I often long to send you one when there is anything in that I
+feel sure would interest you, but am withheld by fearing it would be quite
+superfluous or troublesome even.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XIV" id="LETTER_XIV"></a>LETTER XIV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Earls Colne<br />
+Halstead<br />
+August 12, 1873.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>The paper has just been forwarded here which tells me you are still
+suffering and not, as I was fondly believing, already quite emerged from
+the cloud of sickness. My Darling, let me use that tender caressing word
+once more&mdash;for how can I help it, with heart so full &amp; no outlet but
+words? My darling&mdash;I say it over &amp; over to myself with voice, with eyes so
+full of love, of tender yearning, sorrowful, longing love. I would give
+all the world if I might come (but am held here yet awhile by a duty
+nothing may supersede) &amp; soothe &amp; tend &amp; wait on you &amp; with such cheerful
+loving companionship lift off some of the weight of the long hours &amp; days
+&amp; perhaps months that must still go over while nature slowly,
+imperceptibly, but still so surely repairs the mischief within: result of
+the tremendous ordeal to your frame of those great over-brimming years of
+life spent in the Army Hospitals. You see dear Friend, a woman who is a
+mother has thenceforth something of that feeling toward other men who are
+dear to her. A cherishing, fostering instinct that rejoices so in tending,
+nursing, caretaking &amp; I should be so happy it needs must diffuse a
+reviving, comforting, vivifying warmth around you. Might but these words
+breathed out of the heart of a woman who loves you with her whole soul &amp;
+life &amp; strength<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> fulfil their errand &amp; comfort the sorrowful heart, if
+ever so little&mdash;&amp; through that revive the drooping frame. This love that
+has grown up, far away over here, unhelped by the sweet influences of
+personal intercourse, penetrating the whole substance of a woman&#8217;s life,
+swallowing up into itself all her aspirations, hopes, longings, regardless
+of Death, looking earnestly, confidently beyond that for its fruition,
+blending more or less with every thought &amp; act of her life&mdash;a guiding star
+that her feet cannot choose but follow resolutely&mdash;what can be more real
+than this, dear Friend? What can have deeper roots, or a more immortal
+growing power? But I do not ask any longer whether this love is believed
+in &amp; welcomed &amp; precious to you. For I know that what has real roots
+cannot fail to bear real flowers &amp; fruits that will in the end be sweet &amp;
+joyful to you; and that if I am indeed capable of being your eternal
+comrade, climbing whereon you climb, daring all that you dare, learning
+all that you learn, suffering all that you suffer (pressing closest then)
+loving, enjoying all that you love &amp; enjoy&mdash;you will want me. You will not
+be able to help stretching out your hand &amp; drawing me to you. I have
+written this mostly out in the fields, as I am so fond of doing&mdash;the
+serene, beautiful harvest landscape spread around&mdash;returned once more as I
+have every summer for five &amp; twenty years to this old village where my
+mother&#8217;s family have lived in unbroken succession three hundred years,
+ever since, in fact, the old Priory which they have inhabited, ceased to
+be a Priory. My Mother&#8217;s health is still good&mdash;wonderful indeed for 88,
+though she has been 30 years crippled with rheumatism. Still she enjoys
+getting out in the sunshine in her Bath chair, &amp; is able to take pleasure
+in seeing her friends &amp; in having us all with her. Her father was a hale
+man at 90. These eastern counties are flat &amp; tame, but yet under this
+soft, smiling, summer sky lovely enough too&mdash;with their rich green meadows
+&amp; abundant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> golden corn crops, now being well got in. Even the sluggish
+little river Colne one cannot find fault with, it nourishes such a
+luxuriant border of wild flowers as it creeps along&mdash;&amp; turns &amp; twists from
+sunshine into shade &amp; from shade into sunshine so as to make the very best
+&amp; most of itself. But as to the human growth here, I think that more than
+anywhere else in England perhaps it struggled along choked &amp; poisoned by
+dead things of the past, still holding their place above ground. Carlyle
+calls the clergy &#8220;black dragoons&#8221;&mdash;in these rural parishes they are black
+Squires, making it their chief business to instruct the labourer that his
+grinding poverty &amp; excessive toil, &amp; the Squire&#8217;s affluence &amp; ease are
+equally part of the sacred order of Providence. When I have been here a
+little I wish myself in London again, dearly as I love outdoor life &amp;
+companionship with nature. For though the same terrible &amp; cruel facts are
+there as here, they are not choked down your throat by any one, as a
+beautiful &amp; perfect ideal. Even in England light is unmistakably breaking
+through the darkness for the toilers.</p>
+
+<p>I did not see William Rossetti before I came down, but heard he had had a
+very happy time in Italy &amp; splendid weather all the while. Mr. Conway &amp;
+his wife are going to spend their holiday in Brittany. Do not think me
+childish dear friend if I send a copy of this letter to Washington as well
+as to Camden. I want it so to get to you&mdash;long &amp; so long to speak with
+you&mdash;&amp; the Camden one may never come to hand&mdash;or the Washington one might
+remain months unforwarded&mdash;it is easy to tear up.</p>
+
+<p>I hope it will find you by the sea shore!&mdash;getting on so fast toward
+health &amp; strength again&mdash;refreshed &amp; tranquillized, soul &amp; body. Good-bye,
+beloved Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XV" id="LETTER_XV"></a>LETTER XV<span class="foot"><a name="f21.1" id="f21.1" href="#f21">[21]</a></span></h2>
+<h3>WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST</h3>
+
+<p>I must write<br />
+friend once more at<br />
+Since I last wrote, clouds have darkened over me, and still remain.</p>
+
+<p>On the night of 3d January last I was paralyzed, left side, and have
+remained so since. Feb. 19 I lost a dear dear sister, who died in St.
+Louis leaving two young daughters. May 23d, my dear inexpressibly beloved
+mother died in Camden, N. J. I was just able to get from Washington to her
+dying bed &amp; sit there. I thought I was bearing it all stoutly, but I find
+it affecting the progress of my recovery since and now. I am still feeble,
+palsied &amp; have spells of great distress in the head. But there are points
+more favourable.</p>
+
+<p>I am up &amp; dressed every day, sleep &amp; eat middling well &amp; do not change
+much yet, in flesh &amp; face, only look very old.</p>
+
+<p>Though I can move slowly very short distances, I walk with difficulty &amp;
+have to stay in the house nearly all the time. As I write to-day, I feel
+that I shall probably get well&mdash;though I may not.</p>
+
+<p>Many times during the past year have I thought of you &amp; your children.
+Many times indeed have I been going to write, but did not. I have just
+been reading over again several of this &amp; last year&#8217;s letters from you &amp;
+looking at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> the pictures sent in the one of Jan. 24, &#8217;72. (Your letters
+of Jan. 24, June 3 &amp; July 14, of last year and of Jan. 31, and May 20,
+this year, with certainly one other, maybe two) all came safe. Do not
+think hard of me for not writing in reply. If you could look into my
+spirit &amp; emotion you would be entirely satisfied &amp; at peace. I am at
+present temporarily here at Camden, on the Delaware river, opposite
+Philadelphia, at the house of my brother, and I am occupying, as I write,
+the rooms wherein my mother died. You must not be unhappy about me, as I
+am as comfortably situated as can be&mdash;&amp; many things&mdash;indeed every
+thing&mdash;in my case might be so much worse. Though my plans are not
+definite, my intention as far as anything is on getting stronger, and
+after the hot season passes, to get back to Washington for the fall &amp;
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>My post office address continues at Washington. I send my love to Percy &amp;
+all your dear children.</p>
+
+<p>The enclosed ring I have just taken from my finger, &amp; send to you, with my love.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img02.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">FACSIMILE OF A TYPICAL WHITMAN LETTER.<br />FROM THOMAS B. HARNED&#8217;S COLLECTION</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XVI" id="LETTER_XVI"></a>LETTER XVI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Earls Colne<br />
+Sept. 4, 1873.</i></p>
+
+<p>I am entirely satisfied &amp; at peace, my Beloved&mdash;no words can say how
+divine a peace.</p>
+
+<p>Pain and joy struggle together in me (but joy getting the mastery, because
+its portion is eternal). O the precious letter, bearing to me the living
+touch of your hand, vibrating through &amp; through me as I feel the pressure
+of the ring that pressed your flesh&mdash;&amp; now will press mine so long as I
+draw breath. My Darling! take comfort &amp; strength &amp; joy from me that you
+have made so rich &amp; strong. Perhaps it will yet be given us to see each
+other, to travel the last stage of this journey side by side, hand in
+hand&mdash;so completing the preparation for the fresh start on the greater
+journey; me loving and blessing her you mourn, now for your dear
+sake&mdash;then growing to know &amp; love her in full unison with you.</p>
+
+<p>I hope you will soon get to the sea&mdash;as soon as you are strong enough,
+that is&mdash;&amp; if you could have all needful care &amp; comfort &amp; a dear friend
+with you there. For I believe you would get on faster away from Camden&mdash;&amp;
+that it tends so to keep the wound open &amp; quivering to be where the blow
+fell on you&mdash;where every object speaks of her last hours &amp; is laden with
+heart-stirring associations; though I realize, dearest Friend, that in the
+midst of the poignant sorrow come immortal sweet moments&mdash;communings, rapt
+anticipations. But these would come the same in nature&#8217;s great soothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+arms by the seashore, with her reviving, invigorating breath playing
+freely over you. If only you could get just strong enough prudently to
+undertake the journey. When my eyes first open in the morning, often such
+tender thoughts, yearning ineffably, pitying, sorrowful, sweet thoughts
+flow into my breast that longs &amp; longs to pillow on itself the suffering
+head (with white hair more beautiful to me than the silvery clouds which
+always make me think of it.) My hands want to be so helpful, tending,
+soothing, serving my whole frame to support his stricken side&mdash;O to
+comfort his heart&mdash;to diffuse round him such warm sunshine of love,
+helping time &amp; the inborn vigour of each organ that the disease could not
+withstand the influences, but healthful life begin to flow again through
+every part. My children send their love, their earnest sympathy. Do not
+feel anyways called on to write except when inwardly impelled. Your
+silence is not dumb to me now&mdash;will never again cloud or pain, or be
+misconstrued by me. I can feast &amp; feast, &amp; still have wherewithal to
+satisfy myself with the sweet &amp; precious words that have now come &amp; with
+the feel of my ring, only send any old paper that comes to hand (never
+mind whether there is anything to read in it or not) just as a sign that
+the breath of love &amp; hope these poor words try to bear to you, has reached
+you. And just one word literally that, dearest, when you begin to feel you
+are really getting on&mdash;to make me so joyful with the news.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dearest Friend,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Back again in Marquis Road.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XVII" id="LETTER_XVII"></a>LETTER XVII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden Sq.<br />
+Nov. 3, &#8217;73 London</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>All the papers have reached me&mdash;3 separate packets (with the handwriting
+on them that makes my heart give a glad bound). I look through them full
+of interest &amp; curiosity, wanting to realize as I do, in things small as
+well as things large, my Land of Promise&mdash;the land where I hope to plant
+down my children&mdash;so strong in the faith that they, &amp; perhaps still more
+those that come after them will bless me for that (consciously or
+unconsciously, it doesn&#8217;t matter which) I should set out with a cheerful
+heart on that errand if I knew the first breath I drew on American soil
+would be my last in life. I searched hopeful for a few words telling of
+improvement in your health in the last paper. But perhaps it does not
+follow from there being no much mention that there is no progress. May you
+be steadily though ever so slowly gaining ground, my Darling! Now that I
+understand the nature of the malady (a deficient flow of blood to the
+brain, if it has been rightly explained to me) I realize that recovery
+must be very gradual: as the coming on of it must have been slow &amp;
+insidious. And perhaps that, &amp; also even from before the war time with its
+tremendous strain, emotional &amp; physical, is part of the price paid for the
+greatness of the Poems &amp; for their immortal destiny&mdash;the rapt exaltation
+the intensity of joy &amp; sorrow &amp; struggle&mdash;all that went to give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> them
+their life-giving power. For I have felt many times in reading them as if
+the light and heat of their sacred fire must needs have consumed the vital
+energies of him in whose breast it was generated, faster then even the
+most splendid physique could renew itself. For our sakes, for humanity&#8217;s
+sake, you suffer now, I do not doubt it, every bit as much as the
+soldier&#8217;s wounds are for his country&#8217;s sake. The more precious, the more
+tenderly cherished, the more drawing the hearts that understand with
+ineffable yearnings, for this.</p>
+
+<p>My children all continue well in the main, I am thankful to say, though
+Beatrice (the eldest girl) looks paler than I could wish and is working
+her brains too much and the rest of her too little just at present, with
+the hope of getting through the Apothecaries Hall exam. in Arts next
+Sept., which involves a good bit of Latin and mathematics. This is all
+women can do in England toward getting into the medical profession &amp; as
+the Apoth. Hall certificate is accepted for the preliminary studies at
+Paris &amp; Zurich, I make no doubt it is also at Philadelphia &amp; New York; so
+that she would be able to enter on medical studies, the virtual
+preliminary work, when we come. For she continues steadfastly desirous to
+win her way into that field of usefulness, &amp; I believe is well fitted to
+work there, with her grave, earnest, thoughtful, feeling nature &amp; strong
+bodily frame. She is able to enjoy your Poems &amp; the vistas; broods over
+them a great deal. Percy is bending his energies now to mastering the
+processes that go to the production of the very best quality of copper
+such as is used for telegraph wires &amp;c. No easy matter, copper being the
+most difficult, in a metallurgical point of view, of all the metals to
+deal with &amp; the Company in whose employ he is having hitherto been
+unsuccessful in this branch. His looks, too, do not quite satisfy me&mdash;it
+is partly rather too long hours of work&mdash;but still more not getting a good
+meal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> till the end of it. It is so hard to make the young believe that the
+stomach shares the fatigue of the rest of the body and that there is not
+nervous energy enough left for it to do all its principal work to
+perfection after a long, exhausting day. But I hope now I, or rather his
+own experience and I together, have convinced him in time, and he promises
+me faithfully to arrange for a good meal in the middle of the day however
+much grudging the time. My little artist Herby is still chiefly working
+from the antique, but tries his hand at home occasionally with oils &amp; to
+life &amp; has made an oil sketch of me which, though imperfect in drawing
+&amp;c., gives far more the real character &amp; expression of my face than the
+photographs. Have you heard, I wonder, of William Rossetti&#8217;s approaching
+marriage? It is to take place early in the New Year. The lady is Lucy
+Brown, daughter of one of our most eminent artists (he was the friend who
+first put into my hand the &#8220;Selections&#8221; from your Poems). Lucy is a very
+sweet-tempered, cultivated, lovable woman, well fitted, I should say, to
+make William Rossetti happy. They are to continue in the old home, Euston
+Sq., with Mrs. Rossetti &amp; the sisters, who are one and all fond of Lucy. I
+am glad he is going to be married for I think he is a man capable both of
+giving and receiving a large measure of domestic happiness. I hope the
+dear little girls at St. Louis are well. And you, my Darling, O surely the
+sun is piercing through the dark clouds once more and strength &amp; health
+and gladness returning. O fill yourself with happy thoughts for you have
+filled others with joy &amp; strength &amp; will do so for countless generations,
+&amp; from these hearts flows back, and will ever flow, a steady current of
+love &amp; the beautiful fruits of love.</p>
+
+<p>When you next send me a paper, if you feel that you are getting on ever so
+little, dearest friend, just a dash under the word <i>London</i>. I have looked
+back at all your old addresses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> &amp; I see you never do put any lines, so I
+shall know it was not done absently but really means you are better. And
+how that line will gladden my eyes, Darling!</p>
+
+<p>Love from us all. Good-bye.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XVIII" id="LETTER_XVIII"></a>LETTER XVIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden Sq., N. W.<br />
+Dec. 8, 1873.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>The papers with Prof. Young&#8217;s speech came safely &amp; I read it, my hand in
+yours, happy and full of interest. Are you getting on, my Darling? When I
+know that you no longer suffer from distressing sensations in the head &amp;
+can move without such effort and difficulty, a hymn of thankfulness will
+go up from my heart. Perhaps this week I shall get the paper with the line
+on it that is to tell me so much&mdash;or at least that you are well on your
+way towards it. And what shall I tell you about? The quiet tenor of our
+daily lives here? but that is very restricted, though, I trust, as far as
+it goes, good &amp; healthful. O the thoughts and hopes that leap from across
+the ocean &amp; the years! But they hide themselves away when I want to put
+them into words. Do not think I live in dreams. I know very well it is
+strictly in proportion as the present &amp; the past have been busy shaping &amp;
+preparing the materials of a beautiful future, that it really will be
+beautiful when it comes to exist as a present, seeing how it needs must be
+entirely a growth from all that has preceded it &amp; that there are no sudden
+creations of flowers of happiness in men &amp; women any more than in the
+fields. But if the buds lie ready folded, ah, what the sunshine will do!
+What fills me with such deep joy in your poems is the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> sense of the large
+complete acceptiveness&mdash;the full &amp; perfect faith in humanity&mdash;in <i>every
+individual unit of humanity</i>&mdash;thus for the first time uttered. That alone
+satisfies the sense of justice in the soul, responds to what its own
+nature compels it to believe of the Infinite Source of all. That too
+includes within its scope the lot as well as the man. His infinite,
+undying self must achieve and fulfil itself out of any &amp; all experiences.
+Why, if it takes such ages &amp; such vicissitudes to compact a bit of
+rock&mdash;fierce heat, &amp; icy cold, storms, deluges, crushing pressure &amp; slow
+subsidences, as if it were like a handful of grass &amp; all sunshine&mdash;what
+would it do for a man!</p>
+
+
+<p class="right"><br /><i>Dec. 18.</i></p>
+
+<p>The longed-for paper has come to hand. O it <i>is</i> a slow struggle back to
+health, my Darling! I believe in the main it is good news that is
+come&mdash;and there is the little stroke I wanted so on the address. But for
+all that, I feel troubled &amp; conscious&mdash;for I believe you have been a great
+deal worse since you wrote&mdash;and that you have still such a steep, steep
+hill to climb.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps if my hand were in yours, dear Walt, you would get along faster.
+Dearer and sweeter that lot than even to have been your bride in the full
+flush &amp; strength and glory of your youth. I turn my face to the westward
+sky before I lie down to sleep, deep &amp; steadfast within me the silent
+aspiration that every year, every month &amp; week, may help something to
+prepare and make fitter me and mine to be your comfort and joy. We are
+full of imperfections, short-comings but half developed, but half
+&#8220;possessing our own souls.&#8221; But we grow, we learn, we strive&mdash;that is the
+best of us. I think in the sunshine of your presence we shall grow fast&mdash;I
+too, my years notwithstanding. May the New Year lead you out into the
+sunshine again&mdash;shed out of its days health<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> &amp; strength, so that you tread
+the earth in gladness again. This with love from us all. Good-bye, dearest
+Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Herby was at a Conversation last night where were many distinguished men &amp;
+beautiful women. Among the works of art displayed on the walls was a fine
+photograph of you.</p>
+
+<p>19th, afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>And now a later post has brought me the other No. of the <i>Graphic</i> with
+your own writing in it&mdash;so full of life and spirit, so fresh &amp; cheerful &amp;
+vivid, dear Friend, it seems to scatter all anxious sad thoughts to the
+winds. And are you then really back at Washington, I wonder, or have you
+only visited it in spirit, &amp; written the recollection of former evenings?</p>
+
+<p>I shall have none but cheerful thoughts now. I shall reread it
+carefully&mdash;read it to the young folk at tea to-night.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XIX" id="LETTER_XIX"></a>LETTER XIX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden Sq.<br />
+London<br />
+26 Feb., 1874.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Glad am I when the time comes round for writing to you again&mdash;though I
+can&#8217;t please myself with my letters, poor little echoes that they are of
+the loving, hoping, far-journeying thoughts so busy within. It has been a
+happy time since I received the paper with the joyful news you were back
+at Washington, well on your way to recovery, able partially to resume
+work&mdash;scenting from afar the fresh breeze &amp; sunshine of perfect health&mdash;by
+this time, not from afar, perhaps. The thought of that makes dull days
+bright &amp; bright days glorious to me too. I note in the New York <i>Graphic</i>
+that a new edition of &#8220;Leaves of Grass&#8221; was called for&mdash;sign truly that
+America is not so very slowly &amp; now absorbing the precious food she needs
+above all else? Perhaps, dear Friend, even during your lifetime will begin
+to come the proof you will alone accept&mdash;that &#8220;your country absorbs you as
+affectionately as you have absorbed it.&#8221; I have had two great pleasures
+since I last wrote you. One is that Herby has read with a large measure of
+responsive delight &#8220;Leaves of Grass&#8221; quite through, so that he now sees
+you with his own eyes &amp; has in his heart the living, growing germs of a
+loving admiration that will grow with his growth &amp; strengthen every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> fibre
+of good in him. Also he read &amp; took much pride in my &#8220;letters,&#8221; now shown
+him for the first time. Percy has had a fortnight&#8217;s holiday with us, and
+looks better in health, though still not altogether as I could wish. He
+says he is getting such good experience he would not care just yet to
+change his post even for better pay. Music is his greatest pleasure&mdash;he
+seems to get more enjoyment out of that than out of literature, &amp; is
+acquiring some practical skill.</p>
+
+<p>To-day (Feb. 25th) is my birthday, dearest Friend&mdash;a day my children
+always make very bright &amp; happy to me: and on it they make me promise to
+&#8220;do nothing but what I like all day.&#8221; So I shall spend it with you&mdash;partly
+in finishing this letter, partly reading in the book that is so dear to
+me&mdash;for that is indeed my soul coming into the presence of your
+soul&mdash;filled by it with strength &amp; warmth &amp; joy. In discouraged moods,
+when oppressed with the consciousness of my own limitations, failures,
+lack of many beautiful gifts, I say to myself, &#8220;What sort of a bird with
+unfledged wings are you that would mate with an eagle? Can your eyes look
+the sun in the face like his? Can you sustain your long, lifelong flights
+upward? Can you rest in dizzy rocks overhanging dark, tempestuous abysses?
+Is your heart like his, a great glowing sun of Love?&#8221; Then I answer, &#8220;Give
+me Time.&#8221; I can bide my time&mdash;a long, long growing &amp; unfolding time. That
+he draws me with such power, that my soul has found the meaning of itself
+in him&mdash;the object of all its deep, deathless aspirations in comradeship
+with him, means, if life is not a mockery clean ended by death, that the
+germs are in me, that through cleaving &amp; loving &amp; ever striving up &amp; on I
+shall grow like him&mdash;like but different&mdash;the correlative&mdash;what his soul
+needs &amp; desires; and if when I reach America he is not so drawn towards
+me,&mdash;if seeing how often I disappoint myself, needs must that he too is
+disappointed, still I can hold bravely, lovingly on to this
+inextinguishable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> faith &amp; hope&mdash;with the added joy of his presence,
+sometimes winning from him more &amp; more a dear friendship, yielding him
+some joy &amp; comfort&mdash;for he too turns with hope, with yearning, towards
+me&mdash;bids me be &#8220;satisfied &amp; at peace!&#8221; So I am, so I will be, my darling.
+Surely, surely, sooner or later I shall justify that hope, satisfy that
+yearning. This is what I say to myself &amp; to you this 46th birthday. Have I
+said it over &amp; over again? That is because it is the undercurrent of my
+whole life. The <i>Tribune</i> with Proctor&#8217;s &#8220;Lecture on the Sun&#8221; (&amp; a great
+deal besides that interests me) came safe. A masterly lecture. And two
+days ago came the Philadelphia paper with Prof. Morton&#8217;s speech&mdash;deeply
+interesting. And as I read these things, the feeling that they have come
+from, &amp; been read by, you turns them into Poems for me.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, my dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />W. Rossetti&#8217;s marriage is to be the end of next month. Had a pleasant chat
+with Mr. Conway, who took supper with us a week or two ago.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XX" id="LETTER_XX"></a>LETTER XX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>March 9th, 1874.</i></p>
+
+<p>With full heart, with eyes wet with tears of joy &amp; I know not what other
+deep emotion&mdash;pain of yearning pity blent with the sense of
+grandeur&mdash;dearest Friend, have I read and reread the great, sacred Poem
+just come to me.<small><a name="f22.1" id="f22.1" href="#f22">[22]</a></small> O august Columbus! whose sorrows, sufferings,
+struggles are more to be envied than any triumph of conquering warrior&mdash;as
+I see him in your poem his figure merges into yours, brother of Columbus.
+Completer of his work, discoverer of the spiritual, the ideal America&mdash;you
+too have sailed over stormy seas to your goal&mdash;surrounded with mocking
+disbelievers&mdash;you too have paid the great price of health&mdash;our Columbus.</p>
+
+<p>Your accents pierce me through &amp; through.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Your loving <span class="smcap">Annie</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXI" id="LETTER_XXI"></a>LETTER XXI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden Sq.<br />
+May 14, 1874.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Two papers have come to hand since I last wrote, one containing the
+memoranda made during the war&mdash;precious records, eagerly read &amp; treasured
+&amp; reread by me.</p>
+
+<p>How the busy days slip by one so like another, yet each with its own fresh
+&amp; pleasant flavour &amp; scent, as like and as different as the leaves on a
+tree, or the plants in the hedgerows. Days they are busy with humble
+enough occupations, but lit up for me not only with the light of hope, but
+with the half-hidden joy of one who knows she has found what she sought
+and laid such strong hold upon it that she fears nothing, questions
+nothing&mdash;no life, or death, nor in the end, in her own imperfections,
+flaws, shortcomings. For to be so conscious of these, and to love and
+understand you so, are proofs [that] the germs of all are in her, &amp;
+perhaps in the warmth &amp; joyous sunshine of your presence would grow fast.
+Anyhow, distance has not baffled her, and time will not. A great deal of
+needlework to be done at this time of year; for my girls have not time for
+any at present; it is not a good contrast or the right thing after longish
+hours of study&mdash;much better household activity of any sort. If they would
+but understand this in schools &amp; colleges for girls &amp; young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> women. No
+healthier or more cheerful occupation as a relief from study, could be
+found than household work&mdash;sweeping, scrubbing, washing, ironing,
+cooking&mdash;in the variety of it, &amp; equable development of the muscles, I
+should think equal to the most elaborate gymnastics. I know very well how
+I have felt, &amp; still feel, the want of having been put to these things
+when a girl. Then the importance afterwards of doing them easily &amp; well &amp;
+without undue fatigue, to all who aim to give practical shape to their
+ardent belief in equality &amp; fair play for all. In domestic life under one
+roof, at all events, it is already feasible to make the disposals without
+ignominious distinctions&mdash;not all the rough bodily work, never ending,
+leisure all to the other; but a wholesome interchange and sharing of
+these. Not least too among the advantages of taking an active share in
+these duties is the zest, the keen relish, it gives to the hours not too
+easily secured for reading &amp; music. Besides, I often think that just as
+the Poem Nature is made up half of rude, rough realities and homely
+materials &amp; processes, so it is necessary for women to construct their
+Poem, Home, on a groundwork of homeliest details &amp; occupations, providing
+for the bodily wants &amp; comforts of their household, and that without
+putting their own hands to this, their Poem will lack the vital, fresh,
+growing, nature-like quality that alone endures, and that of this soil
+will grow, with fitting preparation &amp; culture, noble &amp; more vigorous
+intellectual life in women, fit to embody itself in wider spheres
+afterwards&mdash;if the call comes.</p>
+
+<p>This month of May that comes to you so laden with great and sorrowful &amp;
+beautiful &amp; tender memories, and that is your birth-month too, I cannot
+say that I think of you more than at any other time, for there is no month
+nor day that my thoughts do not habitually &amp; spontaneously turn to you,
+refer all to you&mdash;yet I seem to come closer because of the Poems that tell
+me of what relates to that time; but most of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> all when I think of your
+beloved Mother, because then I often yearn, more than I know how to bear,
+to comfort you with love and tender care and silent companionship. May is
+in a sense (&amp; a very real one) my birth-month too, for in it were your
+Poems first put into my hand. I wish I were <i>quite sure</i> that you no
+longer suffer in your head, and that you can move about without effort or
+difficulty&mdash;perhaps before long there will be a paper with some paragraph
+about your health, for though we say to ourselves no news is good news, it
+is a very different thing to have the absolute affirmation of good news.</p>
+
+<p>My children are all well and hearty, I am thankful to say, &amp; working
+industriously. Grace means to study the best system of kindergarten
+
+teaching&mdash;I fancy she is well suited for kindergarten teaching &amp; that it
+is very excellent work.</p>
+
+<p>Herby is still drawing from the antique in the British Museum. I hope he
+will get into the Academy this summer. He is going to spend his holidays
+with his brother in South Wales&mdash;and we as usual at Colne, but that will
+not be till August.</p>
+
+<p>Did I tell you William Rossetti and his bride were spending their
+honeymoon at Naples? &amp; have found it bitterly cold there, I learn. Mr. &amp;
+Mrs. Conway &amp; their children are well. Eustace is coming to spend the
+afternoon with Herby to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, my dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXII" id="LETTER_XXII"></a>LETTER XXII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden Sq.<br />
+July 4, 1874.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Are you well and happy, and enjoying this beautiful summer? London is, in
+one sense, a sort of big prison at this time of year: but still at a wide
+open window, with the blue sky opening to me &amp; a soft breeze blowing in &amp;
+the Book that is so dear&mdash;my life-giving treasure&mdash;open on my lap, I have
+very happy times. No one hundreds of years hence will find deeper joy in
+these poems than I&mdash;breathe the fresh, sweet, exhilarating air of them,
+bathe in it, drink in what nourishes &amp; delights the whole being, body,
+intellect &amp; soul, more than I. Nor could you, when writing them, have
+desired to come nearer to a human being &amp; be more to them forever &amp;
+forever than you are &amp; will be to me. O I take the hand you stretch out
+each day&mdash;I put mine into it with a sense of utter fulfilment: I ask
+nothing more of time and of eternity but to live and grow up to that
+companionship that includes all.</p>
+
+<p>6th. This very morning has come the answer to my question. First I only
+saw the Poem&mdash;read it so elate&mdash;soared with it to joyous heights, said to
+myself: &#8220;He is so well again, he is able to take the journey into
+Massachusetts &amp; speak the kindling words.&#8221; Then I turned over and my joy
+was dashed. My Darling; such patience yet needed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> along the tedious path!
+Oh, it makes me long, with passionate longings, with yearnings I know not
+how to bear, to come, to be your loving, cheerful companion, the one to
+take such care, to do all for you&mdash;to beguile the time, to give you of my
+health as you have done to tens of thousands. I do not doubt, either, but
+that you will get well. I feel sure, sure, it will be given me to see you;
+and perhaps a very slow, gradual recovery is safest&mdash;is the only way in
+this as in other matters to thoroughness; &amp; a very speedy rally would be
+specious, treacherous, in the end, leading you to do what you were not yet
+fit for. I believe if I could only make you conscious of the love, the
+enfolding love, my heart breathes out toward you it would do you physical
+good; many-sided love&mdash;Mother&#8217;s love that cherishes, that delights so in
+personal service, that sees in sickness &amp; suffering such dear appeals to
+an answering, limitless tenderness&mdash;wife&#8217;s love&mdash;ah, you draw that from me
+too, resistlessly&mdash;I have no choice&mdash;comrade&#8217;s love, so happy in sharing
+all, pain, sorrow, toil, effort, enjoyments, thoughts, hopes, aims,
+struggles, disappointment, beliefs, aspirations. Child&#8217;s love, too, that
+trusts utterly, confides unquestioningly. Not more spontaneously, &amp; wholly
+without effort or volition on my part, does the sunlight flow into my eyes
+when I open them in the morning than does the sense of your existence
+enter like bright light into my awaking soul. And then I send to you
+thoughts&mdash;tender, caressing thoughts&mdash;that would fain nestle so close&mdash;ah,
+if you could feel them, take them in, let them lie in your breast, each
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>My children are all well, dear Friend. Herbert is going to spend his
+holidays with his brother in Wales&mdash;&amp; we shall all go to Colne as usual
+the end of this month &amp; remain there through August and September; so if
+you think of it, address any paper you may send [to] Earls Colne,
+Halstead, because I should get it a day sooner. But it does not signify if
+you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> forget &amp; send it here; it will be forwarded all right. Beatrice has
+just got through one of the Govern. Exams. in elementary mathematics; and
+I hope Herby has got into the Academy, but do not know for certain yet. He
+works away zealously and with great delight in his work. William Rossetti
+and his wife are coming to dine with us Wednesday&mdash;they look so well and
+happy, it does one good to see them. The Conways are going to Ostend, I
+think, for their holiday, &amp; when they come back [are] going to move into a
+larger house. I heard an American lady, Miss Whitman, sing at a concert
+the other day, who delighted me, fascinated me&mdash;I longed to kiss her after
+each song, though some of them were poor enough Verdi stuff&mdash;but she
+contrived to impart genuineness &amp; beauty to them. I hope you will hear her
+when she returns to America, which will be soon, I believe.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dearest Friend. Beatrice, Herby &amp; Grace join their love with
+mine. I had the sweet little Bridal Poem all safe, &amp; by the bye I liked
+that Springfield paper very much.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Your loving <span class="smcap">Annie</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXIII" id="LETTER_XXIII"></a>LETTER XXIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Earls Colne<br />
+Sept. 3, 1874.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>The change down here has refreshed me more than usual and I find my Mother
+still wonderful for her years (the 89th), able to get out daily in her
+Bath chair for two or three hours&mdash;to enjoy our being with her, and
+suffering little or no pain from rheumatism now. I hope you have had as
+glorious a summer &amp; harvest as we have, and that you are able to be much
+out of doors and absorb the health-giving influences, dear Friend. Such
+mornings! So fresh and invigourating. I have been before breakfast mostly
+in a beautiful garden (the old Priory garden) with my beloved Poems and
+the dew-laden flowers and liquid light and sweet, fresh air; &amp; the sparkle
+of the pond &amp; delicious greenness of the meadows beyond &amp; rustling trees,
+and had a joyful time with you, my Darling&mdash;sometimes with thoughts that
+lay hold on &#8220;the solid prizes of the Universe,&#8221; sometimes so busy building
+up a home in America, thinking, dreaming, hoping, loving, groping among
+dim shadows, straining wistful eyes into the dim distance&mdash;then to my
+poems again&mdash;ah! not groping then, but hand in hand with you, breathing
+the air you breathe, with eyes ardently fixed in the same direction your
+eyes look, heart beating strong with the same hopes, aspirations, yours
+beats with. It does not need to be American to love America and to believe
+in the great future of humanity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> there; it is curious to be human, still
+more English to do that. I love &amp; believe in &amp; understand her in &amp; through
+you: but was always drawn towards her, always a believer, though in a
+vaguer way, that a new glorious day for men &amp; women was dawning there, and
+recognized a new, distinctive American quality, very congenial to me, even
+in American virtues, which you not perhaps rate highly or retard as
+decisively national, not adequately or commandingly so, at any rate. Did I
+ever tell you the cousin of mine<small><a name="f23.1" id="f23.1" href="#f23">[23]</a></small> who owns the priory here fought for
+two years in the Secession war in the army of the Potomac when Burnside &amp;
+McClellan were at the head? John Cowardine was Major in a Cavalry
+regiment&mdash;was at Vicksburg, Frederickburg, &amp;c. Never wounded, or but
+slightly&mdash;had a good deal of outpost duty, being just the right sort of a
+man for that, &amp; has letters of approval from his generals of which he is
+not a little proud. Before that fought under the Stars &amp; Stripes in Mexico
+&amp; has had a curiously adventurous career, which he commenced by running
+away from a military college, where he was being prepared for a cadetship,
+&amp; enlisting as a private&mdash;getting out of that by &amp; bye and working his way
+before the mast as a sailor&mdash;then mining in California&mdash;then in Australia,
+riding steeplechases, keeper of the Melrose hounds, market gardening,
+hotel keeping, then on his way back to California, cast ashore on one of
+the Navigator Islands, where he remained for six months, the only white
+man among savages, who were friendly &amp; made much of him&mdash;now, come into a
+good estate, married to a woman who seems to suit him well &amp; is healthy,
+cheerful rich &amp; handsome, he has fallen into indifferent health &amp;
+considerable depression of spirits. Perhaps he finds the atmosphere of
+Squirearchical gentility very stagnant, the bed of roses
+stifling&mdash;perhaps, too, the severe privations he has at different times
+undergone have injured him. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> often think he was perhaps one of those
+your eyes rested on with pride &amp; admiration&mdash;&#8220;handsome, tan-faced, dressed
+in blue.&#8221; He is the very ideal of a soldier in appearance &amp; bearing&mdash;has
+now some fine children, of whom he is very fond.</p>
+
+<p>It was just this time of year I received the precious letter and ring that
+put peace and joy, and yet such pain of yearning, into my heart&mdash;pain for
+you, my Darling. O sorrowing helpless love that waits, and must wait,
+useless, afar off, while you suffer. But trying every day of my life to
+grow fitter, more capable of being your comfort and joy and true
+comrade&mdash;never to cease trying this side death or the other&mdash;rejoicing in
+my children more than I ever rejoiced in them before, now that in and
+through you I for the first time see and understand humanity (myself
+included)&mdash;its divine nature, its possibilities, nay, its certainties. How
+I do long for you to see my children, dear Friend, and for them to see and
+love you as they will love you, and all their nature unfold and grow more
+vigorously and joyously under your influence. Gracie, of whom you have
+photographs, grows fast,&mdash;is such a fine, blooming girl. I hope soon to
+send you one of Beatrice too. They have been enjoying their visit here and
+are now gone home. Gracie for school, Beatrice for the examination at
+Apoth. Hall she is hoping to get through. Then she is coming here to be
+with my Mother, &amp; I going back to London. We mean now one or other of us
+always to be with my Mother here. Herby has had such a happy time with his
+brother in Wales&mdash;&amp; is looking as brown as a nut &amp; full of health &amp;
+life&mdash;he had a swim in the sea every day. He did succeed in getting into
+the Academy, &amp; will begin work there Oct. 1st! Be sure, dear Friend, if
+there is a word about your health in any paper to send it me&mdash;that is what
+I search for so eagerly&mdash;to have the joyful news you are getting on&mdash;but
+even if it is but so very very slowly, still I would rather know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> the
+truth? I do not like thinking of you mistakenly. I want to send you the
+thoughts, the yearnings, that belong to you, the cherishing love that
+enfolds you most tenderly of all when you suffer. O if I could send it!
+and the cheerful companionship, beguiling the time while strength creeps
+back. I hope your little nieces at St. Louis are well.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, my dearest Friend. Herby, the only one here with me, would like
+to join his love with mine.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />I go back the beginning of October.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sep. 14th.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXIV" id="LETTER_XXIV"></a>LETTER XXIV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden Sq. London<br />
+Dec. 9, 1874.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>It did me much good to get your Poem&mdash;beautiful, earnest, eloquent words
+from the soul whose dear companionship mine seeks with persistent
+longing&mdash;wrestling with distance &amp; time. It seems to me, too, from your
+having spoken the Poem yourself I may conclude you have made fair
+progress. What I would fain know is whether you have recovered the use of
+the left side so far as to get about pretty freely and to have as much
+open-air life as you need &amp; like; and also whether you have quite ceased
+to suffer distressing sensations in the head. If you can say yes to the
+first question, will you in sign of it put a dash under the word <i>London</i>,
+and if yes to the second under <i>England</i>, when you next send me a paper?
+Unless indeed the paper itself contain a notice of your health. But if it
+does not, that would be an easy way of gladdening me with good news, if
+good news there is. I wish I could send you good letters, dearest Friend,
+making myself the vehicle of what is stirring around me in life &amp; thought
+that would interest you; for there is plenty. But that is very hard to
+do&mdash;though I watch, hear, read eagerly, full of interest. Everything stirs
+in me a cloud of questions, makes me want to see its relationship to what
+I hold already. I am forever brooding, pondering, sifting, testing&mdash;but
+that is not the bent of mind that enables one to reproduce one&#8217;s
+impressions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> in compact &amp; lively form. So please, dear Friend, be
+indulgent, as indeed I know you will be, of these poor letters of mine
+with their details of my children &amp; their iterated and reiterated
+expressions of the love and hope and aspiration you have called into life
+within me&mdash;take them not for what they are, but for all they have to stand
+for. Beatrice is at Colne (having got well through the exam. we were
+anxious about in the autumn) and is a very great comfort to my Mother&mdash;as
+I well knew she would be; for a more affectionate, devoted, care-taking
+nature does not breathe&mdash;with a strong active mental life of her own too.
+So, though missing her sorely, I am well satisfied she should be there;
+and the country life and rest are doing her a world of good. My artist boy
+is working away cheerily at the R. Academy, his heart in his work. Percy
+is coming to spend Xmas with us&mdash;he, too, continues well content with his
+work and in good health. Gracie is blooming. The Rossettis have had a
+heavy affliction this first year of their married life in the premature
+death of her only brother&mdash;a young man of considerable promise&mdash;barely 20.</p>
+
+<p>The Conways are well. I feel more completely myself than I have done since
+my illness&mdash;so you see, dear friend, if it has taken me quite four years
+to recover the lost ground, one must not be discouraged if two do not
+accomplish it in your case. I hope your little nieces<small><a name="f24.1" id="f24.1" href="#f24">[24]</a></small> at St. Louis are
+well&mdash;and the brothers you are with, and that you have many dear friends
+round you at Camden.</p>
+
+<p>I think my thoughts fly to you on strongest and most joyous wings when I
+am out walking in the clear, cold, elastic air I enjoy so much.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, my dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Annie Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>A cheerful Christmas, a New Year of which each day brings its share of
+restorative influence, be yours.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXV" id="LETTER_XXV"></a>LETTER XXV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd.<br />
+Camden Sq.<br />
+Dec. 30, 1874.</i></p>
+
+<p>I see, my dearest Friend, I must not look for those dashes under the words
+I thought were going to convey a joyful confirmation of my hopes. I see
+how the dark clouds linger. Full of pain &amp; indignation. I read the
+paragraph&mdash;but fuller still of yearning tenderness &amp; trust and hope. I
+believe, my dear love, that what you need to help on your recovery is a
+woman&#8217;s tender, cherishing love and care, and that in that warm, genial
+atmosphere the spring of life will be quickened once more and flow full
+and strong through all its channels as of old, gradually, not quickly,
+even so. I dare say: but with plenty of patience; with utmost intelligent
+care of all conditions favourable to health, of diet, of abundant oxygen
+in the rooms you inhabit, of as much outdoor life as possible, of happy,
+cheerful companionship, &amp; all the homely everyday domestic joys which are
+so helpful in their influences. America is doing what nations in all times
+have done towards that which is profoundly new &amp; great, that which
+discredits their old ideals and offers them strange fruits &amp; flowers from
+another world than that they have been content to dwell in all their
+lives. But for all that I do not believe the precious seed is lying
+dormant even now&mdash;everywhere a few in whose hearts it is treasured &amp;
+yields a noble growth. Since it is America that has produced you nourished
+your soul and body, she is silently, unnoticed, producing men &amp; women who
+will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> justify you, who will understand the meaning of all and respond with
+a love that will quicken &amp; exalt humanity as Christ&#8217;s influence once did.
+Still it is inscrutable to me that the heart of America is not now
+passionately drawn toward the great heart that beats &amp; glows in these
+Poems&mdash;that &#8220;Drum Taps,&#8221; at any rate, are not as dear to her as the memory
+of her dead heroes, sons, brothers, husbands. It must be that they really
+do not reach the hands of the American people at large&mdash;that the
+professedly literary, cultivated class asking for nothing better than the
+pretty sing-song sentimentalities which &#8220;join them in their nonsense,&#8221; or
+else slavishly prostrating their judgments before the models of the past
+(so perfect for their day, so wholly inadequate for ours), raise their
+voices so loud in newspapers &amp; magazines as to prevent or everywhere check
+the circulation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Jan. 1.</i> The New Year has come in bleakly &amp; keenly to the inner as well
+as to the outer sense, with the papers full of the details of the dark
+fate of the emigrant ship &amp; of the terrible railway accidents. Percy was
+not able to join us at Xmas (through business) but I am expecting him
+to-night. My mother bears up against the cold wonderfully&mdash;&amp; even
+continues to go out in her chair. Bee&#8217;s letters are very bright &amp;
+cheerful&mdash;she &amp; indeed all my children enjoy the cold much, provided they
+have plenty of out-door exercise&mdash;above all skating, which they are now
+enjoying. I too like it, but am so haunted by the thought of the increased
+misery it brings to our hundreds of thousands of ill-fed, ill-clothed,
+ill-housed. I trust the family circle round you &amp; your nieces at St. Louis
+&amp; all near &amp; dear to you are well, and that you have felt the warm grasp
+of many loving friends this wintry, cloudy time, my dearest&mdash;and that
+there may breathe out of these poor words a warm, bright glow of love and
+hope &amp; unrestricted trust in the future.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXVI" id="LETTER_XXVI"></a>LETTER XXVI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Earls Colne, Halstead<br />
+Feb. 21, 1875.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend</span>:</p>
+
+<p>I have run down to Colne for a glimpse of my dear Bee, whom I had not seen
+for five months, and of my Mother; &amp; now I am alone with the latter,
+Beatrice taking my place at home with her brother &amp; sister for a week or
+two. A wonderful evergreen my Mother continues; still able to face the
+keen winds &amp; the frost daily in her Bath chair&mdash;well swathed, of course in
+eiderdown &amp; flannels. Beatrice takes beautiful care of her &amp; is happy &amp;
+content with her life here, loving the country as dearly as I do &amp; having
+time enough for study &amp; reading, as well as for domestic activities, to
+keep her mind as busy as her body. How I do long for you to see my
+children, dearest Friend. I wonder if you are surrounded with any in your
+brother&#8217;s home&mdash;young, growing, blossoming plants that gladden you. And I
+wonder if the winter, which I hear is so severe in America this year,
+tries you&mdash;whether you can yet move briskly enough to keep up the
+circulation&mdash;and whether you have as many dear friends round you as you
+had at Washington. In my walks I keep thinking of these things. Write me a
+little letter once more, it would do me such good. No one of all your
+friends so easy as I to write to because none to whom any &amp; every little
+detail is so welcome, so precious&mdash;lifting a tiny corner of the great vast
+of space between us, giving me for a moment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> to feel the friendly grasp of
+your hand&mdash;I that long for it so. Two years are over since your illness
+began, or seemed to begin, dearest friend&mdash;so slow &amp; stealthy in its
+approaches, so slow &amp; stealthy in its retreat&mdash;may the spring that is
+coming (the birds have already caught sight of it, cold &amp; brown &amp; bare as
+the landscape still is)&mdash;may it but come laden with healing,
+strengthening, refreshing influences&mdash;so that you begin to feel again the
+joyous freedom of health, warbling once more a song of joy for lilac time.
+True, I know indeed, my dearest, that anyhow you are content, not grudging
+the price paid for your life work, but even some way or other the richer
+for paying it&mdash;garnering precious equivalents for pain &amp; privation of
+health in your inmost soul. I cannot choose but believe this
+earnestly&mdash;the resplendent faith that there is not &#8220;one cause nor result
+lamentable, at last, in the Universe&#8221; which glows throughout the Poems is
+for me an exhaustless source of strength &amp; comfort.&mdash;I see every now &amp;
+then &amp; like the more each time the Conways. I am half afraid Mr. Conway
+works too incessantly&mdash;that is, does not like well enough the
+indispensable supplement of close mental work&mdash;plenty of air &amp; exercise,
+&amp;c.,&mdash;hates walking, &amp; indeed it is not to be wondered at in great, smoky
+London (I shall be fond enough &amp; proud enough of it too when I am over the
+Atlantic). Unless one has a real passion for open air &amp; the sense of sky
+overhead, like me. I hear Mr. Conway is coming to America for six months
+in October.</p>
+
+<p><i>Feb. 25</i>&mdash;I kept my letter till to-day that I might have the happiness of
+speaking to you on my birthday. See me this evening in the bright,
+cheerful parlour of our cottage, which stands just in the middle of the
+old village (it has been a village &amp; jogged on through all change at its
+own sober, sleepy pace this 800 years)&mdash;my mother in her arm chair by the
+fire; I chatting with her &amp; working or playing to her when she is awake; &amp;
+with the Poems I love beside me, reading,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> musing, wondering while she
+dozes. Ah, shall I ever attain to the Ideal that burst upon me with such
+splendour of light &amp; joy in those Poems in 1869&mdash;so filling, so possessing
+me, I seemed as if I had by one bound attained to that ideal&mdash;as if I were
+already a very twin of the soul from whom they emanated. But now I know
+that divine foretaste indicated what was possible for me, not what was
+accomplished&mdash;I know the slow growth&mdash;the standstill winters that follow
+the growing joyous springs &amp; ripening summers. I believe it will take more
+lives than this one to reach that mountain on which I was transfigured
+again, never to descend more, but to start thence for new heights, fresh
+glories. Ah, dear friend, will you be able to have patience with me, for
+me?</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, my dearest.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXVII" id="LETTER_XXVII"></a>LETTER XXVII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq.<br />
+London,<br />
+May 18, 1875.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend</span>:</p>
+
+<p>Since last I wrote to you at the beginning of April (enclosing a little
+photograph of that avenue just by our cottage at Colne) I have been into
+Wales for a fortnight to see Percy, &amp; have looked for the first time in my
+life on the Atlantic&mdash;the ocean my mental eyes travel over &amp; beyond so
+often and that your eyes and ears &amp; heart have been fed by, have communed
+with and interpreted, as in a new tongue, to the soul of man. Looking upon
+that, watching the tides ebb &amp; flow on your shores, sharing, through my
+beloved book, in those greatest movements you have spent alone with
+it&mdash;that was a new joyful experience, a fresh kind of communing with
+you.&mdash;I went to Wales because I felt anxious about Percy, who is not happy
+just now. I must not tell friends here about it (except his brother &amp;
+sisters) but I am sure I may tell you, for you will listen with sympathy.
+He has attached himself very deeply, I think it will prove, to a girl, &amp;
+she to him, whose parents welcomed him cordially to their house for a year
+or two &amp; allowed plenty of intercourse till they became aware through
+Percy himself (who thought it right to tell the father as soon as he was
+fully aware of his own feelings &amp; more than suspected Norah&#8217;s response to
+them) that there was a strong affection growing up between the two. Then
+they peremptorily forbade all intercourse&mdash;not because they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> have any
+objection to Percy&mdash;quite the contrary, they say; but solely and simply
+because he is not yet earning money enough to marry on, &amp; they hold that a
+man has no right to engage a girl&#8217;s affections till he can do so. As if
+these things could be timed to the moment the money comes in! Percy was in
+hopes, &amp; so was I, that if I went down, I might get sense enough into
+their heads, if not kindness &amp; sympathy into their hearts, to see that the
+sole effect of such arbitrary &amp; narrow-sighted conduct would be to
+alienate &amp; embitter the young people&#8217;s feelings toward them, while it
+would make them more restless &amp; anxious to marry without adequate means.
+Whereas if a reasonable amount of intercourse were allowed, it would be a
+happy time with them, &amp; Norah being still so young (18), &amp; Percy working
+away with all his might, doing very well for his age &amp; sure,
+conscientious, thorough, capable, &amp; well trained worker that he is (for
+the L. School of Mais gives a first rate scientific preparation for his
+profession) to be making a modest sufficiency in a year or two. Well, they
+were very courteous &amp; indeed friendly to me, &amp; I think I have won over the
+mother; but the father remains obdurate, &amp; Percy feels bitterly the
+separation&mdash;all the more trying as they live almost within sight of each
+other. So Beatrice &amp; Grace are going to spend their holidays with him this
+summer to cheer him up. Meanwhile, dear friend, I am on the whole happier
+than not about him. I liked what I saw of Norah &amp; believe he has found a
+very sweet, affectionate girl of quiet, domestic nature, practical,
+industrious, sensible&mdash;thoroughly well to suit him, &amp; that there is true &amp;
+deep love between them&mdash;also, she took to me very much, &amp; I feel will be
+quite another child to me. It is besides no little joy to me to find how
+Percy has confided in me in this &amp; chooses me as the friend to whom he
+tells all&mdash;far from being any separation, as sometimes happens, this love
+of his seems to draw us closer together. Only I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> very, very anxious for
+his sake to see him in a better berth&mdash;they would let her marry him on
+&pound;300 a year; now he has only &pound;175. He is quite competent to manage iron or
+copper or tin works, only he looks so young, not having yet any beard or
+moustache to speak of. That is the end of my long story.</p>
+
+<p>This will reach you on your birthday perhaps, my dearest Friend; at any
+rate it must bear you a greeting of love and fond remembrance for that
+dear day such as my heart will send you when it actually comes: patiently
+waiting heart, with the fibres of love and boundless trust &amp; joy &amp; hope
+which bind me to you bedded deep, grown to be, during these long years, a
+very part of its immortal substance, untouchable by age or varying moods
+or sickness, or death itself, as I surely believe. I long more than words
+can tell to know how it fares with you now in health and spirit. My
+children are all well &amp; growing &amp; unfolding to my heart&#8217;s content.
+Beatrice &amp; Herbert deeply influenced by your Poems. Good-bye, my dearest
+Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXVIII" id="LETTER_XXVIII"></a>LETTER XXVIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p><i>Address<br />
+1 Torriano Gardens<br />
+Camden Road, N. W.<br />
+London</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Earls Colne<br />
+Aug. 28, 1875.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend</span>:</p>
+
+<p>Your letter came to me just when I most needed the comfort of it&mdash;when I
+was watching and tending my dear Mother as she gently, slowly, with but
+little suffering, sank to rest. There was no sick bed to sit by&mdash;we got
+her up and out into the air and sunshine for an hour or two even the day
+before she died&mdash;No disease, only the stomach could not do its work any
+longer &amp; for the last three weeks she lived wholly on stimulants,
+suffering somewhat from sickness. She drew her last breath very gently
+before daybreak on the 15th inst., in her 90th year, which she had entered
+in Jan. She looked very beautiful in death, notwithstanding her great
+age&mdash;as well she might&mdash;tranquil sunset that it was of a beautiful day&mdash;a
+fulfilled life&mdash;joy &amp; delight of her father in youth (who used to call her
+the apple of his eye), good wife, devoted, self-sacrificing, wise
+mother&mdash;patient, courageous sufferer through thirty years of chronic
+rheumatism, which, however, neutralized &amp; ceased its pains the last few
+years&mdash;unsurpassed, &amp; indeed I think unsurpassable, in
+conscientiousness&mdash;in the strong sense of duty &amp; perfect obedience to that
+highest sense&mdash;she is one of those who amply justify your large faith in
+women.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>I do not need to tell you anything, my dearest friend&mdash;you know all&mdash;I
+feel your strong comforting hand&mdash;I press it very close.</p>
+
+<p>I had all my children with me at the funeral.</p>
+
+<p>O the comfort your dear letter was &amp; is to me. Thinking over &amp; over the
+few words you say of yourself&mdash;&amp; what is said in the paper (so eagerly
+read&mdash;every word so welcome) I cannot help fancying that the return of the
+distressing sensations in the head must be caused by your having worked at
+the book&mdash;the &#8220;Two Rivulets&#8221; (I dearly like the title &amp; the idea of
+bringing the Poems &amp; Prose together so)&mdash;that you must be more patient
+with yourself and submit still to perfect rest&mdash;&amp; that perhaps in regard
+to the stomach&mdash;you have not enough adapted your diet to the privation of
+exercise&mdash;that you must be more indulgent to the stomach too in the sense
+of giving it only the very easiest &amp; simplest work to do. My children join
+their love with mine.</p>
+
+<p>Your own loving</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img03.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">FACSIMILE OF ONE OF ANNE GILCHRIST&#8217;S LETTERS TO WALT WHITMAN</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img04.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">FACSIMILE OF ONE OF ANNE GILCHRIST&#8217;S LETTERS TO WALT WHITMAN</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXIX" id="LETTER_XXIX"></a>LETTER XXIX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>1 Torriano Gardens<br />
+Camden Rd., Nov. 16, 1875.<br />
+London</i></p>
+
+<p>I have been wanting the comfort of a talk with you, dearest Friend, for
+weeks &amp; weeks, without being able to get leisure &amp; tranquillity enough to
+do it to my heart&#8217;s content&mdash;indeed, heart&#8217;s content is not for me at
+present&mdash;but restless, eager, longing to come&mdash;&amp; the struggle to do
+patiently &amp; completely &amp; wisely what remains for me here before I am free
+to obey the deep faith and love which govern me&mdash;so let me sit close
+beside you, my Darling&mdash;&amp; feel your presence &amp; take comfort &amp; strength &amp;
+serenity from it as I do, as I can when with all my heart &amp; soul I draw
+close to you, realizing your living presence with all my might.&mdash;First,
+about Percy&mdash;things are beginning to look a little brighter for him. He is
+just entering upon a new engagement with some very large &amp; successful
+works&mdash;the Blenavon Iron Co.&mdash;where, though his salary will not be higher
+at first, his opportunities of improvement will be better &amp; he is also to
+be allowed to take private practice (in assaying &amp; analyzing). The manager
+there believes in Science &amp; is friendly to Percy &amp; will give him every
+facility for showing what he can do, so that he hopes to prove to the
+Directors before long that he is worth a good salary. The parents of Norah
+(whom he loves) have released from their unfriendly attitude since my
+Beatrice has been staying with them; the two girls have attached
+themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> to one another &amp; Per. has had delightful opportunities of
+being with Norah, &amp; best of all, she is to return here with Beatrice (they
+are coming to-morrow), &amp; Per. is to have a week&#8217;s holiday &amp; come up, so
+that he &amp; Norah will be wholly together &amp; have, I suspect, the happiest
+week they have yet had in their lives. Then I have stored away for them
+the furniture of the dear old home at Colne, &amp; I really think that by the
+time &#8217;76 is out they will be able to marry. I see, and indeed I have known
+ever since he formed this attachment, that I must not look for him to come
+to America with me. But what I build upon, Dearest Friend, is that when I
+have been a little while in America &amp; have made friends &amp; had time to look
+about me I might hear of a good certainty for him&mdash;his excellent training
+at the School of Mines, large experience at Blenavon, energy, ability, &amp;
+sturdy uprightness will make him a first-rate manager of works by &amp; bye.
+But the leaving him so happy with his young wife will make it easier for
+us to part. <i>Nov. 26</i>&mdash;Beatrice has begun to work at anatomy at the School
+of Medicine for Women lately founded, &amp; seems to delight in her work. She
+will not enter on the full course all at once&mdash;I am for taking things
+gently. Women have plenty of strength but it is of a different kind from
+men&#8217;s &amp; must work by gentler &amp; slower means&mdash;Above all I do not like what
+pushes violently aside domestic duties &amp; pleasures. The special work must
+combine itself with these; I am sure it can. Herby is getting on very
+nicely&mdash;never did student love his work better. He is eager, &amp; by making
+the best use of present opportunities &amp; advantages yet looking towards
+America full of cheerful hopes &amp; sympathy. Grace is less developed in
+intellect but not less in character than the others. I can&#8217;t describe her
+but send you her photograph. There is a freshness &amp; independence of
+character about her&mdash;yet withal a certain waywardness &amp; reserve. She is a
+good, instinctive judge of character&mdash;more influenced by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> it than by
+books&mdash;yet with a growing taste for them too. She comes to America with a
+gay and buoyant curiosity, declining to make up her mind about anything
+till she gets there. We want, as far as possible, to transplant our home
+bodily&mdash;to bring as much as we can of our own furniture because we have
+beautiful old things precious in Herby&#8217;s eyes &amp; that we are all fond of.
+And [by] coming straight to Philadelphia &amp; taking a house somewhere on the
+outskirts of it or Camden immediately we fancy this might be practicable,
+but have not yet launched into the matter. I have just heard from Mr.
+Rossetti, and also from Mrs. Conway of her husband having seen you, &amp; if
+his report be not too sanguine it is a cheering one &amp; would comfort me
+much, dearest Friend. But what he says is so favourable I am afraid to
+believe it altogether, knowing that you would make the very best of
+yourself &amp; indeed be probably at your best with the pleasure of seeing an
+old friend fresh from England. <i>Nov.</i> 30. And now, dear Friend, I have had
+a very great pleasure indeed, thanks to you&mdash;a visit from Mr. Marvin&mdash;&amp; I
+hope to have another when he returns from Paris. And the account he gives
+of you is so cheerful&mdash;so vivid&mdash;it seems to part asunder a gloomy cloud
+that was brooding in my mind. And though I know that for the short hours
+that you feel bright &amp; well are many long hours when you are far
+otherwise, still I feel sure those short hours are the earnest of perfect
+recovery&mdash;with a fine patience&mdash;boundless patience. And now I can picture
+you sitting in your favourite window, having a friendly word with
+passers-by&mdash;&amp; feel quite sure that you are happy &amp; comfortable in your
+surroundings. And a great deal else full of interest Mr. Marvin told me. I
+was loth for him to go, but one hour is so small, we have noticed, for a
+friend, I am sorry to say.</p>
+
+<p>William Rossetti has a little girl which is a great delight to him. Miss
+Hillard of Brooklyn has also paid me a visit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> &amp; spoken to me of you. She
+charmed me much&mdash;only I felt a little cross with her for giving Herby such
+a dismal account of his chances as an artist in America. However, we both
+refused to be discouraged, for after all he can send his pictures to
+England to be established &amp;c., having plenty of friends who would see to
+it; &amp; we are both firm in the faith that if you can only paint the really
+good pictures the rest will take care of itself, somehow or other&mdash;&amp; that
+can be done as well in America as in England, but of course he must finish
+his training here.</p>
+
+<p>With best love from us all, good-bye, my dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXX" id="LETTER_XXX"></a>LETTER XXX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>1 Torriano Gardens<br />
+Camden Rd., London<br />
+Dec. 4, 1875.</i></p>
+
+<p>Though it is but a few days since I posted a letter, my dearest friend, I
+must write you again&mdash;because I cannot help it, my heart is so full&mdash;so
+full of love &amp; sorrow &amp; struggle. The day before yesterday I saw Mr.
+Conway&#8217;s printed account of you, &amp; instead of the cheerful report I had
+been told of, he speaks of your having given up hope of recovery. Those
+words were like a sharp knife plunged into me&mdash;they choked me with bitter
+tears. <i>Don&#8217;t give up that hope</i> for the sake of those that so tenderly,
+passionately, love you&mdash;would give their lives with joy for you. Why, who
+knows better than you how much hope &amp; the will have to do with it, &amp; I
+know quite well that the belief does not depress you&mdash;that you are ready
+to accept either lot with calmness, cheerfulness, perfect faith, perhaps
+with equal joy. But for all that, it does you harm. Ideas always have a
+tendency to accomplish themselves. And what right have the Doctors to
+utter gloomy prophecies? The wisest of them know the best how profoundly
+in the dark they are as to much that goes on within us, especially in
+maladies like yours. O cling to life with a resolute hold, my beloved, to
+bless us with your presence unspeakably dear, beneficent presence&mdash;me to
+taste of it before so very long now&mdash;thirsting, pining, loving me. Take
+through these poor words of mine some breath of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> tender, tender,
+ineffable love that fills my heart and soul and body&mdash;take of it to
+strengthen the very springs of your life: it is capable of that; O its
+cherishing warmth and joy, if it could only get to you, only fold you
+round close enough, would help, I know. Soon, soon as ever my boy has one
+to love &amp; care for him all his own, I will come; I may not before, not if
+it should break my heart to stop away from you, for his welfare is my
+sacred charge &amp; nearer &amp; dearer than all to me. Verily, my God, strengthen
+me, comfort me, stay for me&mdash;let that have a little beginning on this dear
+earth which is for all eternity, which will live &amp; grow immortally into a
+diviner reality than the heart of man has conceived.</p>
+
+<p>I am well satisfied with Norah, dear Friend. She is very affectionate,
+loveable, prudent, &amp; clear in all practical matters, well suited to Percy
+in tastes, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Your own</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Annie</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXXI" id="LETTER_XXXI"></a>LETTER XXXI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Blaenavon<br />
+Routzpool<br />
+Mon. England<br />
+Jan. 18, &#8217;76.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend</span>:</p>
+
+<p>Do not think me too wilful or headstrong, but I have taken our tickets &amp;
+we shall sail Aug. 30 for Philadelphia. I found if I did not come to a
+decision now, we could not well arrange it before next summer. And since
+we <i>have</i> come to a decision my mind has been quite at rest. Do not feel
+any anxiety or misgivings about us. I have a clear and strong conviction I
+am doing what is right &amp; best for us all. After a busy anxious time I am
+having a week or two of rest with Percy, who I find fairly well in health
+&amp; prospering in his business&mdash;indeed, he bids fair to have a large private
+practice as an analyst here, &amp; is already making income enough to marry
+on, only there is to build the nest&mdash;&amp; I think he will have actually to
+<i>build</i> it, for there seem no eligible houses&mdash;&amp; to furnish&mdash;so that the
+wedding will not be till next spring or early summer. Nevertheless, with a
+definite goal &amp; a definite time &amp; the way between not so very rugged,
+though rather dull and lonely, I think he will be pretty cheery. This
+little town (of 11,000 inhabitants, all miners, smelters &amp;c.) lies up
+among the hills 1100 ft. above the sea&mdash;glorious hills here, spreading,
+then converging, with wooded flanks, &amp; swift brooklets leaping over stones
+in the hollows&mdash;the air, too, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> course deliciously light &amp; pure. I have
+heard through a friend of ours of Bee&#8217;s fellow student who lives in Camden
+(Mr. Suerkrop, I think his name is) that we shall be able to get a very
+comfortable home with pleasant garden there for about &pound;55 per an. I think
+I can manage that very well&mdash;so all I need is to hear of a comfortable
+lodging or boarding house (the former preferred) where we can be, avoiding
+hotels even while we hunt for the house. I have arranged for my goods to
+sail a week later than we do, so as to give us time.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye for a short while, my dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Bee has obtained a very satisfactory account of the Women&#8217;s Medical
+College in Philadelphia &amp; introductions to the Head, &amp;c.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXXII" id="LETTER_XXXII"></a>LETTER XXXII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>1 Torriano Gardens<br />
+Camden Rd.<br />
+London<br />
+Feb. 25, &#8217;76.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I received the paper &amp; enclosed slip Saturday week, filling me so full of
+emotion I could not write, for I am too bitterly impatient of mere words.
+Soon, very soon, I come, my darling. I am not lingering, but held yet a
+little while by the firm grip of conscience&mdash;this is the last spring we
+shall be asunder&mdash;O I passionately believe there are years in store for
+us, years of tranquil, tender happiness&mdash;me making your outward life
+serene &amp; sweet&mdash;you making my inward life so rich&mdash;me learning, growing,
+loving&mdash;we shedding benign influences round us out of our happiness and
+fulfilled life&mdash;Hold on but a little longer for me, my Walt&mdash;I am
+straining every nerve to hasten the day&mdash;I have enough for us all (with
+the simple, unpretending ways we both love best).</p>
+
+<p>Percy is battling slowly&mdash;doing as well as we could expect in the time. I
+think he will soon build the nest for his mate. I think he never in his
+heart believed I really should go to America, and so it comes as a great
+blow to him now. You must be very indulgent towards him for my sake, dear
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>I am glad we know about those rascally book agents&mdash;for many of us are
+wanting a goodish number of copies of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> new edition &amp; it is important
+to understand we may have them straight from you. Rossetti is making a
+list of the friends &amp; the number, so that they may all come together.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, dearest friend, you may be having a great difficulty in getting
+the books out for want of funds&mdash;if so, let me help a little&mdash;show your
+trust in me and my love thus generously.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Your own loving</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Annie</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXXIII" id="LETTER_XXXIII"></a>LETTER XXXIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>1 Torriano Gardens<br />
+March 11, &#8217;76.</i></p>
+
+<p>I have had such joy this morning, my Darling&mdash;Poems of yours given in the
+<i>Daily News</i>&mdash;sublime Poems one of them reaching dizzy heights, filling my
+soul with strong delight. These prefaced by a few words, timid enough yet
+kindly in tone, &amp; better than nothing. The days, the weeks, are slipping
+by, my beloved, bearing me swiftly, surely to you&mdash;before the beauty of
+the year begins to fade we shall come. The young folk too are full of
+bright anticipation &amp; eagerness now, I am thankful to say; and Percy
+getting on with, I trust, such near &amp; definite prospect of his happiness
+that he will be able to pull along cheerily towards it after we are gone,
+in spite of loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>I expect, Darling, we must go to some little town or village ten or twenty
+miles short of Philadelphia till the tremendous influx of visitors to the
+Centennial has ceased, else we shall not be able to find a corner
+there.&mdash;By the bye, I feel a little sulky at your always taking a fling at
+the poor piano. I see I have got to try &amp; show you it too is capable of
+waking deep chords in the human soul when it is the vehicle of a great
+master&#8217;s thought &amp; emotions&mdash;if only my poor fingers prove equal to the
+task! (All my heart shall go into them.) Take from my picture a long, long
+look of tender love and joy and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> faith, deathless, ever young, ever
+growing, ever learning, aspiring love, tender, cherishing, domestic love.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, may I be full of sweet comfort for my Beloved&#8217;s Soul and Body through
+life, through and after death.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXXIV" id="LETTER_XXXIV"></a>LETTER XXXIV</h2>
+<h3>WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Camden, New Jersey<br />
+March, 1876.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>To your good &amp; comforting letter of Feb. 25th I at once answer, at least
+with a few lines. I have already written this morning a pretty full letter
+to Mr. Rossetti (to answer one just rec&#8217;d from him) &amp; requested him to
+loan it you for perusal. In that I have described my situation fully &amp;
+candidly.</p>
+
+<p>My new edition is printed &amp; ready. Upon receipt of your letter I sent you
+a set, two Vols. (by Mail, March 15) which you must have rec&#8217;d by this
+time. I wish you to send me word soon as they arrive.</p>
+
+<p>My health, I am encouraged to think, is perhaps a shade better&mdash;certainly
+as well as any time of late.</p>
+
+<p>I even already vaguely contemplate plans (they may never be fulfilled, but
+yet again they may) of changes, journeys&mdash;even of coming to London &amp;
+seeing you, visiting my friends, &amp;c. My dearest friend, <i>I do not approve
+your American trans-settlement. I see so many things here you have no idea
+of&mdash;the social, and almost every other kind of crudeness, meagreness, here
+(at least in appearance).</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Don&#8217;t do anything towards it nor resolve in it nor make any move at all
+in it without further advice from me. If I should get well enough to
+voyage, we will talk about it yet in London.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>You must not be uneasy about me&mdash;dearest friend, I get along much better
+than you think for. As to the literary situation here, my rejection by the
+coteries and the poverty (which is the least of my troubles), am not sure
+but I enjoy them all&mdash;besides, as to the latter, I am not in want.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXXV" id="LETTER_XXXV"></a>LETTER XXXV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>1 Torriano Gardens<br />
+Camden Rd., London<br />
+March 30, &#8217;76.</i></p>
+
+<p>Yesterday <i>was</i> a day for me, dearest Friend. In the morning your letter,
+strong, cheerful, reassuring&mdash;dear letter. In the afternoon the books. I
+don&#8217;t know how to settle down my thoughts calmly enough to write, nor how
+to lay down the books (with delicate yet serviceable exterior, with
+inscription making me so proud, so joyous). But there are a few things I
+want to say to you at once in regard to our coming to America. I will not
+act without &#8220;further advice from you&#8221;; but as to not resolving on it, dear
+friend, I can&#8217;t exactly obey that, for it has been my settled, steady
+purpose (resting on a deep, strong faith) ever since 1869. Nor do I feel
+discouraged or surprised at what you say of American &#8220;crudeness,&#8221; &amp;c. (of
+which, in truth, one hears not a little in England). I have not shut my
+eyes to the difficulties and trials &amp; responsibilities (for the children&#8217;s
+sake) of the enterprise. I am not urged on by any discontent with old
+England or by any adverse circumstances here which I might hope to better
+there: my reasons, emotions, the sources of my strength and courage for
+the uprooting &amp; transplanting&mdash;all are inclosed in those two volumes that
+lie before me on the table. That America has brought them forth makes me
+want to plant some, at least, of my children on her soil. I understand &amp;
+believe in &amp; love her in &amp; through them. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> teach me to look beneath
+the surface &amp; to get hints of the great future that is shaping itself out
+of the crude present, &amp; I believe we shall prove to be of the right sort
+to plant down there.&mdash;O to talk it all over with you, dearest Friend, here
+in London first; I feel as if that would really be&mdash;the joy, the comfort,
+of that. I cannot finish this to-day but send what I have written without
+delay that you may know of the safe arrival of the books. With reverent,
+grateful love from us all.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXXVI" id="LETTER_XXXVI"></a>LETTER XXXVI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>1 Torriano Gardens<br />
+Camden Rd. London<br />
+April 21, 1876.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I must write again, out of a full heart. For the reading of this book,
+&#8220;The Two Rivulets,&#8221; has filled it very full. Ever the deep inward assent,
+rising up strong, exultant my immortal self recognizing, responding to
+your immortal self. Ever the sense of dearness, the sweet, subtle perfume,
+pervading every page, every line, to my sense&mdash;O I cannot put into any
+words what I perceive nor what answering emotion pervades me, flows out
+towards you&mdash;sweetest, deepest, greatest experience of my life&mdash;what I was
+made for&mdash;surely I was made as the soil in which the precious seed of your
+thoughts &amp; emotions should be planted&mdash;try to fulfil themselves in me,
+that I might by &amp; bye blossom into beauty &amp; bring forth rich
+fruits&mdash;immortal fruits. So no doubt other women feel, and future women
+will.</p>
+
+<p>Do not dissuade me from coming this autumn, my dearest Friend. I have
+waited patiently&mdash;7 years&mdash;patiently, yet often, especially since your
+illness, with such painful yearning your heart would yearn towards me if
+you realized it&mdash;I cannot wait any longer. Nor ought I to&mdash;that would
+indeed be sacrificing the prudence that concerns itself with immortal
+things to the prudence that concerns itself only with temporary ones. But,
+indeed, even so far as this latter is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>concerned, there is no sacrifice
+for any. It is by far the best step, for instance, I could take on
+Beatrice&#8217;s account. She is heartily in earnest in her medical studies. I
+am persuaded, too, it is a splendid training for her whether or no she
+ever makes a money-earning profession of it. And in England women have at
+present no means of obtaining a complete medical education. They cannot
+get admission to any Hospital for the clinical part of the course. So that
+she is exceedingly anxious to come where it is possible for her to follow
+out her aims effectually. Then, I am confident she will find America
+congenial to her&mdash;that she is in her essential nature democratic&mdash;&amp; that
+she has the intelligence, the sympathies, earnestness, affectionateness,
+unconventionality needed to pierce through appearances surface &#8220;crudeness&#8221;
+&amp; see &amp; love the great reality unfolding below. So I believe has Herby.
+Then an artist is as free as an author to work where he pleases &amp; reaps as
+much from fresh and widened experiences. He does not contemplate cutting
+himself off from England&mdash;will exhibit here&mdash;very likely take a studio in
+London for a season, a couple of years hence to work among old friends &amp;
+associations &amp; so have double chance &amp; opportunities. Then above all,
+dearest friend, they too see America in &amp; through you&mdash;they too would fain
+be near you. Have no anxiety or misgivings for us. Let us come &amp; be near
+you&mdash;&amp; see if we are made of the right sort of stuff for transplanting to
+American soil. Only advise us where. If it be Philadelphia (which as far
+as offering facilities for Beatrice would, as far as I can learn, suit us
+very well). We must not come, I think, till the end of October, because of
+its being so full. Perhaps indeed, dearest Friend (but dare not build on
+it) we shall talk this over in England. If you are able to take the
+journey, it might, and would, be sure to do you good as well as to rejoice
+the hearts of English friends. But if not, if we are not able to talk over
+our coming, do not feel the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> least anxious about us. We shall light on our
+feet &amp; do very well. Percy seems getting on fairly well, considering what
+a bad time it is in his line of business. I think he will be able to marry
+this autumn or following winter. I shall go and spend a month with him in
+July. Perhaps, indeed, if, as many are prophecying, the iron trade does
+not recover its old pre-eminence here, he may be glad by &amp; bye that I have
+gone over to America &amp; opened a way for him. But if he does not follow me
+then, if I live, I hope to spend a few months with him every three or four
+years, instead of as now a few weeks once a year. Anyhow we have to live
+widely apart. Thanks for the papers just received. Specially welcome the
+account of some stranger&#8217;s interview with you&mdash;for me too before very long
+now the joy of hearing the &#8220;strong musical voice&#8221; read the &#8220;Wound Dresser&#8221;
+or speak.</p>
+
+<p>I have happy thoughts for my companions all day long, helping me over
+every difficulty&mdash;strengthening me. Good-bye, dearest Friend. Love from us
+all.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXXVII" id="LETTER_XXXVII"></a>LETTER XXXVII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>1 Torriano Gardens<br />
+Camden Rd., London<br />
+May 18, 1876.</i></p>
+
+<p>Just a line of birthday greeting, my dearest Friend. May it find you
+enjoying the beautiful spring-time &amp; the grand sights of people &amp; products
+&amp; the music at Philadelphia, notwithstanding drawbacks (but lessening
+drawbacks, I earnestly hope) of health, lameness. Rejoiced, too, perhaps
+with the sight of many dear old friends occasion has brought to your city.
+May all that will do you good come, my dearest Friend. And not least the
+sense of relief &amp; joy in having fulfilled the great task, in the teeth of
+such difficulties relaunched safely, more fully, richly equipt, the ship
+to sail down the great ocean of Time, bearing precious, precious freight
+of seed to be planted in countless successions of human souls, helping
+forward more than even the best lovers of your poems dream, the great
+future of humanity. That is what I believe as surely as I believe in my
+own existence.</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;low star,&#8221; the great star drooping low in the west, has been
+unusually resplendent of a night here lately &amp; by day lilacs &amp; the
+labernums wonderfully brightening dear old smoky London, constant
+reminders all, if I needed any, of the Poet &amp; the Poems, so dear to me.</p>
+
+<p>If I do not hear from you to the contrary I am to take our passage by one
+of the &#8220;States&#8221; Line of Steamers that come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> straight to Philadelphia
+sailing about the 1st Sept.&mdash;&amp; I am told one ought to secure one&#8217;s cabin a
+couple of months or so beforehand. But if there be indeed an increasing
+hope of your coming here in the course of the summer, or if you think it
+would be best for us to go to New York (only I want to go at once where we
+are likely to stop, because of my furniture), let me hear as soon as may
+be, dear Friend. Looking at it purely as concerns the young ones, for some
+reasons it is very desirable to come this year &amp; for others to wait till
+next. With Bee, for instance, we are both losing time &amp; wasting money by
+going over another winter here when there is no complete &amp; satisfactory
+medical course to be had. Then as regards dear Percy, he writes me now
+that though he is doing fairly well, he does not think he will be able to
+take a house &amp; marry till next summer&mdash;&amp; that I am very sorry for. But
+then I think that as I could not be with him nor help him forward, the
+balance goes down on Beatrice&#8217;s side, if I am able to accomplish it.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, my dearest Friend. Loving, tender thoughts shall I send you on
+the 30th. Solemn thoughts outleaping life, immortal aspirations of my soul
+toward your soul. The children&#8217;s love too, please, dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXXVIII" id="LETTER_XXXVIII"></a>LETTER XXXVIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Round Hill, Northampton, Mass.<br />
+Monday, Sept., &#8217;77.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I have had joyful news to-day! Percy&#8217;s wife has a fine little boy&mdash;it was
+born on the 10th, and Norah got through well &amp; is doing nicely; so I feel
+very happy.</p>
+
+<p>Since then Per. has gone to Paris where he is to read a paper before the
+&#8220;Iron and Steel Institute&#8221; on the Elimination of phosphorus from
+Iron&mdash;which is also a little triumph of another kind for him&mdash;for the
+Council which accepted his paper is composed of eminent English
+scientists, &amp; eminent foreign ones will hear it.&mdash;I need not tell you it
+is indescribably lovely here now&mdash;no doubt Kirkwood is the same&mdash;the light
+so brilliant, and yet soft&mdash;the rich autumn tints just beginning to
+appear&mdash;the temperature delicious&mdash;crisp &amp; bracing, yet genial.</p>
+
+<p>The throng of people is gone&mdash;but a few of the pleasantest of the old set
+remain&mdash;&amp; a few interesting new ones have come!&mdash;among them Mrs. Dexter
+from Boston, who was a Miss Ticnor, daughter of the author of the book on
+Spanish literature&mdash;she and her husband full of interesting talk. Also Mr.
+Martin B&mdash;&mdash; and his wife&mdash;a fine specimen of a leading Bostonian. Besides
+these also a physician from Florida whom I much admire&mdash;with a beautiful
+firm tenor voice&mdash;very handsome &amp; graceful too, a true southerner, I
+should say&mdash;(but of Scotch extraction).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>Next week we go to Boston.</p>
+
+<p>I went over the Lunatic Asylum here the other day &amp; saw some strange, sad
+sights&mdash;some figures crouched down in attitudes of such profound dejection
+I shall never forget them&mdash;some very bright and talkative. It is said to
+be the best managed in America. Dr. Earle, who is at the head, is a man of
+splendid capacity for the post&mdash;a noble-looking old man (uncle of those
+Miss Chases you met at our house).</p>
+
+<p>I can&#8217;t settle to anything or think of any thing since I received Percy&#8217;s
+letter but the baby &amp; Norah. Love to you &amp; to Mrs. Whitman<small><a name="f25.1" id="f25.1" href="#f25">[25]</a></small> &amp;
+Hattie<small><a name="f26.1" id="f26.1" href="#f26">[26]</a></small> &amp; Jessie.<small><a name="f27.1" id="f27.1" href="#f27">[27]</a></small></p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dear Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XXXIX" id="LETTER_XXXIX"></a>LETTER XXXIX</h2>
+<h3>BEATRICE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>New England Hospital<br />
+Codman Avenue<br />
+Boston Highlands</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Walt:</span></p>
+
+<p>Hospital life is beginning to seem a long-accustomed life. I enjoy all the
+duties involved &amp; all the human relations. Even getting up in the night is
+compensated for by yielding a sense of importance &amp; independence. I sleep
+in a large room with three windows, &amp; three beds in a row. Breakfast at 7,
+&amp; we are supposed to have seen all our patients before breakfast, but do
+not keep to that rule.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast, round to count pulses &amp; respirations, note condition,
+dress any wound, in charge, etc. At &#189; past 8 o&#8217;clock go the rounds with
+the resident physician (Dr. Berlin), all the students, &amp; superintendent of
+nurses. Then put up medicine, each for her own patients (about 8 in no.),
+give electricity, etc. If one&#8217;s patient has an ache or pain, the nurse
+whistles for the student (my whistle is 2). She sees the patient orders
+what is necessary, or if serious reports to Dr. Berlin. Then there is some
+microscopic work, &amp; copying out the history &amp; daily record of the case &amp;
+making out the temperature charts more than fills in the day. At 8 o&#8217;clock
+we all in conclave report about our patients &amp; talk over any interesting
+case. One of my patients has empyema following pleurisy. I inject into her
+chest about a doz. of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>different preparations. Several of my patients (I
+have all the very sick just now) require very careful watching.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening we go round again &amp; count pulses &amp; respirations &amp; note
+temperatures. If a very sick patient, in the middle of the day; also take
+pulse, etc. The number of visits depending on the need &amp; the competency of
+the nurse. I like introducing lint into wounds (such simple ones as an
+incised abscess of the breast) with the probe, because if I take trouble
+enough I can do it without hurting the patient, much to the patient&#8217;s
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>The other day Mr. &amp; Mrs. Marvin called to see me with Mrs. &amp; Miss
+Callender&mdash;I enjoyed their visit much. To-day Mr. Marvin drove over to
+fetch me to lunch, &amp; I had a beautiful drive over to Dorchester; in the
+afternoon a game of lawn tennis, a stroll down to the creek, &amp; drive home
+by Forest Hill Cemetery &amp; Jamaica Pond. The air was fresh after a shower &amp;
+golden-tinted, &amp; the drive through beautiful lanes &amp; country. All were
+friendly &amp; it was refreshing to emerge from the little hospital world. Mr.
+Marvin&#8217;s cordial face greeted me when I was speaking to some patients in
+hammocks, under the trees, the day he called, much to my surprise.</p>
+
+<p>I was to-day feeling the need of a little change of air &amp; scene, so that
+the visit was most opportune.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morse<small><a name="f28.1" id="f28.1" href="#f28">[28]</a></small> is working away desperately at the bust of you; he feels as
+if he would get on famously if he could only catch a glimpse of you. Now
+might not you come to Boston on your way to Chesterfield, ride up in the
+open horsecars (a very pleasant ride) to see me also and give Mr. Morse
+the benefit of a sitting? How I wish we could get Mrs. Stafford in here;
+the patients get most excellent care. I have great confidence in Dr.
+Berlin &amp; in the attending physician. I do not want her to come for a
+month, because Dr. Berlin has just gone away for a vacation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>I fear no mere visiting once a day of a doctor will do her any good&mdash;she
+needs hygienic treatment&mdash;massage (a woman works here every day on the
+patients who need rubbing &amp; massage), feeding up (I have never yet seen a
+patient whom we could not make eat, appetite or not, by aid of beef-tea &amp;
+milk), perfect rest, &amp; judicious treatment.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Berlin is a learned, charming woman of 28&mdash;she takes advanced views,
+gives no medicine at all in some cases, &amp; if any, few at a time, but
+efficient. She is perfectly unaffected, very intelligent, &amp; has been
+thoroughly trained. She is a Russian.</p>
+
+<p>Please give my love to Mrs. Whitman &amp; remember me to Colonel Whitman. This
+afternoon, when driving with Mr. Marvin, I thought of the pleasant drives
+I have had with Colonel Whitman.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Yours affectionately,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Beatrice C. Gilchrist</span>.</span></p>
+
+<p><br />If it were not for records accumulating mountain high I should have time
+to write to my friends.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XL" id="LETTER_XL"></a>LETTER XL</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Sept. 3, &#8217;78.<br />
+Chesterfield, Mass.</i></p>
+
+<p>I am half<br />
+afraid Herby has<br />
+got a malarious<br />
+place by his description.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I had a lingering hope&mdash;till Herby went south again&mdash;that I should have a
+letter from you, in answer to mine, saying you were coming up to see us
+here. In truth, it was a great disappointment to me, his going back to
+Philadelphia instead of your joining us, or him, either here or somewhere
+near to New York. I wonder where that North Amboyna is that you once
+mentioned to me&mdash;and what kind of a place it is. I have had a long, quiet
+time here, and have enjoyed it very much&mdash;never did I breathe such sweet,
+light, pure air as is always blowing freely over these rocky hills. Rocky
+as they are&mdash;and their sides &amp; ravines are strewn with huge boulders of
+every conceivable size &amp; shape&mdash;they nourish an abundant growth of woods,
+and I fancy the farmers here do a great deal better with their winter
+crops of lumber and bark and maple sugar than with their summer one of
+grain &amp; corn. I expect Herby has described our neighbours to
+you&mdash;specially Levi Bryant, the father of my hostess&mdash;a farmer who lives
+just opposite and has put such heart &amp; soul and muscle &amp; sinew into his
+farming that he has continued to win quite a handsome competence from this
+barren soil (it isn&#8217;t muscle &amp; industry only that are wanted here&mdash;but
+pluck and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>endurance) hauling his timber up &amp; down over the snow &amp; through
+the drifts, along roads that are pretty nearly vertical. I am never tired
+of hearing his stories (nor he of telling them) of hairbreadth escapes for
+him &amp; his cattle&mdash;when the harness or the shafts have broken under the
+tremendous strain&mdash;&amp; nothing but coolness &amp; daring have got him or them
+out of it alive. Generally, as he sits talking, his little boy of eleven
+who bids fair to be like him and can now manage a team or a yoke of oxen
+as well as any man in the parish&mdash;and work almost as hard&mdash;sits close by
+him leaning his head on his father&#8217;s shoulder or breast&mdash;for the rugged
+old fellow has a vein of great gentleness and affectionateness in him &amp; I
+notice the child nestles up to him always rather than to the mother&mdash;who
+is all the same a very kind, amiable, good mother. Then there are
+neighbours of another sort up at the &#8220;Centre&#8221;&mdash;Mr. Chadwick, &amp;c., from New
+York, with whom I have pleasant chats daily when I trudge up to fetch my
+letters&mdash;now &amp; then I get a delightful drive or go on a blackberrying
+party with the folks round&mdash;I expect Giddy over to-day &amp; we shall remain
+here together for about a fortnight&mdash;then back to Round Hill&mdash;where I am
+to meet the Miss Chase whom you may remember taking tea with &amp;
+liking&mdash;then on to Boston to see dear Bee&mdash;&amp; then to New York, where we
+shall meet again at last, I hope ere long. Love to Mr. &amp; Mrs. Whitman&mdash;I
+enjoy her letters. Also to Hattie &amp; Jessie&mdash;who will hear from me by &amp;
+bye. With love to you, dear Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">Good-bye.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XLI" id="LETTER_XLI"></a>LETTER XLI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Concord, Mass.<br />
+Oct. 25th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>The days are slipping away so pleasantly here that weeks are gone before I
+know it. The Concord folk are as friendly as they are intellectual, and
+there is really no end to the kindness received. We are rowed on the
+beautiful river every day that it is warm enough&mdash;a very winding river not
+much broader than your favourite creek&mdash;flowing sometimes through level
+meadows, sometimes round rocky promontories &amp; steep wooded hills which,
+with their wonderful autumn tints, are like a gay flower border mirrored
+in the water. Never in my life have I enjoyed outdoor pleasures more&mdash;I
+hardly think, so much&mdash;enhanced as they are by the companionship of very
+lovable men and women. They lead an easy-going life here&mdash;seem to spend
+half their time floating about on the river&mdash;or meeting in the evening to
+talk &amp; read aloud. Judge Hoar says it is a good place to live and die in,
+but a very bad place to make a living in. Beatrice spent one Sunday with
+us here. We walked to Hawthorne&#8217;s old house in the morning, &amp; in the
+afternoon to the &#8220;Old Manse&#8221; and to Sleepy Hollow, most beautiful of last
+resting places. Tuesday we go on to Boston for a week very loth to leave
+Concord&mdash;at least, I am!&mdash;but Giddy begins to long for city life again.
+And then to New York about the 5th Nov. Herby told you, no doubt, that I
+spent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> an hour or two with Emerson&mdash;and that he looked very beautiful&mdash;and
+talked in a friendly, pleasant manner. A long letter from my sister in
+England tells me Per. looks well and happy &amp; is so proud of his little
+boy&mdash;and that Norah is really a perfect wife to him&mdash;affectionate,
+devoted, and the best of housewives. How glad I am Herby is painting you.
+I wonder if you like the landscape he is working on as well as you did
+&#8220;Timber Creek.&#8221; Miss Hillard has undertaken the charge of a young lady&#8217;s
+education, and is very much pleased with her task. She is in a delightful
+family who make her quite one with them&mdash;live in the best part of New
+York, and pay her a handsome salary. She has the afternoons and Saturday &amp;
+Sunday to herself.&mdash;Concord boasts of having been first to recognize your
+genius. Mr. Alcott &amp; Mr. Sanborn say so. Good-bye, dear Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">A. G.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XLII" id="LETTER_XLII"></a>LETTER XLII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>39 Somerset St.<br />
+Boston<br />
+Nov. 13, &#8217;78.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I feel as if I didn&#8217;t a bit deserve the glorious budget you sent me
+yesterday, for I have been a laggard, dull correspondent of late, because,
+leading such an unsettled kind of life, I don&#8217;t seem to have got well hold
+of myself. Beautiful is the title prose poem&mdash;the glimpse of the autumn
+cornfield: one smells the sweet fragrance, basks in the sunshine with
+you&mdash;tastes all the varied, subtle outdoor pleasures, just as you want us
+to. A lady who has just been calling on me&mdash;Miss Hillard&mdash;no relation of
+the odious Dr. H.&mdash;said, &#8220;Have you seen a lovely little bit about a
+cornfield by Walt Whitman in a New York paper?&#8221; She did not know your
+poems, but was so taken with this. By the bye, I am not quite American
+enough yet to enjoy the sound of the locusts &amp; big grasshoppers&mdash;ours are
+modest little things that only make a gentle sort of whirr&mdash;not that loud
+brassy sound&mdash;couldn&#8217;t help wishing for more birds &amp; less insects when I
+was at Chesterfield&mdash;but I like our English name &#8220;ladybird&#8221; better than
+&#8220;ladybug&#8221;. Do your children always say when they see one, as ours do,
+&#8220;Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home: your house is on fire, your children
+are flown&#8221;? But for the rest&mdash;I believe I am growing a very good American;
+indeed, certain am I there is no more lovable people to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> live amongst
+anywhere in the world&mdash;and in this respect it has been good to give up
+having a home of my own here for awhile&mdash;for I have been thrown amongst
+many more intimately than I could have been otherwise. What you say of
+Herby&#8217;s picture delights me, dear Friend. I have been grieving he was not
+with us, sharing the pleasant times we have had and enlarging his circle
+of friends&mdash;but after all he could not have been doing better&mdash;he must
+come on here by &amp; bye. I wonder if you are as satisfied with his portrait
+of you as with the landscape. I suppose he is gone on to New York to-day.
+I have sighed for dear little Concord many times since I came
+away&mdash;beautiful city as Boston is &amp; many the interesting &amp; kindly people I
+am seeing here: but the outdoor life &amp; the entirely simple, unpretending,
+cordial, friendly ways of Concord &amp; its inhabitants won my heart
+altogether&mdash;one of them came to see me to-day &amp; to ask us to go and spend
+a couple of days with them there again before we leave &amp; I could not say
+nay, though our time is short. There are some portraits in the Art Museum
+here, which interested me a good deal&mdash;of Adams, Hancock, Quincy, &amp;c.,&mdash;&amp;
+of some of the women of that time&mdash;they would form an excellent nucleus of
+a national portrait gallery, which (together with good biographies while
+yet materials &amp; recollections are fresh &amp; abundant) would be a very
+interesting &amp; important contribution to the world&#8217;s history.&mdash;Tennyson&#8217;s
+letter is a pleasure to me to see&mdash;considering his age &amp; the imperfection
+of his sight through life, matters are better rather than worse with him
+than one could have expected. Since that was written a friend (Walter
+White) tells me they&mdash;the Tennysons&mdash;have taken a house in Eaton Sq.,
+London, for the winter. And last, not least, thanks for Mr. Burroughs&#8217;s
+beautiful letter&mdash;that young man is indeed, as he says, like a bit out of
+your poems.</p>
+
+<p>There are two or three fine young men boarding here, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>&amp; Giddy &amp; I enjoy
+their society not a little. Love to your Brothers &amp; Sister. I shall write
+soon as I am settled down in New York to her or Hattie. Love to Mrs.
+Stafford. And most of all to you.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dear friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />I will send T&#8217;s letter in a day or two.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XLIII" id="LETTER_XLIII"></a>LETTER XLIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>112 Madison Ave.<br />
+New York<br />
+Jan. 5, &#8217;79.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Herby has told you of our difficulties in getting comfortable quarters
+here&mdash;and also that we seem now to have succeeded&mdash;not indeed in the way I
+most wished &amp; hoped we had&mdash;in 19th St., taking rooms &amp; boarding
+ourselves&mdash;so that we could have a friend with us when &amp; as we pleased. It
+seems as if that were not practicable unless we were to furnish for
+ourselves. Certainly our experiences there of using another&#8217;s kitchen were
+discouraging&mdash;it was so dirty and uncomfortable that we were glad to take
+refuge in a regular boarding house again before one week was out. It seems
+to me more difficult to get anything of a medium kind in New York than
+elsewhere I have been&mdash;if it isn&#8217;t the best, it is very uninviting indeed.
+Herby is enjoying his work and companionship at the League very much. We
+stand the cold well&mdash;how does it suit you? Is your arm free from rheumatic
+pains? When you come to Mr. J. H. Johnstons, which will be very soon I
+hope, we shall be quite handy, and have a pretty, sunny room&mdash;a sitting
+room by day!&mdash;with a handsome piece of furniture which is metamorphosed
+into a bed at night&mdash;and a large dressing closet with hot &amp; cold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> water
+adjoining&mdash;all very comfortable. O how wistfully do I think of one evening
+in Philadelphia, last winter. I shan&#8217;t begin really to like New York till
+you come and we have had some chats together. I have news from England
+which makes me rather anxious. The Blaenavon Co., to which Per. is
+chemist, has gone into liquidation&mdash;&amp; I don&#8217;t know whether it will
+continue to exist&mdash;or how soon in these dull times he may find a good
+opening elsewhere. Should things go badly for him, either Giddy and I will
+return to England to share [our] home with him there, or else I want him
+to take into serious consideration coming out here, instead of our going
+back. Of course it would be a risky thing for him to do with wife &amp; child,
+in these times, unless some definite opening presented itself, but I
+cannot help thinking that, being an expert in his profession, with first
+rate training &amp; experience, and iron work &amp; metallurgy promising here to
+have such enormous developments, he would be sure to do well in the end;
+and meanwhile we could rub on together somehow. However, we shall see. I
+have laid the matter before him, he &amp; his dear little wife wrote me a very
+brave, cheery letter when they told me the bad news&mdash;&amp; I shall have an
+answer to mine, I suppose, by the end of the month. Kate Hillard read an
+amusing paper on Swinburne at a meeting of the Woman&#8217;s Club in Brooklyn&mdash;&amp;
+we had some fine music too. For the rest, I have not yet presented any
+introductions here.</p>
+
+<p>Have had some beautiful glimpses of the North &amp; East River effects of the
+shipping at sunset, &amp;c.&mdash;Have subscribed to the Mercantile library,&mdash;&amp; are
+beginning to feel at home. Herby &amp; Giddy had been to hear Mr. Frothingham
+this morning, &amp; were much interested. Bee missed us sorely at first&mdash;but
+writes&mdash;when she does write, which is but seldom&mdash;pretty cheerily.
+Friendly remembrance to your brother &amp; sister. I wonder where Hattie &amp;
+Jessie are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> spending their holidays. Love from us all. Good-bye, dear
+friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Had a letter from Mr. Marvin&mdash;all well&mdash;he is doing the Washington letter
+of a N. Eng. paper. Hopes &amp; trusts you are really going to Washington.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XLIV" id="LETTER_XLIV"></a>LETTER XLIV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>112 Madison Ave.<br />
+14 Jan., &#8217;79.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>The pleasantest event since I last wrote has been a visit from Mr.
+Eldridge. We had a long, friendly chat that did me good. Saturday evening
+we went to one of Miss Booth&#8217;s receptions&mdash;met Joaquin Miller there, who
+is just back from Europe&mdash;of course we talked of you. Mrs. Moulton too is
+hoping so you will come to New York during her stay here, which is to last
+a week or two longer. John Burroughs has just sent me a post card to say
+he has returned from a 3-weeks stay with his folks in Delaware Co.&mdash;that
+he hopes to come here soon&mdash;wants Mrs. Burroughs to come too &amp; board for a
+month or so&mdash;wants also &#8220;Walt to come&mdash;&amp; lecture&#8221;&mdash;but &#8220;Walt will not be
+hurried.&#8221; Did I tell you that we found boarding here a young man, Mr.
+Arthur Holland, one of the family who were so very friendly to me &amp; made
+my stay so pleasant both in Concord &amp; Cambridge? He often comes to our
+room of an evening for an hour or two&#8217;s chat, &amp; by the bye, being
+connected with the iron trade he has been able to make some enquiries for
+me as to what Per&#8217;s chances as a scientific metallurgist would be in this
+country&mdash;&amp; I am sorry to say he thinks they would be very poor indeed.
+Prof. Lesley said the same thing; so it is clear I must not urge him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> to
+try the experiment, seeing he has a wife &amp; child. Herby &amp; Giddy both well.
+Love from us all. Good bye, Dear Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Friendly greeting to your brother &amp; sister.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XLV" id="LETTER_XLV"></a>LETTER XLV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>112 Madison Ave.,<br />
+Jan. 27, &#8217;79.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Are you never coming? I do long &amp; long to see you. I am beginning to like
+New York better than I did and to have pleasant times. Had some friendly
+chats with Kate Hillard last week, &amp; went with her to call on Mrs. Putman
+Jacobi, who has a little baby 3 weeks old &amp; is still in her room, but has
+got through very nicely&mdash;She talks well, doesn&#8217;t she? &amp; has a face with
+plenty of individuality in it. Also we went together on Saturday again to
+one of Miss Booth&#8217;s receptions, &amp; there met Mrs. Croly, &amp; had the best
+talk about you I have had this long while. I like her cordiality&mdash;we are
+going to her reception on Sunday &amp; to one at Mrs. Bigelow&#8217;s Wednesday. It
+is true there is not much that can be called social enjoyment at these
+crowded receptions, but they enable you to start many acquaintanceships,
+some of which turn out lasting good. We had some fine harp playing &amp; a
+witty recital at Miss Booth&#8217;s. Miss Selous is back in America. I should
+not wonder if she comes on here soon. Bee is living at the Dispensary now,
+instead of in the Hospital, &amp; finds the comparatively outdoor life&mdash;&amp; the
+freedom from being &#8220;whistled&#8221; for all hours of the day and night as she
+was there&mdash;a wonderful refreshment. That coloured lady, Mrs. Wiley, whom
+you met once at our house, is her fellow labourer &amp; room mate at the
+Dispensary. Bee likes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> her much. I am not sure whether you know the
+Gilders? We spent a couple of hours delightfully with them yesterday
+afternoon. She has a very attractive face, a musical voice, &amp; such a sweet
+smile. They are going to Europe for a four months&#8217; holiday this spring. I
+admire the simple, unconventional way in which they live. Herby is working
+away in the best spirits. He is going to paint that bowling alley subject
+on a large scale. Giddy is sitting by me with her nose in the French
+Dictionary, working away at a novel of Balzac&#8217;s. I have had scarcely any
+letters from England lately!&mdash;and the papers bring none but dismal
+tidings; nevertheless I don&#8217;t believe our sun is going down yet awhile&mdash;we
+shall emerge from this dark crisis the better, not the worse, because
+compelled to grapple with the evils that have caused it, instead of
+passively enduring them. Please give friendly remembrance from me to your
+brothers &amp; sister. Have you been at Kirkwood lately, I wonder? I suppose
+Timber Creek is frozen over. Good-bye, dear Friend. Write soon, or better
+still Come!</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XLVI" id="LETTER_XLVI"></a>LETTER XLVI</h2>
+<h3>HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>New York<br />
+112 Madison Avenue<br />
+February 2nd, 1879.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Darling Walt:</span></p>
+
+<p>I read your long piece in the Philadelphia <i>Times</i> with ever so much
+interest, &amp; with especial delight the delicately told bit about the dear
+old Pond, artistic, because so true. I know that it will please you to
+hear that I have gained tenfold facility with my brush since the autumn.
+It has agreed uncommonly well with me having enlisted under such an
+experienced &amp; able painter as Chase; as a manipulator of the brush he is
+agreed by the experts (Eaton) to have no rival. I may yet be able to paint
+a head of you in <i>one</i> sitting that will do justice to you. Three of my
+pictures are nicely hung at the Water Colour Exhibition Academy of Design,
+the first time that I have exhibited in New York. We had two &amp; three
+engagements every night (with one exception) last week, &amp; go to Mrs.
+Croley&#8217;s to-night. Your friend John Burroughs called last Wednesday&mdash;came
+to try Turkish baths for his malarious trouble, but it seemed to bring on
+his attacks of neuralgia worse. I am sorry that I can report but poorly of
+his health, so painfully excruciating was his neuralgia about his arms at
+times that a Dr. was sent for &amp; morphia injected in his wrist, but I am
+glad to say he reported himself a little better. He hopes that you will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+come and give the lecture on Lincoln this winter; why not, confound it, it
+would be most interesting.</p>
+
+<p>Quite often we go to Miss Booth&#8217;s receptions. Saturday evening, they are
+gay &amp; amusing. Met Mr. Bliss, the gentleman that talked like &#8220;a house
+afire&#8221; one Sunday at your house last winter, you remember.</p>
+
+<p>Last Wednesday I, mother, Giddy, &amp; Kate Hillard went to Mrs. Bigelow&#8217;s
+reception. Miss H. was asked to recite &amp; she recited the &#8220;Swineherd&#8221;
+(Anderson&#8217;s) charmingly, &amp; &#8220;The Faithful Lovers,&#8221; which took every one.
+&#8220;Walk in&#8221; Miller was there (I can&#8217;t spell his name) &amp; lots more.</p>
+
+<p>This morning being Sunday, I took my skates to the Park. The wind was high
+&amp; whirled us about fantastically; ladies seated in wicker chairs were
+pushed rapidly along the Pond&#8217;s smooth icy surface by their gentlemen
+escorts, tall men kissed the ice or sprawled full length on their backs,
+while others flew by like swallows; all this with a church spire peeping
+behind hills dappled with snow &amp; sunshine: what more inspiriting than
+this?</p>
+
+<p>And now dear Walt.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye for the present.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Herbert H. Gilchrist</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XLVII" id="LETTER_XLVII"></a>LETTER XLVII</h2>
+<h3>BEATRICE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>33 Warrenton St.<br />
+Feb. 16, 1879.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Whitman:</span></p>
+
+<p>Although not in word, I have thanked you for your letter &amp; papers by
+enjoying them thoroughly.</p>
+
+<p>Down at this Dispensary we work just as hard as at the Hospital, but our
+spare minutes are our own (no records to write out); our work is under our
+own control; we are out in fresh air half the day, sometimes half the
+night, making intimate acquaintance with all sorts of people &amp; places &amp;
+with far distant parts of Boston.</p>
+
+<p>We have all the responsibility that it is good for young doctors to have,
+i. e., in all difficult or obscure &amp; dangerous cases we are obliged to call
+in older heads &amp; are obliged to report verbally to the visiting physician
+of the month all our cases &amp; our treatment. Only two students live at the
+Dispensary&mdash;Dr. Wiley (the coloured Philadelphia student you saw) &amp;
+myself. In tastes we have much in common &amp; on the whole I prefer to live
+with her rather than with any of the other students. We share rooms. We
+have a bedroom, a drug-room, a treatment room, waiting room for patients,
+&amp; take our meals in the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>A widow woman with two children housekeeps.</p>
+
+<p>I think Boston a very beautiful city. The public Gardens &amp; Commons in the
+busiest part, sloping down from the gilt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> domed state house on Beacon
+hill, threaded by paths in all directions, traversed by the business men,
+the fine ladies, the beggars, etc., etc. One broad, sloping path is given
+up to the boys who want to coast, temporary wooden bridges being thrown
+over the cross paths. Then, crossing South Bay to South Boston is a
+beautiful walk I take from one to four times a day. South Boston looks
+rather dingy; it is inhabited mostly by artisans &amp; mill hands &amp; fishermen,
+but walking up 3rd St., as you cross the lettered streets A, B, C, D,
+etc., you look down upon the harbour&mdash;on bright days bright blue, &amp; a few
+sails to be seen&mdash;at sunset the colours of course are reflected
+gorgeously.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow or other the sea looks doubly beautiful set in dingy S. Boston.</p>
+
+<p>Far over in the West End too we have patients. Last Tuesday I had twins
+all by myself; only one, however, was born alive; the other had been dead
+a week. How delightful that you are feeling so much better. Shall you not
+be coming to Boston sometime before I leave, 1st June?</p>
+
+<p>The Boston I know is not the Boston I knew in books; I am as far off from
+that as if I lived in England&mdash;is not the &#8220;hub&#8221;&mdash;I was reminded of that
+last Sunday when I had time for once to go to church &amp; went to hear Mr. E.
+E. Hale preach and went home to dinner with him....</p>
+
+<p>I like his daughter whom we knew in Philadelphia. She is a clever young
+artist. Dr. Wiley is very popular with her patients, far more so than I.</p>
+
+<p>Please remember me to all the Staffords &amp; give my especial love to Mrs.
+Stafford. Also to Mrs. Whitman.</p>
+
+<p>Yours affectionately,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Beatrice C. Gilchrist</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XLVIII" id="LETTER_XLVIII"></a>LETTER XLVIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>112 Madison Ave.<br />
+March 18, 1879.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I hope you are enjoying this splendid, sunshiny weather as much as we
+are&mdash;the atmosphere here is delicious. In the morning Giddy and I set at
+home busy with needle work, letter writing, and reading. After lunch we go
+out for a walk or to pay visits&mdash;and of an evening very often to
+receptions (but they are not half so jolly as our evenings at
+Philadelphia). Still we have a lively, pleasant time. I like Miss Booth
+very much, with her kindly, generous character and active practical mind.
+So I do Mrs. Croly&mdash;she is more impulsive and enthusiastic. Kate Hillard
+often goes with us, &amp; she is always good company. I had a note from Edward
+Carpenter the other day brought by a lady who had been living near him at
+Sheffield&mdash;an American lady with two very fine little girls who has lately
+lost her husband in England and was on her way back to her parents&#8217; home
+in Pennsylvania&mdash;somewhere beyond Pittsburg. She is one who loves your
+poems, &amp; has great hopes of seeing you in New York. She told me her little
+girls were so fond of Carpenter he of them&mdash;he is first rate with
+children. I hope you will not put off coming to New York till we are
+returning to Philadelphia, which will be some time in May. I find Beatrice
+is so anxious to get further advantages for study in England or Paris
+before she begins to practise, and Herby is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> so strongly advised by Mr.
+Eaton, of whose judgment &amp; experience he thinks very highly, to study in
+Duron&#8217;s Studio in Paris for a year, that I have made up my mind to go
+back, for a time at any rate, this summer; but I shall leave my furniture
+here, and the question of where our future home is to be, open. Herby is
+making great progress. I wish you could see the head of an old woman he
+has just painted&mdash;and I wish he had had as much power when he had such
+splendid chances of painting you. I cannot tell you how vividly and
+pleasantly Chestnut St. on a sunny day rose before me in your jottings.
+Love from us all. Tell your sister I often think of her &amp; shall enjoy a
+chat ever so.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">A. G.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_XLIX" id="LETTER_XLIX"></a>LETTER XLIX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>112 Madison Ave.<br />
+March 26, &#8217;79.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>It seems quite a long while since I wrote, &amp; a <i>very long</i> while since you
+wrote. I am beginning to turn my thoughts Philadelphia-wards that we may
+have some weeks near you before we set out on fresh wanderings across the
+sea; and though I feel quite cheery about them, I look eagerly forward to
+the time beyond that when we have a fixed, final nest of our own again,
+where we can welcome you just when and as you please. Whichever side the
+Atlantic it is, you will come surely? for you belong to the one country as
+much as to the other. And I shall always feel that I do too. I take back
+with me a deep and hearty love for America&mdash;I came indeed with a good deal
+of that, but what I take back is different&mdash;stronger, more real. I went
+over to see friends in Brooklyn yesterday, &amp; it was more lovely than I can
+tell you on the Ferry&mdash;in fact, it was just your poem, &#8220;Crossing Brooklyn
+Ferry&#8221;. Herby still painting away <i>con amore</i>, &amp; making good progress. I
+met Joaquin Miller at the Bigelows last week, &amp; he was very pleasant
+(which isn&#8217;t always the case) and said some very good things to me.
+Thursday we are going to lunch with Mrs. Albert Brown&mdash;perhaps you may
+have heard of her as Bessie Griffiths. She was a Southern lady who, when
+she was about 18, freed all her slaves &amp; left herself penniless. On Sunday
+we take tea at Prof. Rood&#8217;s of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> Columbia College. Kate Hillard we often
+see &amp; have lively chats with. We meet also &amp; see a good deal of General
+Edward Lee&mdash;a fine soldierly looking man, &amp; I believe he distinguished
+himself in the war &amp; was afterwards sent to organize the new Territory of
+Wyoming, &amp; was the first governor. I wish very much that if you or your
+brother knew him or know anything about him, you would tell me&mdash;for
+reasons that I will tell you by &amp; bye. Bee is seeing a great deal of the
+educated coloured people at Boston&mdash;was at the meeting of a literary
+club&mdash;the only white among 20 or 30 coloured ladies&mdash;likes them much.</p>
+
+<p>Write soon, dear Friend. Meanwhile, best love &amp; good-bye.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />No letters from England this long while.</p>
+
+<p>Please give friendly greetings from me to your brother &amp; sister.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_L" id="LETTER_L"></a>LETTER L</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Glasgow<br />
+Friday, June 20, 1879.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>We set foot on dry land again Wednesday morning after a good passage&mdash;not
+a very smooth one&mdash;and not without four or five days of seasickness, but
+after that we really enjoyed the sea &amp; the sky&mdash;it was mostly cloudy, but
+such lovely lights and shades &amp; invigorating breezes! and as we got up
+into northern latitudes, daylight in the sky all night through. The last
+three days we had glorious scenery&mdash;sailed close in under the Giant&#8217;s
+Causeway on the north coast of Ireland&mdash;great sort of natural ramparts &amp;
+bastions or rock, wonderfully grand. Then we sailed on Lough Fozle to land
+a group of Irish folk at Moville&mdash;some of them old people who had not seen
+Ireland for forty years, and who were so happy they did not know what to
+do with themselves. And what with this human interest, and the first
+getting near land again and the rich green-and-golden gorse-covered hills
+&amp; the setting sun streaming along the beautiful lough with golden light,
+it was a sight &amp; a time I shall never forget. Then we entered the Firth of
+Clyde &amp; sailed among the islands&mdash;mountainous Arran, level Bute&mdash;&amp; on the
+other hand the green hills of Ayr, with pleasant towns nestled under them,
+sloping to the Clyde&mdash;this was during the night&mdash;we did not go to bed at
+all it was so beautiful&mdash;&amp; then came a gorgeous sunrise&mdash;&amp; then the
+landing at Greenock &amp; a short railway journey to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> Glasgow, the tide not
+serving to bring our big ship up so far. We had very pleasant (&amp; learned
+withal) companions on the voyage&mdash;the Professor of Greek &amp; of Philosophy
+from Harvard and a young student from Concord, all of whom we have seen
+since we landed and hope to see often again, especially the young student,
+Frank Bigelow, who is a very nice fellow. Herby enjoyed the voyage much &amp;
+so did Giddy. Glasgow is a great, solidly built city, very pleasant [in]
+spite of smoky atmosphere&mdash;full of sturdy, rosy-cheeked people with broad
+Scotch accent. We have been rushing about shopping&mdash;have not yet seen
+Per.&mdash;shall meet him at Durham in a week&#8217;s time &amp; spend a month together
+there where he will be superintending your works. Meanwhile we are going
+to Edinburgh for a few days. I kept thinking of you on the voyage, dear
+friend, &amp; wondering how you would like it&mdash;&amp; whether you could stand being
+stowed away in the little box-like berth at night. I should recommend any
+American friend coming over to try this line&mdash;we had a fine ship&mdash;fine
+officers &amp; crew&mdash;&amp; the latter part, fine scenery. Love to your Brother &amp;
+Sister &amp; to Mr. Burroughs. Address to me for the present.</p>
+
+<p>Care Percy C. Gilchrist<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Blaenavon</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Poutzpool</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mon.</span></p>
+
+<p>Love from us all. I shall write soon again. Good-bye dear Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LI" id="LETTER_LI"></a>LETTER LI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Lower Shincliffe<br />
+Durham<br />
+August 2d, &#8217;79.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I am sitting in my room with my dear little grandson, the sweetest little
+fellow you ever saw, asleep beside me. Giddy and Norah (my 3d daughter)
+are gone into Durham to do some shopping. Bee is up in London on her way
+to Berne in Switzerland, where she has finally decided to complete her
+medical studies. Herby is, I think, staying with Eustace Conway at
+Hammersmith just now. He has been spending a week at Brighton with Edward
+Carpenter &amp; his family&mdash;but I will leave him to tell his own news. We are
+lodging in this little village with its red-tiled roofs &amp; gray stone
+walls, lying among wooded hills, corn fields, meadows, and collieries on
+the banks of the Weir, for the sake of being near Percy &amp; his wife. He is
+superintending here the erection of some kilns for making the peculiar
+kind of basic firebricks needed in his dephosphorization process. Durham
+Cathedral, which was mainly built soon after the Norman conquest, is in
+sight, crowning a wooded hill that rises abruptly from the river-side. It
+looks as solid, majestic, venerable as the rocks &amp; hills&mdash;the interior is
+of wonderful grandeur &amp; beauty. When you enter one of these cathedrals you
+are tempted to say architecture is a lost art with us moderns so far as
+sublimity is concerned&mdash;except in vast engineering works. You<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> would not
+dignify the Weir with the name of a river in America&mdash;it is no bigger than
+Timber Creek&mdash;but it winds about so capriciously through the picturesque
+little city as to make almost an island of the hill on which the castle &amp;
+cathedral stand &amp; to need three great solid stone bridges within a quarter
+of a mile of each other, &amp; with its steep wooded sides carrying nature
+right into the heart of the old town. But the rainy season (we have
+scarcely seen the sun since we have been in England &amp; I believe it is the
+same in France &amp; Italy) and the great depression in trade, especially the
+coal &amp; iron, which chiefly concerns this district, seem to cast a gloom
+over everything. There are whole rows of colliers&#8217; cottages in this
+village empty. Where they go to no one knows, but as soon as the
+collieries reopen they will all reappear. We often meet Colliers returning
+from work&mdash;they look as if they had just emerged from Hades, poor
+fellows&mdash;their faces black as soot&mdash;their lean, bowed legs bare&mdash;I believe
+the mines are hot here; they work with little on&mdash;but they are really the
+cleanest of all workmen, as they take a bath every night on their return
+before supping. The speech here is almost like a foreign tongue to any one
+from the south or middle of England. I wonder if you have yet read Dr.
+Bucke&#8217;s book.<small><a name="f29.1" id="f29.1" href="#f29">[29]</a></small> It is about the only thing I have read since my return.
+It suggests deeply interesting trains of thought.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder if you are at Camden, taking your daily trips across the ferry &amp;
+strolls up Chestnut St. I hardly realized till I left it how dearly I love
+America&mdash;great sunny land of hope and progress&mdash;or how my whole life has
+been enriched with the human intercourse I had there. Give my love to
+those of our friends whom you know &amp; tell them not to forget us. I have
+had a long letter from Emma Lazarus. I suppose Hattie and Jessie are
+spending their holidays at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> Camden &amp; that Hattie has pretty well done with
+school. We have been chiefly busy with needlework since we came&mdash;preparing
+dear Bee for Berne. I miss her sadly&mdash;had quite hoped we should have all
+been together at Paris this winter&mdash;but it seems the course is much longer
+&amp; more arduous [there]. We spent a week in Edinburgh before we came on
+here. It is by far the most beautiful city I have ever seen. The journey
+between it and Berwick-on-Tweed lies through the richest &amp; best cultivated
+farm land in Britain&mdash;the sea sparkling on one side of us &amp; these fertile
+fields dotted with splendid flocks &amp; herds&mdash;with large comfortable-looking
+farmhouses, &amp; here &amp; there an old castle; it was singularly enjoyable. How
+I have wished everywhere that you were with us to share the sight&mdash;and the
+best is that you would return home more than ever proud &amp; rejoicing in
+America. It is a land where humanity is having, and is going to have, such
+chances as never before. Giddy sends her love. Mine also &amp; to your brother
+&amp; sister. Good-bye, dear Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Please write soon; I am longing for a letter.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LII" id="LETTER_LII"></a>LETTER LII<span class="foot"><a name="f30.1" id="f30.1" href="#f30">[30]</a></span></h2>
+<h3>WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>(Camden, New Jersey.)<br />
+(August, 1879.)</i></p>
+
+<p>Thank you, dear friend, for your letter; how I should indeed like to see
+that <i>Cathedral</i><small><a name="f31.1" id="f31.1" href="#f31">[31]</a></small>, I don&#8217;t know which I should go for first, the
+Cathedral or <i>that baby</i>.<small><a name="f32.1" id="f32.1" href="#f32">[32]</a></small> I write in haste, but I am determined you
+shall have a word, at least, promptly in response.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LIII" id="LETTER_LIII"></a>LETTER LIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>1 Elm Villas, Elm Row, Heath St.<br />
+Hampstead, Dec. 5, &#8217;79, London, England.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>You could not easily realize the strong emotion with which I read your
+last note and traced on the little map<small><a name="f33.1" id="f33.1" href="#f33">[33]</a></small>&mdash;a most precious possession
+which I would not part with for the whole world&mdash;all your
+journeyings&mdash;both in youth &amp; now. Mingled emotions! for I cannot but feel
+anxious about your health, &amp; if I didn&#8217;t know it was very naught to ask
+you questions, should beg you [to] tell me in what way your health has
+failed&mdash;whether it is the rheumatic &amp; neuralgic affection that troubled
+you the last spring we were in Philadelphia, or whether the fatigues &amp;
+excitements &amp; the very enjoyments &amp; full life, &amp; burst of prophetic joy,
+as it were, had proved too great a strain. But you have accomplished
+another thing, that had to be done in your life &amp; I exult with you&mdash;have
+seen the vast magnificent theatre, the free, unfettered conditions whereon
+humanity will enact a new drama, with the parts all so differently cast!
+the rest&mdash;the moving spirit of it all&mdash;hints of this, at least&mdash;flashes,
+glimpses, I find in your greatest poems. But, dear Friend, I think
+humanity moves forward [slowly] even under splendid conditions&mdash;you must
+give it a century or two instead of 50 years&mdash;before at least the crowning
+glories of a corresponding literature &amp; art will develope
+themselves&mdash;Nature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> has got plenty of time before her, &amp; obstinately
+refuses to be hurried; witness her dealings with the mere rocks &amp; stones.</p>
+
+<p>Bee is at Berne, working away merrily, rejoicing in the really splendid
+advantage for medical study there open to her. She mastered German so as
+to be able to speak &amp; understand it&mdash;lectures &amp; all&mdash;with ease during the
+two months at Wiesbaden &amp; she has found a thoroughly comfortable home with
+some excellent, intelligent ladies who are fond of her &amp; see to her bodily
+welfare in every possible way. I have my dear little grandson with me
+here&mdash;as engaging a little toddler as the sun ever shone upon&mdash;so
+affectionate &amp; sweet-tempered &amp; bright. I wish I could see him sitting on
+your knee. You will certainly have to come to us as soon as ever we have a
+comfortable home, won&#8217;t you? Giddy is well &amp; as rosy as ever. She &amp; Herby
+send their love. I have seen Rossetti&mdash;he was full of enquiries &amp;
+affectionate interest in all that concerns you&mdash;&amp; loth we were to break
+off our conversation &amp; hurry back&mdash;but Hampstead, the pleasantest &amp;
+prettiest of all our suburbs, is terribly inaccessible &amp; cuts us off a
+good deal from the intercourse with old friends I had looked forward to.
+It is on the top of a high hill (as high as the top of St. Pauls), &amp; looks
+down on one side over the great city with its canopy of smoke, &amp; on the
+other over a wide, pleasant stretch of green &amp; fertile Middlesex&mdash;has
+moreover pleasant lanes, solid old houses, shaded by big elms, &amp; other
+picturesque features &amp; such an abundance of keen, fresh air this cold
+weather too! We sigh for the warmth of an American house indoors often &amp;
+for American sunshine out of doors. Rossetti has a beautiful little group
+of children growing up around him&mdash;I think the eldest girl will grow up a
+real beauty &amp; the boy too is a noble little fellow. I meet numbers so
+delighted to hear about you. I believe Addington Symonds is preparing a
+book which treats largely of your Poems.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>Glad to hear that Brother &amp; Sister &amp; nieces are all well. I wish I could
+write to some of them, but what with needlework, an avalanche of letters,
+the care of my dear little man&mdash;the re-editing of my husband&#8217;s life of
+Blake, to which there will be a considerable addition of letters newly
+come to light, I hardly know which way to turn. Per. &amp; my nephew &amp; the
+&#8220;Process&#8221; have made a great stride forward. Won two important law suits at
+Berlin, where the Bessemer ring &amp; Krupp at their head were trying to oust
+them of their patent rights. Also it is practically making good way in
+England. So by &amp; bye the money will begin to flow in, I suppose&mdash;but has
+not done so yet.</p>
+
+<p>I trust, dearest Friend, this will find you safe &amp; fairly well again at
+Camden, with plenty of great, happy thoughts to brood over for the winter.</p>
+
+<p>Love from us all. Good-bye.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LIV" id="LETTER_LIV"></a>LETTER LIV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>5 Mount Vernon<br />
+Hampstead<br />
+Jan. 25, &#8217;80.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Welcome was your postcard announcing recovered health &amp; return to Camden!
+May this find you safe there, well &amp; hearty, able to go freely to &amp; fro on
+the ferries &amp; streets. I wish one of those old red Market Ferry cars were
+going to land you at our door once more! What you would have to tell us of
+western scenes &amp; life! What teas &amp; what evenings we would have&mdash;you would
+certainly have to say &#8220;there is a point beyond which&#8221;&mdash;&amp; would have pretty
+late trips back of moonlight. Strange episode in my life! so unlike what
+went before &amp; what comes after&mdash;those evenings in Philadelphia&mdash;yet so
+natural, familiar, dear! If I were American-born, I certainly should not
+want to change it for any country in the world, and if as you have
+dreamed&mdash;as I too have dreamed&mdash;it is given us hereafter to have another
+spell of life on this old earth, may my lot be cast there when the great
+time dimly preparing is actually come. But meanwhile, dear Friend, my work
+lies here: innumerable are the ties that bind us. And I can only hope &amp;
+dream that you will come &amp; stay with us awhile when we have a home of our
+own. That dear little grandson stayed with me two months till I really
+didn&#8217;t know how to part with him, &amp; grew more &amp; more engaging &amp; pretty in
+his ways every day&mdash;rapid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> indeed is the opening of the little bud at that
+age&mdash;between 1 &amp; 3&mdash;&amp; the way he had of looking up &amp; giving you little
+kisses of his own accord would win anybody&#8217;s heart. Bee&#8217;s letters continue
+as cheery as ever&mdash;she is heartily enjoying work &amp; life, and accomplishing
+the purpose she has set her heart upon, &amp; the people she is with are so
+good and kindly, it is quite a home. She is working a good deal with the
+microscope. Her outdoor recreation is skating. Herby is getting on very
+nicely. He has had a commission to make some designs for a new kind of
+painted tapestry&mdash;and his figures &#8220;Audrey &amp; Touchstone&#8221; are very much
+admired &amp; have been bought by a rich American, &amp; he has a commission for
+more. But the summer work he has set his heart upon is a portrait of you
+from all the material he brought with him&mdash;the many attempts he made
+there&mdash;handled with his present improved skill with the brush. I hope you
+will be able by &amp; bye to send him the photograph he asked for&mdash;but no
+hurry. Edward Carpenter came up from Sheffield and spent an evening with
+us&mdash;which we all heartily enjoyed&mdash;he is a dear fellow. We talked much of
+you. He has been giving lectures this winter on the Lives of the Great
+Discoverers in Science. Carpenter knows intimately, goes freely among, a
+greater range &amp; variety of men than any Englishman I know&mdash;he has a way of
+making himself thoroughly welcome by the firesides of mechanics &amp; factory
+workers&mdash;his own kith &amp; kin are aristocratic.</p>
+
+<p>Giddy is taking singing lessons again, &amp; hoping by the time you next see
+her to be able to contribute her share of the evening&#8217;s pleasure. Percy is
+still working away indomitably at the &#8220;process,&#8221; which is gaining ground
+rapidly on the continent, &amp; I hope I may say slowly &amp; surely in England. I
+see the Gilders now &amp; then&mdash;indeed they are coming up to lunch with us
+to-morrow&mdash;Mr. Gilder<small><a name="f34.1" id="f34.1" href="#f34">[34]</a></small>
+is the better for rest&mdash;&amp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> they seem to enjoy
+England; but England has done her very worst in the way of climate ever
+since they have been here. O I do long for a little American sunshine. We
+met Henry James at the Conways last Sunday &amp; found him one of the
+pleasantest of talkers. Rossetti &amp; all your friends are well. Please give
+my love to your brothers &amp; sister. Were Jessie &amp; Hattie at home in St.
+Louis, I wonder, when you were there? Love from us all.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, Dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Please give my love to John Burroughs when you write or see him.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LV" id="LETTER_LV"></a>LETTER LV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Marley, Haslemere<br />
+England<br />
+Aug. 22, &#8217;80.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I have had all the welcome papers with accounts of your doings, and to-day
+a nice long letter from Mrs. Whitman, which I much enjoyed, giving me
+better account of your health again, &amp; of your great enjoyment of the
+water travel through Canada. So I hope, spite of drawbacks, you will
+return to Camden for the winter quite set up in body, as well as full of
+delightful memories. If only we were at 22nd St. to welcome you back &amp;
+talk it all over at tea! Ah, those evenings! My friends told me I looked
+ten years younger when I came back from America than when I went. And I am
+not yet quite re-acclimatized; &amp; what with missing the sunshine &amp; working
+a little too hard, was feeling quite knocked up: so Bee insisted on my
+coming down, or rather up, here to stay with some very kind &amp; dear
+friends. The house stands all alone on a great heath-covered hill, and
+below &amp; around are endless coppices, so that you step from the lawn into
+[a] winding wood-path, along which I wander by the hour: and from my
+window I look over much such a view as we had at Round Hill Hotel,
+Northampton, this time two years, only that with the soft haze that is so
+often spread over our landscape, the distant hill looks more ghostly in
+the moonlight. My friend is a noble, large-hearted, capable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> woman, who
+devotes all her life and energies to keeping alive an invalid husband; and
+he well deserves her care, for he has a beautiful nature, too, &amp; their
+mutual affection is unbounded. He is just ordered by the doctors to leave
+the home they have made for themselves up here&mdash;which is as lovely as it
+can be&mdash;&amp; to spend two years at least in Italy. So it is a sorrowful time
+with them&mdash;they have no children, but have adopted a little niece. Our new
+house is just ready &amp; we are daily expecting our furniture from America.
+Herby has been working as usual, making good progress &amp; has just done a
+beautiful little drawing for the new edition of his father&#8217;s book. Bee,
+you will be glad to hear, has decided to continue her medical studies &amp; is
+going to be assistant to a lady doctor at Edinburgh, who is to pay her
+sufficient salary to cover all remaining expenses. Meanwhile we have got
+her at home for a few weeks to help us through with the move in, and a sad
+pinch it will be to part with her again. Giddy has been paying a
+delightful visit to some friends of Carpenter&#8217;s near Leeds&mdash;a Quaker
+family&mdash;the daughter very lovable &amp; admirable. We do not forget the
+Staffords<small><a name="f35.1" id="f35.1" href="#f35">[35]</a></small> nor they us. Mont. often sends Herby a magazine or a token.
+Love to them when you see them, &amp; to Mr. &amp; Mrs. Whitman &amp; Hattie &amp; Jessie
+&amp; kindest remembrance to Dr. Bucke. Send me a line soon, dear Friend&mdash;I
+think of you continually &amp; know that somewhere &amp; somehow we are to meet
+again, &amp; that there is a tie of love between us that time &amp; change &amp; death
+itself cannot touch.</p>
+
+<p>With love,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LVI" id="LETTER_LVI"></a>LETTER LVI</h2>
+<h3>HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner, England<br />
+12 Well Road, Hampstead, London<br />
+November 30th, 1880.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Walt:</span></p>
+
+<p>Your postcard came to hand some little time ago. I was pleased to get it,
+to hear of your being well, &amp; with your friends. I have been extremely
+busy seeing after the new edition of my father&#8217;s book;<small><a name="f36.1" id="f36.1" href="#f36">[36]</a></small> the work of
+seeing such a richly illustrated &#8220;edition de luxe&#8221; through the press was
+enormous, but it is done! The binders are now doing their work, &amp; next
+Tuesday the reviewers will be doing theirs&mdash;I defy them to find any fault
+with the book. I dare say you think it &#8220;tall&#8221; talk, but I think that it is
+the most perfectly gotten up book that I ever have seen. My mother has
+written an admirable memoir of my father at the end of the second vol.</p>
+
+<p class="center">POND MUSINGS<br />
+(Pen sketch of a butterfly)<br />
+by<br />
+WALT WHITMAN</p>
+
+<p>I thought that this was to be the title of your prose volume. I will
+undertake the illustrations, choosing the paper (hand made), everything
+except the expense of reproducing, etc.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> I should say London is the place
+to have things executed in: if you wish to give photos they must be drawn
+by an artist and reproduced; no photo ever looked well in a book yet! they
+haven&#8217;t decorative importance and don&#8217;t blend with type. I should suggest
+that we should imitate the artistic size &amp; style of your earliest edition
+of &#8220;Leaves of G.,&#8221; a large, thin, flat volume, a fanciful, but as
+inexpensive as possible, cover written in gold on blue, a waterlily say:
+but I could think this over. I will design fanciful tailpieces to be woven
+in with the text; as a frontispiece the drawing that I gave you, retouched
+by me, and reproduced by the Typographic Etching Company, 23 Farringdon
+street, London, E. C. All these are only suggestions, which I am prepared
+to execute in right earnest thought. I read your letter to mother with
+interest. We like our new house so much, &amp; I am sure that you would. You
+must come and stay with us &amp; stroll on Hampstead Heath, &amp; ride down into
+London upon an omnibus &amp; sit to some good sculptor here in London (Boem
+say). And you yourself could make arrangements with the publishers. With
+remembrance to friends,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Herbert H. Gilchrist</span>.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LVII" id="LETTER_LVII"></a>LETTER LVII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Well Rd., Hampstead<br />
+Apr. 18, &#8217;81.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I have just been sauntering in our little but sunny garden which slopes to
+the South&mdash;surveying with much satisfaction some fruit trees&mdash;plum, green
+gage, pear, cherry, apple&mdash;which we have just had planted to train up
+against the house and fence&mdash;in which fashion fruit ripens much better
+with our English modicum of sunshine, besides taking no room &amp; casting no
+shade over your little bit of ground&mdash;Then we have filled our large window
+with flowers in pots which make the room smell as delicious as a garden.
+Giddy is assiduous in keeping them well watered &amp; tended.&mdash;Welcome was
+your postcard&mdash;with the little rain-bird&#8217;s coy note in it. But I had not
+before heard of your illness, dear friend&mdash;the letter before, you spoke of
+being unusually well, as I trust you are again now, &amp; enjoying the spring.
+I am well again so far as digestion &amp;c. goes; but bronchitis asthma of a
+chronic kind still trouble me. My breath is so short I cannot walk, which
+is a privation. I am going, at the beginning of June, to stay with Bee in
+Edinburgh, as she will not have any holiday or be able to come &amp; see us
+this year, &amp; much am I longing to be with her. Have you begun to have any
+summer thoughts, dear Walt? And do they turn towards England, &amp; our nest
+therein? Yes, I have received<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> &amp; have enjoyed all the papers &amp;
+cuttings&mdash;dearly like what you said of Carlyle. Everyone here is speaking
+bitterly of the harsh judgments &amp; sarcastic descriptions of people in the
+&#8220;reminiscenses.&#8221; But I know that at bottom his heart was genial and good &amp;
+that he wrote those in a miserable mood&mdash;&amp; never looked at them again
+afterwards. I hope you received the little memoir of my husband all right.
+Herby is very busy with a drawing of you&mdash;hopes that with the many
+sketches he made, &amp; the vivid impress on his memory &amp; the help of
+photographs, it will be good. I wish he had possessed as much power with
+the brush when he was in America as he has now&mdash;he is making very great
+progress in mastery of the technique. I observe, too, that he reads &amp;
+dwells upon your poems&mdash;especially the &#8220;Walt Whitman&#8221;&mdash;with growing
+frequency &amp; delight. We often say, &#8220;Won&#8217;t Walt like sitting in that sunny
+window?&#8221; or &#8220;by that cheery open fire&#8221; or &#8220;sauntering on the heath&#8221;&mdash;&amp;
+picture you here in a thousand different ways. I believe Maggie Lesley is
+coming from Paris, where she is studying art in good earnest, at the
+beginning of May, &amp; then will come and spend a few days with us. Welcome
+are American friends! The Buxton Forman&#8217;s took tea with us last week &amp; we
+had pleasant talk of you &amp; of Dr. Bucke. Mrs. Forman is a sincere,
+sympathetic, motherly woman whom you would like. The Rossetti&#8217;s too have
+been to see us&mdash;we didn&#8217;t think William in the best health or spirits&mdash;&amp;
+his wife was not looking well either, but then another baby is just
+coming.</p>
+
+<p>This Easter time the poorest of London working folk flock in enormous
+numbers to Hampstead Heath; it is a sight that would interest you&mdash;they
+are rougher &amp; noisier &amp; poorer than such folks in America&mdash;&amp; the men more
+prone to get the worse for drink&mdash;but there is a good deal of fun &amp;
+merriment too&mdash;the girls &amp; boys racing about on donkeys (who have a pretty
+hard time of it)&mdash;plenty of merry-go-rounds&mdash;&amp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> enjoyment of the pure air
+&amp; sunshine, &amp; such sights, more than they know. The light is failing,
+dearest friend; so with love from us all, good-bye.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Friendliest greeting to your brother &amp; sister &amp; to Hattie &amp; Jessie when
+you write &amp; to the Staffords.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LVIII" id="LETTER_LVIII"></a>LETTER LVIII</h2>
+<h3>HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner, Well Road<br />
+North London<br />
+Hampstead, England<br />
+June 5th, 1881, Sunday afternoon</i><br />
+5 P. M.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Walt:</span></p>
+
+<p>You don&#8217;t write me a letter nor take any notice of my magnificent offers
+concerning &#8220;Pond Musings&#8221;, etc. however, I will forgive you this
+oft-repeated offence. I often think of you, very often of America and
+things generally there, and nearly always with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>My mother is away staying with Beatrice in Edinburgh city, recruiting her
+health, which has most sadly needed it of late. So I and Grace &amp; a new
+Scotch lassie, one Margaret, who officiates as servant most efficaciously
+too, I can tell you (such scrubbing &amp; cleaning as you never saw the like)
+we three, I say, are alone at Keats Corner; cool sitting here in our long
+drawing-room (hung with innumerable pictures as of yore), although it has
+been scorchingly hot this past month. The morning I spend sketching on
+Hampstead Heath, which is lovely just now, all the May-trees are in full
+bloom the gorse &amp; broom are a blaze of yellow, the rooks fly constantly by
+a quarter of a mile (seemingly) overhead, the sly fellows giving some side
+like dart when you look up at them even at that height. I am painting one
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> them; so I have to look up pretty often. In the early morning the
+nightingale sings, oh, so sweetly, long trills &amp; roulades in the most
+accomplished manner.</p>
+
+<p>Last Wednesday Miss Ellen Terry, whose name you are doubtless familiar
+with as being the leading actress in London, well, she called upon me to
+ask my advice or opinion of a drawing connected with my father&#8217;s book.
+Ellen Terry expressed herself highly interested in our house, pictures,
+decorations and so forth. Her manner was a little stagey, but graceful to
+the extreme, and you could see peeping out of this theatric manner a kind,
+good heart, oh, so kind, I feel as if I would do anything for her, her
+manners were so winning. &#8220;Will you come to the stage entrance of the
+Lyceum some day soon and you shall have stalls for two; now will you come?
+Do.&#8221; Were her last words to Grace. I called on her at Kensington last
+week, returning the drawing, and I was so charmed with two beautiful
+children of hers, a tall, fair girl, a pretty mixture of shyness and
+self-possession that quite won me. She too I should fancy will be a great
+actress some day, she has such a bright face. The boy, Master Ted, was
+nice too.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I gave Ellen Terry a proof of a drawing that I have just completed
+for Dr. Bucke&#8217;s book&mdash;a job I got through Buxton Forman, a great friend of
+Bucke&#8217;s, done <i>con amore</i> on my part. This drawing has been beautifully
+reproduced by the new photo intaglio-process. I hope Dr. Bucke will like
+it, but I should not expect great things from him in that line, judging
+from the twopenny hapenny little pen &amp; ink sketch by Waters which he sent
+over in the first instance; however, Forman rescued him from that &amp; so far
+he has been guided by his friend. Whether he will when he sees my drawing,
+we neither of us know; but both feel to have done our best in the matter.
+I said that Ellen Terry must ask for you when she goes to America, which
+she contemplates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> some day. I have sold the last drawing I made in New
+York of you for &pound;10. 10s to Buxton Forman ($50. odd). Church bells have
+just commenced chiming in the distance, a sound I like better than the
+parsons. I hear that the young American artists are doing capitally
+filling their pockets. My cousin Sidney Thomas is, or was, in America, a
+good deal lionized, I understand. If at any time you favour me with a
+letter let it be a letter and not a postcard please. I have been reading
+Carlyle&#8217;s reminiscences&mdash;good stuff in them, brilliant touches, but
+dreadfully morbid, don&#8217;t you think? &amp; one shuts the book up with a feeling
+that in some respect one Carlyle is enough in the world: &amp; yet in some
+respects a million wouldn&#8217;t be too many. I often think of your remark to
+us one day that tolerance is the rarest quality in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Interested in those Boston scraps you send my mother. You have always been
+pretty well received in Boston, have you not&mdash;I mean in the Emerson days?
+Pity that when Emerson is no more there will be no fine portrait of him in
+existence; there was a nobility stamped upon his face that I never saw the
+like of, and which should have been caught and stamped forever on canvas.</p>
+
+<p>We all see something of the Formans &amp; all like them; they have so much
+character, rather unusual in literary folk of the lighter sort, I fancy;
+but there is something very fresh and original about Forman. Nice children
+they have, too. Miss Blind is bringing out a volume of poems; why will
+people all imagine they can write poetry? William Rossetti is writing a
+hundred sonnets&mdash;writes one a day; one about John Brown is not bad: and
+many are instructive, but are in no sense poems. I am going down to tea &amp;
+must not keep Grace waiting any longer. Love to you.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Herbert H. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LIX" id="LETTER_LIX"></a>LETTER LIX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>12 Well Road, Hampstead<br />
+London, Dec. 14, &#8217;81.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Your welcome letter to hand. I have longed for a word from you&mdash;could not
+write myself<small><a name="f37.1" id="f37.1" href="#f37">[37]</a></small>&mdash;was stricken dumb&mdash;nay, there is nothing but silence for
+me still. Herby wrote to Mrs. Stafford first, thinking that so the shock
+would come less abruptly to you.</p>
+
+<p>I heard of you at Concord in a kind long letter from Frederick Holland,
+with whose wife you had some conversation. Indeed all that sympathy and
+warm &amp; true words of love &amp; sorrow &amp; highest admiration &amp; esteem for my
+darling could do to comfort me I have had&mdash;and most &amp; best from America.
+And many of her poor patients at Edinburgh went sobbing from the door when
+they heard they should see her no more.</p>
+
+<p>The report of your health is comforting dear friend. Mine too is better&mdash;I
+am able to take walks again&mdash;though still liable to sudden attacks of
+difficult breathing.</p>
+
+<p>Herby is working hard&mdash;has just been disappointed over a competition
+design which he sent in to the Royal Academy&mdash;a very poor &amp; specious work
+obtaining the premium&mdash;but is no whit discouraged &amp; has no need to be, for
+he is making great progress&mdash;works hard, loves his work &amp; is of the stuff
+where of great painters are made, I am persuaded&mdash;so he can afford to
+wait. Giddy is not quite so well &amp; strong as I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> could wish, but there
+seems nothing serious. She is working diligently at the development of her
+voice&mdash;&amp; is learning German. Dr. Bucke&#8217;s friend, Mr. Buxton Forman, &amp; his
+wife are very warm, staunch friends of Herby&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>Please give my love to your sister, and tell her that her good letter
+spoke the right words to me &amp; that I shall write before very long. Thanks
+for the paper, dear friend&mdash;&amp; for those that came when I was too
+overwhelmed but which I have since read with deep interest&mdash;those about
+your visit to your birthplace. With love from us all&mdash;good-bye, dearest
+Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LX" id="LETTER_LX"></a>LETTER LX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>12 Well Road<br />
+Jan 29, &#8217;82.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Your letter to Herby was a real talk with you. I don&#8217;t know why I punish
+myself by writing to you so seldom now, for indeed to be near you, even in
+that way would do me good&mdash;often &amp; often do I wish we were back in America
+near you. As I write this I am sitting to Herby for my portrait again&mdash;he
+has never satisfied himself yet: but this one seems coming on nicely&mdash;and
+so is the Consuelo picture. Another one he has in his mind is to be called
+&#8220;The tea-party,&#8221; and it is to be the old group round our table in
+Philadelphia&mdash;you &amp; me and dear Bee &amp; Giddy &amp; himself. He thinks that what
+with memory &amp; photograph &amp; the studies he made when with you, he will be
+able to put you &amp; my darling on the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>Giddy&#8217;s voice is developing into a really fine contralto &amp; she has the
+work in her to become an artist, I think &amp; will turn out one of the
+tortoises who outstrip the hares. Percy and Norah are spending the winter
+in London (at Kensington)&mdash;and we can get round by train in half an hour;
+so I often see them and the dear little man. Do you remember the Miss
+Chases&mdash;two pleasant maiden ladies who took tea with us once in
+Philadelphia &amp; talked about Sojourner Truth? One of the sisters is in
+London this winter &amp; has been several times to see us. The birds are
+beginning to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> sing very sweetly here&mdash;&amp; our room is full of the perfume of
+spring flowers&mdash;indoor ones. Did dear Bee tell you, in the long letter she
+once wrote you, how much she loved the Swiss ladies with whom she made her
+home while in Berne? A more tender &amp; beautiful love and sorrow than that
+with which they cherish the memory of her never grew in any heart. I think
+you will like to see some of their letters&mdash;please return them, for they
+are very precious to me (the little matters they thank me for are some of
+dear Bee&#8217;s things which I sent them for tokens). Love to your sister &amp;
+brother. How are Mr. Marvin &amp; Mr. Burroughs? Best love from us all.
+Good-bye, dear Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXI" id="LETTER_LXI"></a>LETTER LXI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>12 Well Road<br />
+Hampstead<br />
+May 8th, &#8217;82.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Herby went to David Bognes<small><a name="f38.1" id="f38.1" href="#f38">[38]</a></small> about a week ago: he himself was out, but
+H. saw the head man, who reported that the sale of &#8220;Leaves of Grass&#8221; was
+progressing satisfactorily. I hope you have received, or will receive,
+tangible proof of the same. Bognes is a young publisher, but, I believe
+from what I hear, a man to be relied on. His father was the publisher of
+my husband&#8217;s first literary venture &amp; behaved honourably. Herby brought
+away for me a copy of the new edition. I like the type like that of &#8217;73, &amp;
+the pale green leaf it is folded in so to speak. I find a few new friends
+to love&mdash;perhaps I have not yet found them all out. But you must not
+expect me to take kindly to any changes in the titles or arrangement of
+the old beloved friends. I love them too dearly&mdash;every word &amp; <i>look</i> of
+them&mdash;for that. For instance, I want &#8220;Walt Whitman&#8221; instead of &#8220;Myself&#8221; at
+the top of the page. Also my own longing is always for a chronological
+arrangement, if change at all there is to be; for that at once makes
+biography of the best kind. What deaths, dear Friend! As for me, my heart
+is already gone over to the other side of the river, so that sometimes I
+feel a kind of rejoicing in the swelling of the ranks of the great company
+there. Darwin, with his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> splendid day&#8217;s work here gently closed; Rossetti,
+whose brilliant genius had got entangled in a premature physical decay, so
+that <i>his</i> day&#8217;s work was over too! In a letter to me, William, who was
+the best, most faithful &amp; loving of brothers to him, says, &#8220;I doubt
+whether he would ever have regained that energy of body &amp; concentration of
+mental resource which could have enabled him to resume work at his full &amp;
+wonted power. Without these faculties at ready command my dear Gabriel
+would not have been himself.&#8221; Edward Carpenter&#8217;s father, too, is gone, but
+he at a ripe age without disease&mdash;sank gently.</p>
+
+<p>The photographs I enclose are but poor suggestions&mdash;please give one to
+Mrs. Whitman with my love, or if you prefer to keep both, I will send her
+others. Does the idea ever come into your head, dear Friend, of spending a
+little time this summer or autumn in your English home at Hampstead?</p>
+
+<p>Herby is well and working happily. So is Grace. Little grandson &amp; his
+parents away in Worcestershire.</p>
+
+<p>It is indescribably lovely spring weather here just now. A carpenter near
+us has a sky-lark in a cage which sings as jubilantly as if it were
+mounting into the sky, &amp; is so tame that when he takes it out of the cage
+to wash its little claws, which are apt to get choked up with earth, in
+warm water, it breaks out singing in his hand! Love from us all, dearest
+Friend. Good-bye.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Affectionate greetings to your brother &amp; sister &amp; Hattie &amp; Jessie.</p>
+
+<p>Do you ever see Mr. Marvin? If so, give our love, we hope to see him one day.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXII" id="LETTER_LXII"></a>LETTER LXII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Well Rd., Hampstead, London<br />
+Nov. 24, &#8217;82.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>You have long ere this, I hope, received Herby&#8217;s letter telling of the
+safe arrival of the precious copy of &#8220;Specimen Days,&#8221; with the portraits:
+it makes me very proud. Your father had a fine face too&mdash;there is
+something in it that takes hold of me &amp; that seems to be a kind of natural
+background or substratum to the radiant sweetness of that other sacred &amp;
+beloved face completing your parentage. I like heartily too the new
+portraits of you: they are all wanted as different aspects: but the two
+that remain my favourites are the portrait taken about 30 without coat of
+any kind, and the one you sent me in &#8217;69 next to those I love these two
+latest&mdash;&amp; in some respects better, because they are the Walt I saw &amp; had
+such happy hours with. The second copy of book &amp; my lending one, has come
+safe&mdash;too&mdash;and the card that told of your attack of illness, &amp; the welcome
+news of your recovery in the Paper; &amp; I have been fretting with impatience
+at my own dumbness&mdash;but tied to as many hours a day writing as I could
+possibly manage, at my little book now (last night)&mdash;finished, all but
+proofs, so that I can take my pleasure in &#8220;Specimen Days&#8221; at last; but
+before doing that must have a few words with you, dearest Friend. First a
+gossip. Do you remember Maggie Lesley? She came to see us on her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> way to
+Paris, where she is working all alone &amp; very earnestly to get through
+training as an artist&mdash;then going to start in a studio of her own in
+Philadelphia. She, like my mother&#8217;s sister, are to me fine, lovable
+samples of American women&mdash;in whom, I mean, I detect, like the distinctive
+aroma of a flower, something special&mdash;that is American&mdash;a decisive new
+quality to old-world perceptions. Herby is working away still chiefly at
+the Consuelo picture&mdash;has got a very beautiful model to-day sitting to
+him. His summer work was down in Warwickshire, making sketches&mdash;&amp; very
+charming ones they are, of George Eliot&#8217;s native scenes&mdash;one of a
+garden-nook&mdash;up steep, old, worn stone steps bordered with flowers that is
+enticing&mdash;it will make a lovely background for a figure picture.&mdash;Giddy&#8217;s
+voice is growing in richness &amp; strength&mdash;&amp; she works with all her heart,
+hoping one day to be a real artist vocally&mdash;in church &amp; oratorio music.
+She will not have power or dramatic ability for opera&mdash;nor can I wish that
+she had; there are so many thorns with the roses in that path. I fear you
+will be a loser by Bogne&#8217;s bankruptcy. Did I tell you that among our
+friends one of your warmest admirers is Henry Holmes, the great violinist
+(equal [to] Joachim some think&mdash;we among them). Per. &amp; wife &amp; little
+grandson all well. My love to brother &amp; sister &amp; to Hattie [&amp;] Jessie.
+Good-bye, dear Walt. I hope to write more &amp; better soon.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Greetings to the Staffords.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXIII" id="LETTER_LXIII"></a>LETTER LXIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>12 Well Rd.<br />
+Hampstead<br />
+Jan. 27, &#8217;83.</i></p>
+
+<p>It is not for want of thinking of you, dear Walt, that I write but seldom:
+for indeed my thoughts are chiefly occupied with you &amp; your other
+self&mdash;your Poems&mdash;&amp; with struggles to say a few words that I think want
+saying about them; that might help some to their birthright who now stand
+off, either ignorant or misapprehending.</p>
+
+<p>We all go on much as usual.</p>
+
+<p><i>Feb. 13.</i> I wonder if you will like a true story of Lady Dilke that I
+heard the other day&mdash;I do: It was before her marriage. She was a handsome
+young heiress, a daring horsewoman, fond of hunting. There was a man,
+weakly &amp; of good position, who had behaved very basely &amp; cruelly to a
+young girl in her neighbourhood, &amp; when (as is the case in England) half
+the county was assembled on the hunting field, Lady D. faced him &amp; said in
+a voice that could be heard afar, &#8220;Sir you are a black-guard, &amp; if these
+gentlemen had the right spirit in them they would horsewhip you.&#8221; He
+looked at her with effrontery &amp; made a mocking bow. &#8220;But,&#8221; she continued,
+&#8220;since they won&#8217;t, I will&#8221;&mdash;and she cut him across the face with her
+riding whip; upon which he turned and rode off the field, like a dog with
+his tail between his legs, &amp; reappeared in that neighbourhood no more. She
+was a woman much beloved&mdash;died at the birth of her first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> child (from too
+much chloroform having been given her). Her husband was heart-broken. I
+see you, too, are having floods. With us it pours five days out of seven,
+&amp; so in Germany &amp; France. We have made the acquaintance of Arabella
+Buckley, who has just written an interesting article about Darwin, whom
+she knew well, for the <i>Century</i>. She says his was the most entirely
+beautiful &amp; perfect nature she ever came in contact with. How I wish we
+could have a glimpse of each other, dear Friend&mdash;half an hour talk&mdash;nay, a
+good long look &amp; a hand-shake. Herby is overhead painting in his
+studio&mdash;such a pleasant room. How is John Burroughs? We owe him a letter &amp;
+thanks for a good art. on Carlyle. Love to you, dearest friend.</p>
+
+<p>Hearty remembrances to your brother &amp; sister &amp; Hattie &amp; Jessie.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">A. G.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXIV" id="LETTER_LXIV"></a>LETTER LXIV</h2>
+<h3>HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Well Road, Hampstead, London, England<br />
+April 29th, &#8217;83.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Walt:</span></p>
+
+<p>Your card to hand last night, with its sad account of dear Mrs. Stafford&#8217;s
+health; but what the doctor says is cheering. I wonder, though, what the
+doctor would call good weather&mdash;mild spring, I suppose.</p>
+
+<p>Very glad, my dear old Walt, to see your strong familiar handwriting
+again; it does one good, it&#8217;s so individual that it is next to seeing you.
+Right glad to hear of your good health&mdash;had an idea that you were not so
+well again this winter. John Burroughs was very violent against my
+intaglio; on the other hand, Alma Tadema&mdash;our great painter here&mdash;liked it
+very much. I take violent criticism pretty philosophically, now that I see
+how unreliable it nearly always is. John Burroughs has got a fixed idea
+about your personality, and that is that the top of your head is a foot
+high and any portrait that doesn&#8217;t develop the &#8220;dome&#8221; is no
+portrait.&mdash;Curious what eyes a man may have for everything except a
+picture. I finished lately a life-size portrait of James Simmons, J.P., a
+hunting (fox) squire of the old school&mdash;such a fine old fellow. My
+portrait represents him standing firmly, in a scarlet hunting-coat well
+stained with many a wet chase, his great whip tucked under his arm whilst
+buttoning on his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> left glove, white buckskin trousers in shade relieving
+the scarlet coat, black velvet hunting cap, dark rich blue background to
+qualify and cool the scarlet. I wish you could see it. Then I have painted
+a subject &#8220;The Good Gray Poet&#8217;s Gift.&#8221; I have long meant to build up
+something of you from my studies, adding colour. You play a prominent part
+in this picture&mdash;seated at table bending over a nosegay of flowers,
+poetizing, before presenting them to mother. I am standing up bending over
+the tea-pot, with the kettle, filling it up; opposite you sits Giddy; out
+of the window a pretty view of Cannon place, Hampstead. Mater thinks it a
+pretty picture and a good likeness of you, just as you used to sit at tea
+with us at 1729 N. 22nd St. Now I am going out for a stroll on Hampstead
+Heath. Have just come in from a long ramble over the Heaths&mdash;a lovely soft
+spring day, innumerable birds in full song. I think J. B. is right when he
+says that your birds are more plaintive than ours&mdash;it&#8217;s nature&#8217;s way of
+compensating us for a loss of sunshine: what would England be without the
+merry lark, the very embodiment of cheeriness. Are not the Carlyle &amp;
+Emerson letters interesting? It seems to me to be one of the most
+beautiful and pathetic things in literature, C&#8217;s fondness for E. But all
+Englishmen, I must tell you, are not grumblers like Carlyle; he stands
+quite alone in that quality&mdash;look at Darwin!</p>
+
+<p>I should be grateful for another postcard. With all love,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Herb. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXV" id="LETTER_LXV"></a>LETTER LXV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Hampstead<br />
+May 6, &#8217;83.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I feel as if this beautiful spring morning here in England must send you
+greetings through me. Our sunny little mound of garden, which runs down
+toward the south, is fragrant with hyacinths and wall-flowers (beautiful,
+tawny, reddish, yellow fellows laden with rich perfume)&mdash;and at the bottom
+is a big old cherry tree&mdash;one mass of snowy blossom; in a neighbour&#8217;s gay
+garden &amp; beyond is a distant glimpse of some tall elms just putting on
+their first tender green: our little breakfast room where I always sit of
+a morning opens with glass doors into this garden. Herby is gone with the
+&#8220;Sunday Tramps,&#8221; of whom he is a member, for a ten or fifteen-mile walk.
+Said tramps are some half dozen friends &amp; neighbours, some of them very
+learned professors but genial good fellows withal, who agree to spend
+every other Sunday morning in taking one of their long walks together&mdash;&amp; a
+very good time they have. Giddy is gone to hear a lecture; our bonnie
+Scotch girl is roasting the beef for dinner, singing the while in the
+kitchen; and pussy &amp; I are sitting very companionable &amp; meditative in the
+little room before described.</p>
+
+<p>You cannot think, dear friend, what a pleasure it was to have a whole big
+letter from you (not that I despise Postcards&mdash;they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> are good stop-gaps,
+but not the real thing). Yes, I have &amp; prize the article on the Hebrew
+Scriptures. How I wish you could make up your mind to spend your summer
+holiday with us.</p>
+
+<p>I am still struggling along, striving to say something which, if I can say
+it to my mind, will be useful&mdash;will clear away a little of the rubbish
+that hides you from men&#8217;s eyes. I hear the &#8220;Eminent Women Series&#8221; is
+having quite a large sale in America. Good-bye. Love to Mrs. Whitman.
+Greetings to your brother. Love from us all to you.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXVI" id="LETTER_LXVI"></a>LETTER LXVI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Hampstead, Jul. 30, 1883.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Lazy me, that have been thinking letters to you instead of writing them!
+We have Dr. Bucke&#8217;s book at last; could not succeed in buying one at
+T&uuml;rbner&#8217;s&mdash;I believe they all sold directly&mdash;but he has sent us one. There
+are some things in it I prize very highly&mdash;namely, Helen Price&#8217;s
+&#8220;Memoranda&#8221; and Thomas A. Gere&#8217;s. These I like far better than any
+personal reminiscences of you I have ever read &amp; I feel much drawn to the
+writers of them. Also your letter to Mrs. Price from the Hospitals, dear
+Friend. That makes one hand-in-hand with you&mdash;then &amp; there&mdash;&amp; gives one a
+glimpse of a very beautiful friendship. But why &amp; why did Dr. Bucke set
+himself to counteract that beneficient law of nature&#8217;s by which the dust
+tends to lay itself? And carefully gathering together again all the
+rubbish stupid or malevolent that has been written of you, toss it up in
+the air again to choke and blind or disgust as many as it may? What a
+curious piece of perversity to mistake this for candour &amp; a judicial
+spirit.<small><a name="f39.1" id="f39.1" href="#f39">[39]</a></small> Then again, how do I hate all that unmeaning, irrelevant
+clatter about what Rabelais or Shakespeare or the ancients &amp; their times
+tolerated in the way of coarseness or plainness of speech. As<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> if you
+wanted apologizing for or could be apologized for on that ground! If these
+poems are to be <i>tolerated</i>, I, for one, could not tolerate them. If they
+are not the highest lesson that has yet been taught in refinement &amp;
+purity, if they do not banish all possibility of coarseness of thought &amp;
+feeling, there would be nothing to be said for them. But they do: I am as
+sure of that as of my own existence. When will men begin to understand
+them?</p>
+
+<p>We have had pleasant glimpses of several American friends this summer&mdash;of
+Kate Hillard for instance, who, by the bye narrowly escaped a bad accident
+just at our door&mdash;the harness broke &amp; the cab came down on the horse &amp;
+frightened him so that he bolted&mdash;struck the cab against a lamp-post
+(happily, else it would have been worse)&mdash;overturned them &amp; it&mdash;but when
+they crawled out no worse harm was done than a few cuts from the glass&mdash;&amp;
+Kate &amp; her friend behaved very pluckily, &amp; we had a pleasant evening
+together after all. Then there was Arthur Peterson, looking much as in the
+old Philadelphia days: and Emma &amp; Annie Lazarus&mdash;who, owing to some
+letters of introduction from James the novelist, have had a very gay time
+indeed&mdash;been quite lionized&mdash;and last, not least, Mr. Dalton Dorr, the
+curator of the Pennsylvania Museum in Fairmount Park&mdash;whom we all liked
+much. He is enjoying his visit here with all his heart&mdash;is a great
+enthusiast for our old Gothic Cathedrals, and for everything
+beautiful&mdash;but says there is nothing such a source of unceasing wonder &amp;
+delight as riding about London &amp; over the bridges &amp;c. on the top of an
+omnibus watching the endless flow of people&mdash;it is indeed a kind of human
+Mississippi or Niagara.</p>
+
+<p>The young folks are busy packing up to start for the seaside. Herby wants
+a background for a picture in which green turf &amp; trees and all the
+richness of vegetation come down to the very edge of the sea and I seem to
+remember such a place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> near Lynn Regis, where I was thirty years ago, when
+my eldest child was born, so they are going to look it up. We hear the
+heat is very tremendous in America this year. I hope you are as well as
+ever able to stand it &amp; enjoy it? I wonder where you are. Friendly
+greetings to Mr. &amp; Mrs. Whitman &amp; Hattie &amp; Jessie &amp; the Staffords. Love to
+you, dear Friend, from us all.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />My little book on Mary Lamb just out&mdash;will send you a copy in a day or two.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXVII" id="LETTER_LXVII"></a>LETTER LXVII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Hampstead<br />
+Oct. 13, &#8217;83.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Long &amp; long does it seem since I have had any word or sign from you. I
+hope all goes well &amp; that you have had a pleasant, refreshing summer trip
+somewhere. All goes on much as usual with us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hythe. Kent. Oct. 21.</i> Not having felt very well the last month or two,
+and Giddy also seeming to need a little bracing up, we came down to this
+ancient town by the sea&mdash;one of the Cinque Ports&mdash;on Wednesday, and much
+we like it&mdash;a fine open sea&mdash;a delicious &#8220;briny odour&#8221;&mdash;and inland much
+that is curious and interesting&mdash;for this part of the Kentish Coast&mdash;so
+near to France&mdash;has innumerable old castles, forts, moats, traces
+everywhere of centuries of warfare and of means of defence against our
+great neighbour. It is a fine hilly, woody country, too, and very
+picturesque these gray massive ruins, many of them used now as farm
+houses, look. The men of Kent are very proud of their country and are
+reckoned a fine race&mdash;tall, muscular, ruddy-complexioned, and often too
+with thick, tawny-red beards&mdash;curious how in our little island the
+differences of race-stock are still so discernible&mdash;keep along this same
+coast to the west only about a couple of hundred miles &amp; you come to such
+a different type&mdash;dark&mdash;blackest and Cornish <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>men.&mdash;I get a nice letter
+now &amp; then from John Burroughs. I also saw this summer two women doctors
+who were very kind &amp; good friends to my darling Bee&mdash;Drs. Pope&mdash;twin
+sisters from Boston, whom it did me good to see. They work hard&mdash;have a
+good practice&mdash;&amp; say they don&#8217;t know what a day&#8217;s illness means so far as
+they themselves are concerned. They tell me also that the women doctors
+are doing capital work in America&mdash;and that one of them, who was with dear
+Beatrice at the Penn. Med. Col., Dr. Alice Bennett, is the efficient head
+of the woman&#8217;s department of a large lunatic asylum. We are getting on in
+England too&mdash;but the field where English women doctors find the most work
+&amp; the best position is India, where as the women are not allowed by their
+male relatives to be attended by men, the mortality was immense.&mdash;Herby
+has taken a better studio than our house afforded&mdash;both as to light &amp;
+size&mdash;&amp; finds the advantage great. I expect he is having a delightful walk
+this brilliant morning with the &#8220;Hampstead Tramps&#8221;&mdash;of whom I think I have
+told you. They often walk fifteen miles or so on Sunday morning.</p>
+
+<p>Such a glorious afternoon it has been by the sea&mdash;sapphire colour&mdash;the air
+brisk &amp; elastic, yet soft. To-morrow Gran goes home &amp; I shall be all alone
+here.&mdash;I hear of &#8220;Specimen Days&#8221; in a letter from Australia&mdash;there will be
+a large audience for you there some day, dear Friend. I like what John
+Burroughs has been writing about Carlyle much. We have had nothing but
+stupidities of late about him here&mdash;but there will come a great reaction
+from all this abuse, I have no doubt&mdash;he did put so much gall in his ink
+sometimes, human nature can&#8217;t be expected to take it altogether meekly. I
+hope you received my little book safely. I should be a hypocrite if I
+pretended not to care whether you found patience to read it&mdash;for I grew to
+love Mary &amp; Charles Lamb so much during my task that I want you to love
+them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> too&mdash;&amp; to see what a beautiful friendship was theirs with Coleridge.</p>
+
+<p>How are Mr. &amp; Mrs. Whitman and Hattie &amp; Jessie? Send me a few words soon.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dearest Friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Ann Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXVIII" id="LETTER_LXVIII"></a>LETTER LXVIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Hampstead<br />
+April 5, &#8217;84.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Those few words of yours to Herby &#8220;tasted good&#8221; to us&mdash;few, but enough,
+seeing that we can fill out between the lines with what you have given us
+of yourself forever &amp; always in your books&mdash;&amp; that is how I comfort myself
+for having so few letters. But I turn many wistful thoughts toward
+America, and were not I &amp; mine bound here by unseverable ties, did we not
+seem to grow &amp; belong here as by a kind of natural destiny that has to be
+fulfilled very cheerfully, could I make America my home for the sake of
+being near you in body as I am in heart &amp; soul&mdash;but Time has good things
+in store for us sooner or later, I doubt not. I could hardly express to
+you how welcome is the thought of death to me&mdash;not in the sense of any
+discontent with life&mdash;but as life with fresh energies &amp; wider horizon &amp;
+hand in hand again with those that are gone on first.</p>
+
+<p>Herby found the little bit of gray cloth very useful&mdash;but one day <i>save
+him an old suit</i>. Your figure in the picture is, I think, a fair
+suggestion of one aspect of you; but not, could not of course be, an
+adequate portrait. He will never rest till he has done his best to achieve
+that. As soon as he can afford it (for it is a very slow business indeed
+for a young artist to make money in England, though when he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> does begin he
+is better paid than in America) he means to run over to see you. He says
+he should like always to spend his winters in New York. I say how very
+highly I prize that last slip you sent me, &#8220;A backward glance on my own
+road&#8221;? It both corroborates &amp; explains much that I feel very deeply.&mdash;If
+you are seeing Mrs. Whitman, please say her letter was a pleasure &amp; that I
+shall write again before very long. I feel as if this letter would never
+find you&mdash;be sure &amp; let us know your whereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>Remembrance &amp; love.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dear Walt.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXIX" id="LETTER_LXIX"></a>LETTER LXIX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Hampstead<br />
+May 2, &#8217;84.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Your card (your very voice &amp; touch, drawing me across the Atlantic close
+beside you) was put into my hand just as I was busy copying out &#8220;With
+husky, haughty lips O sea&#8221; to pin into my &#8220;Leaves of Grass.&#8221; I hardly
+think there is anything grander there. I think surely they must see that
+that is the very Soul of Nature uttering itself sublimely.</p>
+
+<p>Who do you think came to see us on Sunday? Professor Dowden.<small><a name="f40.1" id="f40.1" href="#f40">[40]</a></small> And I
+know not when I have set eyes on a more beautiful personality. I think you
+would be as much attracted towards him as I was. It was he who told me
+(full of enthusiasm) of the Poems in <i>Harper&#8217;s</i> which I had not seen or
+heard of. We had a very happy two or three hours together, talking of you
+&amp; looking through Blake&#8217;s drawings. He is a tall man, complexion tanned &amp;
+healthy, nose finely modelled, dark eyes with plenty of life &amp; meaning in
+them, hair grayish&mdash;I should think he was between forty &amp; fifty&mdash;but says
+his father is still a fine hale old man.</p>
+
+<p>Herby disappointed again this year of getting anything into the R.
+Academy.</p>
+
+<p>I think I like the idea of the shanty, if you have any one to take good
+care of you, to cook nicely, keep all neat &amp; clean &amp;c. I wonder if I have
+ever been in Mickle St. I, still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> busy, still hammering away to see if I
+can help those that &#8220;balk&#8221; at &#8220;Leaves of Grass&#8221;. Perhaps you will smile at
+me&mdash;at any rate it bears good fruit to me&mdash;I seem to be in a manner living
+with you the while.</p>
+
+<p>Everything full of beauty just now here, as no doubt it is with you.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dearest friend&mdash;don&#8217;t forget the letter that is to come soon.
+Love from us all, love &amp; again love from</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXX" id="LETTER_LXX"></a>LETTER LXX</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Aug. 5, &#8217;84.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>The notion [that] one is going to write a nice long letter is fatal to
+writing at all. And so I mean to scribble something, somehow, a little
+oftener &amp; make up in quantity for quality! For after all the great thing,
+the thing one wants, is to <i>meet</i>&mdash;if not in the flesh&mdash;then in the
+spirit. A word will do it. I am getting on&mdash;my heart is in my work&mdash;&amp;
+though I have been long about it, it won&#8217;t be long&mdash;but I think &amp; hope it
+will be strong. Quite a sprinkling of American friends&mdash;some new ones this
+spring&mdash;among them Mr. &amp; Mrs. Pennell<small><a name="f41.1" id="f41.1" href="#f41">[41]</a></small> from Philadelphia&mdash;whom you
+know&mdash;we like them well&mdash;hope to see them again &amp; again. Also Miss Keyse
+(her sister married Emerson&#8217;s son) from Concord, and the Lesleys&mdash;Mary
+Lesley has married &amp; gone to the West&mdash;St. Paul&mdash;has just got a little
+son.</p>
+
+<p>How does the &#8220;little shanty&#8221; answer, I wonder? Herby has been painting
+some charming little bits in an old terraced garden here. I do wish you
+could hear Giddy sing now; I am sure her voice would &#8220;go to the right
+spot,&#8221; as you used to say. Good-bye, dearest friend. Love from all &amp; most
+from</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXXI" id="LETTER_LXXI"></a>LETTER LXXI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Wolverhampton<br />
+Oct. 26, &#8217;84.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Walt:</span></p>
+
+<p>I don&#8217;t suppose the enclosed will give you nearly so much pleasure as it
+gives me. But Villiers Stanford is, I think, the best composer England has
+produced since the days of Purcell &amp; Blow, and your words will be sent
+home to hundreds &amp; thousands who had not before seen them. How lovely the
+words read as themes for great music!</p>
+
+<p>I have been staying with old friends who have a house you would enjoy&mdash;it
+stands all alone on the top of a heath-clad hill, with miles of coppice
+(young woods) below it, and spread out beyond is a rich valley with more
+wooded hills jutting out into it&mdash;and you see the storms a long way off
+travelling up from the sea, and you can wander for miles &amp; miles through
+the woods or over the breezy hill&mdash;or, as you sit at your window, feel
+yourself in the very heart of a great, beautiful solitude. Very kind, warm
+friends, too, they are, who leave you as free as a bird to do what you
+like. I have had all the papers, dear friend, &amp; have enjoyed them.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am in the heart of the &#8220;Black Country,&#8221; as we call it&mdash;black with
+the smoke of thousands of foundries &amp; works of all kinds&mdash;staying with
+Percy &amp; his wife. Percy is having a very arduous time here starting some
+Steel Works&mdash;&amp; what with his men being inexperienced &amp; times bad &amp; the
+machinery not yet perfectly adjusted, he seems harassed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> night &amp; day&mdash;for
+these things have to be kept going all night too&mdash;but I hope he will get
+into smoother waters soon. The little son is rosy &amp; bright &amp; healthy&mdash;goes
+to school now, which, being an only child, he enjoys mightily for the sake
+of the companionship of other boys.</p>
+
+<p>Love from us all, dear friend.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Grace &amp; Herby well &amp; busy when I left.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXXII" id="LETTER_LXXII"></a>LETTER LXXII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Hampstead<br />
+Dec. 17, &#8217;84.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>At last I have extracted a little bit of news about you from friend
+Carpenter, who never comes to see us and is [as] reluctant to write
+letters as&mdash;somebody else that I know. That you have a comfortable,
+elderly couple to keep house for you was a good hearing&mdash;for &#8220;the old
+shanty&#8221; had risen before my eyes as somewhat lonely, &amp; perhaps the
+cooking, &amp;c., not well attended to.&mdash;There seems a curious kind of ebb and
+flow about the recognition of you in England&mdash;just now there are signs of
+the flow&mdash;of a steadily gathering great wave, one indication of which is
+the little pamphlet just published in Edinburgh&mdash;one of the &#8220;Round Table&#8221;
+Series&mdash;no doubt a copy has been sent you. If not and you would care to
+see it, I will send you one. On the whole I like it (barring one or two
+stupidities)&mdash;at any rate, as compared with what has hitherto been
+written. My poor article has so far been rejected by editors&mdash;so I have
+laid it by for a little, to come with a fresh eye &amp; see if I can make it
+in any way more likely to win a hearing&mdash;though I often say to myself, &#8220;If
+they have not ears to hear you, how is it likely one can unstop their
+ears?&#8221; But on the other hand there is always the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> chance of leading some
+to read the Poems who had not else done so.&mdash;Percy &amp; Norah and Archie, now
+grown a very sturdy active little fellow, are coming to spend Xmas with
+us, which is a great pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>I am deep in Froude&#8217;s last volumes of &#8220;Carlyle&#8217;s Life in London&#8221;. Folks
+are grumbling that they have had enough &amp; too much of Carlyle &amp; <i>his</i>
+grumblings and sarcasms. But he is an inexhaustibly interesting figure to
+me, &amp; will remain so in the long run to the world, I am persuaded. It
+grieves me that he should have been so cruelly unjust to himself as a
+husband&mdash;that remorse, those bitter self-reproaches, were undeserved, were
+altogether morbid: he was not only an infinitely better husband than she
+was wife: he was wonderfully affectionate &amp; tender &amp; just&mdash;&amp; as to his
+temper &amp; irritable nerves, she knew what she was about when she married
+him. Herby was walking through the British Museum the other day with a
+friend when a group, a ready-made picture, struck him&mdash;it was a young
+student-sculptress, a graceful girl high on a pile of boxes modelling in
+clay a copy of an antique statue, &amp; standing below, looking up at her, was
+a young sculptor in his blouse, criticising her work with much animation &amp;
+gesture; the background of the group, a part of the Elgin Marbles. So this
+is what Herby is painting &amp; I think he will make a very jolly little
+picture out of it. I have been much a prisoner to the house with bad colds
+ever since I returned from Wolverhampton, but am beginning to get out
+again&mdash;which puts new life into me. I have never envied anything in this
+world but a man&#8217;s strong legs &amp; powers of tramping, tramping, over hill &amp;
+dale as long as he pleases&mdash;legs would content me and a sound breathing
+apparatus! I am in no hurry for wings. Giddy&#8217;s voice, too, is just now
+eclipsed by cold.</p>
+
+<p>I hope you have escaped this evil and are able to jaunt to &amp; fro on the
+ferries as freely as ever. And I hope the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> pleasant Quaker friends are
+well&mdash;and Mr. &amp; Mrs. Whitman and Hattie &amp; Jessie&mdash;there is a fellow
+student of Giddy&#8217;s at the Guild Hall music school who so reminds her of
+Hattie.</p>
+
+<p>Love from us all, dear friend. Most from me.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXXIII" id="LETTER_LXXIII"></a>LETTER LXXIII</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Keats Corner<br />
+Hampstead, England<br />
+Feb. 27, &#8217;85.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>How has the winter passed with you I wonder? Me it has imprisoned very
+much with bronchial &amp; asthmatic troubles&mdash;and the four walls of the house
+&amp; the ceiling seem to close in upon one&#8217;s spirit as well as one&#8217;s body,
+all too much. I hope you have been able to wend to and fro daily on the
+great ferry boats &amp; enjoy the beautiful broad river &amp; the sky &amp; the
+throngs of people as of old&mdash;you are in my thoughts as constantly as ever,
+though I have been so silent. Percy &amp; his wife &amp; the little son spent some
+weeks with us at Christmas &amp; now they have taken a house quite near, into
+which they will be moving in a week or two. I can&#8217;t tell you what a dear,
+affectionate, reasonable, companionable little fellow Archie is&mdash;now six
+years old. Perhaps you will have seen in the American papers that Sidney
+Thomas, the cousin with whom Percy was associated in the discovery of the
+Basic process, is dead&mdash;he spent his strength too freely&mdash;wore himself out
+at 35&mdash;he was much loved by all with whom he had to do. His mother &amp;
+sister have been watching &amp; hoping against hope &amp; taking him to warm
+climates, he himself full of hope&mdash;the mind bright and active to the
+last&mdash;&amp; now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> he is gone&mdash;&amp; his eldest brother died only two months before
+him.&mdash;I cannot help grieving over public affairs too&mdash;never in my lifetime
+has old England been in such a bad way&mdash;no honest &amp; capable man seemingly
+to take the helm&mdash;&amp; what Carlyle was fond of describing as the attempt to
+guide the ship by the shouts of the bystanders on shore&mdash;the newspapers
+&amp;c. prospering very ill. A government that tries perpetually how to do it
+and how not to do it at the same moment! The best comfort is that I do not
+think there is any, the smallest sign, of deterioration in the English
+race; so we shall pull through somehow, after tremendous disasters. How
+many things should I like to sit and chat with you about, dear Walt&mdash;above
+all to see you again! I could not get my article into any of the magazines
+I most wished. I believe it is coming out in <i>To-Day</i>. Giddy was so
+pleased at your sending her a paper&mdash;a very capital article too it is of
+Miss Kellogg. I was interested also in a little paragraph I found about
+Pullman town, near Chicago, which confirmed my suspicion that it was not a
+thing with healthy roots&mdash;but only a benevolent despotism. I am seeing a
+good deal of your socialists just now&mdash;&amp; I confess that though they mean
+well, I think they have less sense in their heads than any people I ever
+saw.</p>
+
+<p>I am going to pay a little visit to those friends (friendliest of friends)
+who live on the lonely top of a heath-covered hill&mdash;with such an outlook,
+such wooded slopes and broad valleys&mdash;and the storms travelling up hours
+before they arrive&mdash;such sweeps of sunshine too!&mdash;&amp; they mean to drive me
+about till I am quite strong again. So the next letter I write, dear
+Friend, shall be more cheery. I am afraid to look back lest this one
+should read too grumbly to send. I don&#8217;t feel grumbly however&mdash;only shut
+in. Herby has been working hard at getting up an exhibition here to help
+along our Public Library. It is so very hard to stir up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> anything like
+public spirit &amp; unity of action in London or its suburbs&mdash;I suppose
+because of its vastness&mdash;&amp; alas! also the social cliques &amp; gentilities &amp;
+snobbishnesses. Good-bye, dearest Walt, with love from all.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXXIV" id="LETTER_LXXIV"></a>LETTER LXXIV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Hampstead<br />
+May 4, &#8217;85.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>Delays of Editors&mdash;there is no end to them! I am promised now that the
+art. shall appear in the June No., &amp; if it does I will send you at once
+the number of copies you name. And if it does not, I think I had best get
+it back &amp; have done with the editors of <i>To-day</i> &amp; try for some other &amp;
+better opening again.</p>
+
+<p>I have been reading &amp; re-reading &amp; pondering over Froude&#8217;s 9 vols of
+Carlyle&mdash;&#8220;The Reminiscences,&#8221; &#8220;Letters,&#8221; &amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;and am pretty well at
+boiling point with indignation against Froude&mdash;boiling point of anger &amp;
+freezing point of contempt. His betrayal at every point of a sacred trust!
+lazy, slip-shod editing! not even taking the pains to put letters and
+their answers together&mdash;but printing the one in 1882 &amp; the others three or
+four years after&mdash;so that half the meaning and all the <i>mutuality</i> of the
+letters are lost! And then the sly malignity of the comments with which
+they are preceded! If I live I will do my utmost to expose all this &amp; to
+show that Mrs. Carlyle was no injured heroine, nor he a selfish &amp;
+neglected husband. Both had their faults, but the balance of affection &amp;
+tenderness was largely on his side, as well as of other great qualities:
+though I like her too&mdash;&amp; think she would have scorned Froude&#8217;s ignoble
+championship.</p>
+
+<p>Herby has had rather better luck with his pictures this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> year. Has
+one&mdash;&#8220;The Sculptor&#8217;s Lesson&#8221;&mdash;fairly well hung at the Royal Academy&mdash;where
+it shines out very cheerfully &amp; holds its own modestly, I may say without
+maternal vanity. I think I described to you the little bit of actual life
+it depicts&mdash;a young girl he saw at the British Museum modelling a copy of
+an antique statue &amp; young sculptor in his blouse standing below &amp; giving
+her some animated criticism&mdash;a little bit of the Elgin marbles in the
+background. Herb. has also a little picture he calls &#8220;Midsummer&#8221;&mdash;a bit of
+a very old &amp; buttressed wall hung with roses in full bloom, &amp; Giddy&#8217;s
+figure standing above&mdash;at the Grosvenor. Now if he has the luck to sell
+too! He has a commission also to paint a small portrait of me for our
+friends at Marley, on which he is busy just now. As soon as he has a
+little spare money in his pocket I think his first use of it will be a run
+across the Atlantic &amp; a glimpse of you, dear Friend. Giddy is going to
+sing at a Soiree of socialists &amp; revolutionary folk in general on
+Wednesday. Her songs are to be &#8220;The Wearing of the Green&#8221;&mdash;&amp; &#8220;Poland
+Dirge&#8221; &amp; the &#8220;Marseillaise&#8221;. You will think we are getting pretty red hot!
+But alas! though our sympathy with the Cause&mdash;the cause of suffering
+millions&mdash;is warm, our faith in the wisdom &amp; ability of those who are
+aspiring to be the leaders, so far as we know anything of them&mdash;is
+infinitesimal.</p>
+
+<p>What a burst of beauty we have had during the last ten days! We look out
+just now on a sea of apple &amp; pear blossoms, from the deepest pink to
+dazzling white&mdash;&amp; the tenderest green intermingled with all. I hope you
+are able to be out nearly all day &amp; enjoy all&mdash;and that home affairs go
+smoothly &amp; comfortably &amp; that Mrs. Davis<small><a name="f42.1" id="f42.1" href="#f42">[42]</a></small> is attentive &amp; good &amp; every
+way adequate as care-taker.</p>
+
+<p>I am looking forward very much to the &#8220;After Songs&#8221; and &#8220;Letters of
+Parting&#8221;. Does the sale of &#8220;Leaves of Grass&#8221; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>continue pretty steady? I
+look forward with a sort of dread to seeing my article in proof, lest I
+should feel very disappointed with it.</p>
+
+<p>Your loving friend,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">A. Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />Do you ever see or hear from Mr. Marvin? He is a favourite with all of us.
+Do you remember how we laughed at his dramatic presentation of a negro
+prayer meeting?</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXXV" id="LETTER_LXXV"></a>LETTER LXXV</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Hampstead, London<br />
+Jan. 21, 85.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>I hope the <i>To-days</i> have come safe to hand. I am thinking a great deal
+about the new edition; and cannot help hoping you are going to revert to
+the plan of the Centennial Edition, which issued your writings in two
+independent volumes. May I, without being presumptuous, dear Walt, tell
+you how I should dearly like to see them arranged? I want &#8220;Crossing
+Brooklyn Ferry,&#8221; &#8220;Song at Sunset,&#8221; &#8220;Song of the Open Road,&#8221; &#8220;Starting from
+Paumanok,&#8221; &#8220;Carol of Words,&#8221; &#8220;Carol of Occupations&#8221; and either as &#8220;As I
+Sat by Blue Ontario&#8217;s Shore&#8221; or the Preface to edit. 55 put into &#8220;Two
+Rivulets&#8221;&mdash;you could make room for them that the volumes might balance in
+size by making them exchange places with the &#8220;Centennial Songs&#8221; and the
+&#8220;Memoranda During the War&#8221;; not that these are not precious to me, but I
+want it dearest because I want in the Two Rivulet Volume what will best
+prepare the reader, lift him up to the true point of view, and make him
+all your own, before he comes to the inner sanctuary of &#8220;Calamus&#8221; &amp; &#8220;Walt
+Whitman&#8221; &amp; &#8220;Children of Adam.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Monday morn. Your letter just to hand. It gives me deep joy, dear Friend.
+I have sent copies of <i>To-Day</i> to Dr. Bucke &amp; John Burroughs but did not
+know of his change of address; so fear it has miscarried. I will send
+another,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> and also one to W. O&#8217;Connor.&mdash;You did not tell me about your
+fall&mdash;unless indeed a letter has been lost. It fills me with concern
+because of the difficulty it increases in getting that free out-door life
+that is so dear &amp; essential to your soul &amp; body, and because, too, I still
+cherished in my heart a hope that I should yet see you again&mdash;here in my
+own home&mdash;&amp; now it seems next to an impossibility. Right thankful am I to
+hear about Mrs. Davis&mdash;that she takes good care of you&mdash;please give her a
+friendly greeting from me. I am going to have rather a bothersome
+summer&mdash;first of all, the house full of workmen to make all clean &amp; tidy;
+&amp; then my Scotch lassie, friend &amp; factotum rather than servant, must have
+a holiday &amp; go to her friends in Scotland for a month. I shall heartily
+welcome your friend, no need to say, &amp; be sure to like her. Love from
+Grace &amp; Herb. &amp; most of all from me. I have plenty more to say but won&#8217;t
+delay this.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dear Walt.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_LXXVI" id="LETTER_LXXVI"></a>LETTER LXXVI</h2>
+<h3>ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN</h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>12 Well Rd., Hampstead, Eng.<br />
+July 20, &#8217;85.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Friend:</span></p>
+
+<p>A kind of anxiety has for some time past weighed upon me and upon others,
+I find, who love &amp; admire you, that you do not have all the comforts you
+ought to have; that you are perhaps sometimes straightened for means. We
+have had letters from several young men, almost or quite strangers to us,
+asking questions on this subject; and we hoped &amp; thought that if this were
+so, you would permit those who have received such priceless gifts from you
+to put their gratitude into some tangible shape, some &#8220;free-will
+offering.&#8221; Hence the paragraph was put into the <i>Athenaeum</i> which I send
+with this, and we were proceeding to organize our forces when your paper
+came to hand this morning (the <i>Camden Post</i>, July 3), which seems
+decisively to bid us desist. Or at all events wait till we had told you of
+our wishes and plan. One thing would, I feel sure, give you pleasure in
+any case; and that is to know that there is over here a little
+band&mdash;perhaps indeed it is now quite a considerable one, for we had not
+yet had time to ascertain how considerable&mdash;who would joyfully respond to
+that Poem of yours, &#8220;To Rich Givers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A friend and near neighbour of ours, Frederick Wedmore, is coming over to
+America this autumn, and counts much on coming to see you. He is a
+well-known writer on Art here&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> friendly, candid, open-minded man with
+whom, I think, you will enjoy a talk.</p>
+
+<p>I am on the lookout for Miss Smith<small><a name="f43.1" id="f43.1" href="#f43">[43]</a></small>&mdash;shall indeed enjoy a talk with a
+special friend of yours, dear Walt. I hope she will not fail to come.
+Giddy is away at Haslemere. Herby just going to write for himself to you.</p>
+
+<p>That is a very graphic bit in the <i>Post</i>&mdash;the portrait of Hugo, the canary
+&amp; the kitten&mdash;I like to know all that&mdash;as well as to hear the talk.</p>
+
+<p>My love, dear Walt.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Anne Gilchrist.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><br />So far as can be ascertained this is the last letter. Anne Gilchrist died
+Nov. 29th, 1885.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p>
+
+<p><a name="f1" id="f1" href="#f1.1">[1]</a> Reprinted from the <i>Radical</i> for May, 1870.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f2" id="f2" href="#f2.1">[2]</a> Reprinted from &#8220;Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings,&#8221; by her son
+Herbert H. Gilchrist&mdash;London, 1887.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f3" id="f3" href="#f3.1">[3]</a> Reprinted from Horace Traubel&#8217;s &#8220;With Walt Whitman in Camden,&#8221; I,
+219-220. Although addressed to Rossetti, this letter is evidently intended
+as much for Mrs. Gilchrist, whose name was not at this time known to
+Whitman.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f4" id="f4" href="#f4.1">[4]</a> Alexander Gilchrist.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f5" id="f5" href="#f5.1">[5]</a> Mrs. Gilchrist&#8217;s emotion here apparently prevents her memory from
+doing complete justice to her own past. For a very different expression of
+her feelings toward Alexander Gilchrist, written at the time of her
+betrothal, see her letter announcing the engagement which she sent to her
+friend, Julia Newton, and which is to be found on pp. 30-31 of her son&#8217;s
+biography.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f6" id="f6" href="#f6.1">[6]</a> William Michael Rossetti.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f7" id="f7" href="#f7.1">[7]</a> To W. M. Rossetti. See <i>ante</i>, p. x.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f8" id="f8" href="#f8.1">[8]</a> First printed in Horace Traubel&#8217;s &#8220;With Walt Whitman in Camden,&#8221; III,
+513.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f9" id="f9" href="#f9.1">[9]</a> Evidently meaning the letter of September 3d.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f10" id="f10" href="#f10.1">[10]</a> Missing.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f11" id="f11" href="#f11.1">[11]</a> Percy Carlyle Gilchrist who became an inventive metallurgist.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f12" id="f12" href="#f12.1">[12]</a> Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist, who became an artist.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f13" id="f13" href="#f13.1">[13]</a> Printed from copy retained by Whitman.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f14" id="f14" href="#f14.1">[14]</a> To deliver his Dartmouth College ode.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f15" id="f15" href="#f15.1">[15]</a> William Douglas O&#8217;Connor, an ardent Washington friend of Whitman.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f16" id="f16" href="#f16.1">[16]</a> John Burroughs, the naturalist, then a young author and disciple of Whitman.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f17" id="f17" href="#f17.1">[17]</a> Anne Gilchrist&#8217;s son.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f18" id="f18" href="#f18.1">[18]</a> Horace Greeley, nominated by the Democrats as their candidate for the Presidency.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f19" id="f19" href="#f19.1">[19]</a> Burlington, Vermont, where Whitman&#8217;s sister, Mrs. Heyde, lived.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f20" id="f20" href="#f20.1">[20]</a> Henry M. Stanley, African Explorer.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f21" id="f21" href="#f21.1">[21]</a> Undated. Made up from copy among Whitman&#8217;s papers. This letter
+evidently belongs to the summer of 1873.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f22" id="f22" href="#f22.1">[22]</a> The &#8220;Prayer of Columbus&#8221; was first published in <i>Harper&#8217;s Magazine</i> in March, 1874.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f23" id="f23" href="#f23.1">[23]</a> John Cowardine. See &#8220;Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings,&#8221; pp. 149 ff.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f24" id="f24" href="#f24.1">[24]</a> Daughters of Thomas Jefferson Whitman.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f25" id="f25" href="#f25.1">[25]</a> Mrs. George Whitman.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f26" id="f26" href="#f26.1">[26]</a> Sister.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f27" id="f27" href="#f27.1">[27]</a> Niece.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f28" id="f28" href="#f28.1">[28]</a> Sidney Morse, the sculptor.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f29" id="f29" href="#f29.1">[29]</a> &#8220;Man&#8217;s Moral Nature,&#8221; by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f30" id="f30" href="#f30.1">[30]</a> This extract (?) is taken from H. H. Gilchrist&#8217;s &#8220;Anne Gilchrist,&#8221; p.
+252. It is undated, but it is clearly a reply to the foregoing letter from Mrs. Gilchrist.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f31" id="f31" href="#f31.1">[31]</a> Durham Cathedral.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f32" id="f32" href="#f32.1">[32]</a> Anne Gilchrist&#8217;s grandchild.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f33" id="f33" href="#f33.1">[33]</a> Reproduced in &#8220;Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings,&#8221; facing p. 253.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f34" id="f34" href="#f34.1">[34]</a> Richard Watson Gilder.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f35" id="f35" href="#f35.1">[35]</a> Of Timber Creek, Camden County, New Jersey, whose hospitality helped Whitman to improve his health.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f36" id="f36" href="#f36.1">[36]</a> The second edition of Alexander Gilchrist&#8217;s &#8220;William Blake.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="f37" id="f37" href="#f37.1">[37]</a> Because of the death of her daughter Beatrice.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f38" id="f38" href="#f38.1">[38]</a> Whitman&#8217;s London publisher.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f39" id="f39" href="#f39.1">[39]</a> Dr. Bucke, in his &#8220;Life of Whitman,&#8221; had reprinted at the end of the
+volume many criticisms of the poet, adverse as well as favourable; likewise W. D. O&#8217;Connor&#8217;s &#8220;Good Gray Poet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="f40" id="f40" href="#f40.1">[40]</a> Edward Dowden, of the University of Dublin.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f41" id="f41" href="#f41.1">[41]</a> Artists, famous for their etchings. Mr. Pennell made several etchings for Dr. Bucke&#8217;s biography of Whitman.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f42" id="f42" href="#f42.1">[42]</a> Mrs. Mary Davis, who was Whitman&#8217;s housekeeper until his death.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f43" id="f43" href="#f43.1">[43]</a> Daughter of Pearsall Smith, of Philadelphia.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><strong>Transcriber&#8217;s Note:</strong> The text in the list of illustrations is presented as in the original text, but the links
+navigate to the page number closest to the illustration&#8217;s loaction in this document.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt
+Whitman, by Walt Whitman and Anne Burrows Gilchrist
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt
+Whitman, by Walt Whitman and Anne Burrows Gilchrist
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman
+
+Author: Walt Whitman
+        Anne Burrows Gilchrist
+
+Editor: Thomas B. Harned
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2011 [EBook #35395]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS--ANNE GILCHRIST, WALT WHITMAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Walt Whitman
+
+Photograph taken about the year 1870]
+
+
+
+
+  THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
+
+  Edited
+  With an Introduction
+
+  BY THOMAS B. HARNED
+  One of Walt Whitman's Literary Executors
+
+  Illustrated
+
+  GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+  1918
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
+  TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
+  INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+
+
+
+  In Memoriam
+  AUGUSTA TRAUBEL HARNED
+  1856-1914
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+
+  PREFACE                                                              xix
+
+  INTRODUCTION                                                         xxi
+
+  A WOMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN                                     3
+
+  A CONFESSION OF FAITH                                                 23
+
+  LETTER
+
+        I. WALT WHITMAN TO WILLIAM MICHAEL
+           ROSSETTI AND ANNE GILCHRIST                                  56
+
+       II. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne_
+           _September 3, 1871_                                          58
+
+      III. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Shotter Mill, Haslemere, Surrey_
+           _October 23, 1871_                                           65
+
+       IV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Washington, D. C._
+           _November 3, 1871_                                           67
+
+        V. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _November 27, 1871_                                          68
+
+       VI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _January 24, 1872_                                           72
+
+      VII. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Washington, D. C._
+           _February 8, 1872_                                           75
+
+     VIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _April 12, 1872_                                             76
+
+       IX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _June 3, 1872_                                               79
+
+        X. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
+           _July 14, 1872_                                              82
+
+       XI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq._
+           _November 12, 1872_                                          85
+
+      XII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London, N. W._
+           _January 31, 1873_                                           86
+
+     XIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London, N. W._
+           _May 20, 1873_                                               88
+
+      XIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne, Halstead_
+           _August 12, 1873_                                            91
+
+       XV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Camden, New Jersey_
+           _Undated. Summer of 1873_                                    94
+
+      XVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne, Halstead_
+           _September 4, 1873_                                          96
+
+     XVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _November 3, 1873_                                           98
+
+    XVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _December 8, 1873_                                          102
+
+      XIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _February 26, 1874_                                         105
+
+       XX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _March 9, 1874_                                             108
+
+      XXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _May 14, 1874_                                              109
+
+     XXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _July, 4, 1874_                                             112
+
+    XXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne_
+           _September 3, 1874_                                         115
+
+     XXIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _December 9, 1874_                                          119
+
+      XXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _December 30, 1874_                                         121
+
+     XXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne, Halstead_
+           _February 21, 1875_                                         123
+
+    XXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
+           _May 18, 1875_                                              126
+
+   XXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Earl's Colne_
+           _August 28, 1875_                                           129
+
+     XXIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Square, London_
+           _November 16, 1875_                                         133
+
+      XXX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _December 4, 1875_                                          137
+
+     XXXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Blaenavon, Routzpool, Mon., England_
+           _January 18, 1876_                                          139
+
+    XXXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _February 25, 1876_                                         141
+
+   XXXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _March 11, 1876_                                            143
+
+    XXXIV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Camden, New Jersey._
+           _Undated, March, 1876_                                      145
+
+     XXXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _March 30, 1876_                                            147
+
+    XXXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _April 21, 1876_                                            149
+
+   XXXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
+           _May 18, 1876_                                              152
+
+  XXXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Round Hill, Northampton, Massachusetts_
+           _September, 1877_                                           154
+
+    XXXIX. BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _New England Hospital, Codman Avenue, Boston Highlands_
+           _Undated_                                                   156
+
+       XL. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Chesterfield, Massachusetts_
+           _September 3, 1878_                                         159
+
+      XLI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Concord, Massachusetts_
+           _October 25 (1878)_                                         161
+
+     XLII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _39 Somerset Street, Boston_
+           _November 13, 1878_                                         163
+
+    XLIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _January 5, 1879_                                           166
+
+     XLIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _January 14, 1879_                                          169
+
+      XLV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _January 27, 1879_                                          171
+
+     XLVI. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _February, 2, 1879_                                         173
+
+    XLVII. BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _33 Warrenton Street, Boston_
+           _February 16, 1879_                                         175
+
+   XLVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _March 18, 1879_                                            177
+
+     XLIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _112 Madison Avenue, New York_
+           _March 26, 1879_                                            179
+
+        L. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Glasgow, Scotland_
+           _June 20, 1879_                                             181
+
+       LI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Lower Shincliffe, Durham_
+           _August 2, 1879_                                            183
+
+      LII. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+           _Camden, New Jersey_
+           _Undated, August, 1879_                                     186
+
+     LIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _1 Elm Villas, Elm Row, Heath Street, Hampstead, London_
+           _December 5, 1879_                                          187
+
+      LIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _5 Mount Vernon, Hampstead_
+           _January 25, 1880_                                          190
+
+       LV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Marley, Haslemere, England_
+           _August 22, 1880_                                           193
+
+      LVI. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _November 30, 1880_                                         195
+
+     LVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _April 18, 1881_                                            197
+
+    LVIII. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, North London_
+           _June 5, 1881_                                              200
+
+      LIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _December 14, 1881_                                         203
+
+       LX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _January 29 and February 6, 1882_                           205
+
+      LXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _May 8, 1882_                                               207
+
+     LXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _November 24, 1882_                                         209
+
+    LXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _January 27, 1883_                                          211
+
+     LXIV. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _April 29, 1883_                                            213
+
+      LXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _May 6, 1883_                                               215
+
+     LXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _July 30, 1883_                                             217
+
+    LXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _October 13, 1883_                                          220
+
+   LXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _April 5, 1884_                                             223
+
+     LXIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Hampstead, London_
+           _May 2, 1884_                                               225
+
+      LXX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, London_
+           _August 5, 1884_                                            227
+
+     LXXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Wolverhampton_
+           _October 26, 1884_                                          228
+
+    LXXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _December 17, 1884_                                         230
+
+   LXXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
+           _February 27, 1885_                                         233
+
+    LXXIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Hampstead, London_
+           _May 4, 1885_                                               236
+
+     LXXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _Hampstead, London_
+           _June 21, 1885_                                             239
+
+    LXXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+           _12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
+           _July 20, 1885_                                             241
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Walt Whitman                                              _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                               FACING PAGE
+
+  Anne Gilchrist                                                        54
+
+  Facsimile of a typical Whitman letter                                 94
+
+  Facsimile of one of Anne Gilchrist's letters
+  to Walt Whitman                             _in the text pages_ 131, 132
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Probably there are few who to-day question the propriety of publishing the
+love-letters of eminent persons a generation after the deaths of both
+parties to the correspondence. When one recalls the published love-letters
+of Abelard, of Dorothy Osborne, of Lady Hamilton, of Mary Wollstonecraft,
+of Margaret Fuller, of George Sand, Bismarck, Shelley, Victor Hugo, Edgar
+Allan Poe, and--to mention only one more illustrious example--of the
+Brownings, one must needs look upon this form of presenting biographical
+material as a well-established, if not a valuable, convention of letters.
+
+As to the particular set of letters presented to the reader in this
+volume, a word of explanation and history may be required. Most of these
+letters are from Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman, a few are replies to her
+letters, and a few are letters from her children to Whitman. Mrs.
+Gilchrist died in 1885. When, two years later, her son, Herbert
+Harlakenden Gilchrist, was collecting material for his interesting
+biography of his mother, Whitman was asked for the letters that she had
+written to him--or rather for extracts from them. In reply to this request
+the poet said, "I do not know that I can furnish any good reason, but I
+feel to keep these utterances exclusively to myself. But I cannot let your
+book go to press without at least saying--and wishing it put on
+record--that among the perfect women I have met (and it has been my
+unspeakably good fortune to have had the very best, for mother, sisters,
+and friends) I have known none more perfect in every relation, than my
+dear, dear friend, Anne Gilchrist." But since Whitman carefully preserved
+them for twenty years, refusing to destroy them as he had destroyed such
+other written matter as he did not care to have preserved, it would appear
+that he intended that so beautiful a tribute to the poetry that he had
+written, no less than to the personality of the poet, should be included
+in that complete biography which is being slowly written, by many hands,
+of America's most unique man of genius. In any case, when these letters
+came into my hands in the apportionment of Whitman's literary legacy under
+the will which named me as one of his three literary executors, there were
+but three things which I could honourably do with them--rather, on closer
+analysis, there seemed to be but one. To leave them in _my_ will or to
+place them in some public repository would have been to shift a
+responsibility which was evidently mine to the shoulders of others who,
+perhaps, would be in possession of fewer facts in the light of which to
+discharge that responsibility. To destroy them would be to do what Whitman
+should have done if it was to be done at all, and to erase forever one of
+the finest tributes that either the man or the poet ever received, one of
+the most touching self-revelations that a noble soul ever "poured out on
+paper." The remaining alternative was to edit and publish them (after
+keeping them a proper length of time), for the benefit, not only of the
+general reader, but as an aid to the future biographer who from the
+proper perspective will write the life of America's great poet and
+prophet. In this determination my judgment has been confirmed by that of
+the few sympathetic friends who, during the twenty-five years that the
+letters have been in my possession, have been allowed to read them.
+
+It is a matter of regret that so few of Whitman's letters to Mrs.
+Gilchrist are available. Those included in this volume, sometimes in
+fragmentary form, have been taken from loose copies found among his papers
+after his death, or, in a few instances, are reprinted from Herbert
+Harlakenden Gilchrist's "Anne Gilchrist" or Horace Traubel's "With Walt
+Whitman in Camden." Acknowledgment of these latter is made in each
+instance. But though Whitman's letters printed in this correspondence will
+not compare with Mrs. Gilchrist's in point of number, enough are presented
+to suggest the tenor of them all.
+
+As a matter of fact, the first love-letter from Anne Gilchrist to Walt
+Whitman was in the form of an essay written in his defense called "An
+Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman." For that reason this well-known
+essay is reprinted in this volume; and "A Confession of Faith," in reality
+an amplification of the "Estimate" written several years after the
+publication of the latter, is included. The reader who desires to follow
+the story of this friendship in a chronological order will do well to read
+at least the former of these tributes before beginning the letters.
+Indebtedness is acknowledged to Prof. Emory Halloway of Brooklyn, New
+York, for valuable suggestions.
+
+T. B. H.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Undoubtedly Mrs. Gilchrist's "Estimate of Walt Whitman," published in the
+(Boston) _Radical_ in May, 1870, was the finest, as it was the first,
+public tribute ever paid to the poet by a woman. Whitman himself so
+considered it--"the proudest word that ever came to me from a woman--if
+not the proudest word of all from any source." But a finer tribute was to
+follow, in the sacred privacy of the love-letters which are now made
+public forty years and more after they were written. The purpose of this
+Introduction is not to interpret those letters, but to sketch the story in
+the light of which they are to be read. And since both Anne Gilchrist and
+Walt Whitman have had sympathetic and painstaking biographers, it will not
+be necessary here to mention at length the already known facts of their
+respective lives.
+
+The story naturally begins with Whitman. He was born at West Hills, Long
+Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. His father was of English descent, and
+came of a family of sailors and farmers. His mother, to whom he himself
+attributed most of his personal qualities, was of excellent Hollandic
+stock. Moving to Brooklyn while still in frocks, he there passed his
+boyhood and youth, but took many summer trips to visit relatives in the
+country. He early left the public school for the printing offices of
+local newspapers, picking enough general knowledge to enable him, when
+about seventeen years of age, to teach schools in the rural districts of
+his native island. Very early in life he became a writer, chiefly of short
+prose tales and essays, which were accepted by the best New York
+magazines. His literary and journalistic work was not confined to the
+metropolis, but took him, for a few months in 1848, so far away from home
+as New Orleans. In 1851-54, besides writing for and editing newspapers, he
+was engaged in housebuilding, the trade of his father. Although this was,
+it is said, a profitable business, he gave it up to write poetry, and
+issued his first volume, "Leaves of Grass," in 1855. The book had been
+written with great pains, according to a preconceived plan of the author
+to be stated in the preface; and it was finally set up (by his own hands,
+for want of a publisher) only, as he tells us, after many "doings and
+undoings, leaving out the stock 'poetical' touches." Its publication was
+the occasion of probably the most voluminous controversy of American
+letters--mostly abuse, ridicule, and condemnation.
+
+In 1862 Whitman's brother George, who had volunteered in the Union Army,
+was reported badly wounded in the Fredericksburg fight. Walt, going at
+once to the war front in Virginia, found that his brother's wound was not
+serious enough to require his ministrations, but gradually he became
+engaged in nursing other wounded soldiers, until this work, as a volunteer
+hospital missionary in Washington, engrossed the major part of his time.
+This continued until and for some years after the end of the war.
+Whitman's own needs were supplied by occasional literary work and from his
+earnings as a clerk first in the Interior and later in the Attorney
+General's Department. He had gone to Washington a man of strong and
+majestic physique, but his untiring devotion, fidelity, and vigilance in
+nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the army hospitals in and about
+Washington was soon to shatter that constitution which was ever a marvel
+to its possessor, and to condemn him to pass the last two decades of his
+life in unaccustomed invalidism. The history of the Civil War in America
+presents no instance of nobler fulfilment of duty or of sublimer
+sacrifice.
+
+Meanwhile his muse was not neglected. His book had gone through four
+editions, and, with the increment of the noble war poetry of "Drum Taps,"
+had become a volume of size. At a very early period "Leaves of Grass" had
+been hailed as an important literary contribution by a few of the best
+thinkers in this country and in England but, generally speaking, nearly
+all literary persons received it with much criticism and many
+qualifications. In Washington devoted disciples like William Douglas
+O'Connor and John Burroughs never varied in their uncompromising adherence
+to the book and its author. This appreciation only by the few was likewise
+encountered in England. The book had made a stir among the literary
+classes, but its importance was not at all generally recognized. Men like
+John Addington Symonds, Edward Dowden, and William Michael Rossetti were,
+however, almost unrestricted in their praise.
+
+It was William Rossetti who planned, in 1867, to bring out in England a
+volume of selections from Whitman's poetry, in the belief that it was
+better to leave out the poems that had provoked such adverse criticism, in
+order to get Whitman a foothold among those who might prefer to have an
+expurgated edition. Whitman's attitude toward the plan at the time is
+given in a letter which he wrote to Rossetti on December 3, 1867: "I
+cannot and will not consent of my own volition to countenance an
+expurgated edition of my pieces. I have steadily refused to do so under
+seductive offers, here in my own country, and must not do so in another
+country." It appeared, however, that Rossetti had already advanced his
+project, and Whitman graciously added: "If, before the arrival of this
+letter, you have practically invested in, and accomplished, or partially
+accomplished, any plan, even contrary to this letter, I do not expect you
+to abandon it, at loss of outlay; but shall _bona fide_ consider you
+blameless if you let it go on, and be carried out, as you may have
+arranged. It is the question of the authorization of an expurgated edition
+proceeding from me, that deepest engages me. The facts of the different
+ways, one way or another way, in which the book may appear in England, out
+of influences not under the shelter of my umbrage, are of much less
+importance to me. After making the foregoing explanation, I shall, I
+think, accept kindly whatever happens. For I feel, indeed know, that I am
+in the hands of a friend, and that my pieces will receive that truest,
+brightest of light and perception coming from love. In that, all other
+and lesser requisites become pale...." The Rossetti "Selections" duly
+appeared--with what momentous influence upon the two persons whose
+friendship we are tracing will presently be shown.
+
+On June 22, 1869, Anne Gilchrist, writing to Rossetti, said: "I was
+calling on Madox Brown a fortnight ago, and he put into my hands your
+edition of Walt Whitman's poems. I shall not cease to thank him for that.
+Since I have had it, I can read no other book: it holds me entirely
+spellbound, and I go through it again and again with deepening delight and
+wonder. How can one refrain from expressing gratitude to you for what you
+have so admirably done?..." To this Rossetti promptly responded: "Your
+letter has given me keen pleasure this morning. That glorious man Whitman
+will one day be known as one of the greatest sons of Earth, a few steps
+below Shakespeare on the throne of immortality. What a tearing-away of the
+obscuring veil of use and wont from the visage of man and of life! I am
+doing myself the pleasure of at once ordering a copy of the "Selections"
+for you, which you will be so kind as to accept. Genuine--i. e.,
+_enthusiastic_--appreciators are not so common, and must be cultivated
+when they appear.... Anybody who values Whitman as you do ought to read
+the whole of him...." At a later date Rossetti gave Mrs. Gilchrist a copy
+of the complete "Leaves of Grass," in acknowledging which she said, "The
+gift of yours I have not any words to tell you how priceless it will be to
+me...." This lengthy letter was later, at Rossetti's solicitation, worked
+over for publication as the "Estimate of Walt Whitman" to which reference
+has already been made.
+
+Anne Gilchrist was primarily a woman of letters. Though her natural bent
+was toward science and philosophy, her marriage threw her into association
+with artists and writers of _belles lettres_. She was born in London on
+February 25, 1828. She came of excellent ancestry, and received a good
+education, particularly in music. She had a profoundly religious nature,
+although it appears that she was never a believer in many of the orthodox
+Christian doctrines. Very early in life she recognized the greatness of
+such men as Emerson and Comte. In 1851, at the age of twenty-three, she
+married Alexander Gilchrist, two months her junior. Though of limited
+means, he possessed literary ability and was then preparing for the bar.
+His early writings secured for him the friendship of Carlyle, who for
+years lived next door to the Gilchrists in Cheyne Row. This friendship led
+to others, and the Gilchrists were soon introduced into that supreme
+literary circle which included Ruskin, Herbert Spencer, George Eliot, the
+Rossettis, Tennyson, and many another great mind of that illustrious age.
+
+Within ten years of their marriage the Gilchrists had four children, in
+whom they were very happy. But in the year 1861, when Anne was
+thirty-three years of age, her husband died. It was a terrible blow, but
+she faced the future unflinchingly, and reared her children, giving to
+each of them a profession. At the time of her husband's death his life of
+William Blake was nearing completion. With the assistance of William and
+Gabriel Rossetti Mrs. Gilchrist finished the work on this excellent
+biography, and it was published by Macmillan. Whitman has paid a fitting
+tribute to the pluck exhibited in this achievement: "Do you know much of
+Blake?" said Whitman to Horace Traubel, who records the conversation in
+his remarkable book "With Walt Whitman in Camden." "You know, this is Mrs.
+Gilchrist's book--the book she completed. They had made up their minds to
+do the work--her husband had it well under way: he caught a fever and was
+carried off. Mrs. Gilchrist was left with four young children, alone: her
+perplexities were great. Have you noticed that the time to look for the
+best things in best people is the moment of their greatest need? Look at
+Lincoln: he is our proudest example: he proved to be big as, bigger than,
+any emergency--his grasp was a giant's grasp--made dark things light, made
+hard things easy.... (Mrs. Gilchrist) belonged to the same noble breed:
+seized the reins, was competent; her head was clear, her hand was firm."
+
+The circumstances under which she first read Whitman's poetry have been
+narrated. When in 1869 Whitman became aware of the Rossetti
+correspondence, he felt greatly honoured, and through Rossetti he sent his
+portrait to the as yet anonymous lady. In acknowledging this communication
+his English friend has a grateful word from "the lady" to return: "I gave
+your letter, and the second copy of your portrait, to the lady you refer
+to, and need scarcely say how truly delighted she was. She has asked me to
+say that you could not have devised for her a more welcome pleasure, and
+that she feels grateful to me for having sent to America the extracts from
+what she had written, since they have been a satisfaction to you...."
+Early in 1870 the "Estimate" appeared in the _Radical_, still more than a
+year before Mrs. Gilchrist addressed her first letter to Whitman. He
+welcomed the essay, and its author as a new and peculiarly powerful
+champion of "Leaves of Grass." To Rossetti he wrote: "I am deeply touched
+by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from England,
+and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to me to
+get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them but approve
+that action. I realize indeed of this smiling and emphatic _well done_
+from the heart and conscience of a true wife and mother, and one, too,
+whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your letter, after flowing
+through the heart and conscience, must also move through and satisfy
+science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto received no eulogium
+so magnificent." Concerning this experience Whitman said to Horace
+Traubel, at a much later period: "You can imagine what such a thing as her
+'Estimate' meant to me at that time. Almost everybody was against me--the
+papers, the preachers, the literary gentlemen--nearly everybody with only
+here and there a dissenting voice--when it looked on the surface as if my
+enterprise was bound to fail ... then this wonderful woman. Such things
+stagger a man ... I had got so used to being ignored or denounced that the
+appearance of a friend was always accompanied with a sort of shock....
+There are shocks that knock you up, shocks that knock you down. Mrs.
+Gilchrist never wavered from her first decision. I have that sort of
+feeling about her which cannot easily be spoken of--...: love (strong
+personal love, too), reverence, respect--you see, it won't go into words:
+all the words are weak and formal." Speaking again of her first criticism
+of his work, he said: "I remember well how one of my noblest, best
+friends--one of my wisest, cutest, profoundest, most candid critics--how
+Mrs. Gilchrist, even to the last, insisted that "Leaves of Grass" was not
+the mouthpiece of parlours, refinements--no--but the language of strength,
+power, passion, intensity, absorption, sincerity...." He claimed a closer
+relationship to her than he allowed to Rossetti: "Rossetti mentions Mrs.
+Gilchrist. Well, he had a right to--almost as much right as I had: a sort
+of brother's right: she was his friend, she was more than my friend. I
+feel like Hamlet when he said forty thousand brothers could not feel what
+he felt for Ophelia. After all ... we were a family--a happy family: the
+few of us who got together, going with love the same way--we were a happy
+family. The crowd was on the other side but we were on our side--we: a few
+of us, just a few: and despite our paucity of numbers we made ourselves
+tell for the good cause."
+
+From these expressions it is quite clear that Whitman's attitude toward
+Mrs. Gilchrist was at first that of the unpopular prophet who finds a
+worthy and welcome disciple in an unexpected place. And that he should
+have so felt was but natural, for she had been drawn to him, as she
+confided to him in one of her letters, by what he had written rather than
+and not by her knowledge of the man. There can be no doubt, however, that
+on Mrs. Gilchrist's part something more than the friendship of her
+new-found liberator was desired. When she read the "Leaves of Grass" she
+was forty-one years of age, in the full vigour of womanhood. To her the
+reading meant a new birth, causing her to pour out her soul to the prophet
+and poet across the seas with a freedom and abandon that were phenomenal.
+This was in the first letter printed in this volume, under date of
+September 3, 1871, and about the time that Whitman had sent to his new
+supporter a copy of his poems. Perhaps the strongest reason why Whitman
+did not reply to passion with passion lies in the fact that his heart was,
+so far as attachments of that sort were concerned, already bestowed
+elsewhere. I am indebted to Professor Holloway for the information that
+Whitman was, in 1864, the unfortunate lover of a certain lady whose
+previous marriage to another, while it did not dim their mutual devotion,
+did serve to keep them apart. To her Whitman wrote that heart-wrung lyric
+of separation, "Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd." This suggests that
+there was probably a double tragedy, so ironical is the fate of the
+affections, Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman both passionately yearning for
+personal love yet unable to quench the one desire in the other.
+
+But if there could not be between them the love which leads to marriage,
+there could be a noble and tender and life-long friendship. Over this
+Whitman's loss of his magnificent health, to be followed by an invalidism
+of twenty years, had no power. In 1873 Whitman was stricken with
+paralysis, which rendered him so helpless that he had to give up his work
+and finally his position, and to go to live for the rest of his life in
+Camden, New Jersey. Mrs. Gilchrist's affection for him did not waver when
+this trial was made of it. Indeed, his illness had the effect, as these
+letters show, of quickening the desire which she had had for several years
+(since 1869) of coming to live in America, that she might be near him to
+lighten his burdens, and, if she could not hope to cherish him as a wife,
+that she might at least care for him as a mother. Whitman, it will be
+noted, strongly advised against this plan. Just why he wished to keep her
+away from America is unclear, possibly because he dared not put so
+idealistic a friendship and discipleship to the test of personal
+acquaintance with a prematurely broken old man. Nevertheless, on August
+30, 1876, Mrs. Gilchrist set sail, with three of her children, for
+Philadelphia. They arrived in September. From that date until the spring
+of 1878 the Gilchrists kept house at 1929 North Twenty-second street,
+Philadelphia, where Whitman was a frequent and regular visitor.
+
+It is interesting to note that Mrs. Gilchrist's appreciation of Whitman
+did not lessen after she had met and known him in the intimacy of that
+tea-table circle which at her house discussed the same great variety of
+topics--literature, religion, science, politics--that had enlivened the
+O'Connor breakfast table in Washington. She shall describe it and him
+herself. In a letter to Rossetti, under date of December 22, 1876, she
+writes: "But I need not tell you that our greatest pleasure is the society
+of Mr. Whitman, who fully realizes the ideal I had formed from his poems,
+and brings such an atmosphere of cordiality and geniality with him as is
+indescribable. He is really making slow but, I trust, steady progress
+toward recovery, having been much cheered (and no doubt that acted
+favourably upon his health) by the sympathy manifested toward him in
+England and the pleasure of finding so many buyers of his poems there. It
+must be a deep satisfaction to you to have been the channel through which
+this help and comfort flowed...." And a year later she writes to the same
+correspondent: "We are having delightful evenings this winter; how often
+do I wish you could make one in the circle around our tea table where sits
+on my right hand every evening but Sunday Walt Whitman. He has made great
+progress in health and recovered powers of getting about during the year
+we have been here: nevertheless the lameness--the dragging instead of
+lifting the left leg continues; and this together with his white hair and
+beard give him a look of age curiously contradicted by his face, which has
+not only the ruddy freshness but the full, rounded contours of youth,
+nowhere drawn or wrinkled or sunk; it is a face as indicative of serenity
+and goodness and of mental and bodily health as the brow is of
+intellectual power. But I notice he occasionally speaks of himself as
+having a 'wounded brain,' and of being still quite altered from his former
+self."
+
+Whitman, on his part, thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon sunshine of such
+friendly hospitality, for he considered Mrs. Gilchrist even more gifted as
+a conversationalist than as a writer. For hints of the sort of talk that
+flowed with Mrs. Gilchrist's tea I must refer the reader to her son's
+realistic biography.
+
+After two years of residence in Philadelphia, the Gilchrists went to dwell
+in Boston and later in New York City, and met the leaders in the two
+literary capitals. From these addresses the letters begin again, after the
+natural interruption of two years. It is at this time that the first
+letters from Herbert and Beatrice Gilchrist were written. These are given
+in this volume to complete the chain and to show how completely they were
+in sympathy with their mother in their love and appreciation of Whitman.
+From New York they all sailed for their old home in England on June 7,
+1879. Whitman came the day before to wish them good voyage. The chief
+reason for the return to England seems to have been the desire to send
+Beatrice to Berne to complete her medical education. After the return to
+England, or rather while they are still en route at Glasgow, the letters
+begin again.
+
+Several years of literary work yet remained to Mrs. Gilchrist. The chief
+writings of these years were a new edition of the Blake, a life of Mary
+Lamb for the Eminent Women Series, an article on Blake for the Dictionary
+of National Biography, several essays including "Three Glimpses of a New
+England Village," and the "Confession of Faith." She was beginning a
+careful study of the life and writings of Carlyle, with the intention of
+writing a life of her old friend to reply to the aspersions of Freude.
+This last work was, however, never completed, for early in 1882 some
+malady which rendered her breathing difficult had already begun to cast
+the shadow of death upon her. But her faith, long schooled in the optimism
+of "Leaves of Grass," looked upon the steadily approaching end with
+calmness. On November 29, 1885, she died.
+
+When Whitman was informed of her death by Herbert Gilchrist, he could find
+words for only the following brief reply:
+
+     _15th December 1885.
+     Camden, United States, America._
+
+     DEAR HERBERT:
+
+     I have received your letter. Nothing now remains but a sweet and rich
+     memory--none more beautiful all time, all life all the earth--I
+     cannot write anything of a letter to-day. I must sit alone and think.
+
+     WALT WHITMAN.
+
+Later, in conversations with Horace Traubel which the latter has preserved
+in his minute biography of Whitman, he was able to express his regard for
+Mrs. Gilchrist more fully--"a supreme character of whom the world knows
+too little for its own good ... If her sayings had been recorded--I do not
+say she would pale, but I do say she would equal the best of the women of
+our century--add something as great as any to the testimony on the side of
+her sex." And at another time: "Oh! she was strangely different from the
+average; entirely herself; as simple as nature; true, honest; beautiful as
+a tree is tall, leafy, rich, full, free--_is_ a tree. Yet, free as she
+was by nature, bound by no conventionalisms, she was the most courageous
+of women; more than queenly; of high aspect in the best sense. She was not
+cold; she had her passions; I have known her to warm up--to resent
+something that was said; some impeachment of good things--great things; of
+a person sometimes; she had the largest charity, the sweetest fondest
+optimism.... She was a radical of radicals; enjoyed all sorts of high
+enthusiasms: was exquisitely sensitized; belonged to the times yet to
+come; her vision went on and on."
+
+This searching interpretation of her character wants only her artist son's
+description of her personal appearance to make the final picture complete:
+"A little above the average height, she walked with an even, light step.
+Brown hair concealed a full and finely chiselled brow, and her hazel eyes
+bent upon you a bright and penetrating gaze. Whilst conversing her face
+became radiant as with an experience of golden years; humour was present
+in her conversation--flecks of sunshine, such as sometimes play about the
+minds of deeply religious natures. Her animated manner seldom flagged, and
+charmed the taciturn to talking in his or her best humour." Once, when
+speaking to Walt Whitman of the beauty of the human speaking voice, he
+replied: "The voice indicates the soul. Hers, with its varied modulations
+and blended tones, was the tenderest, most musical voice ever to bless our
+ears."
+
+Her death was a long-lasting shock to Whitman. "She was a wonderful
+woman--a sort of human miracle to me.... Her taking off ... was a great
+shock to me: I have never quite got over it: she was near to me: she was
+subtle: her grasp on my work was tremendous--so sure, so all around, so
+adequate." If this sounds a trifle self-centred in its criticism, not so
+was the poem which, in memory of her, he wrote as a fitting epitaph from
+the poet she had loved.
+
+
+"GOING SOMEWHERE"
+
+  My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend (Now buried in an English
+      grave--and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake),
+  Ended our talk--"The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern
+      learning, intuitions deep,
+  Of all Geologies--Histories--of all Astronomy--of Evolution, Metaphysics
+      all,
+  Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering,
+  Life, life an endless march, an endless army (no halt, but, it is duly
+      over),
+  The world, the race, the soul--in space and time the universes,
+  All bound as is befitting each--all surely going somewhere."
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN[1]
+
+[FROM LETTERS BY ANNE GILCHRIST TO W. M. ROSSETTI.]
+
+
+_June 23, 1869._--I am very sure you are right in your estimate of Walt
+Whitman. There is nothing in him that I shall ever let go my hold of. For
+me the reading of his poems is truly a new birth of the soul.
+
+I shall quite fearlessly accept your kind offer of the loan of a complete
+edition, certain that great and divinely beautiful nature has not, could
+not infuse any poison into the wine he has poured out for us. And as for
+what you specially allude to, who so well able to bear it--I will say, to
+judge wisely of it--as one who, having been a happy wife and mother, has
+learned to accept all things with tenderness, to feel a sacredness in all?
+Perhaps Walt Whitman has forgotten--or, through some theory in his head,
+has overridden--the truth that our instincts are beautiful facts of
+nature, as well as our bodies; and that we have a strong instinct of
+silence about some things.
+
+_July 11._--I think it was very manly and kind of you to put the whole of
+Walt Whitman's poems into my hands; and that I have no other friend who
+would have judged them and me so wisely and generously.
+
+I had not dreamed that words could cease to be words, and become electric
+streams like these. I do assure you that, strong as I am, I feel sometimes
+as if I had not bodily strength to read many of these poems. In the series
+headed "Calamus," for instance, in some of the "Songs of Parting," the
+"Voice out of the Sea," the poem beginning "Tears, Tears," &c., there is
+such a weight of emotion, such a tension of the heart, that mine refuses
+to beat under it,--stands quite still,--and I am obliged to lay the book
+down for a while. Or again, in the piece called "Walt Whitman," and one or
+two others of that type, I am as one hurried through stormy seas, over
+high mountains, dazed with sunlight, stunned with a crowd and tumult of
+faces and voices, till I am breathless, bewildered, half dead. Then come
+parts and whole poems in which there is such calm wisdom and strength of
+thought, such a cheerful breadth of sunshine, that the soul bathes in them
+renewed and strengthened. Living impulses flow out of these that make me
+exult in life, yet look longingly towards "the superb vistas of Death."
+Those who admire this poem, and don't care for that, and talk of
+formlessness, absence of metre, &c., are quite as far from any genuine
+recognition of Walt Whitman as his bitter detractors. Not, of course, that
+all the pieces are equal in power and beauty, but that all are vital; they
+grew--they were not made. We criticise a palace or a cathedral; but what
+is the good of criticising a forest? Are not the hitherto-accepted
+masterpieces of literature akin rather to noble architecture; built up of
+material rendered precious by elaboration; planned with subtile art that
+makes beauty go hand in hand with rule and measure, and knows where the
+last stone will come, before the first is laid; the result stately, fixed,
+yet such as might, in every particular, have been different from what it
+is (therefore inviting criticism), contrasting proudly with the careless
+freedom of nature, opposing its own rigid adherence to symmetry to her
+willful dallying with it? But not such is this book. Seeds brought by the
+winds from north, south, east, and west, lying long in the earth, not
+resting on it like the stately building, but hid in and assimilating it,
+shooting upwards to be nourished by the air and the sunshine and the rain
+which beat idly against that,--each bough and twig and leaf growing in
+strength and beauty its own way, a law to itself, yet, with all this
+freedom of spontaneous growth, the result inevitable, unalterable
+(therefore setting criticism at naught), above all things, vital,--that
+is, a source of ever-generating vitality: such are these poems.
+
+  "Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,
+  Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and from the
+      pondside,
+  Breast sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than
+      vines,
+  Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the sun
+      is risen,
+  Breezes of land and love, breezes set from living shores out to you on
+      the living sea,--to you, O sailors!
+  Frost-mellowed berries and Third-month twigs, offered fresh to young
+      persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
+  Love-buds put before you and within you, whoever you are,
+  Buds to be unfolded on the old terms.
+  If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
+      form, colour, perfume, to you:
+  If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
+      tall branches and trees."
+
+And the music takes good care of itself, too. As if it _could_ be
+otherwise! As if those "large, melodious thoughts," those emotions, now so
+stormy and wild, now of unfathomed tenderness and gentleness, could fail
+to vibrate through the words in strong, sweeping, long-sustained chords,
+with lovely melodies winding in and out fitfully amongst them! Listen, for
+instance, to the penetrating sweetness, set in the midst of rugged
+grandeur, of the passage beginning,--
+
+  "I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
+  I call to the earth and sea half held by the night."
+
+I see that no counting of syllables will reveal the mechanism of the
+music; and that this rushing spontaneity could not stay to bind itself
+with the fetters of metre. But I know that the music is there, and that I
+would not for something change ears with those who cannot hear it. And I
+know that poetry must do one of two things,--either own this man as equal
+with her highest completest manifestors, or stand aside, and admit that
+there is something come into the world nobler, diviner than herself, one
+that is free of the universe, and can tell its secrets as none before.
+
+I do not think or believe this; but see it with the same unmistakable
+definiteness of perception and full consciousness that I see the sun at
+this moment in the noonday sky, and feel his rays glowing down upon me as
+I write in the open air. What more can you ask of the works of a man's
+mouth than that they should "absorb into you as food and air, to appear
+again in your strength, gait, face,"--that they should be "fibre and
+filter to your blood," joy and gladness to your whole nature?
+
+I am persuaded that one great source of this kindling, vitalizing power--I
+suppose _the_ great source--is the grasp laid upon the present, the
+fearless and comprehensive dealing with reality. Hitherto the leaders of
+thought have (except in science) been men with their faces resolutely
+turned backwards; men who have made of the past a tyrant that beggars and
+scorns the present, hardly seeing any greatness but what is shrouded away
+in the twilight, underground past; naming the present only for disparaging
+comparisons, humiliating distrust that tends to create the very barrenness
+it complains of; bidding me warm myself at fires that went out to mortal
+eyes centuries ago; insisting, in religion above all, that I must either
+"look through dead men's eyes," or shut my own in helpless darkness. Poets
+fancying themselves so happy over the chill and faded beauty of the past,
+but not making me happy at all,--rebellious always at being dragged down
+out of the free air and sunshine of to-day.
+
+But this poet, this "athlete, full of rich words, full of joy," takes you
+by the hand, and turns you with your face straight forwards. The present
+is great enough for him, because he is great enough for it. It flows
+through him as a "vast oceanic tide," lifting up a mighty voice. Earth,
+"the eloquent, dumb, great mother," is not old, has lost none of her fresh
+charms, none of her divine meanings; still bears great sons and daughters,
+if only they would possess themselves and accept their birthright,--a
+richer, not a poorer, heritage than was ever provided before,--richer by
+all the toil and suffering of the generations that have preceded, and by
+the further unfolding of the eternal purposes. Here is one come at last
+who can show them how; whose songs are the breath of a glad, strong,
+beautiful life, nourished sufficingly, kindled to unsurpassed intensity
+and greatness by the gifts of the present.
+
+  "Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy."
+
+  "O the joy of my soul leaning poised on itself,--receiving identity
+      through materials, and loving them,--observing characters, and
+      absorbing them!
+  O my soul vibrated back to me from them!
+
+  "O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
+  The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist, fresh
+      stillness of the woods,
+  The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the
+      forenoon.
+
+  "O to realize space!
+  The plenteousness of all--that there are no bounds;
+  To emerge, and be of the sky--of the sun and moon and the flying clouds,
+      as one with them.
+
+  "O the joy of suffering,--
+  To struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted,
+  To be entirely alone with them--to find how much one can stand!"
+
+I used to think it was great to disregard happiness, to press on to a high
+goal, careless, disdainful of it. But now I see that there is nothing so
+great as to be capable of happiness; to pluck it out of "each moment and
+whatever happens"; to find that one can ride as gay and buoyant on the
+angry, menacing, tumultuous waves of life as on those that glide and
+glitter under a clear sky; that it is not defeat and wretchedness which
+come out of the storm of adversity, but strength and calmness.
+
+See, again, in the pieces gathered together under the title "Calamus," and
+elsewhere, what it means for a man to love his fellow-man. Did you dream
+it before? These "evangel-poems of comrades and of love" speak, with the
+abiding, penetrating power of prophecy, of a "new and superb friendship";
+speak not as beautiful dreams, unrealizable aspirations to be laid aside
+in sober moods, because they breathe out what now glows within the poet's
+own breast, and flows out in action toward the men around him. Had ever
+any land before her poet, not only to concentrate within himself her life,
+and, when she kindled with anger against her children who were treacherous
+to the cause her life is bound up with, to announce and justify her
+terrible purpose in words of unsurpassable grandeur (as in the poem
+beginning, "Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps"), but also to go
+and with his own hands dress the wounds, with his powerful presence soothe
+and sustain and nourish her suffering soldiers,--hundreds of them,
+thousands, tens of thousands,--by day and by night, for weeks, months,
+years?
+
+  "I sit by the restless all the dark night; some are so young,
+  Some suffer so much: I recall the experience sweet and sad.
+  Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have crossed and rested,
+  Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips:--"
+
+Kisses, that touched with the fire of a strange, new, undying eloquence
+the lips that received them! The most transcendent genius could not,
+untaught by that "experience sweet and sad," have breathed out hymns for
+her dead soldiers of such ineffably tender, sorrowful, yet triumphant
+beauty.
+
+But the present spreads before us other things besides those of which it
+is easy to see the greatness and beauty; and the poet would leave us to
+learn the hardest part of our lesson unhelped if he took no heed of these;
+and would be unfaithful to his calling, as interpreter of man to himself
+and of the scheme of things in relation to him, if he did not accept
+all--if he did not teach "the great lesson of reception, neither
+preference nor denial." If he feared to stretch out the hand, not of
+condescending pity, but of fellowship, to the degraded, criminal, foolish,
+despised, knowing that they are only laggards in "the great procession
+winding along the roads of the universe," "the far-behind to come on in
+their turn," knowing the "amplitude of Time," how could he roll the stone
+of contempt off the heart as he does, and cut the strangling knot of the
+problem of inherited viciousness and degradation? And, if he were not bold
+and true to the utmost, and did not own in himself the threads of darkness
+mixed in with the threads of light, and own it with the same strength and
+directness that he tells of the light, and not in those vague generalities
+that everybody uses, and nobody means, in speaking on this head,--in the
+worst, germs of all that is in the best; in the best, germs of all that is
+in the worst,--the _brotherhood_ of the human race would be a mere
+flourish of rhetoric. And brotherhood is naught if it does not bring
+brother's love along with it. If the poet's heart were not "a measureless
+ocean of love" that seeks the lips and would quench the thirst of all, he
+were not the one we have waited for so long. Who but he could put at last
+the right meaning into that word "democracy," which has been made to bear
+such a burthen of incongruous notions?
+
+  "By God! I will have nothing that all cannot have their counterpart of
+      on the same terms!"
+
+flashing it forth like a banner, making it draw the instant allegiance of
+every man and woman who loves justice. All occupations, however homely,
+all developments of the activities of man, need the poet's recognition,
+because every man needs the assurance that for him also the materials out
+of which to build up a great and satisfying life lie to hand, the sole
+magic in the use of them, all of the right stuff in the right hands.
+Hence those patient enumerations of every conceivable kind of industry:--
+
+  "In them far more than you estimated--in them far less also."
+
+Far more as a means, next to nothing as an end: whereas we are wont to
+take it the other way, and think the result something, but the means a
+weariness. Out of all come strength, and the cheerfulness of strength. I
+murmured not a little, to say the truth, under these enumerations, at
+first. But now I think that not only is their purpose a justification, but
+that the musical ear and vividness of perception of the poet have enabled
+him to perform this task also with strength and grace, and that they are
+harmonious as well as necessary parts of the great whole.
+
+Nor do I sympathize with those who grumble at the unexpected words that
+turn up now and then. A quarrel with words is always, more or less, a
+quarrel with meanings; and here we are to be as genial and as wide as
+nature, and quarrel with nothing. If the thing a word stands for exists by
+divine appointment (and what does not so exist?), the word need never be
+ashamed of itself; the shorter and more direct, the better. It is a gain
+to make friends with it, and see it in good company. Here at all events,
+"poetic diction" would not serve,--not pretty, soft, colourless words,
+laid by in lavender for the special uses of poetry, that have had none of
+the wear and tear of daily life; but such as have stood most, as tell of
+human heart-beats, as fit closest to the sense, and have taken deep hues
+of association from the varied experiences of life--those are the words
+wanted here. We only ask to seize and be seized swiftly, over-masteringly,
+by the great meanings. We see with the eyes of the soul, listen with the
+ears of the soul; the poor old words that have served so many generations
+for purposes, good, bad, and indifferent, and become warped and blurred in
+the process, grow young again, regenerate, translucent. It is not mere
+delight they give us,--_that_ the "sweet singers," with their subtly
+wrought gifts, their mellifluous speech, can give too in their degree; it
+is such life and health as enable us to pluck delights for ourselves out
+of every hour of the day, and taste the sunshine that ripened the corn in
+the crust we eat (I often seem to myself to do that).
+
+Out of the scorn of the present came skepticism; and out of the large,
+loving acceptance of it comes faith. If _now_ is so great and beautiful, I
+need no arguments to make me believe that the _nows_ of the past and of
+the future were and will be great and beautiful, too.
+
+  "I know I am deathless.
+  I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's compass.
+  I know I shall not pass, like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick
+      at night.
+  I know I am august.
+  I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.
+
+  "My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite:
+  I laugh at what you call dissolution,
+  And I know the amplitude of Time."
+
+  "No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and Death."
+
+You argued rightly that my confidence would not be betrayed by any of the
+poems in this book. None of them troubled me even for a moment; because I
+saw at a glance that it was not, as men had supposed, the heights brought
+down to the depths, but the depths lifted up level with the sunlit
+heights, that they might become clear and sunlit, too. Always, for a
+woman, a veil woven out of her own soul--never touched upon even, with a
+rough hand, by this poet. But, for a man, a daring, fearless pride in
+himself, not a mock-modesty woven out of delusions--a very poor imitation
+of a woman's. Do they not see that this fearless pride, this complete
+acceptance of themselves, is needful for her pride, her justification?
+What! is it all so ignoble, so base, that it will not bear the honest
+light of speech from lips so gifted with "the divine power to use words?"
+Then what hateful, bitter humiliation for her, to have to give herself up
+to the reality! Do you think there is ever a bride who does not taste more
+or less this bitterness in her cup? But who put it there? It must surely
+be man's fault, not God's, that she has to say to herself, "Soul, look
+another way--you have no part in this. Motherhood is beautiful, fatherhood
+is beautiful; but the dawn of fatherhood and motherhood is not beautiful."
+Do they really think that God is ashamed of what he has made and
+appointed? And, if not, surely it is somewhat superfluous that they should
+undertake to be so for him.
+
+  "The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,"
+
+Of a woman above all. It is true that instinct of silence I spoke of is a
+beautiful, imperishable part of nature, too. But it is not beautiful when
+it means an ignominious shame brooding darkly. Shame is like a very
+flexible veil, that follows faithfully the shape of what it
+covers,--beautiful when it hides a beautiful thing, ugly when it hides an
+ugly one. It has not covered what was beautiful here; it has covered a
+mean distrust of a man's self and of his Creator. It was needed that this
+silence, this evil spell, should for once be broken, and the daylight let
+in, that the dark cloud lying under might be scattered to the winds. It
+was needed that one who could here indicate for us "the path between
+reality and the soul" should speak. That is what these beautiful, despised
+poems, the "Children of Adam," do, read by the light that glows out of the
+rest of the volume: light of a clear, strong faith in God, of an
+unfathomably deep and tender love for humanity,--light shed out of a soul
+that is "possessed of itself."
+
+  "Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
+  Corroborating for ever the triumph of things."
+
+Now silence may brood again; but lovingly, happily, as protecting what is
+beautiful, not as hiding what is unbeautiful; consciously enfolding a
+sweet and sacred mystery--august even as the mystery of Death, the dawn as
+the setting: kindred grandeurs, which to eyes that are opened shed a
+hallowing beauty on all that surrounds and preludes them.
+
+  "O vast and well-veiled Death!
+
+  "O the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments,
+      for reasons!"
+
+He who can thus look with fearlessness at the beauty of Death may well
+dare to teach us to look with fearless, untroubled eyes at the perfect
+beauty of Love in all its appointed realizations. Now none need turn away
+their thoughts with pain or shame; though only lovers and poets may say
+what they will,--the lover to his own, the poet to all, because all are in
+a sense his own. None need fear that this will be harmful to the woman.
+How should there be such a flaw in the scheme of creation that, for the
+two with whom there is no complete life, save in closest sympathy, perfect
+union, what is natural and happy for the one should be baneful to the
+other? The utmost faithful freedom of speech, such as there is in these
+poems, creates in her no thought or feeling that shuns the light of
+heaven, none that are not as innocent and serenely fair as the flowers
+that grow; would lead, not to harm, but to such deep and tender affection
+as makes harm or the thought of harm simply impossible. Far more beautiful
+care than man is aware of has been taken in the making of her, to fit her
+to be his mate. God has taken such care that _he_ need take none; none,
+that is, which consists in disguisement, insincerity, painful hushing-up
+of his true, grand, initiating nature. And, as regards the poet's
+utterances, which, it might be thought, however harmless in themselves,
+would prove harmful by falling into the hands of those for whom they are
+manifestly unsuitable, I believe that even here fear is needless. For her
+innocence is folded round with such thick folds of ignorance, till the
+right way and time for it to accept knowledge, that what is unsuitable is
+also unintelligible to her; and, if no dark shadow from without be cast on
+the white page by misconstruction or by foolish mystery and hiding away of
+it, no hurt will ensue from its passing freely through her hands.
+
+This is so, though it is little understood or realized by men. Wives and
+mothers will learn through the poet that there is rejoicing grandeur and
+beauty there wherein their hearts have so longed to find it; where foolish
+men, traitors to themselves, poorly comprehending the grandeur of their
+own or the beauty of a woman's nature, have taken such pains to make her
+believe there was none,--nothing but miserable discrepancy.
+
+One of the hardest things to make a child understand is, that down
+underneath your feet, if you go far enough, you come to blue sky and stars
+again; that there really is no "down" for the world, but only in every
+direction an "up." And that this is an all-embracing truth, including
+within its scope every created thing, and, with deepest significance,
+every part, faculty, attribute, healthful impulse, mind, and body of a
+man (each and all facing towards and related to the Infinite on every
+side), is what we grown children find it hardest to realize, too. Novalis
+said, "We touch heaven when we lay our hand on the human body"; which, if
+it mean anything, must mean an ample justification of the poet who has
+dared to be the poet of the body as well as of the soul,--to treat it with
+the freedom and grandeur of an ancient sculptor.
+
+  "Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy of the muse:--I say the
+      form complete is worthier far.
+
+  "These are not parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul.
+
+  "O, I say now these are soul."
+
+But while Novalis--who gazed at the truth a long way off, up in the air,
+in a safe, comfortable, German fashion--has been admiringly quoted by high
+authorities, the great American who has dared to rise up and wrestle with
+it, and bring it alive and full of power in the midst of us, has been
+greeted with a very different kind of reception, as has happened a few
+times before in the world in similar cases. Yet I feel deeply persuaded
+that a perfectly fearless, candid, ennobling treatment of the life of the
+body (so inextricably intertwined with, so potent in its influence on the
+life of the soul) will prove of inestimable value to all earnest and
+aspiring natures, impatient of the folly of the long-prevalent belief that
+it is because of the greatness of the spirit that it has learned to
+despise the body, and to ignore its influences; knowing well that it is,
+on the contrary, just because the spirit is not great enough, not healthy
+and vigorous enough, to transfuse itself into the life of the body,
+elevating that and making it holy by its own triumphant intensity;
+knowing, too, how the body avenges this by dragging the soul down to the
+level assigned itself. Whereas the spirit must lovingly embrace the body,
+as the roots of a tree embrace the ground, drawing thence rich
+nourishment, warmth, impulse. Or, rather, the body is itself the root of
+the soul--that whereby it grows and feeds. The great tide of healthful
+life that carries all before it must surge through the whole man, not beat
+to and fro in one corner of his brain.
+
+  "O the life of my senses and flesh, transcending my senses and flesh!"
+
+For the sake of all that is highest, a truthful recognition of this life,
+and especially of that of it which underlies the fundamental ties of
+humanity--the love of husband and wife, fatherhood, motherhood--is needed.
+Religion needs it, now at last alive to the fact that the basis of all
+true worship is comprised in "the great lesson of reception, neither
+preference nor denial," interpreting, loving, rejoicing in all that is
+created, fearing and despising nothing.
+
+  "I accept reality, and dare not question it."
+
+The dignity of a man, the pride and affection of a woman, need it too. And
+so does the intellect. For science has opened up such elevating views of
+the mystery of material existence that, if poetry had not bestirred
+herself to handle this theme in her own way, she would have been left
+behind by her plodding sister. Science knows that matter is not, as we
+fancied, certain stolid atoms which the forces of nature vibrate through
+and push and pull about; but that the forces and the atoms are one
+mysterious, imperishable identity, neither conceivable without the other.
+She knows, as well as the poet, that destructibility is not one of
+nature's words; that it is only the relationship of things--tangibility,
+visibility--that are transitory. She knows that body and soul are one, and
+proclaims it undauntedly, regardless, and rightly regardless, of
+inferences. Timid onlookers, aghast, think it means that soul is
+body--means death for the soul. But the poet knows it means body is
+soul--the great whole imperishable; in life and in death continually
+changing substance, always retaining identity. For, if the man of science
+is happy about the atoms, if he is not baulked or baffled by apparent
+decay or destruction, but can see far enough into the dimness to know that
+not only is each atom imperishable, but that its endowments,
+characteristics, affinities, electric and other attractions and
+repulsions--however suspended, hid, dormant, masked, when it enters into
+new combinations--remain unchanged, be it for thousands of years, and,
+when it is again set free, manifest themselves in the old way, shall not
+the poet be happy about the vital whole? shall the highest force, the
+vital, that controls and compels into complete subservience for its own
+purposes the rest, be the only one that is destructible? and the love and
+thought that endow the whole be less enduring than the gravitating,
+chemical, electric powers that endow its atoms? But identity is the
+essence of love and thought--I still I, you still you. Certainly no man
+need ever again be scared by the "dark hush" and the little handful of
+refuse.
+
+  "You are not scattered to the winds--you gather certainly and safely
+      around yourself."
+
+  "Sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together."
+
+  "All goes onward and outward: nothing collapses."
+
+  "What I am, I am of my body; and what I shall be, I shall be of my
+      body."
+
+  "The body parts away at last for the journeys of the soul."
+
+Science knows that whenever a thing passes from a solid to a subtle air,
+power is set free to a wider scope of action. The poet knows it too, and
+is dazzled as he turns his eyes toward "the superb vistas of death." He
+knows that "the perpetual transfers and promotions" and "the amplitude of
+time" are for a man as well as for the earth. The man of science, with
+unwearied, self-denying toil, finds the letters and joins them into words.
+But the poet alone can make complete sentences. The man of science
+furnishes the premises; but it is the poet who draws the final conclusion.
+Both together are "swiftly and surely preparing a future greater than all
+the past." But, while the man of science bequeaths to it the fruits of
+his toil, the poet, this mighty poet, bequeaths himself--"Death making him
+really undying." He will "stand as nigh as the nighest" to these men and
+women. For he taught them, in words which breathe out his very heart and
+soul into theirs, that "love of comrades" which, like the "soft-born
+measureless light," makes wholesome and fertile every spot it penetrates
+to, lighting up dark social and political problems, and kindling into a
+genial glow that great heart of justice which is the life-source of
+Democracy. He, the beloved friend of all, initiated for them a "new and
+superb friendship"; whispered that secret of a godlike pride in a man's
+self, and a perfect trust in woman, whereby their love for each other, no
+longer poisoned and stifled, but basking in the light of God's smile, and
+sending up to him a perfume of gratitude, attains at last a divine and
+tender completeness. He gave a faith-compelling utterance to that "wisdom
+which is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and of
+the excellence of things." Happy America, that he should be her son! One
+sees, indeed, that only a young giant of a nation could produce this kind
+of greatness, so full of the ardour, the elasticity, the inexhaustible
+vigour and freshness, the joyousness, the audacity of youth. But I, for
+one, cannot grudge anything to America. For, after all, the young giant is
+the old English giant--the great English race renewing its youth in that
+magnificent land, "Mexican-breathed, Arctic-braced," and girding up its
+loins to start on a new career that shall match with the greatness of the
+new home.
+
+
+
+
+A CONFESSION OF FAITH[2]
+
+
+"Of genius in the Fine Arts," wrote Wordsworth, "the only infallible sign
+is the widening the sphere of human sensibility for the delight, honour,
+and benefit of human nature. Genius is the introduction of a new element
+into the intellectual universe, or, if that be not allowed, it is the
+application of powers to objects on which they had not before been
+exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce
+effects hitherto unknown. What is all this but an advance or conquest made
+by the soul of the poet? Is it to be supposed that the reader can make
+progress of this kind like an Indian prince or general stretched on his
+palanquin and borne by slaves? No; he is invigorated and inspirited by his
+leader in order that he may exert himself, for he cannot proceed in
+quiescence, he cannot be carried like a dead weight. Therefore to create
+taste is to call forth and bestow power."
+
+A great poet, then, is "a challenge and summons"; and the question first
+of all is not whether we like or dislike him, but whether we are capable
+of meeting that challenge, of stepping out of our habitual selves to
+answer that summons. He works on Nature's plan: Nature, who teaches
+nothing but supplies infinite material to learn from; who never preaches
+but drives home her meanings by the resistless eloquence of effects.
+Therefore the poet makes greater demands upon his reader than any other
+man. For it is not a question of swallowing his ideas or admiring his
+handiwork merely, but of seeing, feeling, enjoying, as he sees, feels,
+enjoys. "The messages of great poems to each man and woman are," says Walt
+Whitman, "come to us on equal terms, only then can you understand us. We
+are no better than you; what we enclose you enclose, what we enjoy you may
+enjoy"--no better than you potentially, that is; but if you would
+understand us the potential must become the actual, the dormant sympathies
+must awaken and broaden, the dulled perceptions clear themselves and let
+in undreamed of delights, the wonder-working imagination must respond, the
+ear attune itself, the languid soul inhale large draughts of love and hope
+and courage, those "empyreal airs" that vitalize the poet's world. No
+wonder the poet is long in finding his audience; no wonder he has to abide
+the "inexorable tests of Time," which, if indeed he be great, slowly turns
+the handful into hundreds, the hundreds into thousands, and at last having
+done its worst, grudgingly passes him on into the ranks of the Immortals.
+
+Meanwhile let not the handful who believe that such a destiny awaits a man
+of our time cease to give a reason for the faith that is in them.
+
+So far as the suffrages of his own generation go Walt Whitman may, like
+Wordsworth, tell of the "love, the admiration, the indifference, the
+slight, the aversion, and even the contempt" with which his poems have
+been received; but the love and admiration are from even a smaller
+number, the aversion, the contempt more vehement, more universal and
+persistent than Wordsworth ever encountered. For the American is a more
+daring innovator; he cuts loose from precedent, is a very Columbus who has
+sailed forth alone on perilous seas to seek new shores, to seek a new
+world for the soul, a world that shall give scope and elevation and beauty
+to the changed and changing events, aspirations, conditions of modern
+life. To new aims, new methods; therefore let not the reader approach
+these poems as a judge, comparing, testing, measuring by what has gone
+before, but as a willing learner, an unprejudiced seeker for whatever may
+delight and nourish and exalt the soul. Neither let him be abashed nor
+daunted by the weight of adverse opinion, the contempt and denial which
+have been heaped upon the great American even though it be the contempt
+and denial of the capable, the cultivated, the recognized authorities; for
+such is the usual lot of the pioneer in whatever field. In religion it is
+above all to the earnest and conscientious believer that the Reformer has
+appeared a blasphemer, and in the world of literature it is equally
+natural that the most careful student, that the warmest lover of the
+accepted masterpieces, should be the most hostile to one who forsakes the
+methods by which, or at any rate, in company with which, those triumphs
+have been achieved. "But," said the wise Goethe, "I will listen to any
+man's convictions; you may keep your doubts, your negations to yourself, I
+have plenty of my own." For heartfelt convictions are rare things.
+Therefore I make bold to indicate the scope and source of power in Walt
+Whitman's writings, starting from no wider ground than their effect upon
+an individual mind. It is not criticism I have to offer; least of all any
+discussion of the question of form or formlessness in these poems, deeply
+convinced as I am that when great meanings and great emotions are
+expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
+what you please. But my aim is rather to suggest such trains of thought,
+such experience of life as having served to put me _en rapport_ with this
+poet may haply find here and there a reader who is thereby helped to the
+same end. Hence I quote just as freely from the prose (especially from
+"Democratic Vistas" and the preface to the first issue of "Leaves of
+Grass," 1855) as from his poems, and more freely, perhaps, from those
+parts that have proved a stumbling-block than from those whose conspicuous
+beauty assures them acceptance.
+
+Fifteen years ago, with feelings partly of indifference, partly of
+antagonism--for I had heard none but ill words of them--I first opened
+Walt Whitman's poems. But as I read I became conscious of receiving the
+most powerful influence that had ever come to me from any source. What was
+the spell? It was that in them humanity has, in a new sense, found itself;
+for the first time has dared to accept itself without disparagement,
+without reservation. For the first time an unrestricted faith in all that
+is and in the issues of all that happens has burst forth triumphantly into
+song.
+
+  "... The rapture of the hallelujah sent
+  From all that breathes and is ..."
+
+rings through these poems. They carry up into the region of Imagination
+and Passion those vaster and more profound conceptions of the universe and
+of man reached by centuries of that indomitably patient organized search
+for knowledge, that "skilful cross-questioning of things" called science.
+
+  "O truth of the earth I am determined to press my way toward you.
+  Sound your voice! I scale the mountains, I dive in the sea after you,"
+
+cried science; and the earth and the sky have answered, and continue
+inexhaustibly to answer her appeal. And now at last the day dawns which
+Wordsworth prophesied of: "The man of science," he wrote, "seeks truth as
+a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his
+solitude. The Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with
+him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly
+companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is
+the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science, it
+is the first and last of all knowledge; it is immortal as the heart of
+man. If the labours of men of science should ever create any material
+revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions
+which we habitually receive, the Poet will then sleep no more than at
+present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science not
+only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side
+carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of science itself. If the
+time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized
+to man, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood,
+the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will
+welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the
+household of man." That time approaches: a new heaven and a new earth
+await us when the knowledge grasped by science is realized, conceived as a
+whole, related to the world within us by the shaping spirit of
+imagination. Not in vain, already, for this Poet have they pierced the
+darkness of the past, and read here and there a word of the earth's
+history before human eyes beheld it; each word of infinite significance,
+because involving in it secrets of the whole. A new anthem of the slow,
+vast, mystic dawn of life he sings in the name of humanity.
+
+  "I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I am an encloser of things to
+      be.
+
+  "My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs;
+  On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps;
+  All below duly travell'd and still I mount and mount.
+
+  "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me:
+  Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know
+  I was even there;
+  I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
+  And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
+
+  "Long I was hugg'd close--long and long.
+
+  "Immense have been the preparations for me,
+  Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.
+  Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;
+  For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
+  They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
+
+  "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me;
+  My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it.
+
+  "For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
+  The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
+  Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
+  Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with
+      care.
+
+  "All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me;
+  Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul."
+
+Not in vain have they pierced space as well as time and found "a vast
+similitude interlocking all."
+
+  "I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
+  And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cypher, edge but the rim of
+      the farther systems.
+
+  "Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
+  Outward, and outward, and for ever outward.
+
+  "My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels,
+  He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
+  And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
+
+  "There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage;
+  If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were
+      this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in
+      the long run;
+  We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
+  And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther."
+
+Not in vain for him have they penetrated into the substances of things to
+find that what we thought poor, dead, inert matter is (in Clerk Maxwell's
+words) "a very sanctuary of minuteness and power where molecules obey the
+laws of their existence, and clash together in fierce collision, or
+grapple in yet more fierce embrace, building up in secret the forms of
+visible things"; each stock and stone a busy group of Ariels plying
+obediently their hidden tasks.
+
+  "Why! who makes much of a miracle?
+  As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
+  Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
+  Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
+      same, ...
+  Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
+      and all that concerns them,
+  All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles."
+
+The natural _is_ the supernatural, says Carlyle. It is the message that
+comes to our time from all quarters alike; from poetry, from science, from
+the deep brooding of the student of human history. Science materialistic?
+Rather it is the current theology that is materialistic in comparison.
+Science may truly be said to have annihilated our gross and brutish
+conceptions of matter, and to have revealed it to us as subtle, spiritual,
+energetic beyond our powers of realization. It is for the Poet to increase
+these powers of realization. He it is who must awaken us to the perception
+of a new heaven and a new earth here where we stand on this old earth. He
+it is who must, in Walt Whitman's words, indicate the path between reality
+and the soul.
+
+Above all is every thought and feeling in these poems touched by the light
+of the great revolutionary truth that man, unfolded through vast stretches
+of time out of lowly antecedents, is a rising, not a fallen creature;
+emerging slowly from purely animal life; as slowly as the strata are piled
+and the ocean beds hollowed; whole races still barely emerged, countless
+individuals in the foremost races barely emerged: "the wolf, the snake,
+the hog" yet lingering in the best; but new ideals achieved, and others
+come in sight, so that what once seemed fit is fit no longer, is adhered
+to uneasily and with shame; the conflicts and antagonisms between what we
+call good and evil, at once the sign and the means of emergence, and
+needing to account for them no supposed primeval disaster, no outside
+power thwarting and marring the Divine handiwork, the perfect fitness to
+its time and place of all that has proceeded from the Great Source. In a
+word that Evil is relative; is that which the slowly developing reason and
+conscience bid us leave behind. The prowess of the lion, the subtlety of
+the fox, are cruelty and duplicity in man.
+
+  "Silent and amazed, when a little boy,
+  I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements,
+  As contending against some being or influence."
+
+says the poet. And elsewhere, "Faith, very old now, scared away by
+science"--by the daylight science lets in upon our miserable, inadequate,
+idolatrous conceptions of God and of His works, and on the
+sophistications, subterfuges, moral impossibilities, by which we have
+endeavoured to reconcile the irreconcilable--the coexistence of omnipotent
+Goodness and an absolute Power of Evil--"Faith must be brought back by the
+same power that caused her departure: restored with new sway, deeper,
+wider, higher than ever." And what else, indeed, at bottom, is science so
+busy at? For what is Faith? "Faith," to borrow venerable and unsurpassed
+words, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
+seen." And how obtain evidence of things not seen but by a knowledge of
+things seen? And how know what we may hope for, but by knowing the truth
+of what is, here and now? For seen and unseen are parts of the Great
+Whole: all the parts interdependent, closely related; all alike have
+proceeded from and are manifestations of the Divine Source. Nature is not
+the barrier between us and the unseen but the link, the communication;
+she, too, has something behind appearances, has an unseen soul; she, too,
+is made of "innumerable energies." Knowledge is not faith, but it is
+faith's indispensable preliminary and starting ground. Faith runs ahead to
+fetch glad tidings for us; but if she start from a basis of ignorance and
+illusion, how can she but run in the wrong direction? "Suppose," said that
+impetuous lover and seeker of truth, Clifford, "Suppose all moving things
+to be suddenly stopped at some instant, and that we could be brought
+fresh, without any previous knowledge, to look at the petrified scene. The
+spectacle would be immensely absurd. Crowds of people would be senselessly
+standing on one leg in the street looking at one another's backs; others
+would be wasting their time by sitting in a train in a place difficult to
+get at, nearly all with their mouths open, and their bodies in some
+contorted, unrestful posture. Clocks would stand with their pendulums on
+one side. Everything would be disorderly, conflicting, in its wrong place.
+But once remember that the world is in motion, is going somewhere, and
+everything will be accounted for and found just as it should be. Just so
+great a change of view, just so complete an explanation is given to us
+when we recognize that the nature of man and beast and of all the world is
+_going somewhere_. The maladaptions in organic nature are seen to be steps
+toward the improvement or discarding of imperfect organs. The _baneful
+strife which lurketh inborn in us, and goeth on the way with us to hurt
+us_, is found to be the relic of a time of savage or even lower
+condition." "Going somewhere!" That is the meaning then of all our
+perplexities! That changes a mystery which stultified and contradicted the
+best we knew into a mystery which teaches, allures, elevates; which
+harmonizes what we know with what we hope. By it we begin to
+
+  "... see by the glad light,
+  And breathe the sweet air of futurity."
+
+The scornful laughter of Carlyle as he points with one hand to the
+baseness, ignorance, folly, cruelty around us, and with the other to the
+still unsurpassed poets, sages, heroes, saints of antiquity, whilst he
+utters the words "progress of the species!" touches us no longer when we
+have begun to realize "the amplitude of time"; when we know something of
+the scale by which Nature measures out the years to accomplish her
+smallest essential modification or development; know that to call a few
+thousands or tens of thousands of years antiquity, is to speak as a child,
+and that in her chronology the great days of Egypt and Syria, of Greece
+and Rome are affairs of yesterday.
+
+  "Each of us inevitable;
+  Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth;
+  Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth;
+  Each of us here as divinely as any are here.
+
+  "You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly hair'd hordes!
+  You own'd persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
+  You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of
+      brutes!
+  I dare not refuse you--the scope of the world, and of time and space are
+      upon me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "I do not prefer others so very much before you either;
+  I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand;
+  (You will come forward in due time to my side.)
+  My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole
+      earth;
+  I have look'd for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
+      lands;
+  I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
+
+  "O vapours! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
+      continents and fallen down there, for reasons;
+  I think I have blown with you, O winds;
+  O waters, I have finger'd every shore with you.
+
+  "I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run
+      through;
+  I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on the high
+      embedded rocks, to cry thence.
+
+      "_Salut au monde!_
+  What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities
+      myself;
+  All islands to which birds wing their way I wing my way myself.
+
+      "Toward all,
+  I raise high the perpendicular hand--I make the signal,
+  To remain after me in sight forever,
+  For all the haunts and homes of men."
+
+But "Hold!" says the reader, especially if he be one who loves science,
+who loves to feel the firm ground under his feet, "That the species has a
+great future before it we may well believe; already we see the
+indications. But that the individual has is quite another matter. We can
+but balance probabilities here, and the probabilities are very heavy on
+the wrong side; the poets must throw in weighty matter indeed to turn the
+scale the other way!" Be it so: but ponder a moment what science herself
+has to say bearing on this theme; what are the widest, deepest facts she
+has reached down to. INDESTRUCTIBILITY: Amidst ceaseless change and
+seeming decay all the elements, all the forces (if indeed they be not one
+and the same) which operate and substantiate those changes, imperishable;
+neither matter nor force capable of annihilation. Endless transformations,
+disappearances, new combinations, but diminution of the total amount
+never; missing in one place or shape to be found in another, disguised
+ever so long, ready always to re-emerge. "A particle of oxygen," wrote
+Faraday, "is ever a particle of oxygen; nothing can in the least wear it.
+If it enters into combination and disappears as oxygen, if it pass through
+a thousand combinations, animal, vegetable, mineral--if it lie hid for a
+thousand years and then be evolved, it is oxygen with its first qualities
+neither more nor less." So then out of the universe is no door. CONTINUITY
+again is one of Nature's irrevocable words; everything the result and
+outcome of what went before; no gaps, no jumps; always a connecting
+principle which carries forward the great scheme of things as a related
+whole, which subtly links past and present, like and unlike. Nothing
+breaks with its past. "It is not," says Helmholtz, "the definite mass of
+substance which now constitutes the body to which the continuance of the
+individual is attached. Just as the flame remains the same in appearance
+and continues to exist with the same form and structure although it draws
+every moment fresh combustible vapour and fresh oxygen from the air into
+the vortex of its ascending current; and just as the wave goes on in
+unaltered form and is yet being reconstructed every moment from fresh
+particles of water, so is it also in the living being. For the material of
+the body like that of flame is subject to continuous and comparatively
+rapid change--a change the more rapid the livelier the activity of the
+organs in question. Some constituents are renewed from day to day, some
+from month to month, and others only after years. That which continues to
+exist as a particular individual is, like the wave and the flame, only the
+_form of motion_ which continually attracts fresh matter into its vortex
+and expels the old. The observer with a deaf ear recognizes the vibration
+of sound as long as it is visible and can be felt, bound up with other
+heavy matter. Are our senses in reference to life like the deaf ear in
+this respect?"
+
+  "You are not thrown to the winds--you gather certainly and safely
+      around yourself;
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and
+      father--it is to identify you;
+  It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
+  Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form'd in you,
+  You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.
+
+  "O Death! the voyage of Death!
+  The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments for
+      reasons;
+  Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd or reduced to
+      powder or buried.
+  My real body doubtless left me for other spheres,
+  My voided body, nothing more to me, returning to the purifications,
+      farther offices, eternal uses of the earth."
+
+Yes, they go their way, those dismissed atoms with all their energies and
+affinities unimpaired. But they are not all; the will, the affections, the
+intellect are just as real as those affinities and energies, and there is
+strict account of all; nothing slips through; there is no door out of the
+universe. But they are qualities of a personality, of a self, not of an
+atom but of what uses and dismisses those atoms. If the qualities are
+indestructible so must the self be. The little heap of ashes, the puff of
+gas, do you pretend that is all that was Shakespeare? The rest of him
+lives in his works, you say? But he lived and was just the same man after
+those works were produced. The world gained, but he lost nothing of
+himself, rather grew and strengthened in the production of them.
+
+Still farther, those faculties with which we seek for knowledge are only a
+part of us, there is something behind which wields them, something that
+those faculties cannot turn themselves in upon and comprehend; for the
+part cannot compass the whole. Yet there it is with the irrefragable proof
+of consciousness. Who should be the mouthpiece of this whole? Who but the
+poet, the man most fully "possessed of his own soul," the man of the
+largest consciousness; fullest of love and sympathy which gather into his
+own life the experiences of others, fullest of imagination; that quality
+whereof Wordsworth says that it
+
+        "... in truth
+  Is but another name for absolute power,
+  And clearest insight, amplitude of mind
+  And reason in her most exalted mood."
+
+Let Walt Whitman speak for us:
+
+  "And I know I am solid and sound;
+  To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow:
+  All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
+
+  "I know I am deathless;
+  I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's compass;
+  I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick
+      at night.
+
+  "I know I am august;
+  I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood;
+  I see that the elementary laws never apologize;
+  (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after
+      all.)
+
+  "I exist as I am--that is enough;
+  If no other in the world be aware I sit content;
+  And if each one and all be aware, I sit content.
+
+  "One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself;
+  And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand or ten million
+      years,
+  I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
+
+  "My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite;
+  I laugh at what you call dissolution;
+  And I know the amplitude of time."
+
+What lies through the portal of death is hidden from us; but the laws that
+govern that unknown land are not all hidden from us, for they govern here
+and now; they are immutable, eternal.
+
+  "Of and in all these things
+  I have dream'd that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us
+      changed,
+  I have dream'd that heroes and good doers shall be under the present and
+      past law,
+  And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and
+      past law,
+  For I have dream'd that the law they are under now is enough."
+
+And the law not to be eluded is the law of consequences, the law of silent
+teaching. That is the meaning of disease, pain, remorse. Slow to learn are
+we; but success is assured with limitless Beneficence as our teacher, with
+limitless time as our opportunity. Already we begin--
+
+  "To know the Universe itself as a road--as many roads
+  As roads for travelling souls.
+  For ever alive; for ever forward.
+  Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble,
+      dissatisfied;
+  Desperate, proud, fond, sick;
+  Accepted by men, rejected by men.
+  They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go.
+  But I know they go toward the best, toward something great;
+  The whole Universe indicates that it is good."
+
+Going somewhere! And if it is impossible for us to see whither, as in the
+nature of things it must be, how can we be adequate judges of the way? how
+can we but often grope and be full of perplexity? But we know that a
+smooth path, a paradise of a world, could only nurture fools, cowards,
+sluggards. "Joy is the great unfolder," but pain is the great enlightener,
+the great stimulus in certain directions, alike of man and beast. How else
+could the self-preserving instincts, and all that grows out of them, have
+been evoked? How else those wonders of the moral world, fortitude,
+patience, sympathy? And if the lesson be too hard comes Death, come "the
+sure-enwinding arms of Death" to end it, and speed us to the unknown land.
+
+      "... Man is only weak
+  Through his mistrust and want of hope,"
+
+wrote Wordsworth. But man's mistrust of himself is, at bottom, mistrust of
+the central Fount of power and goodness whence he has issued. Here comes
+one who plucks out of religion its heart of fear, and puts into it a heart
+of boundless faith and joy; a faith that beggars previous faiths because
+it sees that All is good, not part bad and part good; that there is no
+flaw in the scheme of things, no primeval disaster, no counteracting
+power; but orderly and sure growth and development, and that infinite
+Goodness and Wisdom embrace and ever lead forward all that exists. Are you
+troubled that He is an unknown God; that we cannot by searching find Him
+out? Why, it would be a poor prospect for the Universe if otherwise; if,
+embryos that we are, we could compass Him in our thoughts:
+
+  "I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the
+      least."
+
+It is the double misfortune of the churches that they do not study God in
+His works--man and Nature and their relations to each other; and that they
+do profess to set Him forth; that they worship therefore a God of man's
+devising, an idol made by men's minds it is true, not by their hands, but
+none the less an idol. "Leaves are not more shed out of trees than Bibles
+are shed out of you," says the poet. They were the best of their time, but
+not of all time; they need renewing as surely as there is such a thing as
+growth, as surely as knowledge nourishes and sustains to further
+development; as surely as time unrolls new pages of the mighty scheme of
+existence. Nobly has George Sand, too, written: "Everything is divine,
+even matter; everything is superhuman, even man. God is everywhere. He is
+in me in a measure proportioned to the little that I am. My present life
+separates me from Him just in the degree determined by the actual state of
+childhood of our race. Let me content myself in all my seeking to feel
+after Him, and to possess of Him as much as this imperfect soul can take
+in with the intellectual sense I have. The day will come when we shall no
+longer talk about God idly; nay, when we shall talk about Him as little
+as possible. We shall cease to set Him forth dogmatically, to dispute
+about His nature. We shall put compulsion on no one to pray to Him, we
+shall leave the whole business of worship within the sanctuary of each
+man's conscience. And this will happen when we are really religious."
+
+In what sense may Walt Whitman be called the Poet of Democracy? It is as
+giving utterance to this profoundly religious faith in man. He is rather
+the prophet of what is to be than the celebrator of what is. "Democracy,"
+he writes, "is a word the real gist of which still sleeps quite
+unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out
+of which its syllables have come from pen or tongue. It is a great word,
+whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet
+to be enacted. It is in some sort younger brother of another great and
+often used word, Nature, whose history also waits unwritten." Political
+democracy, now taking shape, is the house to live in, and whilst what we
+demand of it is room for all, fair chances for all, none disregarded or
+left out as of no account, the main question, the kind of life that is to
+be led in that house is altogether beyond the ken of the statesmen as
+such, and is involved in those deepest facts of the nature and destiny of
+man which are the themes of Walt Whitman's writings. The practical outcome
+of that exalted and all-accepting faith in the scheme of things, and in
+man, toward whom all has led up and in whom all concentrates as the
+manifestation, the revelation of Divine Power is a changed estimate of
+himself; a higher reverence for, a loftier belief in the heritage of
+himself; a perception that pride, not humility, is the true homage to his
+Maker; that "noblesse oblige" is for the Race, not for a handful; that it
+is mankind and womankind and their high destiny which constrain to
+greatness, which can no longer stoop to meanness and lies and base aims,
+but must needs clothe themselves in "the majesty of honest dealing"
+(majestic because demanding courage as good as the soldier's, self-denial
+as good as the saint's for every-day affairs), and walk erect and
+fearless, a law to themselves, sternest of all lawgivers. Looking back to
+the palmy days of feudalism, especially as immortalized in Shakespeare's
+plays, what is it we find most admirable? what is it that fascinates? It
+is the noble pride, the lofty self-respect; the dignity, the courage and
+audacity of its great personages. But this pride, this dignity rested half
+upon a true, half upon a hollow foundation; half upon intrinsic qualities,
+half upon the ignorance and brutishness of the great masses of the people,
+whose helpless submission and easily dazzled imaginations made
+stepping-stones to the elevation of the few, and "hedged round kings,"
+with a specious kind of "divinity." But we have our faces turned toward a
+new day, and toward heights on which there is room for all.
+
+  "By God, I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart
+      of on the same terms"
+
+is the motto of the great personages, the great souls of to-day. _On the
+same terms_, for that is Nature's law and cannot be abrogated, the
+reaping as you sow. But all shall have the chance to sow well. This is
+pride indeed! Not a pride that isolates, but that can take no rest till
+our common humanity is lifted out of the mire everywhere, "a pride that
+cannot stretch too far because sympathy stretches with it":
+
+  "Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
+  These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you;
+  These immense meadows--these interminable rivers--
+  You are immense and interminable as they;
+  These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
+      dissolution--you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
+  Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
+      passion, dissolution.
+
+  "The hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency;
+  Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever
+      you are promulges itself;
+  Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is
+      scanted;
+  Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance and ennui, what you are
+      picks its way."
+
+This is indeed a pride that is "calming and excellent to the soul"; that
+"dissolves poverty from its need and riches from its conceit."
+
+And humility? Is there, then, no place for that virtue so much praised by
+the haughty? Humility is the sweet spontaneous grace of an aspiring,
+finely developed nature which sees always heights ahead still unclimbed,
+which outstrips itself in eager longing for excellence still unattained.
+Genuine humility takes good care of itself as men rise in the scale of
+being; for every height climbed discloses still new heights beyond. Or it
+is a wise caution in fortune's favourites lest they themselves should
+mistake, as the unthinking crowd around do, the glitter reflected back
+upon them by their surroundings for some superiority inherent in
+themselves. It befits them well if there be also due pride, pride of
+humanity behind. But to say to a man, 'Be humble' is like saying to one
+who has a battle to fight, a race to run, 'You are a poor, feeble
+creature; you are not likely to win and you do not deserve to.' Say rather
+to him, 'Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made
+for victory: go forward with a joyful confidence in that result sooner or
+later, and the sooner or the later depends mainly on yourself.'
+
+"What Christ appeared for in the moral-spiritual field for humankind,
+namely, that in respect to the absolute soul there is in the possession of
+such by each single individual something so transcendent, so incapable of
+gradations (like life) that to that extent it places all being on a common
+level, utterly regardless of the distinctions of intellect, virtue,
+station, or any height or lowliness whatever" is the secret source of that
+deathless sentiment of Equality which how many able heads imagine
+themselves to have slain with ridicule and contempt as Johnson, kicking a
+stone, imagined he had demolished Idealism when he had simply attributed
+to the word an impossible meaning. True, _In_equality is one of Nature's
+words: she moves forward always by means of the exceptional. But the
+moment the move is accomplished, then all her efforts are toward equality,
+toward bringing up the rear to that standpoint. But social inequalities,
+class distinctions, do not stand for or represent Nature's inequalities.
+Precisely the contrary in the long run. They are devices for holding up
+many that would else gravitate down and keeping down many who would else
+rise up; for providing that some should reap who have not sown, and many
+sow without reaping. But literature tallies the ways of Nature; for though
+itself the product of the exceptional, its aim is to draw all men up to
+its own level. The great writer is "hungry for equals day and night," for
+so only can he be fully understood. "The meal is equally set"; all are
+invited. Therefore is literature, whether consciously or not, the greatest
+of all forces on the side of Democracy.
+
+Carlyle has said there is no grand poem in the world but is at bottom a
+biography--the life of a man. Walt Whitman's poems are not the biography
+of a man, but they are his actual presence. It is no vain boast when he
+exclaims,
+
+  "Camerado! this is no book;
+  Who touches this touches a man."
+
+He has infused himself into words in a way that had not before seemed
+possible; and he causes each reader to feel that he himself or herself has
+an actual relationship to him, is a reality full of inexhaustible
+significance and interest to the poet. The power of his book, beyond even
+its great intellectual force, is the power with which he makes this felt;
+his words lay more hold than the grasp of a hand, strike deeper than the
+gaze or the flash of an eye; to those who comprehend him he stands "nigher
+than the nighest."
+
+America has had the shaping of Walt Whitman, and he repays the filial debt
+with a love that knows no stint. Her vast lands with their varied,
+brilliant climes and rich products, her political scheme, her achievements
+and her failures, all have contributed to make these poems what they are
+both directly and indirectly. Above all has that great conflict, the
+Secession War, found voice in him. And if the reader would understand the
+true causes and nature of that war, ostensibly waged between North and
+South, but underneath a tussle for supremacy between the good and the evil
+genius of America (for there were just as many secret sympathizers with
+the secession-slave-power in the North as in the South) he will find the
+clue in the pages of Walt Whitman. Rarely has he risen to a loftier height
+than in the poem which heralds that volcanic upheaval:--
+
+  "Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier and fiercer
+      sweep!
+  Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour'd what the earth gave
+      me;
+  Long I roam'd the woods of the north--long I watch'd Niagara pouring;
+  I travel'd the prairies over, and slept on their breast--
+  I cross'd the Nevadas, I cross'd the plateaus;
+  I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail'd out to sea;
+  I sail'd through the storm, I was refresh'd by the storm;
+  I watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves;
+  I mark'd the white combs where they career'd so high, curling over;
+  I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds;
+  Saw from below what arose and mounted (O superb! O wild as my heart,
+      and powerful!)
+  Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellow'd after the lightning;
+  Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast
+      amid the din they chased each other across the sky;
+  --These, and such as these, I, elate, saw--saw with wonder, yet pensive
+      and masterful;
+  All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me;
+  Yet there with my soul I fed--I fed content, supercilious.
+
+  "'Twas well, O soul! 'twas a good preparation you gave me!
+  Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill;
+  Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us;
+  Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities;
+  Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring;
+  Torrents of men (sources and rills of the Northwest, are you indeed
+      inexhaustible?)
+  What, to pavements and homesteads here--what were those storms of the
+      mountains and sea?
+  What, to passions I witness around me to-day? Was the sea risen?
+  Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?
+  Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage;
+  Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front--Cincinnati, Chicago,
+      unchain'd;
+  --What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here!
+  How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes!
+  How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes
+      of lightning!
+  How DEMOCRACY, with desperate, vengeful port strides on, shown through
+      the dark by those flashes of lightning!
+  (Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark,
+  In a lull of the deafening confusion.)
+
+  "Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! stride with vengeful stroke!
+  And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities!
+  Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good;
+  My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong
+      nutriment,
+  --Long had I walk'd my cities, my country roads, through farms, only
+      half satisfied;
+  One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the ground
+      before me,
+  Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing
+      low;
+  --The cities I loved so well, I abandon'd and left--I sped to the
+      certainties suitable to me;
+  Hungering, hungering, hungering for primal energies, and nature's
+      dauntlessness;
+  I refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish it only;
+  I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire--on the water and air I
+      waited long;
+  --But now I no longer wait--I am fully satisfied--I am glutted;
+  I have witness'd the true lightning--I have witness'd my cities
+      electric;
+  I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise;
+  Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,
+  No more on the mountain roam, or sail the stormy sea."
+
+But not for the poet a soldier's career. "To sit by the wounded and soothe
+them, or silently watch the dead" was the part he chose. During the whole
+war he remained with the army, but only to spend the days and nights,
+saddest, happiest of his life, in the hospital tents. It was a beautiful
+destiny for this lover of men, and a proud triumph for this believer in
+the People; for it was the People that he beheld, tried by severest tests.
+He saw them "of their own choice, fighting, dying for their own idea,
+insolently attacked by the secession-slave-power." From the workshop, the
+farm, the store, the desk, they poured forth, officered by men who had to
+blunder into knowledge at the cost of the wholesale slaughter of their
+troops. He saw them "tried long and long by hopelessness, mismanagement,
+defeat; advancing unhesitatingly through incredible slaughter; sinewy with
+unconquerable resolution. He saw them by tens of thousands in the
+hospitals tried by yet drearier, more fearful tests--the wound, the
+amputation, the shattered face, the slow hot fever, the long impatient
+anchorage in bed; he marked their fortitude, decorum, their religious
+nature and sweet affection." Finally, newest, most significant sight of
+all, victory achieved, the cause, the Union safe, he saw them return back
+to the workshop, the farm, the desk, the store, instantly reabsorbed into
+the peaceful industries of the land:--
+
+  "A pause--the armies wait.
+  A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait.
+  The world, too, waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn
+  They melt, they disappear."
+
+"Plentifully supplied, last-needed proof of Democracy in its
+personalities!" ratifying on the broadest scale Wordsworth's haughty claim
+for average man--"Such is the inherent dignity of human nature that there
+belong to it sublimities of virtue which all men may attain, and which no
+man can transcend."
+
+But, aware that peace and prosperity may be even still severer tests of
+national as of individual virtue and greatness of mind, Walt Whitman scans
+with anxious, questioning eye the America of to-day. He is no
+smooth-tongued prophet of easy greatness.
+
+  "I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue questioning every
+      one I meet;
+  Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
+  Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?"
+
+He sees clearly as any the incredible flippancy, the blind fury of
+parties, the lack of great leaders, the plentiful meanness and vulgarity;
+the labour question beginning to open like a yawning gulf.... "We sail a
+dangerous sea of seething currents, all so dark and untried.... It seems
+as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial
+destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep intestine difficulty,
+and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection saying lo! the roads! The
+only plans of development, long and varied, with all terrible balks and
+ebullitions! You said in your soul, I will be empire of empires, putting
+the history of old-world dynasties, conquests, behind me as of no
+account--making a new history, a history of democracy ... I alone
+inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of America,
+are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your soul, be it so. But
+behold the cost, and already specimens of the cost. Thought you greatness
+was to ripen for you like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that
+you must conquer it through ages ... must pay for it with proportionate
+price. For you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily
+person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the
+demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long
+postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions,
+prophets, thunderstorms, deaths, new projections and invigorations of
+ideas and men."
+
+"Yet I have dreamed, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our fate,
+whose long unravelling stretches mysteriously through time--dreamed,
+portrayed, hinted already--a little or a larger band, a band of brave and
+true, unprecedented yet, arm'd and equipt at every point, the members
+separated, it may be by different dates and states, or south or north, or
+east or west, a year, a century here, and other centuries there, but
+always one, compact in soul, conscience-conserving, God-inculcating,
+inspired achievers not only in literature, the greatest art, but achievers
+in all art--a new undying order, dynasty from age to age transmitted, a
+band, a class at least as fit to cope with current years, our dangers,
+needs, as those who, for their time, so long, so well, in armour or in
+cowl, upheld and made illustrious that far-back-feudal, priestly world."
+
+Of that band, is not Walt Whitman the pioneer? Of that New World
+literature, say, are not his poems the beginning? A rude beginning if you
+will. He claims no more and no less. But whatever else they may lack they
+do not lack vitality, initiative, sublimity. They do not lack that which
+makes life great and death, with its "transfers and promotions, its superb
+vistas," exhilarating--a resplendent faith in God and man which will
+kindle anew the faith of the world:--
+
+  "Poets to come! Orators, singers, musicians to come!
+  Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
+  But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before
+      known,
+
+  "Arouse! Arouse--for you must justify me--you must answer.
+
+  "I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
+  I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
+
+  "I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a
+      casual look upon you, and then averts his face,
+  Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
+  Expecting the main things from you."
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+[Illustration: ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+Photogravure from a painting by her son, made in 1882]
+
+
+
+
+LETTER I[3]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO W. M. ROSSETTI AND ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _Washington,
+  December 9, 1869._
+
+DEAR MR. ROSSETTI:
+
+Your letter of last summer to William O'Connor with the passages
+transcribed from a lady's correspondence, had been shown me by him, and
+copy lately furnished me, which I have just been rereading. I am deeply
+touched by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from
+England, and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to
+me to get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them to Mr.
+O'Connor but approve that action. I realize indeed of this emphatic and
+smiling _well done_ from the heart and conscience of a true wife and
+mother, and one too whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your
+letter, after flowing through the heart and conscience, must also move
+through and satisfy science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto
+received no eulogium so magnificent.
+
+I send by same mail with this, same address as this letter, two
+photographs, taken within a few months. One is intended for the lady (if I
+may be permitted to send it her)--and will you please accept the other,
+with my respects and love? The picture is by some criticised very severely
+indeed, but I hope you will not dislike it, for I confess to myself a
+perhaps capricious fondness for it, as my own portrait, over some scores
+that have been made or taken at one time or another.
+
+I am still employed in the Attorney General's office. My p. o. address
+remains the same. I am quite well and hearty. My new editions,
+considerably expanded, with what suggestions &c. I have to offer,
+presented I hope in more definite form, will probably get printed the
+coming spring. I shall forward you early copies. I send my love to Moncure
+Conway, if you see him. I wish he would write to me. If the pictures don't
+come, or get injured on the way, I will try again by express. I want you
+to loan this letter to the lady, or if she wishes it, give it to her to
+keep.
+
+WALT WHITMAN.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER II
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+_September 3, 1871._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+At last the beloved books have reached my hand--but now I have them, my
+heart is so rent with anguish, my eyes so blinded, I cannot read in them.
+I try again and again, but too great waves come swaying up & suffocate me.
+I will struggle to tell you my story. It seems to me a death struggle.
+When I was eighteen I met a lad of nineteen[4] who loved me then, and
+always for the remainder of his life. After we had known each other about
+a year he asked me to be his wife. But I said that I liked him well as my
+friend, but could not love him as a wife should love & felt deeply
+convinced I never should. He was not turned aside, but went on just the
+same as if that conversation had never passed. After a year he asked me
+again, and I, deeply moved by and grateful for his steady love, and so
+sorry for him, said yes. But next day, terrified at what I had done and
+painfully conscious of the dreary absence from my heart of any faintest
+gleam of true, tender, wifely love,[5] said no again. This too he bore
+without desisting & at the end of some months once more asked me with
+passionate entreaties. Then, dear friend, I prayed very earnestly, and it
+seemed to me (that) that I should continue to mar & thwart his life so was
+not right, if he was content to accept what I could give. I knew I could
+lead a good and wholesome life beside him--his aims were noble--his heart
+a deep, beautiful, true Poet's heart; but he had not the Poet's great
+brain. His path was a very arduous one, and I knew I could smooth it for
+him--cheer him along it. It seemed to me God's will that I should marry
+him. So I told him the whole truth, and he said he would rather have me on
+those terms than not have me at all. He said to me many times, "Ah, Annie,
+it is not you who are so loved that is rich; it is I who so love." And I
+knew this was true, felt as if my nature were poor & barren beside his.
+But it was not so, it was only slumbering--undeveloped. For, dear Friend,
+my soul was so passionately aspiring--it so thirsted & pined for light, it
+had not power to reach alone and he could not help me on my way. And a
+woman is so made that she cannot give the tender passionate devotion of
+her whole nature save to the great conquering soul, stronger in its
+powers, though not in its aspirations, than her own, that can lead her
+forever & forever up and on. It is for her soul exactly as it is for her
+body. The strong divine soul of the man embracing hers with passionate
+love--so alone the precious germs within her soul can be quickened into
+life. And the time will come when man will understand that a woman's soul
+is as dear and needful to his and as different from his as her body to his
+body. This was what happened to me when I had read for a few days, nay,
+hours, in your books. It was the divine soul embracing mine. I never
+before dreamed what love meant: not what life meant. Never was alive
+before--no words but those of "new birth" can hint the meaning of what
+then happened to me.
+
+The first few months of my marriage were dark and gloomy to me within, and
+sometimes I had misgivings whether I had judged aright, but when I knew
+there was a dear baby coming my heart grew light, and when it was born,
+such a superb child--all gloom & fear forever vanished. I knew it was
+God's seal to the marriage, and my heart was full of gratitude and joy. It
+was a happy and a good life we led together for ten short years, he ever
+tender and affectionate to me--loving his children so, working earnestly
+in the wholesome, bracing atmosphere of poverty--for it was but just
+possible with the most strenuous frugality and industry to pay our way. I
+learned to cook & to turn my hand to all household occupation--found it
+bracing, healthful, cheerful. Now I think it more even now that I
+understand the divineness & sacredness of the Body. I think there is no
+more beautiful task for a woman than ministering all ways to the health &
+comfort & enjoyment of the dear bodies of those she loves: no material
+that will work sweeter, more beautifully into that making of a perfect
+poem of a man's life which is her true vocation.
+
+In 1861 my children took scarlet fever badly: I thought I should have lost
+my dear oldest girl. Then my husband took it--and in five days it carried
+him from me. I think, dear friend, my sorrow was far more bitter, though
+not so deep, as that of a loving tender wife. As I stood by him in the
+coffin I felt such remorse I had not, could not have, been more tender to
+him--such a conviction that if I had loved him as he deserved to be loved
+he would not have been taken from us. To the last my soul dwelt apart &
+unmated & his soul dwelt apart unmated. I do not fear the look of his dear
+silent eyes. I do not think he would even be grieved with me now. My
+youngest was then a baby. I have had much sweet tranquil happiness, much
+strenuous work and endeavour raising my darlings.
+
+In May, 1869, came the voice over the Atlantic to me--O, the voice of my
+Mate: it must be so--my love rises up out of the very depths of the grief
+& tramples upon despair. I can wait--any time, a lifetime, many
+lifetimes--I can suffer, I can dare, I can learn, grow, toil, but nothing
+in life or death can tear out of my heart the passionate belief that one
+day I shall hear that voice say to me, "My Mate. The one I so much want.
+Bride, Wife, indissoluble eternal!" It is not happiness I plead with God
+for--it is the very life of my Soul, my love is its life. Dear Walt. It is
+a sweet & precious thing, this love; it clings so close, so close to the
+Soul and Body, all so tenderly dear, so beautiful, so sacred; it yearns
+with such passion to soothe and comfort & fill thee with sweet tender joy;
+it aspires as grandly as gloriously as thy own soul. Strong to soar--soft
+& tender to nestle and caress. If God were to say to me, "See--he that you
+love you shall not be given to in this life--he is going to set sail on
+the unknown sea--will you go with him?" never yet has bride sprung into
+her husband's arms with the joy with which I would take thy hand & spring
+from the shore.
+
+Understand aright, dear love, the reason of my silence. I was obeying the
+voice of conscience. I thought I was to wait. For it is the instinct of a
+woman's nature to wait to be sought--not to seek. And when that May & June
+I was longing so irrepressibly to write I resolutely restrained myself,
+believing if I were only patient the right opening would occur. And so it
+did through Rossetti. And when he, liking what I said, suggested my
+printing something, it met and enabled me to carry into execution what I
+was brooding over. For I had, and still have, a strong conviction that it
+was necessary for a woman to speak--that finally and decisively only a
+woman can judge a man, only a man a woman, on the subject of their
+relations. What is blameless, what is good in its effect on her, is
+good--however it may have seemed to men. She is the test. And I never for
+a moment feared any hard words against myself because I know these things
+are not judged by the intellect but by the unerring instincts of the soul.
+I knew any man could not but feel that it would be a happy and ennobling
+thing for him that his wife should think & feel as I do on that
+subject--knew that what had filled me with such great and beautiful
+thoughts towards men in that writing could not fail to give them good &
+happy thoughts towards women in the reading. The cause of my consenting to
+Rossetti's[6] urgent advice that I should not put my name, he so kindly
+solicitous, yet not altogether understanding me & it aright, was that I
+did not rightly understand how it might be with my dear Boy if it came
+before him. I thought perhaps he was not old enough to judge and
+understand me aright; nor young enough to let it altogether alone. But it
+has been very bitter & hateful to me this not standing to what I have said
+as it were, with my own personality, better because of my utter love and
+faithfulness to the cause & longing to stand openly and proudly in the
+ranks of its friends; & for the lower reason that my nature is proud and
+as defiant as thine own and immeasurably disdains any faintest appearance
+of being afraid of what I had done.
+
+And, my darling, above all because I love thee so tenderly that if hateful
+words had been spoken against me I could have taken joy in it for thy dear
+sake. There never yet was the woman who loved that would not joyfully bare
+her breast to wrest the blows aimed at her beloved.
+
+I know not what fiend made me write those meaningless words in my letter,
+"it is pleasantest to me" &c., but it was not fear or faithlessness--& it
+is not pleasantest but hateful to me. Now let me come to beautiful joyous
+things again. O dear Walt, did you not feel in every word the breath of a
+woman's love? did you not see as through a transparent veil a soul all
+radiant and trembling with love stretching out its arms towards you? I
+was so sure you would speak, would send me some sign: that I was to
+wait--wait. So I fed my heart with sweet hopes: strengthened it with
+looking into the eyes of thy picture. O surely in the ineffable tenderness
+of thy look speaks the yearning of thy man-soul towards my woman-soul? But
+now I will wait no longer. A higher instinct dominates that other, the
+instinct for perfect truth. I would if I could lay every thought and
+action and feeling of my whole life open to thee as it lies to the eye of
+God. But that cannot be all at once. O come. Come, my darling: look into
+these eyes and see the loving ardent aspiring soul in them. Easily, easily
+will you learn to love all the rest of me for the sake of that and take me
+to your breasts for ever and ever. Out of its great anguish my love has
+risen stronger, more triumphant than ever: it cannot doubt, cannot fear,
+is strong, divine, immortal, sure of its fruition this side the grave or
+the other. "O agonistic throes," tender, passionate yearnings, pinings,
+triumphant joys, sweet dreams--I took from you all. But, dear love, the
+sinews of a woman's outer heart are not twisted so strong as a man's: but
+the heart within is strong & great & loving. So the strain is very
+terrible. O heart of flesh, hold on yet a few years to the great heart
+within thee, if it may be. But if not all is assured, all is safe.
+
+This time last year when I seemed dying I could have no secrets between me
+& my dear children. I told them of my love: told them all they could
+rightly understand, and laid upon them my earnest injunction that as soon
+as my mother's life no longer held them here, they should go fearlessly to
+America, as I should have planted them down there--Land of Promise, my
+Canaan, to which my soul sings, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come & the
+glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." After the 29th of this month I
+shall be in my own home; dear friend--it is at Brookebank, Haslemere,
+Surrey. Haslemere is on the main line between Portsmouth & London.
+
+  Good-bye, dear Walt,
+  ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+_Sept. 6._
+
+The new portrait also is a sweet joy & comfort to my longing, pining heart
+& eyes. How have I brooded & brooded with thankfulness on that one word in
+thy letter[7] "the comfort it has been to me to get her words," for always
+day & night these two years has hovered on my lips & in my heart the one
+prayer: "Dear God, let me comfort him!" Let me comfort thee with my whole
+being, dear love. I feel much better & stronger now.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER III
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Brookebank, Shotter Mill
+  Haslemere, Surrey
+  October 23, 1871._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+I wrote you a letter the 6th September & would fain know whether it has
+reached your hand. If it have not, I will write its contents again quickly
+to you--if it have, I will wait your time with courage with patience for
+an answer; but spare me the needless suffering of uncertainty on this
+point & let me have one line, one word, of assurance that I am no longer
+hidden from you by a thick cloud--I from thee--not thou from me: for I
+that have never set eyes upon thee, all the Atlantic flowing between us,
+yet cleave closer than those that stand nearest & dearest around
+thee--love thee day & night:--last thoughts, first thoughts, my soul's
+passionate yearning toward thy divine Soul, every hour, every deed and
+thought--my love for my children, my hopes, aspirations for them, all
+taking new shape, new height through this great love. My Soul has staked
+all upon it. In dull dark moods when I cannot, as it were, see thee,
+still, still always a dumb, blind yearning towards thee--still it comforts
+me to touch, to press to me the beloved books--like a child holding some
+hand in the dark--it knows not whose--but knows it is enough--knows it is
+a dear, strong, comforting hand. Do not say I am forward, or that I lack
+pride because I tell this love to thee who have never sought or made sign
+of desiring to seek me. Oh, for all that, this love is my pride my glory.
+Source of sufferings and joys that cannot put themselves into words.
+Besides, it is not true thou hast not sought or loved me. For when I read
+the divine poems I feel all folded round in thy love: I feel often as if
+thou wast pleading so passionately for the love of the woman that can
+understand thee--that I know not how to bear the yearning answering
+tenderness that fills my breast. I know that a woman may without hurt to
+her pride--without stain or blame--tell her love to thee. I feel for a
+certainty that she may. Try me for this life, my darling--see if I cannot
+so live, so grow, so learn, so love, that when I die you will say, "This
+woman has grown to be a very part of me. My soul must have her loving
+companionship everywhere & in all things. I alone & she alone are not
+complete identities--it is I and she together in a new, divine, perfect
+union that form the one complete identity."
+
+I am yet young enough to bear thee children, my darling, if God should so
+bless me. And would yield my life for this cause with serene joy if it
+were so appointed, if that were the price for thy having a "perfect
+child"--knowing my darlings would all be safe & happy in thy loving
+care--planted down in America.
+
+Let me have a few words directly, dear Friend. I shall get them by the
+middle of November. I shall have to go to London about then or a little
+later--to find a house for us--I only came to the old home here from which
+I have been absent most four years to wind up matters and prepare for a
+move, for there is nothing to be had in the way of educational advantages
+here--it has been a beautiful survey for the children, but it is not what
+they want now. But we leave with regret, for it is one of the sweetest,
+wildest spots in England, though only 40 miles from London.
+
+  Good-bye, dear friend,
+  ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER IV[8]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _Washington, D. C.
+  November 3, 1871._
+
+(TO A. G., EARL'S COLNE, HALSTED, ESSEX, ENG.)
+
+I have been waiting quite a while for time and the right mood, to answer
+your letter in a spirit as serious as its own, and in the same unmitigated
+trust and affection. But more daily work than ever has fallen to me to do
+the present season, and though I am well and contented, my best moods seem
+to shun me. I wish to give to it a day, a sort of Sabbath, or holy day,
+apart to itself, under serene and propitious influences, confident that I
+could then write you a letter which would do you good, and me too. But I
+must at least show without further delay that I am not insensible to your
+love. I too send you my love. And do you feel no disappointment because I
+now write so briefly. My book is my best letter, my response, my truest
+explanation of all. In it I have put my body and spirit. You understand
+this better and fuller and clearer than any one else. And I too fully and
+clearly understand the loving letter it has evoked. Enough that there
+surely exists so beautiful and a delicate relation, accepted by both of us
+with joy.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER V
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+_27 November '71._
+
+DEAR FRIEND.
+
+Your long waited for letter brought me both joy & pain; but the pain was
+not of your giving. I gather from it that a long letter[9] which I wrote
+you Sept. 6th after I had received the precious packet, a letter in which
+I opened all my heart to you, never reached your hands: nor yet a shorter
+one[10] which, tortured by anxiety & suspense about its predecessor, I
+wrote Oct. 15, it, too, written out of such stress & intensity of painful
+emotion as wrenches from us inmost truth. I cannot face the thought of
+these words of uttermost trust & love having fallen into other hands. Can
+both be simply lost? Could any man suffer a base curiosity, to make him so
+meanly, treacherously cruel? It seems to cut and then burn me.
+
+I was not disappointed at the shortness of your letter & I do not ask nor
+even wish you to write save when you are inwardly impelled & desirous of
+doing so. I only want leave and security to write freely to you. Your book
+does indeed say all--book that is not a book, for the first time a man
+complete, godlike, august, standing revealed the only way possible,
+through the garment of speech. Do you know, dear Friend, what it means for
+a woman, what it means for me, to understand these poems? It means for her
+whole nature to be then first kindled; quickened into life through such
+love, such sympathy, such resistless attraction, that thenceforth she
+cannot choose but live & die striving to become worthy to share this
+divine man's life--to be his dear companion, closer, nearer, dearer than
+any man can be--for ever so. Her soul stakes all on this. It is the
+meaning, the fulfilment, the only perfect development & consummation of
+her nature--of her passionate, high, immortal aspirations--her Soul to
+mate with his for ever & ever. O I know the terms are obdurate--I know how
+hard to attain to this greatness, the grandest lot ever aspired to by
+woman. I know too my own shortcomings, faults, flaws. You might not be
+able to give me your great love yet--to take me to your breast with joy.
+But I can wait. I can grow great & beautiful through sorrow & suffering,
+working, struggling, yearning, loving so, all alone, as I have done now
+nearly three years--it will be three in May since I first read the book,
+first knew what the word _love_ meant. Love & Hope are so strong in me, my
+soul's high aspirations are of such tenacious, passionate intensity, are
+so conscious of their own deathless reality, that what would starve them
+out of any other woman only makes them strike out deeper roots, grow more
+resolute & sturdy, in me. I know that "greatness will not ripen for me
+like a pear." But I could face, I could joyfully accept, the fiercest
+anguish, the hardest toil, the longest, sternest probation, to make me fit
+to be your mate--so that at the last you should say, "This is the woman I
+have waited for, the woman prepared for me: this is my dear eternal
+comrade, wife--the one I so much want." Life has no other meaning for me
+than that--all things have led up to help prepare me for that. Death is
+more welcome to me than life if it means that--if thou, dear sailor, thou
+sailing upon thy endless cruise, takest me on board--me, daring, all with
+thee, steering for the deep waters, bound where mariner has not yet dared
+to go: hand in hand with thee, nestled close--one with thee. Ah, that word
+"enough" was like a blow on the breast to me--breast that often & often is
+so full of yearning tenderness I know not how to draw my breath. The tie
+between us would not grow less but more beautiful, dear friend, if you
+knew me _better_: if I could stand as real & near to you as you do to me.
+But I cannot, like you, clothe my nature in divine poems & so make it
+visible to you. Ah, foolish me! I thought you would catch a glimpse of it
+in those words I wrote--I thought you would say to yourself, "Perhaps this
+is the voice of my mate," and would seek me a little to make sure if it
+were so or not. O the sweet dreams I have fed on these three years nearly,
+pervading my waking moments, influencing every thought & action. I was so
+sure, so sure if I waited silently, patiently, you would send me some
+sign: so full of joyful hope I could not doubt nor fear. When I lay dying
+as it seemed, [I was] still full of the radiant certainty that you would
+seek me, would not lose [me], that we should as surely find one another
+there as here. And when the ebb ceased & life began to flow back into me,
+O never doubting but it was for you. Never doubting but that the sweetest,
+noblest, closest, tenderest companionship ever yet tasted by man & woman
+was to begin for us here & now. Then came the long, long waiting, the hope
+deferred: each morning so sure the book would come & with it a word from
+you that should give me leave to speak: no longer to shut down in stern
+silence the love, the yearning, the thoughts that seemed to strain & crush
+my heart. I knew what that means--"if thou wast not gifted to sing thou
+wouldst surely die." I felt as if my silence must kill me sometimes. Then
+when the Book came but with it no word for me alone, there was such a
+storm in [my] heart I could not for weeks read in it. I wrote that long
+letter out in the Autumn fields for dear life's sake. I knew I might, and
+must, speak then. Then I felt relieved, joyful, buoyant once more. Then
+again months of heart-wearying disappointment as I looked in vain for a
+letter-O the anguish at times, the scalding tears, the feeling within as
+if my heart were crushed & doubled up--but always afterwards saying to
+myself "If this suffering is to make my love which was born & grew up &
+blossomed all in a moment strike deep root down in the dark & cold,
+penetrate with painful intensity every fibre of my being, make it a love
+such as he himself is capable of giving, then welcome this anguish, these
+bitter deferments: let its roots be watered as long as God pleases with my
+tears."
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+  _50 Marquis Road
+  London
+  Camden Sqr. N. W._
+
+
+
+
+LETTER VI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Road, Camden Sqre.
+  London, N. W.,
+  January 24, '72._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+I send you photographs of my oldest and youngest children, I wish I had
+some worth sending of the other two. That of myself done in 1850 is a copy
+of a daguerrotype. The recent one was taken just a week or so before I
+broke down in my long illness & when I was struggling against a terrible
+sense of inward prostration; so it has not my natural expression, but I
+think you will like to have [it] rather than none, & the weather here is
+too gloomy for there to be any chance of a good one if I were to try
+again. Your few words lifted a heavy weight off me. Very few they are,
+dear friend: but knowing that I may give to every word you speak its
+fullest, truest meaning, the more I brood over them the sweeter do they
+taste. Still I am not as happy & content as I thought I should be if I
+could only know my words reached you & were welcome to you,--but restless,
+anxious, impatient, looking so wistfully towards the letters each
+morning--above all, longing, longing so for you to come--to come & see if
+you feel happy beside me: no more this painful struggle to put myself into
+words, but to let what I am & all my life speak to you. Only so can you
+judge whether I am indeed the woman capable of rising to the full height
+of great destiny, of justifying & fulfilling your grand thoughts of
+women. And see my faults, flaws, shortcomings too, dear Friend. I feel an
+earnest wish you should do this too that there may be the broad unmovable
+foundation-rock of perfect truth and candour for our love. I do not fear.
+I believe in a large all-accepting, because all-comprehending, love, a
+boundless faith in growth & development--in your judging "not as the judge
+judges but as the sunshine falling around me." To have you in the midst of
+us! we clustered round you, shone upon, vivified, strengthened by your
+presence, surrounding you with an atmosphere of love & cheerful life.
+
+When I wrote to you in Nov. I was in lodgings in London, having just
+accomplished the difficult task of finding a house for us in London, where
+rents are so high. And I have succeeded better than I anticipated, for we
+find this a comfortable, dear, little home--small, indeed, but not so
+small as to interfere with health or comfort, and at rent that I may
+safely undertake. My Husband was taken from us too young to be able to
+have made any provision for his children. I have a little of my own--about
+L80 a year; & for the rest depend upon my Mother, whose only surviving
+child I am. And she, by nature generous & self-denying as well as prudent,
+has never made anything but a pleasure of this & as long as she was able
+to see to her own affairs, was such a capital manager that she used to
+spare me about L150 out of an income of L350. But now though she retains
+her faculties in a wonderful degree for her years (just upon 86), she is
+no longer able to do this & has put the management of the whole into my
+hands. And I, feeling that she needs, and ought to have, now an easier
+scale of expenditure at Colne, have to manage a little more cleverly still
+to make a less sum serve for us. But I succeed capitally, dear friend--do
+not want a better home, never get behind hand & find it no hardship, but
+quite the contrary to have to spend a good deal of time & pains in
+domestic management. And then, just to help me through at the right
+moment, dear Percy[11] obtained in November a good opening in some large
+copper & iron mining & smelting works in South Wales at a salary upon
+which he can comfortably live; & he likes his work well--writes very
+cheerfully--lodges in a farmhouse in the midst of grand scenery, within a
+walk of the sea. So this enables me to give the girls a turn in education,
+for hitherto they have had hardly any teaching but mine. And I chose this
+part because there is a capital day school for them handy. And Herby[12]
+walks in to the best drawing school in London & is very diligent and happy
+at his work. His bent is unmistakably strong. It was well I have had to be
+so busy this autumn & winter, dear Walt, for I suffered keenly, sometimes
+overwhelmingly, through the delay in my letters' reaching you. What caused
+it? And when did you get the Sept. & Oct. letters & did you get the two
+copies that I, baffled & almost despairing, sent off in Nov.? Good-bye,
+dear Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER VII[13]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _(Washington, D. C.)
+  Feb. 8 '72._
+
+I send by same mail with this my latest piece copied in a newspaper--and
+write you just a line. I suppose you only received my former letters
+(two)--I ought to have written something about your children (described to
+me in your letter of last summer--[July 23d] which I have just been
+reading again.) Dear boys and girls--how my heart goes out to them.
+
+Did I tell you that I had received letters from Tennyson, and that he
+cordially invites me to visit him? Sometimes I dream of coming to Old
+England, on such visit.--& thus of seeing you & your children----But it is
+a dream only.
+
+I am still living here in employment in a Government office. My health is
+good. Life is rather sluggish here--yet not without the sunshine. Your
+letters too were bright rays of it. I am going on to New York soon, to
+stay a few weeks, but my address will still be here. I wrote lately to Mr.
+Rossetti quite a long letter. Dear friend, best love & remembrance to you
+& to the young folk.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER VIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq. N. W.
+  April 12th, '72._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+I was to tell you about my acquaintanceship with Tennyson, which was a
+pleasant episode in my life at Haslemere. Hearing of the extreme beauty of
+the scenery thereabouts & specially of its comparative wildness &
+seclusion, he thought he would like to find or build a house, to escape
+from the obtrusive curiosity of the multitudes who flock to the Isle of
+Wight at certain seasons of the year. He is even morbidly sensitive on
+this point & will not stir beyond his own grounds from week's end to
+week's end to avoid his admiring or inquisitive persecutors. So, knowing
+an old friend of mine, he called on me for particulars as to the resources
+of the neighbourhood. And I, a good walker & familiar with every least
+frequent spot of hill & dale for some miles round, took him long ambles in
+quest of a site. Very pleasant rambles they were; Tennyson, under the
+influence of the fresh, outdoor, quite unconstrained life in new scenery &
+with a cheerful aim, shaking off the languid ennuye air, as of a man to
+whom nothing has any longer a relish--bodily or mental--that too often
+hangs about him. And we found something quite to his mind--a coppice of 40
+acres hanging on the south side two thirds of the way up a hill some 1000
+ft. high so as to be sheltered from the cold & yet have the light, dry,
+elastic hill air--& with, of course, a glorious outlook over the wooded
+weald of Sussex so richly green & fertile & looking almost as boundless as
+the great sweep of sky over it--the South Downs to Surrey Hills & near at
+hand the hill curving round a fir-covered promontory, standing out very
+black & grand between him & the sunset. Underfoot too a wilderness of
+beauty--fox gloves (I wonder if they grow in America) ferns, purple heath
+&c &c. I don't suppose I shall see much more of him now I have left
+Haslemere, though I have had very friendly invitations; for I am a home
+bird--don't like staying out--wanted at home and happiest there. And I
+should not enjoy being with them in the grand mansion half so much as I
+did pic-nicing in the road & watching the builders as we did. It is
+pleasant to see T--with children--little girls at least--he does not take
+to boys but one of my girls was mostly on his knee when they were in the
+room & he liked them very much. His two sons are now both 6 ft. high. I
+have received your letters of March 20 from Brooklyn: but the one you
+speak of as having acknowledged the photograph never came to hand--a sore
+disappointment to me, dear Friend. I can ill afford to lose the long &
+eagerly watched for pleasure of a letter. If it seems to you there must
+needs be something unreal, illusive, in a love that has grown up entirely
+without the basis of personal intercourse, dear Friend, then you do not
+yourself realize your own power nor understand the full meaning of your
+own words, "whoso touches this, touches a man"--"I have put my Soul & Body
+into these Poems." Real effects imply real causes. Do you suppose that an
+ideal figure conjured up by her own fancy could, in a perfectly sound,
+healthy woman of my age, so happy in her children, so busy & content,
+practical, earnest, produce such real & tremendous effect--saturating her
+whole life, colouring every waking moment--filling her with such joys,
+such pains that the strain of them has been well nigh too much even for a
+strong frame, coming as it does, after twenty years of hard work?
+
+Therefore please, dear Friend, do not "warn" me any more--it hurts so, as
+seeming to distrust my love. Time only can show how needlessly. My love,
+flowing ever fresh & fresh out of my heart, will go with you in all your
+wanderings, dear Friend, enfolding you day and night, soul & body, with
+tenderness that tries so vainly to utter itself in these poor, helpless
+words, that clings closer than any man's love can cling. O, I could not
+live if I did not believe that sooner or later you will not be able to
+help stretching out your arms towards me & saying "Come, my Darling." When
+you get this will you post me an American newspaper (any one you have done
+with) as a token it has reached you--& so on at intervals during your
+wanderings; it will serve as a token that you are well, & the postmark
+will tell me where you are. And thus you will feel free only to write when
+you have leisure & inclination--& I shall be spared [the] feeling I have
+when I fancy my letters have not reached you--as if I were so hopelessly,
+helplessly cut off from you, which is more than I can stand. We all read
+American news eagerly too. The children are so well & working on with all
+their might. The school turns out more what I desire for them than I had
+ventured to hope. Good-bye, dearest Friend.
+
+ANN GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER IX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden, Sqre.
+  June 3d, 1872._
+
+DEAR FRIEND:
+
+The newspapers have both come to hand & been gladly welcomed. I shall
+realize you on the 26th sending living impulses into those young men, with
+results not to cease--their kindled hearts sending back response through
+glowing eyes that will be warmer to you than the June sunshine. Perhaps,
+too, you will have pleasant talks with the eminent astronomers there.
+Prof. Young, who is so skilful a worker with that most subtle of tidings
+from the stars, the spectroscope--always, it seems hitherto bringing word
+of the "vast similitude that interlocks all," nay, of the absolute
+identity of the stuff they are made of with the stuff we are made of. The
+news from Dartmouth that too, is a great pleasure.
+
+It has been what seems to me a very long while since last writing, because
+it has been a troubled time within & what I wrote I tore up again,
+believing it was best, wisest so. You said in your first letter that if
+you had leisure you could write one that "would do me good & you too";
+write that letter dear Friend after you have been to Dartmouth[14]--for I
+sorely need it. Perhaps the letters that I have sent you since that first,
+have given you a feeling of constraint towards me because you cannot
+respond to them. I will not write any more such letters; or, if I write
+them because my heart is so full it cannot bear it, they shall not find
+their way to the Post. But do not, because I give you more than
+friendship, think that it would not be a very dear & happy thing to me to
+have friendship only from you. I do not want you to write what it is any
+effort to write--do not ask for deep thoughts, deep feelings--know well
+those must choose their own time & mode--but for the simplest current
+details--for any thing that helps my eyes to pierce the distance & see you
+as you live & move to-day. I dearly like to hear about your Mother--want
+to know if all your sisters are married, & if you have plenty of little
+nephews & nieces--I like to hear anything about Mr. O'Connor[15] & Mr.
+Burroughs,[16] towards both of whom I feel as toward friends. (Has Mr.
+O'Connor succeeded in getting practically adopted his new method of making
+cast steel? Percy[17] being a worker in the field of metallurgy makes me
+specially glad to hear about this.) Then, I need not tell you how deep an
+interest I feel in American politics & want to know if you are satisfied
+with the result of the Cincinnati Convention & what of Mr. Greely?[18] &
+what you augur as to his success--I am sure dear friend, if you realize
+the joy it is to me to receive a few words from you--about anything that
+is passing in your thoughts & around--how beaming bright & happy the day a
+letter comes & many days after--how light hearted & alert I set about my
+daily tasks, it would not seem irksome to you to write. And if you say,
+"Read my books, & be content--you have me in them," I say, it is because I
+read them so that I am not content. It is an effort to me to turn to any
+other reading; as to highest literature what I felt three years ago is
+more than ever true now, with all their precious augmentations. I want
+nothing else--am fully fed & satisfied there. I sit alone many hours busy
+with my needle; this used to be tedious; but it is not so now--for always
+close at hand lie the books that are so dear, so dear, I brooding over the
+poems, sunning myself in them, pondering the vistas--all the experience of
+my past life & all its aspirations corroborating them--all my future & so
+far as in me lies the future of my children to be shaped modified
+vitalized by & through these--outwardly & inwardly. How can I be content
+to live wholly isolated from you? I am sure it is not possible for any
+one,--man or woman, it does not matter which, to receive these books, not
+merely with the intellect critically admiring their power & beauty, but
+with an understanding responsive heart, without feeling it drawn out of
+their breasts so that they must leave all & come to be with you sometimes
+without a resistless yearning for personal intercourse that will take no
+denial. When we come to America I shall not want you to talk to me, shall
+not be any way importunate. To settle down where there are some that love
+you & understand your poems, somewhere that you would be sure to come
+pretty often--to have you sit with me while I worked, you silent, or
+reading to yourself, I don't mind how: to let my children grow fond of
+you--to take food with us; if my music pleased you, to let me play & sing
+to you of an evening. Do your needlework for you--talk freely of all that
+occupied my thoughts concerning the children's welfare &c--I could be very
+happy so. But silence with the living presence and silence with all the
+ocean in between are two different things. Therefore, these years stretch
+out your hand cordially, trustfully, that I may feel its warm grasp.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER X
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq. London
+  July 14, '72._
+
+The 3d July was my rejoicing day, dearest Friend,--the day the packet from
+America reached me, scattering for a while the clouds of pain and
+humiliation & filling me through & through with light & warmth; indeed I
+believe I am often as happy reading, as you were writing, your Poems. The
+long new one "As a Strong Bird" of itself answers the question hinted in
+your preface & nobly fulfils the promise of its opening lines. We want
+again & again in fresh words & from the new impetus & standpoint of new
+days the vision that sweeps ahead, the tones that fill us with faith & joy
+in our present share of life & work--prophetic of the splendid issues. It
+does not need to be American born to believe & passionately rejoice in the
+belief of what is preparing in America. It is for humanity. And it comes
+through England. The noblest souls the most heroic hearts of England were
+called to be the nucleus of the race that (enriched with the blood &
+qualities of other races & planted down in the new half of the world
+reserved in all its fresh beauty & exhaustless riches to be the arena) is
+to fulfil, justify, outstrip the vision of the poets, the quenchless
+aspirations of all the ardent souls that have ever struggled forward upon
+this earth. For me, the most precious page in the book is that which
+contains the Democratic Souvenirs. I respond to that as one to whom it
+means the life of her Soul. It comforts me very much. You speak in the
+Preface of the imperious & resistless command from within out of which
+"Leaves of Grass" issued. This carried with it no doubt the secret of a
+corresponding resistless power over the reader wholly unprecedented,
+unapproached in literature, as I believe, & to be compared only with that
+of Christ. I speak out of my own experience when I say that no myth, no
+"miracle" embodying the notion of a direct communication between God & a
+human creature, goes beyond the effect, soul & body, of those Poems on me:
+& that were I to put into Oriental forms of speech what I experienced it
+would read like one of those old "miracles" or myths. Thus of many things
+that used to appear to me incomprehensible lies, I now perceive the germ
+of truth & understand that what was called the supernatural was merely an
+inadequate & too timid way of conceiving the natural. Had I died the
+following year, it would have been the simple truth to say I died of joy.
+The doctor called it nervous exhaustion falling with tremendous violence
+on the heart which "seemed to have been strained": & was much puzzled how
+that could have come to pass. I left him in his puzzle--but it was none to
+me. How could such a dazzling radiance of light flooding the soul,
+suddenly, kindling it to such intense life, but put a tremendous strain on
+the vital organs? how could the muscles of the heart suddenly grow
+adequate to such new work? O the passionate tender gratitude that flooded
+my breast, the yearnings that seemed to strain the heart beyond endurance
+that I might repay with all my life & soul & body this debt--that I might
+give joy to him who filled me with such joy, that I might make his outward
+life sweeter & more beautiful who made my inner life so divinely sweet &
+beautiful. But, dear friend, I have certainly to see that this is not to
+be so, now: that for me too love & death are folded inseparably together:
+Death that will renew my youth.
+
+I have had the paper from Burlington[19]--with the details a woman likes
+so to have. I wish I had known for certain whether you went on to Boston &
+were enjoying the music there. My youngest boy has gone to spend his
+holiday with his brother in South Wales & he writes me such good news of
+Per., that he is "looking as brown as a nut & very jolly"; his home in a
+"clean airy old farm house half way up a mountain in the midst of wild
+rough grand scenery, sea in sight near enough to hear the sound of it
+about as loud as the rustling of leaves"--so the boys will have a good
+time together, and the girls are going with me for the holiday to their
+grandmother at Colne. W. Rossetti does not take his till October this
+year. I suppose it will be long & long before this letter reaches you as
+you will be gone to California--may it be a time full of enjoyment--full
+to the brim.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend,
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+What a noble achievement is Mr. Stanley's:[20] it fills me with pleasure
+that Americans should thus have been the rescuer of our large-hearted,
+heroic traveller. We have just got his letters with account of the five
+races in Central Africa copied from N. Y. _Herald_, July 29.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Road
+  Camden Sqre.
+  Novr. 12, 1872._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I must write not because I have anything to tell you--but because I want
+so, by help of a few loving words, to come into your presence as it
+were--into your remembrance. Not more do the things that grow want the
+sun.
+
+I have received all the papers--& each has made a day very bright for me.
+
+I hope the trip to California has not again had to be postponed--I realize
+well the enjoyment of it, & what it would be to California & the fresh
+impulses of thought & emotion that would shape themselves, melodiously,
+out of that for the new volume.
+
+My children are all well. Beatrice is working hard to get through the
+requisite amount of Latin, &c. that is required in the preliminary
+examination--before entering on medical studies. Percy, my eldest, whom I
+have not seen for a year, is coming to spend Xmas with us.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Road
+  Camden Sq. London
+  Jan. 31, '73._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Shall you never find it in your heart to say a kind word to me again? or a
+word of some sort? Surely I must have written what displeased you very
+much that you should turn away from me as the tone of your last letter &
+the ten months' silence which have followed seem to express to me with
+such emphasis. But if so, tell me of it, tell me how--with perfect
+candour, I am worthy of that--a willing learner & striver; not afraid of
+the pain of looking my own faults & shortcomings steadily in the face. It
+may be my words have led you to do me some kind of injustice in thought--I
+then could defend myself. But if it is simply that you are preoccupied,
+too busy, perhaps very eagerly beset by hundreds like myself whose hearts
+are so drawn out of their breasts by your Poems that they cannot rest
+without striving, some way or other, to draw near to you personally--then
+write once more & tell me so & I will learn to be content. But please let
+it be a letter just like the first three you wrote: & do not fear that I
+shall take it to mean anything it doesn't mean. I shall never do that
+again, though it was natural enough at first, with the deep unquestioning
+belief I had that I did but answer a call; that I not only might but
+ought, on pain of being untrue to the greatest, sweetest instincts &
+aspirations of my own soul, to answer it with all my heart & strength &
+life. I say to myself, I say to you as I did in my first letters, "This
+voice that has come to me from over the Atlantic is the one divine voice
+that has penetrated to my soul: is the utterance of a nature that sends
+out life-giving warmth & light to my inward self as actually as the Sun
+does to my body, & draws me to it and shapes & shall shape my course just
+as the sun shapes the earth's." "Interlocked in a vast similitude" indeed
+are these inner & outer truths of our lives. It may be that this shaping
+of my life course toward you will have to be all inward--that to feed upon
+your words till they pass into the very substance & action of my soul is
+all that will be given to me & the grateful, yearning, tender love growing
+ever deeper & stronger out of that will have to go dumb & actionless all
+my days here. But I can wait long, wait patiently; know well, realize more
+clearly indeed that this wingless, clouded, half-developed soul of me has
+a long, long novitiate to live through before it can meet & answer yours
+on equal terms so as fully to satisfy you, to be in very truth & deed a
+dear Friend, a chosen companion, a source of joy to you as you of light &
+life to me. But that is what I will live & die hoping & striving for. That
+covers & includes all the aspirations all the high hopes I am capable of.
+And were I to fall away from this belief it would be a fall into utter
+blackness & despair, as one for whom the Sun in Heaven is blotted out.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  50 Marquis Road
+  Camden Sq. N. W.
+  May 20th, '73.
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Such a joyful surprise was that last paper you sent me with the Poem
+celebrating the great events in Spain--the new hopes the new life wakening
+in the breasts of that fine People which has slumbered so long, weighed
+down & tormented with hideous nightmares of superstition. Are you indeed
+getting strong & well again? able to drink in draughts of pleasure from
+the sights & sounds & perfumes of this delicious time, "lilac
+time"--according to your wont? Sleeping well--eating well, dear friend?
+
+William Rossetti is coming to see me Thursday, before starting for his
+holiday trip to Naples. His father was a Neapolitan, so he narrowly
+escaped a lifelong dungeon for having written some patriotic songs--he
+fled in disguise by help of English friends & spent the rest of his life
+here. So this, his first visit to Naples, will be specially full of
+interest & delight to our friend. He is also in great spirits at having
+discovered a large number of hitherto unknown early letters of Shelley's.
+Of modern English Poets Shelley is the one he loves & admires incomparably
+the most. Perhaps this letter will just reach you on your birthday. What
+can I send you? What can I tell you but the same old story of a heart
+fast anchored--of a soul to whom your soul is as the sun & the fresh,
+sweet air, and the nourishing, sustaining earth wherein the other one
+breathes free & feeds & expands & delights itself. There is no occupation
+of the day however homely that is not coloured, elevated, made more
+cheerful to me by thoughts of you & by thoughts you have given me blent in
+& suffusing all: No hope or aim or practical endeavour for my dear
+children that has not taken a higher, larger, more joyous scope through
+you. No immortal aspiration, no thoughts of what lies beyond death, but
+centre in you. And in moods of pain and discouragement, dear Friend, I
+turn to that Poem beginning "Whoever you are holding me now in hand," and
+I don't know but that that one revives and strengthens me more than any.
+For there is not a line nor a word in it at which my spirit does not rise
+up instinctively and fearlessly say--"So be it." And then I read other
+poems & drink in the draught that I know is for me, because it is for
+all--the love that you give me on the broad ground of my humanity and
+womanhood. And I understand the reality & preciousness of that. Then I say
+to myself, "Souls are not made to be frustrated--to have their greatest &
+best & sweetest impulses and aspirations & yearnings made abortive.
+Therefore we shall not be 'carried diverse' forever. This dumb soul of
+mine will not always remain hidden from you--but some way will be given me
+for this love, this passion of gratitude, this set of all the nerves of my
+being toward you, to bring joy & comfort to you. I do not ask the When or
+the How."
+
+I shall be thinking of your great & dear Mother in her beautiful old age,
+too, on your birthday--happiest woman in all the world that she was & is:
+forever sacred & dear to America & to all who feed on the Poems of her
+Son.
+
+Good-bye, my best beloved Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+I suppose you see all that you care to see in the way of English
+newspapers. I often long to send you one when there is anything in that I
+feel sure would interest you, but am withheld by fearing it would be quite
+superfluous or troublesome even.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Earls Colne
+  Halstead
+  August 12, 1873._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The paper has just been forwarded here which tells me you are still
+suffering and not, as I was fondly believing, already quite emerged from
+the cloud of sickness. My Darling, let me use that tender caressing word
+once more--for how can I help it, with heart so full & no outlet but
+words? My darling--I say it over & over to myself with voice, with eyes so
+full of love, of tender yearning, sorrowful, longing love. I would give
+all the world if I might come (but am held here yet awhile by a duty
+nothing may supersede) & soothe & tend & wait on you & with such cheerful
+loving companionship lift off some of the weight of the long hours & days
+& perhaps months that must still go over while nature slowly,
+imperceptibly, but still so surely repairs the mischief within: result of
+the tremendous ordeal to your frame of those great over-brimming years of
+life spent in the Army Hospitals. You see dear Friend, a woman who is a
+mother has thenceforth something of that feeling toward other men who are
+dear to her. A cherishing, fostering instinct that rejoices so in tending,
+nursing, caretaking & I should be so happy it needs must diffuse a
+reviving, comforting, vivifying warmth around you. Might but these words
+breathed out of the heart of a woman who loves you with her whole soul &
+life & strength fulfil their errand & comfort the sorrowful heart, if
+ever so little--& through that revive the drooping frame. This love that
+has grown up, far away over here, unhelped by the sweet influences of
+personal intercourse, penetrating the whole substance of a woman's life,
+swallowing up into itself all her aspirations, hopes, longings, regardless
+of Death, looking earnestly, confidently beyond that for its fruition,
+blending more or less with every thought & act of her life--a guiding star
+that her feet cannot choose but follow resolutely--what can be more real
+than this, dear Friend? What can have deeper roots, or a more immortal
+growing power? But I do not ask any longer whether this love is believed
+in & welcomed & precious to you. For I know that what has real roots
+cannot fail to bear real flowers & fruits that will in the end be sweet &
+joyful to you; and that if I am indeed capable of being your eternal
+comrade, climbing whereon you climb, daring all that you dare, learning
+all that you learn, suffering all that you suffer (pressing closest then)
+loving, enjoying all that you love & enjoy--you will want me. You will not
+be able to help stretching out your hand & drawing me to you. I have
+written this mostly out in the fields, as I am so fond of doing--the
+serene, beautiful harvest landscape spread around--returned once more as I
+have every summer for five & twenty years to this old village where my
+mother's family have lived in unbroken succession three hundred years,
+ever since, in fact, the old Priory which they have inhabited, ceased to
+be a Priory. My Mother's health is still good--wonderful indeed for 88,
+though she has been 30 years crippled with rheumatism. Still she enjoys
+getting out in the sunshine in her Bath chair, & is able to take pleasure
+in seeing her friends & in having us all with her. Her father was a hale
+man at 90. These eastern counties are flat & tame, but yet under this
+soft, smiling, summer sky lovely enough too--with their rich green meadows
+& abundant golden corn crops, now being well got in. Even the sluggish
+little river Colne one cannot find fault with, it nourishes such a
+luxuriant border of wild flowers as it creeps along--& turns & twists from
+sunshine into shade & from shade into sunshine so as to make the very best
+& most of itself. But as to the human growth here, I think that more than
+anywhere else in England perhaps it struggled along choked & poisoned by
+dead things of the past, still holding their place above ground. Carlyle
+calls the clergy "black dragoons"--in these rural parishes they are black
+Squires, making it their chief business to instruct the labourer that his
+grinding poverty & excessive toil, & the Squire's affluence & ease are
+equally part of the sacred order of Providence. When I have been here a
+little I wish myself in London again, dearly as I love outdoor life &
+companionship with nature. For though the same terrible & cruel facts are
+there as here, they are not choked down your throat by any one, as a
+beautiful & perfect ideal. Even in England light is unmistakably breaking
+through the darkness for the toilers.
+
+I did not see William Rossetti before I came down, but heard he had had a
+very happy time in Italy & splendid weather all the while. Mr. Conway &
+his wife are going to spend their holiday in Brittany. Do not think me
+childish dear friend if I send a copy of this letter to Washington as well
+as to Camden. I want it so to get to you--long & so long to speak with
+you--& the Camden one may never come to hand--or the Washington one might
+remain months unforwarded--it is easy to tear up.
+
+I hope it will find you by the sea shore!--getting on so fast toward
+health & strength again--refreshed & tranquillized, soul & body. Good-bye,
+beloved Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XV[21]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  I must write
+  friend once more at
+  Since I last wrote, clouds have darkened over me, and still remain.
+
+On the night of 3d January last I was paralyzed, left side, and have
+remained so since. Feb. 19 I lost a dear dear sister, who died in St.
+Louis leaving two young daughters. May 23d, my dear inexpressibly beloved
+mother died in Camden, N. J. I was just able to get from Washington to her
+dying bed & sit there. I thought I was bearing it all stoutly, but I find
+it affecting the progress of my recovery since and now. I am still feeble,
+palsied & have spells of great distress in the head. But there are points
+more favourable.
+
+I am up & dressed every day, sleep & eat middling well & do not change
+much yet, in flesh & face, only look very old.
+
+Though I can move slowly very short distances, I walk with difficulty &
+have to stay in the house nearly all the time. As I write to-day, I feel
+that I shall probably get well--though I may not.
+
+Many times during the past year have I thought of you & your children.
+Many times indeed have I been going to write, but did not. I have just
+been reading over again several of this & last year's letters from you &
+looking at the pictures sent in the one of Jan. 24, '72. (Your letters
+of Jan. 24, June 3 & July 14, of last year and of Jan. 31, and May 20,
+this year, with certainly one other, maybe two) all came safe. Do not
+think hard of me for not writing in reply. If you could look into my
+spirit & emotion you would be entirely satisfied & at peace. I am at
+present temporarily here at Camden, on the Delaware river, opposite
+Philadelphia, at the house of my brother, and I am occupying, as I write,
+the rooms wherein my mother died. You must not be unhappy about me, as I
+am as comfortably situated as can be--& many things--indeed every
+thing--in my case might be so much worse. Though my plans are not
+definite, my intention as far as anything is on getting stronger, and
+after the hot season passes, to get back to Washington for the fall &
+winter.
+
+My post office address continues at Washington. I send my love to Percy &
+all your dear children.
+
+The enclosed ring I have just taken from my finger, & send to you, with my
+love.
+
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A TYPICAL WHITMAN LETTER.
+
+FROM THOMAS B. HARNED'S COLLECTION]
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Earls Colne
+  Sept. 4, 1873._
+
+I am entirely satisfied & at peace, my Beloved--no words can say how
+divine a peace.
+
+Pain and joy struggle together in me (but joy getting the mastery, because
+its portion is eternal). O the precious letter, bearing to me the living
+touch of your hand, vibrating through & through me as I feel the pressure
+of the ring that pressed your flesh--& now will press mine so long as I
+draw breath. My Darling! take comfort & strength & joy from me that you
+have made so rich & strong. Perhaps it will yet be given us to see each
+other, to travel the last stage of this journey side by side, hand in
+hand--so completing the preparation for the fresh start on the greater
+journey; me loving and blessing her you mourn, now for your dear
+sake--then growing to know & love her in full unison with you.
+
+I hope you will soon get to the sea--as soon as you are strong enough,
+that is--& if you could have all needful care & comfort & a dear friend
+with you there. For I believe you would get on faster away from Camden--&
+that it tends so to keep the wound open & quivering to be where the blow
+fell on you--where every object speaks of her last hours & is laden with
+heart-stirring associations; though I realize, dearest Friend, that in the
+midst of the poignant sorrow come immortal sweet moments--communings, rapt
+anticipations. But these would come the same in nature's great soothing
+arms by the seashore, with her reviving, invigorating breath playing
+freely over you. If only you could get just strong enough prudently to
+undertake the journey. When my eyes first open in the morning, often such
+tender thoughts, yearning ineffably, pitying, sorrowful, sweet thoughts
+flow into my breast that longs & longs to pillow on itself the suffering
+head (with white hair more beautiful to me than the silvery clouds which
+always make me think of it.) My hands want to be so helpful, tending,
+soothing, serving my whole frame to support his stricken side--O to
+comfort his heart--to diffuse round him such warm sunshine of love,
+helping time & the inborn vigour of each organ that the disease could not
+withstand the influences, but healthful life begin to flow again through
+every part. My children send their love, their earnest sympathy. Do not
+feel anyways called on to write except when inwardly impelled. Your
+silence is not dumb to me now--will never again cloud or pain, or be
+misconstrued by me. I can feast & feast, & still have wherewithal to
+satisfy myself with the sweet & precious words that have now come & with
+the feel of my ring, only send any old paper that comes to hand (never
+mind whether there is anything to read in it or not) just as a sign that
+the breath of love & hope these poor words try to bear to you, has reached
+you. And just one word literally that, dearest, when you begin to feel you
+are really getting on--to make me so joyful with the news.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend,
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Back again in Marquis Road.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  Nov. 3, '73 London_
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+All the papers have reached me--3 separate packets (with the handwriting
+on them that makes my heart give a glad bound). I look through them full
+of interest & curiosity, wanting to realize as I do, in things small as
+well as things large, my Land of Promise--the land where I hope to plant
+down my children--so strong in the faith that they, & perhaps still more
+those that come after them will bless me for that (consciously or
+unconsciously, it doesn't matter which) I should set out with a cheerful
+heart on that errand if I knew the first breath I drew on American soil
+would be my last in life. I searched hopeful for a few words telling of
+improvement in your health in the last paper. But perhaps it does not
+follow from there being no much mention that there is no progress. May you
+be steadily though ever so slowly gaining ground, my Darling! Now that I
+understand the nature of the malady (a deficient flow of blood to the
+brain, if it has been rightly explained to me) I realize that recovery
+must be very gradual: as the coming on of it must have been slow &
+insidious. And perhaps that, & also even from before the war time with its
+tremendous strain, emotional & physical, is part of the price paid for the
+greatness of the Poems & for their immortal destiny--the rapt exaltation
+the intensity of joy & sorrow & struggle--all that went to give them
+their life-giving power. For I have felt many times in reading them as if
+the light and heat of their sacred fire must needs have consumed the vital
+energies of him in whose breast it was generated, faster then even the
+most splendid physique could renew itself. For our sakes, for humanity's
+sake, you suffer now, I do not doubt it, every bit as much as the
+soldier's wounds are for his country's sake. The more precious, the more
+tenderly cherished, the more drawing the hearts that understand with
+ineffable yearnings, for this.
+
+My children all continue well in the main, I am thankful to say, though
+Beatrice (the eldest girl) looks paler than I could wish and is working
+her brains too much and the rest of her too little just at present, with
+the hope of getting through the Apothecaries Hall exam. in Arts next
+Sept., which involves a good bit of Latin and mathematics. This is all
+women can do in England toward getting into the medical profession & as
+the Apoth. Hall certificate is accepted for the preliminary studies at
+Paris & Zurich, I make no doubt it is also at Philadelphia & New York; so
+that she would be able to enter on medical studies, the virtual
+preliminary work, when we come. For she continues steadfastly desirous to
+win her way into that field of usefulness, & I believe is well fitted to
+work there, with her grave, earnest, thoughtful, feeling nature & strong
+bodily frame. She is able to enjoy your Poems & the vistas; broods over
+them a great deal. Percy is bending his energies now to mastering the
+processes that go to the production of the very best quality of copper
+such as is used for telegraph wires &c. No easy matter, copper being the
+most difficult, in a metallurgical point of view, of all the metals to
+deal with & the Company in whose employ he is having hitherto been
+unsuccessful in this branch. His looks, too, do not quite satisfy me--it
+is partly rather too long hours of work--but still more not getting a good
+meal till the end of it. It is so hard to make the young believe that the
+stomach shares the fatigue of the rest of the body and that there is not
+nervous energy enough left for it to do all its principal work to
+perfection after a long, exhausting day. But I hope now I, or rather his
+own experience and I together, have convinced him in time, and he promises
+me faithfully to arrange for a good meal in the middle of the day however
+much grudging the time. My little artist Herby is still chiefly working
+from the antique, but tries his hand at home occasionally with oils & to
+life & has made an oil sketch of me which, though imperfect in drawing
+&c., gives far more the real character & expression of my face than the
+photographs. Have you heard, I wonder, of William Rossetti's approaching
+marriage? It is to take place early in the New Year. The lady is Lucy
+Brown, daughter of one of our most eminent artists (he was the friend who
+first put into my hand the "Selections" from your Poems). Lucy is a very
+sweet-tempered, cultivated, lovable woman, well fitted, I should say, to
+make William Rossetti happy. They are to continue in the old home, Euston
+Sq., with Mrs. Rossetti & the sisters, who are one and all fond of Lucy. I
+am glad he is going to be married for I think he is a man capable both of
+giving and receiving a large measure of domestic happiness. I hope the
+dear little girls at St. Louis are well. And you, my Darling, O surely the
+sun is piercing through the dark clouds once more and strength & health
+and gladness returning. O fill yourself with happy thoughts for you have
+filled others with joy & strength & will do so for countless generations,
+& from these hearts flows back, and will ever flow, a steady current of
+love & the beautiful fruits of love.
+
+When you next send me a paper, if you feel that you are getting on ever so
+little, dearest friend, just a dash under the word _London_. I have looked
+back at all your old addresses & I see you never do put any lines, so I
+shall know it was not done absently but really means you are better. And
+how that line will gladden my eyes, Darling!
+
+Love from us all. Good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq., N. W.
+  Dec. 8, 1873._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The papers with Prof. Young's speech came safely & I read it, my hand in
+yours, happy and full of interest. Are you getting on, my Darling? When I
+know that you no longer suffer from distressing sensations in the head &
+can move without such effort and difficulty, a hymn of thankfulness will
+go up from my heart. Perhaps this week I shall get the paper with the line
+on it that is to tell me so much--or at least that you are well on your
+way towards it. And what shall I tell you about? The quiet tenor of our
+daily lives here? but that is very restricted, though, I trust, as far as
+it goes, good & healthful. O the thoughts and hopes that leap from across
+the ocean & the years! But they hide themselves away when I want to put
+them into words. Do not think I live in dreams. I know very well it is
+strictly in proportion as the present & the past have been busy shaping &
+preparing the materials of a beautiful future, that it really will be
+beautiful when it comes to exist as a present, seeing how it needs must be
+entirely a growth from all that has preceded it & that there are no sudden
+creations of flowers of happiness in men & women any more than in the
+fields. But if the buds lie ready folded, ah, what the sunshine will do!
+What fills me with such deep joy in your poems is the sense of the large
+complete acceptiveness--the full & perfect faith in humanity--in _every
+individual unit of humanity_--thus for the first time uttered. That alone
+satisfies the sense of justice in the soul, responds to what its own
+nature compels it to believe of the Infinite Source of all. That too
+includes within its scope the lot as well as the man. His infinite,
+undying self must achieve and fulfil itself out of any & all experiences.
+Why, if it takes such ages & such vicissitudes to compact a bit of
+rock--fierce heat, & icy cold, storms, deluges, crushing pressure & slow
+subsidences, as if it were like a handful of grass & all sunshine--what
+would it do for a man!
+
+
+_Dec. 18._
+
+The longed-for paper has come to hand. O it _is_ a slow struggle back to
+health, my Darling! I believe in the main it is good news that is
+come--and there is the little stroke I wanted so on the address. But for
+all that, I feel troubled & conscious--for I believe you have been a great
+deal worse since you wrote--and that you have still such a steep, steep
+hill to climb.
+
+Perhaps if my hand were in yours, dear Walt, you would get along faster.
+Dearer and sweeter that lot than even to have been your bride in the full
+flush & strength and glory of your youth. I turn my face to the westward
+sky before I lie down to sleep, deep & steadfast within me the silent
+aspiration that every year, every month & week, may help something to
+prepare and make fitter me and mine to be your comfort and joy. We are
+full of imperfections, short-comings but half developed, but half
+"possessing our own souls." But we grow, we learn, we strive--that is the
+best of us. I think in the sunshine of your presence we shall grow fast--I
+too, my years notwithstanding. May the New Year lead you out into the
+sunshine again--shed out of its days health & strength, so that you tread
+the earth in gladness again. This with love from us all. Good-bye, dearest
+Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Herby was at a Conversation last night where were many distinguished men &
+beautiful women. Among the works of art displayed on the walls was a fine
+photograph of you.
+
+
+19th, afternoon.
+
+And now a later post has brought me the other No. of the _Graphic_ with
+your own writing in it--so full of life and spirit, so fresh & cheerful &
+vivid, dear Friend, it seems to scatter all anxious sad thoughts to the
+winds. And are you then really back at Washington, I wonder, or have you
+only visited it in spirit, & written the recollection of former evenings?
+
+I shall have none but cheerful thoughts now. I shall reread it
+carefully--read it to the young folk at tea to-night.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  London
+  26 Feb., 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Glad am I when the time comes round for writing to you again--though I
+can't please myself with my letters, poor little echoes that they are of
+the loving, hoping, far-journeying thoughts so busy within. It has been a
+happy time since I received the paper with the joyful news you were back
+at Washington, well on your way to recovery, able partially to resume
+work--scenting from afar the fresh breeze & sunshine of perfect health--by
+this time, not from afar, perhaps. The thought of that makes dull days
+bright & bright days glorious to me too. I note in the New York _Graphic_
+that a new edition of "Leaves of Grass" was called for--sign truly that
+America is not so very slowly & now absorbing the precious food she needs
+above all else? Perhaps, dear Friend, even during your lifetime will begin
+to come the proof you will alone accept--that "your country absorbs you as
+affectionately as you have absorbed it." I have had two great pleasures
+since I last wrote you. One is that Herby has read with a large measure of
+responsive delight "Leaves of Grass" quite through, so that he now sees
+you with his own eyes & has in his heart the living, growing germs of a
+loving admiration that will grow with his growth & strengthen every fibre
+of good in him. Also he read & took much pride in my "letters," now shown
+him for the first time. Percy has had a fortnight's holiday with us, and
+looks better in health, though still not altogether as I could wish. He
+says he is getting such good experience he would not care just yet to
+change his post even for better pay. Music is his greatest pleasure--he
+seems to get more enjoyment out of that than out of literature, & is
+acquiring some practical skill.
+
+To-day (Feb. 25th) is my birthday, dearest Friend--a day my children
+always make very bright & happy to me: and on it they make me promise to
+"do nothing but what I like all day." So I shall spend it with you--partly
+in finishing this letter, partly reading in the book that is so dear to
+me--for that is indeed my soul coming into the presence of your
+soul--filled by it with strength & warmth & joy. In discouraged moods,
+when oppressed with the consciousness of my own limitations, failures,
+lack of many beautiful gifts, I say to myself, "What sort of a bird with
+unfledged wings are you that would mate with an eagle? Can your eyes look
+the sun in the face like his? Can you sustain your long, lifelong flights
+upward? Can you rest in dizzy rocks overhanging dark, tempestuous abysses?
+Is your heart like his, a great glowing sun of Love?" Then I answer, "Give
+me Time." I can bide my time--a long, long growing & unfolding time. That
+he draws me with such power, that my soul has found the meaning of itself
+in him--the object of all its deep, deathless aspirations in comradeship
+with him, means, if life is not a mockery clean ended by death, that the
+germs are in me, that through cleaving & loving & ever striving up & on I
+shall grow like him--like but different--the correlative--what his soul
+needs & desires; and if when I reach America he is not so drawn towards
+me,--if seeing how often I disappoint myself, needs must that he too is
+disappointed, still I can hold bravely, lovingly on to this
+inextinguishable faith & hope--with the added joy of his presence,
+sometimes winning from him more & more a dear friendship, yielding him
+some joy & comfort--for he too turns with hope, with yearning, towards
+me--bids me be "satisfied & at peace!" So I am, so I will be, my darling.
+Surely, surely, sooner or later I shall justify that hope, satisfy that
+yearning. This is what I say to myself & to you this 46th birthday. Have I
+said it over & over again? That is because it is the undercurrent of my
+whole life. The _Tribune_ with Proctor's "Lecture on the Sun" (& a great
+deal besides that interests me) came safe. A masterly lecture. And two
+days ago came the Philadelphia paper with Prof. Morton's speech--deeply
+interesting. And as I read these things, the feeling that they have come
+from, & been read by, you turns them into Poems for me.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+W. Rossetti's marriage is to be the end of next month. Had a pleasant chat
+with Mr. Conway, who took supper with us a week or two ago.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+_March 9th, 1874._
+
+With full heart, with eyes wet with tears of joy & I know not what other
+deep emotion--pain of yearning pity blent with the sense of
+grandeur--dearest Friend, have I read and reread the great, sacred Poem
+just come to me.[22] O august Columbus! whose sorrows, sufferings,
+struggles are more to be envied than any triumph of conquering warrior--as
+I see him in your poem his figure merges into yours, brother of Columbus.
+Completer of his work, discoverer of the spiritual, the ideal America--you
+too have sailed over stormy seas to your goal--surrounded with mocking
+disbelievers--you too have paid the great price of health--our Columbus.
+
+Your accents pierce me through & through.
+
+Your loving ANNIE.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  May 14, 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Two papers have come to hand since I last wrote, one containing the
+memoranda made during the war--precious records, eagerly read & treasured
+& reread by me.
+
+How the busy days slip by one so like another, yet each with its own fresh
+& pleasant flavour & scent, as like and as different as the leaves on a
+tree, or the plants in the hedgerows. Days they are busy with humble
+enough occupations, but lit up for me not only with the light of hope, but
+with the half-hidden joy of one who knows she has found what she sought
+and laid such strong hold upon it that she fears nothing, questions
+nothing--no life, or death, nor in the end, in her own imperfections,
+flaws, shortcomings. For to be so conscious of these, and to love and
+understand you so, are proofs [that] the germs of all are in her, &
+perhaps in the warmth & joyous sunshine of your presence would grow fast.
+Anyhow, distance has not baffled her, and time will not. A great deal of
+needlework to be done at this time of year; for my girls have not time for
+any at present; it is not a good contrast or the right thing after longish
+hours of study--much better household activity of any sort. If they would
+but understand this in schools & colleges for girls & young women. No
+healthier or more cheerful occupation as a relief from study, could be
+found than household work--sweeping, scrubbing, washing, ironing,
+cooking--in the variety of it, & equable development of the muscles, I
+should think equal to the most elaborate gymnastics. I know very well how
+I have felt, & still feel, the want of having been put to these things
+when a girl. Then the importance afterwards of doing them easily & well &
+without undue fatigue, to all who aim to give practical shape to their
+ardent belief in equality & fair play for all. In domestic life under one
+roof, at all events, it is already feasible to make the disposals without
+ignominious distinctions--not all the rough bodily work, never ending,
+leisure all to the other; but a wholesome interchange and sharing of
+these. Not least too among the advantages of taking an active share in
+these duties is the zest, the keen relish, it gives to the hours not too
+easily secured for reading & music. Besides, I often think that just as
+the Poem Nature is made up half of rude, rough realities and homely
+materials & processes, so it is necessary for women to construct their
+Poem, Home, on a groundwork of homeliest details & occupations, providing
+for the bodily wants & comforts of their household, and that without
+putting their own hands to this, their Poem will lack the vital, fresh,
+growing, nature-like quality that alone endures, and that of this soil
+will grow, with fitting preparation & culture, noble & more vigorous
+intellectual life in women, fit to embody itself in wider spheres
+afterwards--if the call comes.
+
+This month of May that comes to you so laden with great and sorrowful &
+beautiful & tender memories, and that is your birth-month too, I cannot
+say that I think of you more than at any other time, for there is no month
+nor day that my thoughts do not habitually & spontaneously turn to you,
+refer all to you--yet I seem to come closer because of the Poems that tell
+me of what relates to that time; but most of all when I think of your
+beloved Mother, because then I often yearn, more than I know how to bear,
+to comfort you with love and tender care and silent companionship. May is
+in a sense (& a very real one) my birth-month too, for in it were your
+Poems first put into my hand. I wish I were _quite sure_ that you no
+longer suffer in your head, and that you can move about without effort or
+difficulty--perhaps before long there will be a paper with some paragraph
+about your health, for though we say to ourselves no news is good news, it
+is a very different thing to have the absolute affirmation of good news.
+
+My children are all well and hearty, I am thankful to say, & working
+industriously. Grace means to study the best system of kindergarten
+teaching--I fancy she is well suited for kindergarten teaching & that it
+is very excellent work.
+
+Herby is still drawing from the antique in the British Museum. I hope he
+will get into the Academy this summer. He is going to spend his holidays
+with his brother in South Wales--and we as usual at Colne, but that will
+not be till August.
+
+Did I tell you William Rossetti and his bride were spending their
+honeymoon at Naples? & have found it bitterly cold there, I learn. Mr. &
+Mrs. Conway & their children are well. Eustace is coming to spend the
+afternoon with Herby to-morrow.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  July 4, 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Are you well and happy, and enjoying this beautiful summer? London is, in
+one sense, a sort of big prison at this time of year: but still at a wide
+open window, with the blue sky opening to me & a soft breeze blowing in &
+the Book that is so dear--my life-giving treasure--open on my lap, I have
+very happy times. No one hundreds of years hence will find deeper joy in
+these poems than I--breathe the fresh, sweet, exhilarating air of them,
+bathe in it, drink in what nourishes & delights the whole being, body,
+intellect & soul, more than I. Nor could you, when writing them, have
+desired to come nearer to a human being & be more to them forever &
+forever than you are & will be to me. O I take the hand you stretch out
+each day--I put mine into it with a sense of utter fulfilment: I ask
+nothing more of time and of eternity but to live and grow up to that
+companionship that includes all.
+
+6th. This very morning has come the answer to my question. First I only
+saw the Poem--read it so elate--soared with it to joyous heights, said to
+myself: "He is so well again, he is able to take the journey into
+Massachusetts & speak the kindling words." Then I turned over and my joy
+was dashed. My Darling; such patience yet needed along the tedious path!
+Oh, it makes me long, with passionate longings, with yearnings I know not
+how to bear, to come, to be your loving, cheerful companion, the one to
+take such care, to do all for you--to beguile the time, to give you of my
+health as you have done to tens of thousands. I do not doubt, either, but
+that you will get well. I feel sure, sure, it will be given me to see you;
+and perhaps a very slow, gradual recovery is safest--is the only way in
+this as in other matters to thoroughness; & a very speedy rally would be
+specious, treacherous, in the end, leading you to do what you were not yet
+fit for. I believe if I could only make you conscious of the love, the
+enfolding love, my heart breathes out toward you it would do you physical
+good; many-sided love--Mother's love that cherishes, that delights so in
+personal service, that sees in sickness & suffering such dear appeals to
+an answering, limitless tenderness--wife's love--ah, you draw that from me
+too, resistlessly--I have no choice--comrade's love, so happy in sharing
+all, pain, sorrow, toil, effort, enjoyments, thoughts, hopes, aims,
+struggles, disappointment, beliefs, aspirations. Child's love, too, that
+trusts utterly, confides unquestioningly. Not more spontaneously, & wholly
+without effort or volition on my part, does the sunlight flow into my eyes
+when I open them in the morning than does the sense of your existence
+enter like bright light into my awaking soul. And then I send to you
+thoughts--tender, caressing thoughts--that would fain nestle so close--ah,
+if you could feel them, take them in, let them lie in your breast, each
+morning.
+
+My children are all well, dear Friend. Herbert is going to spend his
+holidays with his brother in Wales--& we shall all go to Colne as usual
+the end of this month & remain there through August and September; so if
+you think of it, address any paper you may send [to] Earls Colne,
+Halstead, because I should get it a day sooner. But it does not signify if
+you forget & send it here; it will be forwarded all right. Beatrice has
+just got through one of the Govern. Exams. in elementary mathematics; and
+I hope Herby has got into the Academy, but do not know for certain yet. He
+works away zealously and with great delight in his work. William Rossetti
+and his wife are coming to dine with us Wednesday--they look so well and
+happy, it does one good to see them. The Conways are going to Ostend, I
+think, for their holiday, & when they come back [are] going to move into a
+larger house. I heard an American lady, Miss Whitman, sing at a concert
+the other day, who delighted me, fascinated me--I longed to kiss her after
+each song, though some of them were poor enough Verdi stuff--but she
+contrived to impart genuineness & beauty to them. I hope you will hear her
+when she returns to America, which will be soon, I believe.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend. Beatrice, Herby & Grace join their love with
+mine. I had the sweet little Bridal Poem all safe, & by the bye I liked
+that Springfield paper very much.
+
+Your loving ANNIE.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Earls Colne
+  Sept. 3, 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The change down here has refreshed me more than usual and I find my Mother
+still wonderful for her years (the 89th), able to get out daily in her
+Bath chair for two or three hours--to enjoy our being with her, and
+suffering little or no pain from rheumatism now. I hope you have had as
+glorious a summer & harvest as we have, and that you are able to be much
+out of doors and absorb the health-giving influences, dear Friend. Such
+mornings! So fresh and invigourating. I have been before breakfast mostly
+in a beautiful garden (the old Priory garden) with my beloved Poems and
+the dew-laden flowers and liquid light and sweet, fresh air; & the sparkle
+of the pond & delicious greenness of the meadows beyond & rustling trees,
+and had a joyful time with you, my Darling--sometimes with thoughts that
+lay hold on "the solid prizes of the Universe," sometimes so busy building
+up a home in America, thinking, dreaming, hoping, loving, groping among
+dim shadows, straining wistful eyes into the dim distance--then to my
+poems again--ah! not groping then, but hand in hand with you, breathing
+the air you breathe, with eyes ardently fixed in the same direction your
+eyes look, heart beating strong with the same hopes, aspirations, yours
+beats with. It does not need to be American to love America and to believe
+in the great future of humanity there; it is curious to be human, still
+more English to do that. I love & believe in & understand her in & through
+you: but was always drawn towards her, always a believer, though in a
+vaguer way, that a new glorious day for men & women was dawning there, and
+recognized a new, distinctive American quality, very congenial to me, even
+in American virtues, which you not perhaps rate highly or retard as
+decisively national, not adequately or commandingly so, at any rate. Did I
+ever tell you the cousin of mine[23] who owns the priory here fought for
+two years in the Secession war in the army of the Potomac when Burnside &
+McClellan were at the head? John Cowardine was Major in a Cavalry
+regiment--was at Vicksburg, Frederickburg, &c. Never wounded, or but
+slightly--had a good deal of outpost duty, being just the right sort of a
+man for that, & has letters of approval from his generals of which he is
+not a little proud. Before that fought under the Stars & Stripes in Mexico
+& has had a curiously adventurous career, which he commenced by running
+away from a military college, where he was being prepared for a cadetship,
+& enlisting as a private--getting out of that by & bye and working his way
+before the mast as a sailor--then mining in California--then in Australia,
+riding steeplechases, keeper of the Melrose hounds, market gardening,
+hotel keeping, then on his way back to California, cast ashore on one of
+the Navigator Islands, where he remained for six months, the only white
+man among savages, who were friendly & made much of him--now, come into a
+good estate, married to a woman who seems to suit him well & is healthy,
+cheerful rich & handsome, he has fallen into indifferent health &
+considerable depression of spirits. Perhaps he finds the atmosphere of
+Squirearchical gentility very stagnant, the bed of roses
+stifling--perhaps, too, the severe privations he has at different times
+undergone have injured him. I often think he was perhaps one of those
+your eyes rested on with pride & admiration--"handsome, tan-faced, dressed
+in blue." He is the very ideal of a soldier in appearance & bearing--has
+now some fine children, of whom he is very fond.
+
+It was just this time of year I received the precious letter and ring that
+put peace and joy, and yet such pain of yearning, into my heart--pain for
+you, my Darling. O sorrowing helpless love that waits, and must wait,
+useless, afar off, while you suffer. But trying every day of my life to
+grow fitter, more capable of being your comfort and joy and true
+comrade--never to cease trying this side death or the other--rejoicing in
+my children more than I ever rejoiced in them before, now that in and
+through you I for the first time see and understand humanity (myself
+included)--its divine nature, its possibilities, nay, its certainties. How
+I do long for you to see my children, dear Friend, and for them to see and
+love you as they will love you, and all their nature unfold and grow more
+vigorously and joyously under your influence. Gracie, of whom you have
+photographs, grows fast,--is such a fine, blooming girl. I hope soon to
+send you one of Beatrice too. They have been enjoying their visit here and
+are now gone home. Gracie for school, Beatrice for the examination at
+Apoth. Hall she is hoping to get through. Then she is coming here to be
+with my Mother, & I going back to London. We mean now one or other of us
+always to be with my Mother here. Herby has had such a happy time with his
+brother in Wales--& is looking as brown as a nut & full of health &
+life--he had a swim in the sea every day. He did succeed in getting into
+the Academy, & will begin work there Oct. 1st! Be sure, dear Friend, if
+there is a word about your health in any paper to send it me--that is what
+I search for so eagerly--to have the joyful news you are getting on--but
+even if it is but so very very slowly, still I would rather know the
+truth? I do not like thinking of you mistakenly. I want to send you the
+thoughts, the yearnings, that belong to you, the cherishing love that
+enfolds you most tenderly of all when you suffer. O if I could send it!
+and the cheerful companionship, beguiling the time while strength creeps
+back. I hope your little nieces at St. Louis are well.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend. Herby, the only one here with me, would like
+to join his love with mine.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+I go back the beginning of October.
+
+_Sep. 14th._
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq. London
+  Dec. 9, 1874._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+It did me much good to get your Poem--beautiful, earnest, eloquent words
+from the soul whose dear companionship mine seeks with persistent
+longing--wrestling with distance & time. It seems to me, too, from your
+having spoken the Poem yourself I may conclude you have made fair
+progress. What I would fain know is whether you have recovered the use of
+the left side so far as to get about pretty freely and to have as much
+open-air life as you need & like; and also whether you have quite ceased
+to suffer distressing sensations in the head. If you can say yes to the
+first question, will you in sign of it put a dash under the word _London_,
+and if yes to the second under _England_, when you next send me a paper?
+Unless indeed the paper itself contain a notice of your health. But if it
+does not, that would be an easy way of gladdening me with good news, if
+good news there is. I wish I could send you good letters, dearest Friend,
+making myself the vehicle of what is stirring around me in life & thought
+that would interest you; for there is plenty. But that is very hard to
+do--though I watch, hear, read eagerly, full of interest. Everything stirs
+in me a cloud of questions, makes me want to see its relationship to what
+I hold already. I am forever brooding, pondering, sifting, testing--but
+that is not the bent of mind that enables one to reproduce one's
+impressions in compact & lively form. So please, dear Friend, be
+indulgent, as indeed I know you will be, of these poor letters of mine
+with their details of my children & their iterated and reiterated
+expressions of the love and hope and aspiration you have called into life
+within me--take them not for what they are, but for all they have to stand
+for. Beatrice is at Colne (having got well through the exam. we were
+anxious about in the autumn) and is a very great comfort to my Mother--as
+I well knew she would be; for a more affectionate, devoted, care-taking
+nature does not breathe--with a strong active mental life of her own too.
+So, though missing her sorely, I am well satisfied she should be there;
+and the country life and rest are doing her a world of good. My artist boy
+is working away cheerily at the R. Academy, his heart in his work. Percy
+is coming to spend Xmas with us--he, too, continues well content with his
+work and in good health. Gracie is blooming. The Rossettis have had a
+heavy affliction this first year of their married life in the premature
+death of her only brother--a young man of considerable promise--barely 20.
+
+The Conways are well. I feel more completely myself than I have done since
+my illness--so you see, dear friend, if it has taken me quite four years
+to recover the lost ground, one must not be discouraged if two do not
+accomplish it in your case. I hope your little nieces[24] at St. Louis are
+well--and the brothers you are with, and that you have many dear friends
+round you at Camden.
+
+I think my thoughts fly to you on strongest and most joyous wings when I
+am out walking in the clear, cold, elastic air I enjoy so much.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNIE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+A cheerful Christmas, a New Year of which each day brings its share of
+restorative influence, be yours.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd.
+  Camden Sq.
+  Dec. 30, 1874._
+
+I see, my dearest Friend, I must not look for those dashes under the words
+I thought were going to convey a joyful confirmation of my hopes. I see
+how the dark clouds linger. Full of pain & indignation. I read the
+paragraph--but fuller still of yearning tenderness & trust and hope. I
+believe, my dear love, that what you need to help on your recovery is a
+woman's tender, cherishing love and care, and that in that warm, genial
+atmosphere the spring of life will be quickened once more and flow full
+and strong through all its channels as of old, gradually, not quickly,
+even so. I dare say: but with plenty of patience; with utmost intelligent
+care of all conditions favourable to health, of diet, of abundant oxygen
+in the rooms you inhabit, of as much outdoor life as possible, of happy,
+cheerful companionship, & all the homely everyday domestic joys which are
+so helpful in their influences. America is doing what nations in all times
+have done towards that which is profoundly new & great, that which
+discredits their old ideals and offers them strange fruits & flowers from
+another world than that they have been content to dwell in all their
+lives. But for all that I do not believe the precious seed is lying
+dormant even now--everywhere a few in whose hearts it is treasured &
+yields a noble growth. Since it is America that has produced you nourished
+your soul and body, she is silently, unnoticed, producing men & women who
+will justify you, who will understand the meaning of all and respond with
+a love that will quicken & exalt humanity as Christ's influence once did.
+Still it is inscrutable to me that the heart of America is not now
+passionately drawn toward the great heart that beats & glows in these
+Poems--that "Drum Taps," at any rate, are not as dear to her as the memory
+of her dead heroes, sons, brothers, husbands. It must be that they really
+do not reach the hands of the American people at large--that the
+professedly literary, cultivated class asking for nothing better than the
+pretty sing-song sentimentalities which "join them in their nonsense," or
+else slavishly prostrating their judgments before the models of the past
+(so perfect for their day, so wholly inadequate for ours), raise their
+voices so loud in newspapers & magazines as to prevent or everywhere check
+the circulation.
+
+_Jan. 1._ The New Year has come in bleakly & keenly to the inner as well
+as to the outer sense, with the papers full of the details of the dark
+fate of the emigrant ship & of the terrible railway accidents. Percy was
+not able to join us at Xmas (through business) but I am expecting him
+to-night. My mother bears up against the cold wonderfully--& even
+continues to go out in her chair. Bee's letters are very bright &
+cheerful--she & indeed all my children enjoy the cold much, provided they
+have plenty of out-door exercise--above all skating, which they are now
+enjoying. I too like it, but am so haunted by the thought of the increased
+misery it brings to our hundreds of thousands of ill-fed, ill-clothed,
+ill-housed. I trust the family circle round you & your nieces at St. Louis
+& all near & dear to you are well, and that you have felt the warm grasp
+of many loving friends this wintry, cloudy time, my dearest--and that
+there may breathe out of these poor words a warm, bright glow of love and
+hope & unrestricted trust in the future.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Earls Colne, Halstead
+  Feb. 21, 1875._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I have run down to Colne for a glimpse of my dear Bee, whom I had not seen
+for five months, and of my Mother; & now I am alone with the latter,
+Beatrice taking my place at home with her brother & sister for a week or
+two. A wonderful evergreen my Mother continues; still able to face the
+keen winds & the frost daily in her Bath chair--well swathed, of course in
+eiderdown & flannels. Beatrice takes beautiful care of her & is happy &
+content with her life here, loving the country as dearly as I do & having
+time enough for study & reading, as well as for domestic activities, to
+keep her mind as busy as her body. How I do long for you to see my
+children, dearest Friend. I wonder if you are surrounded with any in your
+brother's home--young, growing, blossoming plants that gladden you. And I
+wonder if the winter, which I hear is so severe in America this year,
+tries you--whether you can yet move briskly enough to keep up the
+circulation--and whether you have as many dear friends round you as you
+had at Washington. In my walks I keep thinking of these things. Write me a
+little letter once more, it would do me such good. No one of all your
+friends so easy as I to write to because none to whom any & every little
+detail is so welcome, so precious--lifting a tiny corner of the great vast
+of space between us, giving me for a moment to feel the friendly grasp of
+your hand--I that long for it so. Two years are over since your illness
+began, or seemed to begin, dearest friend--so slow & stealthy in its
+approaches, so slow & stealthy in its retreat--may the spring that is
+coming (the birds have already caught sight of it, cold & brown & bare as
+the landscape still is)--may it but come laden with healing,
+strengthening, refreshing influences--so that you begin to feel again the
+joyous freedom of health, warbling once more a song of joy for lilac time.
+True, I know indeed, my dearest, that anyhow you are content, not grudging
+the price paid for your life work, but even some way or other the richer
+for paying it--garnering precious equivalents for pain & privation of
+health in your inmost soul. I cannot choose but believe this
+earnestly--the resplendent faith that there is not "one cause nor result
+lamentable, at last, in the Universe" which glows throughout the Poems is
+for me an exhaustless source of strength & comfort.--I see every now &
+then & like the more each time the Conways. I am half afraid Mr. Conway
+works too incessantly--that is, does not like well enough the
+indispensable supplement of close mental work--plenty of air & exercise,
+&c.,--hates walking, & indeed it is not to be wondered at in great, smoky
+London (I shall be fond enough & proud enough of it too when I am over the
+Atlantic). Unless one has a real passion for open air & the sense of sky
+overhead, like me. I hear Mr. Conway is coming to America for six months
+in October.
+
+_Feb. 25_--I kept my letter till to-day that I might have the happiness of
+speaking to you on my birthday. See me this evening in the bright,
+cheerful parlour of our cottage, which stands just in the middle of the
+old village (it has been a village & jogged on through all change at its
+own sober, sleepy pace this 800 years)--my mother in her arm chair by the
+fire; I chatting with her & working or playing to her when she is awake; &
+with the Poems I love beside me, reading, musing, wondering while she
+dozes. Ah, shall I ever attain to the Ideal that burst upon me with such
+splendour of light & joy in those Poems in 1869--so filling, so possessing
+me, I seemed as if I had by one bound attained to that ideal--as if I were
+already a very twin of the soul from whom they emanated. But now I know
+that divine foretaste indicated what was possible for me, not what was
+accomplished--I know the slow growth--the standstill winters that follow
+the growing joyous springs & ripening summers. I believe it will take more
+lives than this one to reach that mountain on which I was transfigured
+again, never to descend more, but to start thence for new heights, fresh
+glories. Ah, dear friend, will you be able to have patience with me, for
+me?
+
+Good-bye, my dearest.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq.
+  London,
+  May 18, 1875._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Since last I wrote to you at the beginning of April (enclosing a little
+photograph of that avenue just by our cottage at Colne) I have been into
+Wales for a fortnight to see Percy, & have looked for the first time in my
+life on the Atlantic--the ocean my mental eyes travel over & beyond so
+often and that your eyes and ears & heart have been fed by, have communed
+with and interpreted, as in a new tongue, to the soul of man. Looking upon
+that, watching the tides ebb & flow on your shores, sharing, through my
+beloved book, in those greatest movements you have spent alone with
+it--that was a new joyful experience, a fresh kind of communing with
+you.--I went to Wales because I felt anxious about Percy, who is not happy
+just now. I must not tell friends here about it (except his brother &
+sisters) but I am sure I may tell you, for you will listen with sympathy.
+He has attached himself very deeply, I think it will prove, to a girl, &
+she to him, whose parents welcomed him cordially to their house for a year
+or two & allowed plenty of intercourse till they became aware through
+Percy himself (who thought it right to tell the father as soon as he was
+fully aware of his own feelings & more than suspected Norah's response to
+them) that there was a strong affection growing up between the two. Then
+they peremptorily forbade all intercourse--not because they have any
+objection to Percy--quite the contrary, they say; but solely and simply
+because he is not yet earning money enough to marry on, & they hold that a
+man has no right to engage a girl's affections till he can do so. As if
+these things could be timed to the moment the money comes in! Percy was in
+hopes, & so was I, that if I went down, I might get sense enough into
+their heads, if not kindness & sympathy into their hearts, to see that the
+sole effect of such arbitrary & narrow-sighted conduct would be to
+alienate & embitter the young people's feelings toward them, while it
+would make them more restless & anxious to marry without adequate means.
+Whereas if a reasonable amount of intercourse were allowed, it would be a
+happy time with them, & Norah being still so young (18), & Percy working
+away with all his might, doing very well for his age & sure,
+conscientious, thorough, capable, & well trained worker that he is (for
+the L. School of Mais gives a first rate scientific preparation for his
+profession) to be making a modest sufficiency in a year or two. Well, they
+were very courteous & indeed friendly to me, & I think I have won over the
+mother; but the father remains obdurate, & Percy feels bitterly the
+separation--all the more trying as they live almost within sight of each
+other. So Beatrice & Grace are going to spend their holidays with him this
+summer to cheer him up. Meanwhile, dear friend, I am on the whole happier
+than not about him. I liked what I saw of Norah & believe he has found a
+very sweet, affectionate girl of quiet, domestic nature, practical,
+industrious, sensible--thoroughly well to suit him, & that there is true &
+deep love between them--also, she took to me very much, & I feel will be
+quite another child to me. It is besides no little joy to me to find how
+Percy has confided in me in this & chooses me as the friend to whom he
+tells all--far from being any separation, as sometimes happens, this love
+of his seems to draw us closer together. Only I am very, very anxious for
+his sake to see him in a better berth--they would let her marry him on
+L300 a year; now he has only L175. He is quite competent to manage iron or
+copper or tin works, only he looks so young, not having yet any beard or
+moustache to speak of. That is the end of my long story.
+
+This will reach you on your birthday perhaps, my dearest Friend; at any
+rate it must bear you a greeting of love and fond remembrance for that
+dear day such as my heart will send you when it actually comes: patiently
+waiting heart, with the fibres of love and boundless trust & joy & hope
+which bind me to you bedded deep, grown to be, during these long years, a
+very part of its immortal substance, untouchable by age or varying moods
+or sickness, or death itself, as I surely believe. I long more than words
+can tell to know how it fares with you now in health and spirit. My
+children are all well & growing & unfolding to my heart's content.
+Beatrice & Herbert deeply influenced by your Poems. Good-bye, my dearest
+Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Address
+  1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Road, N. W.
+  London
+
+  Earls Colne
+  Aug. 28, 1875._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Your letter came to me just when I most needed the comfort of it--when I
+was watching and tending my dear Mother as she gently, slowly, with but
+little suffering, sank to rest. There was no sick bed to sit by--we got
+her up and out into the air and sunshine for an hour or two even the day
+before she died--No disease, only the stomach could not do its work any
+longer & for the last three weeks she lived wholly on stimulants,
+suffering somewhat from sickness. She drew her last breath very gently
+before daybreak on the 15th inst., in her 90th year, which she had entered
+in Jan. She looked very beautiful in death, notwithstanding her great
+age--as well she might--tranquil sunset that it was of a beautiful day--a
+fulfilled life--joy & delight of her father in youth (who used to call her
+the apple of his eye), good wife, devoted, self-sacrificing, wise
+mother--patient, courageous sufferer through thirty years of chronic
+rheumatism, which, however, neutralized & ceased its pains the last few
+years--unsurpassed, & indeed I think unsurpassable, in
+conscientiousness--in the strong sense of duty & perfect obedience to that
+highest sense--she is one of those who amply justify your large faith in
+women.
+
+I do not need to tell you anything, my dearest friend--you know all--I
+feel your strong comforting hand--I press it very close.
+
+I had all my children with me at the funeral.
+
+O the comfort your dear letter was & is to me. Thinking over & over the
+few words you say of yourself--& what is said in the paper (so eagerly
+read--every word so welcome) I cannot help fancying that the return of the
+distressing sensations in the head must be caused by your having worked at
+the book--the "Two Rivulets" (I dearly like the title & the idea of
+bringing the Poems & Prose together so)--that you must be more patient
+with yourself and submit still to perfect rest--& that perhaps in regard
+to the stomach--you have not enough adapted your diet to the privation of
+exercise--that you must be more indulgent to the stomach too in the sense
+of giving it only the very easiest & simplest work to do. My children join
+their love with mine.
+
+Your own loving
+
+ANNE.
+
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ONE OF ANNE GILCHRIST'S LETTERS TO WALT
+WHITMAN]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ONE OF ANNE GILCHRIST'S LETTERS TO WALT
+WHITMAN]
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd., Nov. 16, 1875.
+  London_
+
+I have been wanting the comfort of a talk with you, dearest Friend, for
+weeks & weeks, without being able to get leisure & tranquillity enough to
+do it to my heart's content--indeed, heart's content is not for me at
+present--but restless, eager, longing to come--& the struggle to do
+patiently & completely & wisely what remains for me here before I am free
+to obey the deep faith and love which govern me--so let me sit close
+beside you, my Darling--& feel your presence & take comfort & strength &
+serenity from it as I do, as I can when with all my heart & soul I draw
+close to you, realizing your living presence with all my might.--First,
+about Percy--things are beginning to look a little brighter for him. He is
+just entering upon a new engagement with some very large & successful
+works--the Blenavon Iron Co.--where, though his salary will not be higher
+at first, his opportunities of improvement will be better & he is also to
+be allowed to take private practice (in assaying & analyzing). The manager
+there believes in Science & is friendly to Percy & will give him every
+facility for showing what he can do, so that he hopes to prove to the
+Directors before long that he is worth a good salary. The parents of Norah
+(whom he loves) have released from their unfriendly attitude since my
+Beatrice has been staying with them; the two girls have attached
+themselves to one another & Per. has had delightful opportunities of
+being with Norah, & best of all, she is to return here with Beatrice (they
+are coming to-morrow), & Per. is to have a week's holiday & come up, so
+that he & Norah will be wholly together & have, I suspect, the happiest
+week they have yet had in their lives. Then I have stored away for them
+the furniture of the dear old home at Colne, & I really think that by the
+time '76 is out they will be able to marry. I see, and indeed I have known
+ever since he formed this attachment, that I must not look for him to come
+to America with me. But what I build upon, Dearest Friend, is that when I
+have been a little while in America & have made friends & had time to look
+about me I might hear of a good certainty for him--his excellent training
+at the School of Mines, large experience at Blenavon, energy, ability, &
+sturdy uprightness will make him a first-rate manager of works by & bye.
+But the leaving him so happy with his young wife will make it easier for
+us to part. _Nov. 26_--Beatrice has begun to work at anatomy at the School
+of Medicine for Women lately founded, & seems to delight in her work. She
+will not enter on the full course all at once--I am for taking things
+gently. Women have plenty of strength but it is of a different kind from
+men's & must work by gentler & slower means--Above all I do not like what
+pushes violently aside domestic duties & pleasures. The special work must
+combine itself with these; I am sure it can. Herby is getting on very
+nicely--never did student love his work better. He is eager, & by making
+the best use of present opportunities & advantages yet looking towards
+America full of cheerful hopes & sympathy. Grace is less developed in
+intellect but not less in character than the others. I can't describe her
+but send you her photograph. There is a freshness & independence of
+character about her--yet withal a certain waywardness & reserve. She is a
+good, instinctive judge of character--more influenced by it than by
+books--yet with a growing taste for them too. She comes to America with a
+gay and buoyant curiosity, declining to make up her mind about anything
+till she gets there. We want, as far as possible, to transplant our home
+bodily--to bring as much as we can of our own furniture because we have
+beautiful old things precious in Herby's eyes & that we are all fond of.
+And [by] coming straight to Philadelphia & taking a house somewhere on the
+outskirts of it or Camden immediately we fancy this might be practicable,
+but have not yet launched into the matter. I have just heard from Mr.
+Rossetti, and also from Mrs. Conway of her husband having seen you, & if
+his report be not too sanguine it is a cheering one & would comfort me
+much, dearest Friend. But what he says is so favourable I am afraid to
+believe it altogether, knowing that you would make the very best of
+yourself & indeed be probably at your best with the pleasure of seeing an
+old friend fresh from England. _Nov._ 30. And now, dear Friend, I have had
+a very great pleasure indeed, thanks to you--a visit from Mr. Marvin--& I
+hope to have another when he returns from Paris. And the account he gives
+of you is so cheerful--so vivid--it seems to part asunder a gloomy cloud
+that was brooding in my mind. And though I know that for the short hours
+that you feel bright & well are many long hours when you are far
+otherwise, still I feel sure those short hours are the earnest of perfect
+recovery--with a fine patience--boundless patience. And now I can picture
+you sitting in your favourite window, having a friendly word with
+passers-by--& feel quite sure that you are happy & comfortable in your
+surroundings. And a great deal else full of interest Mr. Marvin told me. I
+was loth for him to go, but one hour is so small, we have noticed, for a
+friend, I am sorry to say.
+
+William Rossetti has a little girl which is a great delight to him. Miss
+Hillard of Brooklyn has also paid me a visit & spoken to me of you. She
+charmed me much--only I felt a little cross with her for giving Herby such
+a dismal account of his chances as an artist in America. However, we both
+refused to be discouraged, for after all he can send his pictures to
+England to be established &c., having plenty of friends who would see to
+it; & we are both firm in the faith that if you can only paint the really
+good pictures the rest will take care of itself, somehow or other--& that
+can be done as well in America as in England, but of course he must finish
+his training here.
+
+With best love from us all, good-bye, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd., London
+  Dec. 4, 1875._
+
+Though it is but a few days since I posted a letter, my dearest friend, I
+must write you again--because I cannot help it, my heart is so full--so
+full of love & sorrow & struggle. The day before yesterday I saw Mr.
+Conway's printed account of you, & instead of the cheerful report I had
+been told of, he speaks of your having given up hope of recovery. Those
+words were like a sharp knife plunged into me--they choked me with bitter
+tears. _Don't give up that hope_ for the sake of those that so tenderly,
+passionately, love you--would give their lives with joy for you. Why, who
+knows better than you how much hope & the will have to do with it, & I
+know quite well that the belief does not depress you--that you are ready
+to accept either lot with calmness, cheerfulness, perfect faith, perhaps
+with equal joy. But for all that, it does you harm. Ideas always have a
+tendency to accomplish themselves. And what right have the Doctors to
+utter gloomy prophecies? The wisest of them know the best how profoundly
+in the dark they are as to much that goes on within us, especially in
+maladies like yours. O cling to life with a resolute hold, my beloved, to
+bless us with your presence unspeakably dear, beneficent presence--me to
+taste of it before so very long now--thirsting, pining, loving me. Take
+through these poor words of mine some breath of the tender, tender,
+ineffable love that fills my heart and soul and body--take of it to
+strengthen the very springs of your life: it is capable of that; O its
+cherishing warmth and joy, if it could only get to you, only fold you
+round close enough, would help, I know. Soon, soon as ever my boy has one
+to love & care for him all his own, I will come; I may not before, not if
+it should break my heart to stop away from you, for his welfare is my
+sacred charge & nearer & dearer than all to me. Verily, my God, strengthen
+me, comfort me, stay for me--let that have a little beginning on this dear
+earth which is for all eternity, which will live & grow immortally into a
+diviner reality than the heart of man has conceived.
+
+I am well satisfied with Norah, dear Friend. She is very affectionate,
+loveable, prudent, & clear in all practical matters, well suited to Percy
+in tastes, &c.
+
+  Your own
+  ANNIE.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Blaenavon
+  Routzpool
+  Mon. England
+  Jan. 18, '76._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Do not think me too wilful or headstrong, but I have taken our tickets &
+we shall sail Aug. 30 for Philadelphia. I found if I did not come to a
+decision now, we could not well arrange it before next summer. And since
+we _have_ come to a decision my mind has been quite at rest. Do not feel
+any anxiety or misgivings about us. I have a clear and strong conviction I
+am doing what is right & best for us all. After a busy anxious time I am
+having a week or two of rest with Percy, who I find fairly well in health
+& prospering in his business--indeed, he bids fair to have a large private
+practice as an analyst here, & is already making income enough to marry
+on, only there is to build the nest--& I think he will have actually to
+_build_ it, for there seem no eligible houses--& to furnish--so that the
+wedding will not be till next spring or early summer. Nevertheless, with a
+definite goal & a definite time & the way between not so very rugged,
+though rather dull and lonely, I think he will be pretty cheery. This
+little town (of 11,000 inhabitants, all miners, smelters &c.) lies up
+among the hills 1100 ft. above the sea--glorious hills here, spreading,
+then converging, with wooded flanks, & swift brooklets leaping over stones
+in the hollows--the air, too, of course deliciously light & pure. I have
+heard through a friend of ours of Bee's fellow student who lives in Camden
+(Mr. Suerkrop, I think his name is) that we shall be able to get a very
+comfortable home with pleasant garden there for about L55 per an. I think
+I can manage that very well--so all I need is to hear of a comfortable
+lodging or boarding house (the former preferred) where we can be, avoiding
+hotels even while we hunt for the house. I have arranged for my goods to
+sail a week later than we do, so as to give us time.
+
+Good-bye for a short while, my dearest Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Bee has obtained a very satisfactory account of the Women's Medical
+College in Philadelphia & introductions to the Head, &c.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd.
+  London
+  Feb. 25, '76._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I received the paper & enclosed slip Saturday week, filling me so full of
+emotion I could not write, for I am too bitterly impatient of mere words.
+Soon, very soon, I come, my darling. I am not lingering, but held yet a
+little while by the firm grip of conscience--this is the last spring we
+shall be asunder--O I passionately believe there are years in store for
+us, years of tranquil, tender happiness--me making your outward life
+serene & sweet--you making my inward life so rich--me learning, growing,
+loving--we shedding benign influences round us out of our happiness and
+fulfilled life--Hold on but a little longer for me, my Walt--I am
+straining every nerve to hasten the day--I have enough for us all (with
+the simple, unpretending ways we both love best).
+
+Percy is battling slowly--doing as well as we could expect in the time. I
+think he will soon build the nest for his mate. I think he never in his
+heart believed I really should go to America, and so it comes as a great
+blow to him now. You must be very indulgent towards him for my sake, dear
+friend.
+
+I am glad we know about those rascally book agents--for many of us are
+wanting a goodish number of copies of the new edition & it is important
+to understand we may have them straight from you. Rossetti is making a
+list of the friends & the number, so that they may all come together.
+
+Perhaps, dearest friend, you may be having a great difficulty in getting
+the books out for want of funds--if so, let me help a little--show your
+trust in me and my love thus generously.
+
+  Your own loving
+  ANNIE.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  March 11, '76._
+
+I have had such joy this morning, my Darling--Poems of yours given in the
+_Daily News_--sublime Poems one of them reaching dizzy heights, filling my
+soul with strong delight. These prefaced by a few words, timid enough yet
+kindly in tone, & better than nothing. The days, the weeks, are slipping
+by, my beloved, bearing me swiftly, surely to you--before the beauty of
+the year begins to fade we shall come. The young folk too are full of
+bright anticipation & eagerness now, I am thankful to say; and Percy
+getting on with, I trust, such near & definite prospect of his happiness
+that he will be able to pull along cheerily towards it after we are gone,
+in spite of loneliness.
+
+I expect, Darling, we must go to some little town or village ten or twenty
+miles short of Philadelphia till the tremendous influx of visitors to the
+Centennial has ceased, else we shall not be able to find a corner
+there.--By the bye, I feel a little sulky at your always taking a fling at
+the poor piano. I see I have got to try & show you it too is capable of
+waking deep chords in the human soul when it is the vehicle of a great
+master's thought & emotions--if only my poor fingers prove equal to the
+task! (All my heart shall go into them.) Take from my picture a long, long
+look of tender love and joy and faith, deathless, ever young, ever
+growing, ever learning, aspiring love, tender, cherishing, domestic love.
+
+Oh, may I be full of sweet comfort for my Beloved's Soul and Body through
+life, through and after death.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXIV
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _Camden, New Jersey
+  March, 1876._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+To your good & comforting letter of Feb. 25th I at once answer, at least
+with a few lines. I have already written this morning a pretty full letter
+to Mr. Rossetti (to answer one just rec'd from him) & requested him to
+loan it you for perusal. In that I have described my situation fully &
+candidly.
+
+My new edition is printed & ready. Upon receipt of your letter I sent you
+a set, two Vols. (by Mail, March 15) which you must have rec'd by this
+time. I wish you to send me word soon as they arrive.
+
+My health, I am encouraged to think, is perhaps a shade better--certainly
+as well as any time of late.
+
+I even already vaguely contemplate plans (they may never be fulfilled, but
+yet again they may) of changes, journeys--even of coming to London &
+seeing you, visiting my friends, &c. My dearest friend, _I do not approve
+your American trans-settlement. I see so many things here you have no idea
+of--the social, and almost every other kind of crudeness, meagreness, here
+(at least in appearance)._
+
+_Don't do anything towards it nor resolve in it nor make any move at all
+in it without further advice from me. If I should get well enough to
+voyage, we will talk about it yet in London._
+
+You must not be uneasy about me--dearest friend, I get along much better
+than you think for. As to the literary situation here, my rejection by the
+coteries and the poverty (which is the least of my troubles), am not sure
+but I enjoy them all--besides, as to the latter, I am not in want.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd., London
+  March 30, '76._
+
+Yesterday _was_ a day for me, dearest Friend. In the morning your letter,
+strong, cheerful, reassuring--dear letter. In the afternoon the books. I
+don't know how to settle down my thoughts calmly enough to write, nor how
+to lay down the books (with delicate yet serviceable exterior, with
+inscription making me so proud, so joyous). But there are a few things I
+want to say to you at once in regard to our coming to America. I will not
+act without "further advice from you"; but as to not resolving on it, dear
+friend, I can't exactly obey that, for it has been my settled, steady
+purpose (resting on a deep, strong faith) ever since 1869. Nor do I feel
+discouraged or surprised at what you say of American "crudeness," &c. (of
+which, in truth, one hears not a little in England). I have not shut my
+eyes to the difficulties and trials & responsibilities (for the children's
+sake) of the enterprise. I am not urged on by any discontent with old
+England or by any adverse circumstances here which I might hope to better
+there: my reasons, emotions, the sources of my strength and courage for
+the uprooting & transplanting--all are inclosed in those two volumes that
+lie before me on the table. That America has brought them forth makes me
+want to plant some, at least, of my children on her soil. I understand &
+believe in & love her in & through them. They teach me to look beneath
+the surface & to get hints of the great future that is shaping itself out
+of the crude present, & I believe we shall prove to be of the right sort
+to plant down there.--O to talk it all over with you, dearest Friend, here
+in London first; I feel as if that would really be--the joy, the comfort,
+of that. I cannot finish this to-day but send what I have written without
+delay that you may know of the safe arrival of the books. With reverent,
+grateful love from us all.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd. London
+  April 21, 1876._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I must write again, out of a full heart. For the reading of this book,
+"The Two Rivulets," has filled it very full. Ever the deep inward assent,
+rising up strong, exultant my immortal self recognizing, responding to
+your immortal self. Ever the sense of dearness, the sweet, subtle perfume,
+pervading every page, every line, to my sense--O I cannot put into any
+words what I perceive nor what answering emotion pervades me, flows out
+towards you--sweetest, deepest, greatest experience of my life--what I was
+made for--surely I was made as the soil in which the precious seed of your
+thoughts & emotions should be planted--try to fulfil themselves in me,
+that I might by & bye blossom into beauty & bring forth rich
+fruits--immortal fruits. So no doubt other women feel, and future women
+will.
+
+Do not dissuade me from coming this autumn, my dearest Friend. I have
+waited patiently--7 years--patiently, yet often, especially since your
+illness, with such painful yearning your heart would yearn towards me if
+you realized it--I cannot wait any longer. Nor ought I to--that would
+indeed be sacrificing the prudence that concerns itself with immortal
+things to the prudence that concerns itself only with temporary ones. But,
+indeed, even so far as this latter is concerned, there is no sacrifice
+for any. It is by far the best step, for instance, I could take on
+Beatrice's account. She is heartily in earnest in her medical studies. I
+am persuaded, too, it is a splendid training for her whether or no she
+ever makes a money-earning profession of it. And in England women have at
+present no means of obtaining a complete medical education. They cannot
+get admission to any Hospital for the clinical part of the course. So that
+she is exceedingly anxious to come where it is possible for her to follow
+out her aims effectually. Then, I am confident she will find America
+congenial to her--that she is in her essential nature democratic--& that
+she has the intelligence, the sympathies, earnestness, affectionateness,
+unconventionality needed to pierce through appearances surface "crudeness"
+& see & love the great reality unfolding below. So I believe has Herby.
+Then an artist is as free as an author to work where he pleases & reaps as
+much from fresh and widened experiences. He does not contemplate cutting
+himself off from England--will exhibit here--very likely take a studio in
+London for a season, a couple of years hence to work among old friends &
+associations & so have double chance & opportunities. Then above all,
+dearest friend, they too see America in & through you--they too would fain
+be near you. Have no anxiety or misgivings for us. Let us come & be near
+you--& see if we are made of the right sort of stuff for transplanting to
+American soil. Only advise us where. If it be Philadelphia (which as far
+as offering facilities for Beatrice would, as far as I can learn, suit us
+very well). We must not come, I think, till the end of October, because of
+its being so full. Perhaps indeed, dearest Friend (but dare not build on
+it) we shall talk this over in England. If you are able to take the
+journey, it might, and would, be sure to do you good as well as to rejoice
+the hearts of English friends. But if not, if we are not able to talk over
+our coming, do not feel the least anxious about us. We shall light on our
+feet & do very well. Percy seems getting on fairly well, considering what
+a bad time it is in his line of business. I think he will be able to marry
+this autumn or following winter. I shall go and spend a month with him in
+July. Perhaps, indeed, if, as many are prophecying, the iron trade does
+not recover its old pre-eminence here, he may be glad by & bye that I have
+gone over to America & opened a way for him. But if he does not follow me
+then, if I live, I hope to spend a few months with him every three or four
+years, instead of as now a few weeks once a year. Anyhow we have to live
+widely apart. Thanks for the papers just received. Specially welcome the
+account of some stranger's interview with you--for me too before very long
+now the joy of hearing the "strong musical voice" read the "Wound Dresser"
+or speak.
+
+I have happy thoughts for my companions all day long, helping me over
+every difficulty--strengthening me. Good-bye, dearest Friend. Love from us
+all.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Torriano Gardens
+  Camden Rd., London
+  May 18, 1876._
+
+Just a line of birthday greeting, my dearest Friend. May it find you
+enjoying the beautiful spring-time & the grand sights of people & products
+& the music at Philadelphia, notwithstanding drawbacks (but lessening
+drawbacks, I earnestly hope) of health, lameness. Rejoiced, too, perhaps
+with the sight of many dear old friends occasion has brought to your city.
+May all that will do you good come, my dearest Friend. And not least the
+sense of relief & joy in having fulfilled the great task, in the teeth of
+such difficulties relaunched safely, more fully, richly equipt, the ship
+to sail down the great ocean of Time, bearing precious, precious freight
+of seed to be planted in countless successions of human souls, helping
+forward more than even the best lovers of your poems dream, the great
+future of humanity. That is what I believe as surely as I believe in my
+own existence.
+
+The "low star," the great star drooping low in the west, has been
+unusually resplendent of a night here lately & by day lilacs & the
+labernums wonderfully brightening dear old smoky London, constant
+reminders all, if I needed any, of the Poet & the Poems, so dear to me.
+
+If I do not hear from you to the contrary I am to take our passage by one
+of the "States" Line of Steamers that come straight to Philadelphia
+sailing about the 1st Sept.--& I am told one ought to secure one's cabin a
+couple of months or so beforehand. But if there be indeed an increasing
+hope of your coming here in the course of the summer, or if you think it
+would be best for us to go to New York (only I want to go at once where we
+are likely to stop, because of my furniture), let me hear as soon as may
+be, dear Friend. Looking at it purely as concerns the young ones, for some
+reasons it is very desirable to come this year & for others to wait till
+next. With Bee, for instance, we are both losing time & wasting money by
+going over another winter here when there is no complete & satisfactory
+medical course to be had. Then as regards dear Percy, he writes me now
+that though he is doing fairly well, he does not think he will be able to
+take a house & marry till next summer--& that I am very sorry for. But
+then I think that as I could not be with him nor help him forward, the
+balance goes down on Beatrice's side, if I am able to accomplish it.
+
+Good-bye, my dearest Friend. Loving, tender thoughts shall I send you on
+the 30th. Solemn thoughts outleaping life, immortal aspirations of my soul
+toward your soul. The children's love too, please, dearest Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Round Hill, Northampton, Mass.
+  Monday, Sept., '77._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I have had joyful news to-day! Percy's wife has a fine little boy--it was
+born on the 10th, and Norah got through well & is doing nicely; so I feel
+very happy.
+
+Since then Per. has gone to Paris where he is to read a paper before the
+"Iron and Steel Institute" on the Elimination of phosphorus from
+Iron--which is also a little triumph of another kind for him--for the
+Council which accepted his paper is composed of eminent English
+scientists, & eminent foreign ones will hear it.--I need not tell you it
+is indescribably lovely here now--no doubt Kirkwood is the same--the light
+so brilliant, and yet soft--the rich autumn tints just beginning to
+appear--the temperature delicious--crisp & bracing, yet genial.
+
+The throng of people is gone--but a few of the pleasantest of the old set
+remain--& a few interesting new ones have come!--among them Mrs. Dexter
+from Boston, who was a Miss Ticnor, daughter of the author of the book on
+Spanish literature--she and her husband full of interesting talk. Also Mr.
+Martin B---- and his wife--a fine specimen of a leading Bostonian. Besides
+these also a physician from Florida whom I much admire--with a beautiful
+firm tenor voice--very handsome & graceful too, a true southerner, I
+should say--(but of Scotch extraction).
+
+Next week we go to Boston.
+
+I went over the Lunatic Asylum here the other day & saw some strange, sad
+sights--some figures crouched down in attitudes of such profound dejection
+I shall never forget them--some very bright and talkative. It is said to
+be the best managed in America. Dr. Earle, who is at the head, is a man of
+splendid capacity for the post--a noble-looking old man (uncle of those
+Miss Chases you met at our house).
+
+I can't settle to anything or think of any thing since I received Percy's
+letter but the baby & Norah. Love to you & to Mrs. Whitman[25] &
+Hattie[26] & Jessie.[27]
+
+Good-bye, dear Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XXXIX
+
+BEATRICE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _New England Hospital
+  Codman Avenue
+  Boston Highlands_
+
+DEAR WALT:
+
+Hospital life is beginning to seem a long-accustomed life. I enjoy all the
+duties involved & all the human relations. Even getting up in the night is
+compensated for by yielding a sense of importance & independence. I sleep
+in a large room with three windows, & three beds in a row. Breakfast at 7,
+& we are supposed to have seen all our patients before breakfast, but do
+not keep to that rule.
+
+After breakfast, round to count pulses & respirations, note condition,
+dress any wound, in charge, etc. At 1/2 past 8 o'clock go the rounds with
+the resident physician (Dr. Berlin), all the students, & superintendent of
+nurses. Then put up medicine, each for her own patients (about 8 in no.),
+give electricity, etc. If one's patient has an ache or pain, the nurse
+whistles for the student (my whistle is 2). She sees the patient orders
+what is necessary, or if serious reports to Dr. Berlin. Then there is some
+microscopic work, & copying out the history & daily record of the case &
+making out the temperature charts more than fills in the day. At 8 o'clock
+we all in conclave report about our patients & talk over any interesting
+case. One of my patients has empyema following pleurisy. I inject into her
+chest about a doz. of different preparations. Several of my patients (I
+have all the very sick just now) require very careful watching.
+
+In the evening we go round again & count pulses & respirations & note
+temperatures. If a very sick patient, in the middle of the day; also take
+pulse, etc. The number of visits depending on the need & the competency of
+the nurse. I like introducing lint into wounds (such simple ones as an
+incised abscess of the breast) with the probe, because if I take trouble
+enough I can do it without hurting the patient, much to the patient's
+surprise.
+
+The other day Mr. & Mrs. Marvin called to see me with Mrs. & Miss
+Callender--I enjoyed their visit much. To-day Mr. Marvin drove over to
+fetch me to lunch, & I had a beautiful drive over to Dorchester; in the
+afternoon a game of lawn tennis, a stroll down to the creek, & drive home
+by Forest Hill Cemetery & Jamaica Pond. The air was fresh after a shower &
+golden-tinted, & the drive through beautiful lanes & country. All were
+friendly & it was refreshing to emerge from the little hospital world. Mr.
+Marvin's cordial face greeted me when I was speaking to some patients in
+hammocks, under the trees, the day he called, much to my surprise.
+
+I was to-day feeling the need of a little change of air & scene, so that
+the visit was most opportune.
+
+Mr. Morse[28] is working away desperately at the bust of you; he feels as
+if he would get on famously if he could only catch a glimpse of you. Now
+might not you come to Boston on your way to Chesterfield, ride up in the
+open horsecars (a very pleasant ride) to see me also and give Mr. Morse
+the benefit of a sitting? How I wish we could get Mrs. Stafford in here;
+the patients get most excellent care. I have great confidence in Dr.
+Berlin & in the attending physician. I do not want her to come for a
+month, because Dr. Berlin has just gone away for a vacation.
+
+I fear no mere visiting once a day of a doctor will do her any good--she
+needs hygienic treatment--massage (a woman works here every day on the
+patients who need rubbing & massage), feeding up (I have never yet seen a
+patient whom we could not make eat, appetite or not, by aid of beef-tea &
+milk), perfect rest, & judicious treatment.
+
+Dr. Berlin is a learned, charming woman of 28--she takes advanced views,
+gives no medicine at all in some cases, & if any, few at a time, but
+efficient. She is perfectly unaffected, very intelligent, & has been
+thoroughly trained. She is a Russian.
+
+Please give my love to Mrs. Whitman & remember me to Colonel Whitman. This
+afternoon, when driving with Mr. Marvin, I thought of the pleasant drives
+I have had with Colonel Whitman.
+
+  Yours affectionately,
+  BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+If it were not for records accumulating mountain high I should have time
+to write to my friends.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XL
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Sept. 3, '78.
+  Chesterfield, Mass._
+
+  I am half afraid Herby has got a malarious place by his description.
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I had a lingering hope--till Herby went south again--that I should have a
+letter from you, in answer to mine, saying you were coming up to see us
+here. In truth, it was a great disappointment to me, his going back to
+Philadelphia instead of your joining us, or him, either here or somewhere
+near to New York. I wonder where that North Amboyna is that you once
+mentioned to me--and what kind of a place it is. I have had a long, quiet
+time here, and have enjoyed it very much--never did I breathe such sweet,
+light, pure air as is always blowing freely over these rocky hills. Rocky
+as they are--and their sides & ravines are strewn with huge boulders of
+every conceivable size & shape--they nourish an abundant growth of woods,
+and I fancy the farmers here do a great deal better with their winter
+crops of lumber and bark and maple sugar than with their summer one of
+grain & corn. I expect Herby has described our neighbours to
+you--specially Levi Bryant, the father of my hostess--a farmer who lives
+just opposite and has put such heart & soul and muscle & sinew into his
+farming that he has continued to win quite a handsome competence from this
+barren soil (it isn't muscle & industry only that are wanted here--but
+pluck and endurance) hauling his timber up & down over the snow & through
+the drifts, along roads that are pretty nearly vertical. I am never tired
+of hearing his stories (nor he of telling them) of hairbreadth escapes for
+him & his cattle--when the harness or the shafts have broken under the
+tremendous strain--& nothing but coolness & daring have got him or them
+out of it alive. Generally, as he sits talking, his little boy of eleven
+who bids fair to be like him and can now manage a team or a yoke of oxen
+as well as any man in the parish--and work almost as hard--sits close by
+him leaning his head on his father's shoulder or breast--for the rugged
+old fellow has a vein of great gentleness and affectionateness in him & I
+notice the child nestles up to him always rather than to the mother--who
+is all the same a very kind, amiable, good mother. Then there are
+neighbours of another sort up at the "Centre"--Mr. Chadwick, &c., from New
+York, with whom I have pleasant chats daily when I trudge up to fetch my
+letters--now & then I get a delightful drive or go on a blackberrying
+party with the folks round--I expect Giddy over to-day & we shall remain
+here together for about a fortnight--then back to Round Hill--where I am
+to meet the Miss Chase whom you may remember taking tea with &
+liking--then on to Boston to see dear Bee--& then to New York, where we
+shall meet again at last, I hope ere long. Love to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman--I
+enjoy her letters. Also to Hattie & Jessie--who will hear from me by &
+bye. With love to you, dear Friend.
+
+  Good-bye.
+  A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Concord, Mass.
+  Oct. 25th._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The days are slipping away so pleasantly here that weeks are gone before I
+know it. The Concord folk are as friendly as they are intellectual, and
+there is really no end to the kindness received. We are rowed on the
+beautiful river every day that it is warm enough--a very winding river not
+much broader than your favourite creek--flowing sometimes through level
+meadows, sometimes round rocky promontories & steep wooded hills which,
+with their wonderful autumn tints, are like a gay flower border mirrored
+in the water. Never in my life have I enjoyed outdoor pleasures more--I
+hardly think, so much--enhanced as they are by the companionship of very
+lovable men and women. They lead an easy-going life here--seem to spend
+half their time floating about on the river--or meeting in the evening to
+talk & read aloud. Judge Hoar says it is a good place to live and die in,
+but a very bad place to make a living in. Beatrice spent one Sunday with
+us here. We walked to Hawthorne's old house in the morning, & in the
+afternoon to the "Old Manse" and to Sleepy Hollow, most beautiful of last
+resting places. Tuesday we go on to Boston for a week very loth to leave
+Concord--at least, I am!--but Giddy begins to long for city life again.
+And then to New York about the 5th Nov. Herby told you, no doubt, that I
+spent an hour or two with Emerson--and that he looked very beautiful--and
+talked in a friendly, pleasant manner. A long letter from my sister in
+England tells me Per. looks well and happy & is so proud of his little
+boy--and that Norah is really a perfect wife to him--affectionate,
+devoted, and the best of housewives. How glad I am Herby is painting you.
+I wonder if you like the landscape he is working on as well as you did
+"Timber Creek." Miss Hillard has undertaken the charge of a young lady's
+education, and is very much pleased with her task. She is in a delightful
+family who make her quite one with them--live in the best part of New
+York, and pay her a handsome salary. She has the afternoons and Saturday &
+Sunday to herself.--Concord boasts of having been first to recognize your
+genius. Mr. Alcott & Mr. Sanborn say so. Good-bye, dear Friend.
+
+A. G.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _39 Somerset St.
+  Boston
+  Nov. 13, '78._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I feel as if I didn't a bit deserve the glorious budget you sent me
+yesterday, for I have been a laggard, dull correspondent of late, because,
+leading such an unsettled kind of life, I don't seem to have got well hold
+of myself. Beautiful is the title prose poem--the glimpse of the autumn
+cornfield: one smells the sweet fragrance, basks in the sunshine with
+you--tastes all the varied, subtle outdoor pleasures, just as you want us
+to. A lady who has just been calling on me--Miss Hillard--no relation of
+the odious Dr. H.--said, "Have you seen a lovely little bit about a
+cornfield by Walt Whitman in a New York paper?" She did not know your
+poems, but was so taken with this. By the bye, I am not quite American
+enough yet to enjoy the sound of the locusts & big grasshoppers--ours are
+modest little things that only make a gentle sort of whirr--not that loud
+brassy sound--couldn't help wishing for more birds & less insects when I
+was at Chesterfield--but I like our English name "ladybird" better than
+"ladybug". Do your children always say when they see one, as ours do,
+"Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home: your house is on fire, your children
+are flown"? But for the rest--I believe I am growing a very good American;
+indeed, certain am I there is no more lovable people to live amongst
+anywhere in the world--and in this respect it has been good to give up
+having a home of my own here for awhile--for I have been thrown amongst
+many more intimately than I could have been otherwise. What you say of
+Herby's picture delights me, dear Friend. I have been grieving he was not
+with us, sharing the pleasant times we have had and enlarging his circle
+of friends--but after all he could not have been doing better--he must
+come on here by & bye. I wonder if you are as satisfied with his portrait
+of you as with the landscape. I suppose he is gone on to New York to-day.
+I have sighed for dear little Concord many times since I came
+away--beautiful city as Boston is & many the interesting & kindly people I
+am seeing here: but the outdoor life & the entirely simple, unpretending,
+cordial, friendly ways of Concord & its inhabitants won my heart
+altogether--one of them came to see me to-day & to ask us to go and spend
+a couple of days with them there again before we leave & I could not say
+nay, though our time is short. There are some portraits in the Art Museum
+here, which interested me a good deal--of Adams, Hancock, Quincy, &c.,--&
+of some of the women of that time--they would form an excellent nucleus of
+a national portrait gallery, which (together with good biographies while
+yet materials & recollections are fresh & abundant) would be a very
+interesting & important contribution to the world's history.--Tennyson's
+letter is a pleasure to me to see--considering his age & the imperfection
+of his sight through life, matters are better rather than worse with him
+than one could have expected. Since that was written a friend (Walter
+White) tells me they--the Tennysons--have taken a house in Eaton Sq.,
+London, for the winter. And last, not least, thanks for Mr. Burroughs's
+beautiful letter--that young man is indeed, as he says, like a bit out of
+your poems.
+
+There are two or three fine young men boarding here, & Giddy & I enjoy
+their society not a little. Love to your Brothers & Sister. I shall write
+soon as I am settled down in New York to her or Hattie. Love to Mrs.
+Stafford. And most of all to you.
+
+Good-bye, dear friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+I will send T's letter in a day or two.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.
+  New York
+  Jan. 5, '79._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Herby has told you of our difficulties in getting comfortable quarters
+here--and also that we seem now to have succeeded--not indeed in the way I
+most wished & hoped we had--in 19th St., taking rooms & boarding
+ourselves--so that we could have a friend with us when & as we pleased. It
+seems as if that were not practicable unless we were to furnish for
+ourselves. Certainly our experiences there of using another's kitchen were
+discouraging--it was so dirty and uncomfortable that we were glad to take
+refuge in a regular boarding house again before one week was out. It seems
+to me more difficult to get anything of a medium kind in New York than
+elsewhere I have been--if it isn't the best, it is very uninviting indeed.
+Herby is enjoying his work and companionship at the League very much. We
+stand the cold well--how does it suit you? Is your arm free from rheumatic
+pains? When you come to Mr. J. H. Johnstons, which will be very soon I
+hope, we shall be quite handy, and have a pretty, sunny room--a sitting
+room by day!--with a handsome piece of furniture which is metamorphosed
+into a bed at night--and a large dressing closet with hot & cold water
+adjoining--all very comfortable. O how wistfully do I think of one evening
+in Philadelphia, last winter. I shan't begin really to like New York till
+you come and we have had some chats together. I have news from England
+which makes me rather anxious. The Blaenavon Co., to which Per. is
+chemist, has gone into liquidation--& I don't know whether it will
+continue to exist--or how soon in these dull times he may find a good
+opening elsewhere. Should things go badly for him, either Giddy and I will
+return to England to share [our] home with him there, or else I want him
+to take into serious consideration coming out here, instead of our going
+back. Of course it would be a risky thing for him to do with wife & child,
+in these times, unless some definite opening presented itself, but I
+cannot help thinking that, being an expert in his profession, with first
+rate training & experience, and iron work & metallurgy promising here to
+have such enormous developments, he would be sure to do well in the end;
+and meanwhile we could rub on together somehow. However, we shall see. I
+have laid the matter before him, he & his dear little wife wrote me a very
+brave, cheery letter when they told me the bad news--& I shall have an
+answer to mine, I suppose, by the end of the month. Kate Hillard read an
+amusing paper on Swinburne at a meeting of the Woman's Club in Brooklyn--&
+we had some fine music too. For the rest, I have not yet presented any
+introductions here.
+
+Have had some beautiful glimpses of the North & East River effects of the
+shipping at sunset, &c.--Have subscribed to the Mercantile library,--& are
+beginning to feel at home. Herby & Giddy had been to hear Mr. Frothingham
+this morning, & were much interested. Bee missed us sorely at first--but
+writes--when she does write, which is but seldom--pretty cheerily.
+Friendly remembrance to your brother & sister. I wonder where Hattie &
+Jessie are spending their holidays. Love from us all. Good-bye, dear
+friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Had a letter from Mr. Marvin--all well--he is doing the Washington letter
+of a N. Eng. paper. Hopes & trusts you are really going to Washington.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.
+  14 Jan., '79._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The pleasantest event since I last wrote has been a visit from Mr.
+Eldridge. We had a long, friendly chat that did me good. Saturday evening
+we went to one of Miss Booth's receptions--met Joaquin Miller there, who
+is just back from Europe--of course we talked of you. Mrs. Moulton too is
+hoping so you will come to New York during her stay here, which is to last
+a week or two longer. John Burroughs has just sent me a post card to say
+he has returned from a 3-weeks stay with his folks in Delaware Co.--that
+he hopes to come here soon--wants Mrs. Burroughs to come too & board for a
+month or so--wants also "Walt to come--& lecture"--but "Walt will not be
+hurried." Did I tell you that we found boarding here a young man, Mr.
+Arthur Holland, one of the family who were so very friendly to me & made
+my stay so pleasant both in Concord & Cambridge? He often comes to our
+room of an evening for an hour or two's chat, & by the bye, being
+connected with the iron trade he has been able to make some enquiries for
+me as to what Per's chances as a scientific metallurgist would be in this
+country--& I am sorry to say he thinks they would be very poor indeed.
+Prof. Lesley said the same thing; so it is clear I must not urge him to
+try the experiment, seeing he has a wife & child. Herby & Giddy both well.
+Love from us all. Good bye, Dear Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Friendly greeting to your brother & sister.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.,
+  Jan. 27, '79._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Are you never coming? I do long & long to see you. I am beginning to like
+New York better than I did and to have pleasant times. Had some friendly
+chats with Kate Hillard last week, & went with her to call on Mrs. Putman
+Jacobi, who has a little baby 3 weeks old & is still in her room, but has
+got through very nicely--She talks well, doesn't she? & has a face with
+plenty of individuality in it. Also we went together on Saturday again to
+one of Miss Booth's receptions, & there met Mrs. Croly, & had the best
+talk about you I have had this long while. I like her cordiality--we are
+going to her reception on Sunday & to one at Mrs. Bigelow's Wednesday. It
+is true there is not much that can be called social enjoyment at these
+crowded receptions, but they enable you to start many acquaintanceships,
+some of which turn out lasting good. We had some fine harp playing & a
+witty recital at Miss Booth's. Miss Selous is back in America. I should
+not wonder if she comes on here soon. Bee is living at the Dispensary now,
+instead of in the Hospital, & finds the comparatively outdoor life--& the
+freedom from being "whistled" for all hours of the day and night as she
+was there--a wonderful refreshment. That coloured lady, Mrs. Wiley, whom
+you met once at our house, is her fellow labourer & room mate at the
+Dispensary. Bee likes her much. I am not sure whether you know the
+Gilders? We spent a couple of hours delightfully with them yesterday
+afternoon. She has a very attractive face, a musical voice, & such a sweet
+smile. They are going to Europe for a four months' holiday this spring. I
+admire the simple, unconventional way in which they live. Herby is working
+away in the best spirits. He is going to paint that bowling alley subject
+on a large scale. Giddy is sitting by me with her nose in the French
+Dictionary, working away at a novel of Balzac's. I have had scarcely any
+letters from England lately!--and the papers bring none but dismal
+tidings; nevertheless I don't believe our sun is going down yet awhile--we
+shall emerge from this dark crisis the better, not the worse, because
+compelled to grapple with the evils that have caused it, instead of
+passively enduring them. Please give friendly remembrance from me to your
+brothers & sister. Have you been at Kirkwood lately, I wonder? I suppose
+Timber Creek is frozen over. Good-bye, dear Friend. Write soon, or better
+still Come!
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLVI
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _New York
+  112 Madison Avenue
+  February 2nd, 1879._
+
+DEAR DARLING WALT:
+
+I read your long piece in the Philadelphia _Times_ with ever so much
+interest, & with especial delight the delicately told bit about the dear
+old Pond, artistic, because so true. I know that it will please you to
+hear that I have gained tenfold facility with my brush since the autumn.
+It has agreed uncommonly well with me having enlisted under such an
+experienced & able painter as Chase; as a manipulator of the brush he is
+agreed by the experts (Eaton) to have no rival. I may yet be able to paint
+a head of you in _one_ sitting that will do justice to you. Three of my
+pictures are nicely hung at the Water Colour Exhibition Academy of Design,
+the first time that I have exhibited in New York. We had two & three
+engagements every night (with one exception) last week, & go to Mrs.
+Croley's to-night. Your friend John Burroughs called last Wednesday--came
+to try Turkish baths for his malarious trouble, but it seemed to bring on
+his attacks of neuralgia worse. I am sorry that I can report but poorly of
+his health, so painfully excruciating was his neuralgia about his arms at
+times that a Dr. was sent for & morphia injected in his wrist, but I am
+glad to say he reported himself a little better. He hopes that you will
+come and give the lecture on Lincoln this winter; why not, confound it, it
+would be most interesting.
+
+Quite often we go to Miss Booth's receptions. Saturday evening, they are
+gay & amusing. Met Mr. Bliss, the gentleman that talked like "a house
+afire" one Sunday at your house last winter, you remember.
+
+Last Wednesday I, mother, Giddy, & Kate Hillard went to Mrs. Bigelow's
+reception. Miss H. was asked to recite & she recited the "Swineherd"
+(Anderson's) charmingly, & "The Faithful Lovers," which took every one.
+"Walk in" Miller was there (I can't spell his name) & lots more.
+
+This morning being Sunday, I took my skates to the Park. The wind was high
+& whirled us about fantastically; ladies seated in wicker chairs were
+pushed rapidly along the Pond's smooth icy surface by their gentlemen
+escorts, tall men kissed the ice or sprawled full length on their backs,
+while others flew by like swallows; all this with a church spire peeping
+behind hills dappled with snow & sunshine: what more inspiriting than
+this?
+
+And now dear Walt.
+
+Good-bye for the present.
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLVII
+
+BEATRICE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _33 Warrenton St.
+  Feb. 16, 1879._
+
+DEAR MR. WHITMAN:
+
+Although not in word, I have thanked you for your letter & papers by
+enjoying them thoroughly.
+
+Down at this Dispensary we work just as hard as at the Hospital, but our
+spare minutes are our own (no records to write out); our work is under our
+own control; we are out in fresh air half the day, sometimes half the
+night, making intimate acquaintance with all sorts of people & places &
+with far distant parts of Boston.
+
+We have all the responsibility that it is good for young doctors to have,
+i. e., in all difficult or obscure & dangerous cases we are obliged to
+call in older heads & are obliged to report verbally to the visiting
+physician of the month all our cases & our treatment. Only two students
+live at the Dispensary--Dr. Wiley (the coloured Philadelphia student you
+saw) & myself. In tastes we have much in common & on the whole I prefer to
+live with her rather than with any of the other students. We share rooms.
+We have a bedroom, a drug-room, a treatment room, waiting room for
+patients, & take our meals in the kitchen.
+
+A widow woman with two children housekeeps.
+
+I think Boston a very beautiful city. The public Gardens & Commons in the
+busiest part, sloping down from the gilt domed state house on Beacon
+hill, threaded by paths in all directions, traversed by the business men,
+the fine ladies, the beggars, etc., etc. One broad, sloping path is given
+up to the boys who want to coast, temporary wooden bridges being thrown
+over the cross paths. Then, crossing South Bay to South Boston is a
+beautiful walk I take from one to four times a day. South Boston looks
+rather dingy; it is inhabited mostly by artisans & mill hands & fishermen,
+but walking up 3rd St., as you cross the lettered streets A, B, C, D,
+etc., you look down upon the harbour--on bright days bright blue, & a few
+sails to be seen--at sunset the colours of course are reflected
+gorgeously.
+
+Somehow or other the sea looks doubly beautiful set in dingy S. Boston.
+
+Far over in the West End too we have patients. Last Tuesday I had twins
+all by myself; only one, however, was born alive; the other had been dead
+a week. How delightful that you are feeling so much better. Shall you not
+be coming to Boston sometime before I leave, 1st June?
+
+The Boston I know is not the Boston I knew in books; I am as far off from
+that as if I lived in England--is not the "hub"--I was reminded of that
+last Sunday when I had time for once to go to church & went to hear Mr. E.
+E. Hale preach and went home to dinner with him....
+
+I like his daughter whom we knew in Philadelphia. She is a clever young
+artist. Dr. Wiley is very popular with her patients, far more so than I.
+
+Please remember me to all the Staffords & give my especial love to Mrs.
+Stafford. Also to Mrs. Whitman.
+
+Yours affectionately,
+
+BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.
+  March 18, 1879._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I hope you are enjoying this splendid, sunshiny weather as much as we
+are--the atmosphere here is delicious. In the morning Giddy and I set at
+home busy with needle work, letter writing, and reading. After lunch we go
+out for a walk or to pay visits--and of an evening very often to
+receptions (but they are not half so jolly as our evenings at
+Philadelphia). Still we have a lively, pleasant time. I like Miss Booth
+very much, with her kindly, generous character and active practical mind.
+So I do Mrs. Croly--she is more impulsive and enthusiastic. Kate Hillard
+often goes with us, & she is always good company. I had a note from Edward
+Carpenter the other day brought by a lady who had been living near him at
+Sheffield--an American lady with two very fine little girls who has lately
+lost her husband in England and was on her way back to her parents' home
+in Pennsylvania--somewhere beyond Pittsburg. She is one who loves your
+poems, & has great hopes of seeing you in New York. She told me her little
+girls were so fond of Carpenter he of them--he is first rate with
+children. I hope you will not put off coming to New York till we are
+returning to Philadelphia, which will be some time in May. I find Beatrice
+is so anxious to get further advantages for study in England or Paris
+before she begins to practise, and Herby is so strongly advised by Mr.
+Eaton, of whose judgment & experience he thinks very highly, to study in
+Duron's Studio in Paris for a year, that I have made up my mind to go
+back, for a time at any rate, this summer; but I shall leave my furniture
+here, and the question of where our future home is to be, open. Herby is
+making great progress. I wish you could see the head of an old woman he
+has just painted--and I wish he had had as much power when he had such
+splendid chances of painting you. I cannot tell you how vividly and
+pleasantly Chestnut St. on a sunny day rose before me in your jottings.
+Love from us all. Tell your sister I often think of her & shall enjoy a
+chat ever so.
+
+A. G.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER XLIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _112 Madison Ave.
+  March 26, '79._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+It seems quite a long while since I wrote, & a _very long_ while since you
+wrote. I am beginning to turn my thoughts Philadelphia-wards that we may
+have some weeks near you before we set out on fresh wanderings across the
+sea; and though I feel quite cheery about them, I look eagerly forward to
+the time beyond that when we have a fixed, final nest of our own again,
+where we can welcome you just when and as you please. Whichever side the
+Atlantic it is, you will come surely? for you belong to the one country as
+much as to the other. And I shall always feel that I do too. I take back
+with me a deep and hearty love for America--I came indeed with a good deal
+of that, but what I take back is different--stronger, more real. I went
+over to see friends in Brooklyn yesterday, & it was more lovely than I can
+tell you on the Ferry--in fact, it was just your poem, "Crossing Brooklyn
+Ferry". Herby still painting away _con amore_, & making good progress. I
+met Joaquin Miller at the Bigelows last week, & he was very pleasant
+(which isn't always the case) and said some very good things to me.
+Thursday we are going to lunch with Mrs. Albert Brown--perhaps you may
+have heard of her as Bessie Griffiths. She was a Southern lady who, when
+she was about 18, freed all her slaves & left herself penniless. On Sunday
+we take tea at Prof. Rood's of Columbia College. Kate Hillard we often
+see & have lively chats with. We meet also & see a good deal of General
+Edward Lee--a fine soldierly looking man, & I believe he distinguished
+himself in the war & was afterwards sent to organize the new Territory of
+Wyoming, & was the first governor. I wish very much that if you or your
+brother knew him or know anything about him, you would tell me--for
+reasons that I will tell you by & bye. Bee is seeing a great deal of the
+educated coloured people at Boston--was at the meeting of a literary
+club--the only white among 20 or 30 coloured ladies--likes them much.
+
+Write soon, dear Friend. Meanwhile, best love & good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+No letters from England this long while.
+
+Please give friendly greetings from me to your brother & sister.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER L
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Glasgow
+  Friday, June 20, 1879._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+We set foot on dry land again Wednesday morning after a good passage--not
+a very smooth one--and not without four or five days of seasickness, but
+after that we really enjoyed the sea & the sky--it was mostly cloudy, but
+such lovely lights and shades & invigorating breezes! and as we got up
+into northern latitudes, daylight in the sky all night through. The last
+three days we had glorious scenery--sailed close in under the Giant's
+Causeway on the north coast of Ireland--great sort of natural ramparts &
+bastions or rock, wonderfully grand. Then we sailed on Lough Fozle to land
+a group of Irish folk at Moville--some of them old people who had not seen
+Ireland for forty years, and who were so happy they did not know what to
+do with themselves. And what with this human interest, and the first
+getting near land again and the rich green-and-golden gorse-covered hills
+& the setting sun streaming along the beautiful lough with golden light,
+it was a sight & a time I shall never forget. Then we entered the Firth of
+Clyde & sailed among the islands--mountainous Arran, level Bute--& on the
+other hand the green hills of Ayr, with pleasant towns nestled under them,
+sloping to the Clyde--this was during the night--we did not go to bed at
+all it was so beautiful--& then came a gorgeous sunrise--& then the
+landing at Greenock & a short railway journey to Glasgow, the tide not
+serving to bring our big ship up so far. We had very pleasant (& learned
+withal) companions on the voyage--the Professor of Greek & of Philosophy
+from Harvard and a young student from Concord, all of whom we have seen
+since we landed and hope to see often again, especially the young student,
+Frank Bigelow, who is a very nice fellow. Herby enjoyed the voyage much &
+so did Giddy. Glasgow is a great, solidly built city, very pleasant [in]
+spite of smoky atmosphere--full of sturdy, rosy-cheeked people with broad
+Scotch accent. We have been rushing about shopping--have not yet seen
+Per.--shall meet him at Durham in a week's time & spend a month together
+there where he will be superintending your works. Meanwhile we are going
+to Edinburgh for a few days. I kept thinking of you on the voyage, dear
+friend, & wondering how you would like it--& whether you could stand being
+stowed away in the little box-like berth at night. I should recommend any
+American friend coming over to try this line--we had a fine ship--fine
+officers & crew--& the latter part, fine scenery. Love to your Brother &
+Sister & to Mr. Burroughs. Address to me for the present.
+
+  Care Percy C. Gilchrist
+  Blaenavon
+  Poutzpool
+  Mon.
+
+Love from us all. I shall write soon again. Good-bye dear Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Lower Shincliffe
+  Durham
+  August 2d, '79._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I am sitting in my room with my dear little grandson, the sweetest little
+fellow you ever saw, asleep beside me. Giddy and Norah (my 3d daughter)
+are gone into Durham to do some shopping. Bee is up in London on her way
+to Berne in Switzerland, where she has finally decided to complete her
+medical studies. Herby is, I think, staying with Eustace Conway at
+Hammersmith just now. He has been spending a week at Brighton with Edward
+Carpenter & his family--but I will leave him to tell his own news. We are
+lodging in this little village with its red-tiled roofs & gray stone
+walls, lying among wooded hills, corn fields, meadows, and collieries on
+the banks of the Weir, for the sake of being near Percy & his wife. He is
+superintending here the erection of some kilns for making the peculiar
+kind of basic firebricks needed in his dephosphorization process. Durham
+Cathedral, which was mainly built soon after the Norman conquest, is in
+sight, crowning a wooded hill that rises abruptly from the river-side. It
+looks as solid, majestic, venerable as the rocks & hills--the interior is
+of wonderful grandeur & beauty. When you enter one of these cathedrals you
+are tempted to say architecture is a lost art with us moderns so far as
+sublimity is concerned--except in vast engineering works. You would not
+dignify the Weir with the name of a river in America--it is no bigger than
+Timber Creek--but it winds about so capriciously through the picturesque
+little city as to make almost an island of the hill on which the castle &
+cathedral stand & to need three great solid stone bridges within a quarter
+of a mile of each other, & with its steep wooded sides carrying nature
+right into the heart of the old town. But the rainy season (we have
+scarcely seen the sun since we have been in England & I believe it is the
+same in France & Italy) and the great depression in trade, especially the
+coal & iron, which chiefly concerns this district, seem to cast a gloom
+over everything. There are whole rows of colliers' cottages in this
+village empty. Where they go to no one knows, but as soon as the
+collieries reopen they will all reappear. We often meet Colliers returning
+from work--they look as if they had just emerged from Hades, poor
+fellows--their faces black as soot--their lean, bowed legs bare--I believe
+the mines are hot here; they work with little on--but they are really the
+cleanest of all workmen, as they take a bath every night on their return
+before supping. The speech here is almost like a foreign tongue to any one
+from the south or middle of England. I wonder if you have yet read Dr.
+Bucke's book.[29] It is about the only thing I have read since my return.
+It suggests deeply interesting trains of thought.
+
+I wonder if you are at Camden, taking your daily trips across the ferry &
+strolls up Chestnut St. I hardly realized till I left it how dearly I love
+America--great sunny land of hope and progress--or how my whole life has
+been enriched with the human intercourse I had there. Give my love to
+those of our friends whom you know & tell them not to forget us. I have
+had a long letter from Emma Lazarus. I suppose Hattie and Jessie are
+spending their holidays at Camden & that Hattie has pretty well done with
+school. We have been chiefly busy with needlework since we came--preparing
+dear Bee for Berne. I miss her sadly--had quite hoped we should have all
+been together at Paris this winter--but it seems the course is much longer
+& more arduous [there]. We spent a week in Edinburgh before we came on
+here. It is by far the most beautiful city I have ever seen. The journey
+between it and Berwick-on-Tweed lies through the richest & best cultivated
+farm land in Britain--the sea sparkling on one side of us & these fertile
+fields dotted with splendid flocks & herds--with large comfortable-looking
+farmhouses, & here & there an old castle; it was singularly enjoyable. How
+I have wished everywhere that you were with us to share the sight--and the
+best is that you would return home more than ever proud & rejoicing in
+America. It is a land where humanity is having, and is going to have, such
+chances as never before. Giddy sends her love. Mine also & to your brother
+& sister. Good-bye, dear Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Please write soon; I am longing for a letter.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LII[30]
+
+WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
+
+
+  _(Camden, New Jersey.)
+  (August, 1879.)_
+
+Thank you, dear friend, for your letter; how I should indeed like to see
+that _Cathedral_[31], I don't know which I should go for first, the
+Cathedral or _that baby_.[32] I write in haste, but I am determined you
+shall have a word, at least, promptly in response.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _1 Elm Villas, Elm Row, Heath St.
+  Hampstead, Dec. 5, '79, London, England._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+You could not easily realize the strong emotion with which I read your
+last note and traced on the little map[33]--a most precious possession
+which I would not part with for the whole world--all your
+journeyings--both in youth & now. Mingled emotions! for I cannot but feel
+anxious about your health, & if I didn't know it was very naught to ask
+you questions, should beg you [to] tell me in what way your health has
+failed--whether it is the rheumatic & neuralgic affection that troubled
+you the last spring we were in Philadelphia, or whether the fatigues &
+excitements & the very enjoyments & full life, & burst of prophetic joy,
+as it were, had proved too great a strain. But you have accomplished
+another thing, that had to be done in your life & I exult with you--have
+seen the vast magnificent theatre, the free, unfettered conditions whereon
+humanity will enact a new drama, with the parts all so differently cast!
+the rest--the moving spirit of it all--hints of this, at least--flashes,
+glimpses, I find in your greatest poems. But, dear Friend, I think
+humanity moves forward [slowly] even under splendid conditions--you must
+give it a century or two instead of 50 years--before at least the crowning
+glories of a corresponding literature & art will develope
+themselves--Nature has got plenty of time before her, & obstinately
+refuses to be hurried; witness her dealings with the mere rocks & stones.
+
+Bee is at Berne, working away merrily, rejoicing in the really splendid
+advantage for medical study there open to her. She mastered German so as
+to be able to speak & understand it--lectures & all--with ease during the
+two months at Wiesbaden & she has found a thoroughly comfortable home with
+some excellent, intelligent ladies who are fond of her & see to her bodily
+welfare in every possible way. I have my dear little grandson with me
+here--as engaging a little toddler as the sun ever shone upon--so
+affectionate & sweet-tempered & bright. I wish I could see him sitting on
+your knee. You will certainly have to come to us as soon as ever we have a
+comfortable home, won't you? Giddy is well & as rosy as ever. She & Herby
+send their love. I have seen Rossetti--he was full of enquiries &
+affectionate interest in all that concerns you--& loth we were to break
+off our conversation & hurry back--but Hampstead, the pleasantest &
+prettiest of all our suburbs, is terribly inaccessible & cuts us off a
+good deal from the intercourse with old friends I had looked forward to.
+It is on the top of a high hill (as high as the top of St. Pauls), & looks
+down on one side over the great city with its canopy of smoke, & on the
+other over a wide, pleasant stretch of green & fertile Middlesex--has
+moreover pleasant lanes, solid old houses, shaded by big elms, & other
+picturesque features & such an abundance of keen, fresh air this cold
+weather too! We sigh for the warmth of an American house indoors often &
+for American sunshine out of doors. Rossetti has a beautiful little group
+of children growing up around him--I think the eldest girl will grow up a
+real beauty & the boy too is a noble little fellow. I meet numbers so
+delighted to hear about you. I believe Addington Symonds is preparing a
+book which treats largely of your Poems.
+
+Glad to hear that Brother & Sister & nieces are all well. I wish I could
+write to some of them, but what with needlework, an avalanche of letters,
+the care of my dear little man--the re-editing of my husband's life of
+Blake, to which there will be a considerable addition of letters newly
+come to light, I hardly know which way to turn. Per. & my nephew & the
+"Process" have made a great stride forward. Won two important law suits at
+Berlin, where the Bessemer ring & Krupp at their head were trying to oust
+them of their patent rights. Also it is practically making good way in
+England. So by & bye the money will begin to flow in, I suppose--but has
+not done so yet.
+
+I trust, dearest Friend, this will find you safe & fairly well again at
+Camden, with plenty of great, happy thoughts to brood over for the winter.
+
+Love from us all. Good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _5 Mount Vernon
+  Hampstead
+  Jan. 25, '80._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Welcome was your postcard announcing recovered health & return to Camden!
+May this find you safe there, well & hearty, able to go freely to & fro on
+the ferries & streets. I wish one of those old red Market Ferry cars were
+going to land you at our door once more! What you would have to tell us of
+western scenes & life! What teas & what evenings we would have--you would
+certainly have to say "there is a point beyond which"--& would have pretty
+late trips back of moonlight. Strange episode in my life! so unlike what
+went before & what comes after--those evenings in Philadelphia--yet so
+natural, familiar, dear! If I were American-born, I certainly should not
+want to change it for any country in the world, and if as you have
+dreamed--as I too have dreamed--it is given us hereafter to have another
+spell of life on this old earth, may my lot be cast there when the great
+time dimly preparing is actually come. But meanwhile, dear Friend, my work
+lies here: innumerable are the ties that bind us. And I can only hope &
+dream that you will come & stay with us awhile when we have a home of our
+own. That dear little grandson stayed with me two months till I really
+didn't know how to part with him, & grew more & more engaging & pretty in
+his ways every day--rapid indeed is the opening of the little bud at that
+age--between 1 & 3--& the way he had of looking up & giving you little
+kisses of his own accord would win anybody's heart. Bee's letters continue
+as cheery as ever--she is heartily enjoying work & life, and accomplishing
+the purpose she has set her heart upon, & the people she is with are so
+good and kindly, it is quite a home. She is working a good deal with the
+microscope. Her outdoor recreation is skating. Herby is getting on very
+nicely. He has had a commission to make some designs for a new kind of
+painted tapestry--and his figures "Audrey & Touchstone" are very much
+admired & have been bought by a rich American, & he has a commission for
+more. But the summer work he has set his heart upon is a portrait of you
+from all the material he brought with him--the many attempts he made
+there--handled with his present improved skill with the brush. I hope you
+will be able by & bye to send him the photograph he asked for--but no
+hurry. Edward Carpenter came up from Sheffield and spent an evening with
+us--which we all heartily enjoyed--he is a dear fellow. We talked much of
+you. He has been giving lectures this winter on the Lives of the Great
+Discoverers in Science. Carpenter knows intimately, goes freely among, a
+greater range & variety of men than any Englishman I know--he has a way of
+making himself thoroughly welcome by the firesides of mechanics & factory
+workers--his own kith & kin are aristocratic.
+
+Giddy is taking singing lessons again, & hoping by the time you next see
+her to be able to contribute her share of the evening's pleasure. Percy is
+still working away indomitably at the "process," which is gaining ground
+rapidly on the continent, & I hope I may say slowly & surely in England. I
+see the Gilders now & then--indeed they are coming up to lunch with us
+to-morrow--Mr. Gilder[34] is the better for rest--& they seem to enjoy
+England; but England has done her very worst in the way of climate ever
+since they have been here. O I do long for a little American sunshine. We
+met Henry James at the Conways last Sunday & found him one of the
+pleasantest of talkers. Rossetti & all your friends are well. Please give
+my love to your brothers & sister. Were Jessie & Hattie at home in St.
+Louis, I wonder, when you were there? Love from us all.
+
+Good-bye, Dearest Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Please give my love to John Burroughs when you write or see him.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Marley, Haslemere
+  England
+  Aug. 22, '80._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I have had all the welcome papers with accounts of your doings, and to-day
+a nice long letter from Mrs. Whitman, which I much enjoyed, giving me
+better account of your health again, & of your great enjoyment of the
+water travel through Canada. So I hope, spite of drawbacks, you will
+return to Camden for the winter quite set up in body, as well as full of
+delightful memories. If only we were at 22nd St. to welcome you back &
+talk it all over at tea! Ah, those evenings! My friends told me I looked
+ten years younger when I came back from America than when I went. And I am
+not yet quite re-acclimatized; & what with missing the sunshine & working
+a little too hard, was feeling quite knocked up: so Bee insisted on my
+coming down, or rather up, here to stay with some very kind & dear
+friends. The house stands all alone on a great heath-covered hill, and
+below & around are endless coppices, so that you step from the lawn into
+[a] winding wood-path, along which I wander by the hour: and from my
+window I look over much such a view as we had at Round Hill Hotel,
+Northampton, this time two years, only that with the soft haze that is so
+often spread over our landscape, the distant hill looks more ghostly in
+the moonlight. My friend is a noble, large-hearted, capable woman, who
+devotes all her life and energies to keeping alive an invalid husband; and
+he well deserves her care, for he has a beautiful nature, too, & their
+mutual affection is unbounded. He is just ordered by the doctors to leave
+the home they have made for themselves up here--which is as lovely as it
+can be--& to spend two years at least in Italy. So it is a sorrowful time
+with them--they have no children, but have adopted a little niece. Our new
+house is just ready & we are daily expecting our furniture from America.
+Herby has been working as usual, making good progress & has just done a
+beautiful little drawing for the new edition of his father's book. Bee,
+you will be glad to hear, has decided to continue her medical studies & is
+going to be assistant to a lady doctor at Edinburgh, who is to pay her
+sufficient salary to cover all remaining expenses. Meanwhile we have got
+her at home for a few weeks to help us through with the move in, and a sad
+pinch it will be to part with her again. Giddy has been paying a
+delightful visit to some friends of Carpenter's near Leeds--a Quaker
+family--the daughter very lovable & admirable. We do not forget the
+Staffords[35] nor they us. Mont. often sends Herby a magazine or a token.
+Love to them when you see them, & to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie
+& kindest remembrance to Dr. Bucke. Send me a line soon, dear Friend--I
+think of you continually & know that somewhere & somehow we are to meet
+again, & that there is a tie of love between us that time & change & death
+itself cannot touch.
+
+With love,
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LVI
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner, England
+  12 Well Road, Hampstead, London
+  November 30th, 1880._
+
+MY DEAR WALT:
+
+Your postcard came to hand some little time ago. I was pleased to get it,
+to hear of your being well, & with your friends. I have been extremely
+busy seeing after the new edition of my father's book;[36] the work of
+seeing such a richly illustrated "edition de luxe" through the press was
+enormous, but it is done! The binders are now doing their work, & next
+Tuesday the reviewers will be doing theirs--I defy them to find any fault
+with the book. I dare say you think it "tall" talk, but I think that it is
+the most perfectly gotten up book that I ever have seen. My mother has
+written an admirable memoir of my father at the end of the second vol.
+
+         POND MUSINGS
+  (Pen sketch of a butterfly)
+             by
+         WALT WHITMAN
+
+I thought that this was to be the title of your prose volume. I will
+undertake the illustrations, choosing the paper (hand made), everything
+except the expense of reproducing, etc. I should say London is the place
+to have things executed in: if you wish to give photos they must be drawn
+by an artist and reproduced; no photo ever looked well in a book yet! they
+haven't decorative importance and don't blend with type. I should suggest
+that we should imitate the artistic size & style of your earliest edition
+of "Leaves of G.," a large, thin, flat volume, a fanciful, but as
+inexpensive as possible, cover written in gold on blue, a waterlily say:
+but I could think this over. I will design fanciful tailpieces to be woven
+in with the text; as a frontispiece the drawing that I gave you, retouched
+by me, and reproduced by the Typographic Etching Company, 23 Farringdon
+street, London, E. C. All these are only suggestions, which I am prepared
+to execute in right earnest thought. I read your letter to mother with
+interest. We like our new house so much, & I am sure that you would. You
+must come and stay with us & stroll on Hampstead Heath, & ride down into
+London upon an omnibus & sit to some good sculptor here in London (Boem
+say). And you yourself could make arrangements with the publishers. With
+remembrance to friends,
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Well Rd., Hampstead
+  Apr. 18, '81._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I have just been sauntering in our little but sunny garden which slopes to
+the South--surveying with much satisfaction some fruit trees--plum, green
+gage, pear, cherry, apple--which we have just had planted to train up
+against the house and fence--in which fashion fruit ripens much better
+with our English modicum of sunshine, besides taking no room & casting no
+shade over your little bit of ground--Then we have filled our large window
+with flowers in pots which make the room smell as delicious as a garden.
+Giddy is assiduous in keeping them well watered & tended.--Welcome was
+your postcard--with the little rain-bird's coy note in it. But I had not
+before heard of your illness, dear friend--the letter before, you spoke of
+being unusually well, as I trust you are again now, & enjoying the spring.
+I am well again so far as digestion &c. goes; but bronchitis asthma of a
+chronic kind still trouble me. My breath is so short I cannot walk, which
+is a privation. I am going, at the beginning of June, to stay with Bee in
+Edinburgh, as she will not have any holiday or be able to come & see us
+this year, & much am I longing to be with her. Have you begun to have any
+summer thoughts, dear Walt? And do they turn towards England, & our nest
+therein? Yes, I have received & have enjoyed all the papers &
+cuttings--dearly like what you said of Carlyle. Everyone here is speaking
+bitterly of the harsh judgments & sarcastic descriptions of people in the
+"reminiscenses." But I know that at bottom his heart was genial and good &
+that he wrote those in a miserable mood--& never looked at them again
+afterwards. I hope you received the little memoir of my husband all right.
+Herby is very busy with a drawing of you--hopes that with the many
+sketches he made, & the vivid impress on his memory & the help of
+photographs, it will be good. I wish he had possessed as much power with
+the brush when he was in America as he has now--he is making very great
+progress in mastery of the technique. I observe, too, that he reads &
+dwells upon your poems--especially the "Walt Whitman"--with growing
+frequency & delight. We often say, "Won't Walt like sitting in that sunny
+window?" or "by that cheery open fire" or "sauntering on the heath"--&
+picture you here in a thousand different ways. I believe Maggie Lesley is
+coming from Paris, where she is studying art in good earnest, at the
+beginning of May, & then will come and spend a few days with us. Welcome
+are American friends! The Buxton Forman's took tea with us last week & we
+had pleasant talk of you & of Dr. Bucke. Mrs. Forman is a sincere,
+sympathetic, motherly woman whom you would like. The Rossetti's too have
+been to see us--we didn't think William in the best health or spirits--&
+his wife was not looking well either, but then another baby is just
+coming.
+
+This Easter time the poorest of London working folk flock in enormous
+numbers to Hampstead Heath; it is a sight that would interest you--they
+are rougher & noisier & poorer than such folks in America--& the men more
+prone to get the worse for drink--but there is a good deal of fun &
+merriment too--the girls & boys racing about on donkeys (who have a pretty
+hard time of it)--plenty of merry-go-rounds--& enjoyment of the pure air
+& sunshine, & such sights, more than they know. The light is failing,
+dearest friend; so with love from us all, good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Friendliest greeting to your brother & sister & to Hattie & Jessie when
+you write & to the Staffords.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LVIII
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner, Well Road
+  North London
+  Hampstead, England
+  June 5th, 1881, Sunday afternoon_
+  5 P. M.
+
+MY DEAR WALT:
+
+You don't write me a letter nor take any notice of my magnificent offers
+concerning "Pond Musings", etc. however, I will forgive you this
+oft-repeated offence. I often think of you, very often of America and
+things generally there, and nearly always with pleasure.
+
+My mother is away staying with Beatrice in Edinburgh city, recruiting her
+health, which has most sadly needed it of late. So I and Grace & a new
+Scotch lassie, one Margaret, who officiates as servant most efficaciously
+too, I can tell you (such scrubbing & cleaning as you never saw the like)
+we three, I say, are alone at Keats Corner; cool sitting here in our long
+drawing-room (hung with innumerable pictures as of yore), although it has
+been scorchingly hot this past month. The morning I spend sketching on
+Hampstead Heath, which is lovely just now, all the May-trees are in full
+bloom the gorse & broom are a blaze of yellow, the rooks fly constantly by
+a quarter of a mile (seemingly) overhead, the sly fellows giving some side
+like dart when you look up at them even at that height. I am painting one
+of them; so I have to look up pretty often. In the early morning the
+nightingale sings, oh, so sweetly, long trills & roulades in the most
+accomplished manner.
+
+Last Wednesday Miss Ellen Terry, whose name you are doubtless familiar
+with as being the leading actress in London, well, she called upon me to
+ask my advice or opinion of a drawing connected with my father's book.
+Ellen Terry expressed herself highly interested in our house, pictures,
+decorations and so forth. Her manner was a little stagey, but graceful to
+the extreme, and you could see peeping out of this theatric manner a kind,
+good heart, oh, so kind, I feel as if I would do anything for her, her
+manners were so winning. "Will you come to the stage entrance of the
+Lyceum some day soon and you shall have stalls for two; now will you come?
+Do." Were her last words to Grace. I called on her at Kensington last
+week, returning the drawing, and I was so charmed with two beautiful
+children of hers, a tall, fair girl, a pretty mixture of shyness and
+self-possession that quite won me. She too I should fancy will be a great
+actress some day, she has such a bright face. The boy, Master Ted, was
+nice too.
+
+Well, I gave Ellen Terry a proof of a drawing that I have just completed
+for Dr. Bucke's book--a job I got through Buxton Forman, a great friend of
+Bucke's, done _con amore_ on my part. This drawing has been beautifully
+reproduced by the new photo intaglio-process. I hope Dr. Bucke will like
+it, but I should not expect great things from him in that line, judging
+from the twopenny hapenny little pen & ink sketch by Waters which he sent
+over in the first instance; however, Forman rescued him from that & so far
+he has been guided by his friend. Whether he will when he sees my drawing,
+we neither of us know; but both feel to have done our best in the matter.
+I said that Ellen Terry must ask for you when she goes to America, which
+she contemplates some day. I have sold the last drawing I made in New
+York of you for L10. 10s to Buxton Forman ($50. odd). Church bells have
+just commenced chiming in the distance, a sound I like better than the
+parsons. I hear that the young American artists are doing capitally
+filling their pockets. My cousin Sidney Thomas is, or was, in America, a
+good deal lionized, I understand. If at any time you favour me with a
+letter let it be a letter and not a postcard please. I have been reading
+Carlyle's reminiscences--good stuff in them, brilliant touches, but
+dreadfully morbid, don't you think? & one shuts the book up with a feeling
+that in some respect one Carlyle is enough in the world: & yet in some
+respects a million wouldn't be too many. I often think of your remark to
+us one day that tolerance is the rarest quality in the world.
+
+Interested in those Boston scraps you send my mother. You have always been
+pretty well received in Boston, have you not--I mean in the Emerson days?
+Pity that when Emerson is no more there will be no fine portrait of him in
+existence; there was a nobility stamped upon his face that I never saw the
+like of, and which should have been caught and stamped forever on canvas.
+
+We all see something of the Formans & all like them; they have so much
+character, rather unusual in literary folk of the lighter sort, I fancy;
+but there is something very fresh and original about Forman. Nice children
+they have, too. Miss Blind is bringing out a volume of poems; why will
+people all imagine they can write poetry? William Rossetti is writing a
+hundred sonnets--writes one a day; one about John Brown is not bad: and
+many are instructive, but are in no sense poems. I am going down to tea &
+must not keep Grace waiting any longer. Love to you.
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Road, Hampstead
+  London, Dec. 14, '81._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Your welcome letter to hand. I have longed for a word from you--could not
+write myself[37]--was stricken dumb--nay, there is nothing but silence for
+me still. Herby wrote to Mrs. Stafford first, thinking that so the shock
+would come less abruptly to you.
+
+I heard of you at Concord in a kind long letter from Frederick Holland,
+with whose wife you had some conversation. Indeed all that sympathy and
+warm & true words of love & sorrow & highest admiration & esteem for my
+darling could do to comfort me I have had--and most & best from America.
+And many of her poor patients at Edinburgh went sobbing from the door when
+they heard they should see her no more.
+
+The report of your health is comforting dear friend. Mine too is better--I
+am able to take walks again--though still liable to sudden attacks of
+difficult breathing.
+
+Herby is working hard--has just been disappointed over a competition
+design which he sent in to the Royal Academy--a very poor & specious work
+obtaining the premium--but is no whit discouraged & has no need to be, for
+he is making great progress--works hard, loves his work & is of the stuff
+where of great painters are made, I am persuaded--so he can afford to
+wait. Giddy is not quite so well & strong as I could wish, but there
+seems nothing serious. She is working diligently at the development of her
+voice--& is learning German. Dr. Bucke's friend, Mr. Buxton Forman, & his
+wife are very warm, staunch friends of Herby's.
+
+Please give my love to your sister, and tell her that her good letter
+spoke the right words to me & that I shall write before very long. Thanks
+for the paper, dear friend--& for those that came when I was too
+overwhelmed but which I have since read with deep interest--those about
+your visit to your birthplace. With love from us all--good-bye, dearest
+Friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Road
+  Jan 29, '82._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Your letter to Herby was a real talk with you. I don't know why I punish
+myself by writing to you so seldom now, for indeed to be near you, even in
+that way would do me good--often & often do I wish we were back in America
+near you. As I write this I am sitting to Herby for my portrait again--he
+has never satisfied himself yet: but this one seems coming on nicely--and
+so is the Consuelo picture. Another one he has in his mind is to be called
+"The tea-party," and it is to be the old group round our table in
+Philadelphia--you & me and dear Bee & Giddy & himself. He thinks that what
+with memory & photograph & the studies he made when with you, he will be
+able to put you & my darling on the canvas.
+
+Giddy's voice is developing into a really fine contralto & she has the
+work in her to become an artist, I think & will turn out one of the
+tortoises who outstrip the hares. Percy and Norah are spending the winter
+in London (at Kensington)--and we can get round by train in half an hour;
+so I often see them and the dear little man. Do you remember the Miss
+Chases--two pleasant maiden ladies who took tea with us once in
+Philadelphia & talked about Sojourner Truth? One of the sisters is in
+London this winter & has been several times to see us. The birds are
+beginning to sing very sweetly here--& our room is full of the perfume of
+spring flowers--indoor ones. Did dear Bee tell you, in the long letter she
+once wrote you, how much she loved the Swiss ladies with whom she made her
+home while in Berne? A more tender & beautiful love and sorrow than that
+with which they cherish the memory of her never grew in any heart. I think
+you will like to see some of their letters--please return them, for they
+are very precious to me (the little matters they thank me for are some of
+dear Bee's things which I sent them for tokens). Love to your sister &
+brother. How are Mr. Marvin & Mr. Burroughs? Best love from us all.
+Good-bye, dear Friend.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Road
+  Hampstead
+  May 8th, '82._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Herby went to David Bognes[38] about a week ago: he himself was out, but
+H. saw the head man, who reported that the sale of "Leaves of Grass" was
+progressing satisfactorily. I hope you have received, or will receive,
+tangible proof of the same. Bognes is a young publisher, but, I believe
+from what I hear, a man to be relied on. His father was the publisher of
+my husband's first literary venture & behaved honourably. Herby brought
+away for me a copy of the new edition. I like the type like that of '73, &
+the pale green leaf it is folded in so to speak. I find a few new friends
+to love--perhaps I have not yet found them all out. But you must not
+expect me to take kindly to any changes in the titles or arrangement of
+the old beloved friends. I love them too dearly--every word & _look_ of
+them--for that. For instance, I want "Walt Whitman" instead of "Myself" at
+the top of the page. Also my own longing is always for a chronological
+arrangement, if change at all there is to be; for that at once makes
+biography of the best kind. What deaths, dear Friend! As for me, my heart
+is already gone over to the other side of the river, so that sometimes I
+feel a kind of rejoicing in the swelling of the ranks of the great company
+there. Darwin, with his splendid day's work here gently closed; Rossetti,
+whose brilliant genius had got entangled in a premature physical decay, so
+that _his_ day's work was over too! In a letter to me, William, who was
+the best, most faithful & loving of brothers to him, says, "I doubt
+whether he would ever have regained that energy of body & concentration of
+mental resource which could have enabled him to resume work at his full &
+wonted power. Without these faculties at ready command my dear Gabriel
+would not have been himself." Edward Carpenter's father, too, is gone, but
+he at a ripe age without disease--sank gently.
+
+The photographs I enclose are but poor suggestions--please give one to
+Mrs. Whitman with my love, or if you prefer to keep both, I will send her
+others. Does the idea ever come into your head, dear Friend, of spending a
+little time this summer or autumn in your English home at Hampstead?
+
+Herby is well and working happily. So is Grace. Little grandson & his
+parents away in Worcestershire.
+
+It is indescribably lovely spring weather here just now. A carpenter near
+us has a sky-lark in a cage which sings as jubilantly as if it were
+mounting into the sky, & is so tame that when he takes it out of the cage
+to wash its little claws, which are apt to get choked up with earth, in
+warm water, it breaks out singing in his hand! Love from us all, dearest
+Friend. Good-bye.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Affectionate greetings to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.
+
+Do you ever see Mr. Marvin? If so, give our love, we hope to see him one
+day.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Well Rd., Hampstead, London
+  Nov. 24, '82._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+You have long ere this, I hope, received Herby's letter telling of the
+safe arrival of the precious copy of "Specimen Days," with the portraits:
+it makes me very proud. Your father had a fine face too--there is
+something in it that takes hold of me & that seems to be a kind of natural
+background or substratum to the radiant sweetness of that other sacred &
+beloved face completing your parentage. I like heartily too the new
+portraits of you: they are all wanted as different aspects: but the two
+that remain my favourites are the portrait taken about 30 without coat of
+any kind, and the one you sent me in '69 next to those I love these two
+latest--& in some respects better, because they are the Walt I saw & had
+such happy hours with. The second copy of book & my lending one, has come
+safe--too--and the card that told of your attack of illness, & the welcome
+news of your recovery in the Paper; & I have been fretting with impatience
+at my own dumbness--but tied to as many hours a day writing as I could
+possibly manage, at my little book now (last night)--finished, all but
+proofs, so that I can take my pleasure in "Specimen Days" at last; but
+before doing that must have a few words with you, dearest Friend. First a
+gossip. Do you remember Maggie Lesley? She came to see us on her way to
+Paris, where she is working all alone & very earnestly to get through
+training as an artist--then going to start in a studio of her own in
+Philadelphia. She, like my mother's sister, are to me fine, lovable
+samples of American women--in whom, I mean, I detect, like the distinctive
+aroma of a flower, something special--that is American--a decisive new
+quality to old-world perceptions. Herby is working away still chiefly at
+the Consuelo picture--has got a very beautiful model to-day sitting to
+him. His summer work was down in Warwickshire, making sketches--& very
+charming ones they are, of George Eliot's native scenes--one of a
+garden-nook--up steep, old, worn stone steps bordered with flowers that is
+enticing--it will make a lovely background for a figure picture.--Giddy's
+voice is growing in richness & strength--& she works with all her heart,
+hoping one day to be a real artist vocally--in church & oratorio music.
+She will not have power or dramatic ability for opera--nor can I wish that
+she had; there are so many thorns with the roses in that path. I fear you
+will be a loser by Bogne's bankruptcy. Did I tell you that among our
+friends one of your warmest admirers is Henry Holmes, the great violinist
+(equal [to] Joachim some think--we among them). Per. & wife & little
+grandson all well. My love to brother & sister & to Hattie [&] Jessie.
+Good-bye, dear Walt. I hope to write more & better soon.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Greetings to the Staffords.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Rd.
+  Hampstead
+  Jan. 27, '83._
+
+It is not for want of thinking of you, dear Walt, that I write but seldom:
+for indeed my thoughts are chiefly occupied with you & your other
+self--your Poems--& with struggles to say a few words that I think want
+saying about them; that might help some to their birthright who now stand
+off, either ignorant or misapprehending.
+
+We all go on much as usual.
+
+_Feb. 13._ I wonder if you will like a true story of Lady Dilke that I
+heard the other day--I do: It was before her marriage. She was a handsome
+young heiress, a daring horsewoman, fond of hunting. There was a man,
+weakly & of good position, who had behaved very basely & cruelly to a
+young girl in her neighbourhood, & when (as is the case in England) half
+the county was assembled on the hunting field, Lady D. faced him & said in
+a voice that could be heard afar, "Sir you are a black-guard, & if these
+gentlemen had the right spirit in them they would horsewhip you." He
+looked at her with effrontery & made a mocking bow. "But," she continued,
+"since they won't, I will"--and she cut him across the face with her
+riding whip; upon which he turned and rode off the field, like a dog with
+his tail between his legs, & reappeared in that neighbourhood no more. She
+was a woman much beloved--died at the birth of her first child (from too
+much chloroform having been given her). Her husband was heart-broken. I
+see you, too, are having floods. With us it pours five days out of seven,
+& so in Germany & France. We have made the acquaintance of Arabella
+Buckley, who has just written an interesting article about Darwin, whom
+she knew well, for the _Century_. She says his was the most entirely
+beautiful & perfect nature she ever came in contact with. How I wish we
+could have a glimpse of each other, dear Friend--half an hour talk--nay, a
+good long look & a hand-shake. Herby is overhead painting in his
+studio--such a pleasant room. How is John Burroughs? We owe him a letter &
+thanks for a good art. on Carlyle. Love to you, dearest friend.
+
+Hearty remembrances to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.
+
+A. G.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXIV
+
+HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Well Road, Hampstead, London, England
+  April 29th, '83._
+
+MY DEAR WALT:
+
+Your card to hand last night, with its sad account of dear Mrs. Stafford's
+health; but what the doctor says is cheering. I wonder, though, what the
+doctor would call good weather--mild spring, I suppose.
+
+Very glad, my dear old Walt, to see your strong familiar handwriting
+again; it does one good, it's so individual that it is next to seeing you.
+Right glad to hear of your good health--had an idea that you were not so
+well again this winter. John Burroughs was very violent against my
+intaglio; on the other hand, Alma Tadema--our great painter here--liked it
+very much. I take violent criticism pretty philosophically, now that I see
+how unreliable it nearly always is. John Burroughs has got a fixed idea
+about your personality, and that is that the top of your head is a foot
+high and any portrait that doesn't develop the "dome" is no
+portrait.--Curious what eyes a man may have for everything except a
+picture. I finished lately a life-size portrait of James Simmons, J.P., a
+hunting (fox) squire of the old school--such a fine old fellow. My
+portrait represents him standing firmly, in a scarlet hunting-coat well
+stained with many a wet chase, his great whip tucked under his arm whilst
+buttoning on his left glove, white buckskin trousers in shade relieving
+the scarlet coat, black velvet hunting cap, dark rich blue background to
+qualify and cool the scarlet. I wish you could see it. Then I have painted
+a subject "The Good Gray Poet's Gift." I have long meant to build up
+something of you from my studies, adding colour. You play a prominent part
+in this picture--seated at table bending over a nosegay of flowers,
+poetizing, before presenting them to mother. I am standing up bending over
+the tea-pot, with the kettle, filling it up; opposite you sits Giddy; out
+of the window a pretty view of Cannon place, Hampstead. Mater thinks it a
+pretty picture and a good likeness of you, just as you used to sit at tea
+with us at 1729 N. 22nd St. Now I am going out for a stroll on Hampstead
+Heath. Have just come in from a long ramble over the Heaths--a lovely soft
+spring day, innumerable birds in full song. I think J. B. is right when he
+says that your birds are more plaintive than ours--it's nature's way of
+compensating us for a loss of sunshine: what would England be without the
+merry lark, the very embodiment of cheeriness. Are not the Carlyle &
+Emerson letters interesting? It seems to me to be one of the most
+beautiful and pathetic things in literature, C's fondness for E. But all
+Englishmen, I must tell you, are not grumblers like Carlyle; he stands
+quite alone in that quality--look at Darwin!
+
+I should be grateful for another postcard. With all love,
+
+HERB. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead
+  May 6, '83._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I feel as if this beautiful spring morning here in England must send you
+greetings through me. Our sunny little mound of garden, which runs down
+toward the south, is fragrant with hyacinths and wall-flowers (beautiful,
+tawny, reddish, yellow fellows laden with rich perfume)--and at the bottom
+is a big old cherry tree--one mass of snowy blossom; in a neighbour's gay
+garden & beyond is a distant glimpse of some tall elms just putting on
+their first tender green: our little breakfast room where I always sit of
+a morning opens with glass doors into this garden. Herby is gone with the
+"Sunday Tramps," of whom he is a member, for a ten or fifteen-mile walk.
+Said tramps are some half dozen friends & neighbours, some of them very
+learned professors but genial good fellows withal, who agree to spend
+every other Sunday morning in taking one of their long walks together--& a
+very good time they have. Giddy is gone to hear a lecture; our bonnie
+Scotch girl is roasting the beef for dinner, singing the while in the
+kitchen; and pussy & I are sitting very companionable & meditative in the
+little room before described.
+
+You cannot think, dear friend, what a pleasure it was to have a whole big
+letter from you (not that I despise Postcards--they are good stop-gaps,
+but not the real thing). Yes, I have & prize the article on the Hebrew
+Scriptures. How I wish you could make up your mind to spend your summer
+holiday with us.
+
+I am still struggling along, striving to say something which, if I can say
+it to my mind, will be useful--will clear away a little of the rubbish
+that hides you from men's eyes. I hear the "Eminent Women Series" is
+having quite a large sale in America. Good-bye. Love to Mrs. Whitman.
+Greetings to your brother. Love from us all to you.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead, Jul. 30, 1883._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Lazy me, that have been thinking letters to you instead of writing them!
+We have Dr. Bucke's book at last; could not succeed in buying one at
+Tuerbner's--I believe they all sold directly--but he has sent us one. There
+are some things in it I prize very highly--namely, Helen Price's
+"Memoranda" and Thomas A. Gere's. These I like far better than any
+personal reminiscences of you I have ever read & I feel much drawn to the
+writers of them. Also your letter to Mrs. Price from the Hospitals, dear
+Friend. That makes one hand-in-hand with you--then & there--& gives one a
+glimpse of a very beautiful friendship. But why & why did Dr. Bucke set
+himself to counteract that beneficient law of nature's by which the dust
+tends to lay itself? And carefully gathering together again all the
+rubbish stupid or malevolent that has been written of you, toss it up in
+the air again to choke and blind or disgust as many as it may? What a
+curious piece of perversity to mistake this for candour & a judicial
+spirit.[39] Then again, how do I hate all that unmeaning, irrelevant
+clatter about what Rabelais or Shakespeare or the ancients & their times
+tolerated in the way of coarseness or plainness of speech. As if you
+wanted apologizing for or could be apologized for on that ground! If these
+poems are to be _tolerated_, I, for one, could not tolerate them. If they
+are not the highest lesson that has yet been taught in refinement &
+purity, if they do not banish all possibility of coarseness of thought &
+feeling, there would be nothing to be said for them. But they do: I am as
+sure of that as of my own existence. When will men begin to understand
+them?
+
+We have had pleasant glimpses of several American friends this summer--of
+Kate Hillard for instance, who, by the bye narrowly escaped a bad accident
+just at our door--the harness broke & the cab came down on the horse &
+frightened him so that he bolted--struck the cab against a lamp-post
+(happily, else it would have been worse)--overturned them & it--but when
+they crawled out no worse harm was done than a few cuts from the glass--&
+Kate & her friend behaved very pluckily, & we had a pleasant evening
+together after all. Then there was Arthur Peterson, looking much as in the
+old Philadelphia days: and Emma & Annie Lazarus--who, owing to some
+letters of introduction from James the novelist, have had a very gay time
+indeed--been quite lionized--and last, not least, Mr. Dalton Dorr, the
+curator of the Pennsylvania Museum in Fairmount Park--whom we all liked
+much. He is enjoying his visit here with all his heart--is a great
+enthusiast for our old Gothic Cathedrals, and for everything
+beautiful--but says there is nothing such a source of unceasing wonder &
+delight as riding about London & over the bridges &c on the top of an
+omnibus watching the endless flow of people--it is indeed a kind of human
+Mississippi or Niagara.
+
+The young folks are busy packing up to start for the seaside. Herby wants
+a background for a picture in which green turf & trees and all the
+richness of vegetation come down to the very edge of the sea and I seem to
+remember such a place near Lynn Regis, where I was thirty years ago, when
+my eldest child was born, so they are going to look it up. We hear the
+heat is very tremendous in America this year. I hope you are as well as
+ever able to stand it & enjoy it? I wonder where you are. Friendly
+greetings to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie & the Staffords. Love to
+you, dear Friend, from us all.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+My little book on Mary Lamb just out--will send you a copy in a day or
+two.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXVII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead
+  Oct. 13, '83._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Long & long does it seem since I have had any word or sign from you. I
+hope all goes well & that you have had a pleasant, refreshing summer trip
+somewhere. All goes on much as usual with us.
+
+_Hythe. Kent. Oct. 21._ Not having felt very well the last month or two,
+and Giddy also seeming to need a little bracing up, we came down to this
+ancient town by the sea--one of the Cinque Ports--on Wednesday, and much
+we like it--a fine open sea--a delicious "briny odour"--and inland much
+that is curious and interesting--for this part of the Kentish Coast--so
+near to France--has innumerable old castles, forts, moats, traces
+everywhere of centuries of warfare and of means of defence against our
+great neighbour. It is a fine hilly, woody country, too, and very
+picturesque these gray massive ruins, many of them used now as farm
+houses, look. The men of Kent are very proud of their country and are
+reckoned a fine race--tall, muscular, ruddy-complexioned, and often too
+with thick, tawny-red beards--curious how in our little island the
+differences of race-stock are still so discernible--keep along this same
+coast to the west only about a couple of hundred miles & you come to such
+a different type--dark--blackest and Cornish men.--I get a nice letter
+now & then from John Burroughs. I also saw this summer two women doctors
+who were very kind & good friends to my darling Bee--Drs. Pope--twin
+sisters from Boston, whom it did me good to see. They work hard--have a
+good practice--& say they don't know what a day's illness means so far as
+they themselves are concerned. They tell me also that the women doctors
+are doing capital work in America--and that one of them, who was with dear
+Beatrice at the Penn. Med. Col., Dr. Alice Bennett, is the efficient head
+of the woman's department of a large lunatic asylum. We are getting on in
+England too--but the field where English women doctors find the most work
+& the best position is India, where as the women are not allowed by their
+male relatives to be attended by men, the mortality was immense.--Herby
+has taken a better studio than our house afforded--both as to light &
+size--& finds the advantage great. I expect he is having a delightful walk
+this brilliant morning with the "Hampstead Tramps"--of whom I think I have
+told you. They often walk fifteen miles or so on Sunday morning.
+
+Such a glorious afternoon it has been by the sea--sapphire colour--the air
+brisk & elastic, yet soft. To-morrow Gran goes home & I shall be all alone
+here.--I hear of "Specimen Days" in a letter from Australia--there will be
+a large audience for you there some day, dear Friend. I like what John
+Burroughs has been writing about Carlyle much. We have had nothing but
+stupidities of late about him here--but there will come a great reaction
+from all this abuse, I have no doubt--he did put so much gall in his ink
+sometimes, human nature can't be expected to take it altogether meekly. I
+hope you received my little book safely. I should be a hypocrite if I
+pretended not to care whether you found patience to read it--for I grew to
+love Mary & Charles Lamb so much during my task that I want you to love
+them too--& to see what a beautiful friendship was theirs with Coleridge.
+
+How are Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie? Send me a few words soon.
+
+Good-bye, dearest Friend.
+
+ANN GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXVIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead
+  April 5, '84._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Those few words of yours to Herby "tasted good" to us--few, but enough,
+seeing that we can fill out between the lines with what you have given us
+of yourself forever & always in your books--& that is how I comfort myself
+for having so few letters. But I turn many wistful thoughts toward
+America, and were not I & mine bound here by unseverable ties, did we not
+seem to grow & belong here as by a kind of natural destiny that has to be
+fulfilled very cheerfully, could I make America my home for the sake of
+being near you in body as I am in heart & soul--but Time has good things
+in store for us sooner or later, I doubt not. I could hardly express to
+you how welcome is the thought of death to me--not in the sense of any
+discontent with life--but as life with fresh energies & wider horizon &
+hand in hand again with those that are gone on first.
+
+Herby found the little bit of gray cloth very useful--but one day _save
+him an old suit_. Your figure in the picture is, I think, a fair
+suggestion of one aspect of you; but not, could not of course be, an
+adequate portrait. He will never rest till he has done his best to achieve
+that. As soon as he can afford it (for it is a very slow business indeed
+for a young artist to make money in England, though when he does begin he
+is better paid than in America) he means to run over to see you. He says
+he should like always to spend his winters in New York. I say how very
+highly I prize that last slip you sent me, "A backward glance on my own
+road"? It both corroborates & explains much that I feel very deeply.--If
+you are seeing Mrs. Whitman, please say her letter was a pleasure & that I
+shall write again before very long. I feel as if this letter would never
+find you--be sure & let us know your whereabouts.
+
+Remembrance & love.
+
+Good-bye, dear Walt.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXIX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Hampstead
+  May 2, '84._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Your card (your very voice & touch, drawing me across the Atlantic close
+beside you) was put into my hand just as I was busy copying out "With
+husky, haughty lips O sea" to pin into my "Leaves of Grass." I hardly
+think there is anything grander there. I think surely they must see that
+that is the very Soul of Nature uttering itself sublimely.
+
+Who do you think came to see us on Sunday? Professor Dowden.[40] And I
+know not when I have set eyes on a more beautiful personality. I think you
+would be as much attracted towards him as I was. It was he who told me
+(full of enthusiasm) of the Poems in _Harper's_ which I had not seen or
+heard of. We had a very happy two or three hours together, talking of you
+& looking through Blake's drawings. He is a tall man, complexion tanned &
+healthy, nose finely modelled, dark eyes with plenty of life & meaning in
+them, hair grayish--I should think he was between forty & fifty--but says
+his father is still a fine hale old man.
+
+Herby disappointed again this year of getting anything into the R.
+Academy.
+
+I think I like the idea of the shanty, if you have any one to take good
+care of you, to cook nicely, keep all neat & clean &c. I wonder if I have
+ever been in Mickle St. I, still busy, still hammering away to see if I
+can help those that "balk" at "Leaves of Grass". Perhaps you will smile at
+me--at any rate it bears good fruit to me--I seem to be in a manner living
+with you the while.
+
+Everything full of beauty just now here, as no doubt it is with you.
+
+Good-bye, dearest friend--don't forget the letter that is to come soon.
+Love from us all, love & again love from
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXX
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Aug. 5, '84._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+The notion [that] one is going to write a nice long letter is fatal to
+writing at all. And so I mean to scribble something, somehow, a little
+oftener & make up in quantity for quality! For after all the great thing,
+the thing one wants, is to _meet_--if not in the flesh--then in the
+spirit. A word will do it. I am getting on--my heart is in my work--&
+though I have been long about it, it won't be long--but I think & hope it
+will be strong. Quite a sprinkling of American friends--some new ones this
+spring--among them Mr. & Mrs. Pennell[41] from Philadelphia--whom you
+know--we like them well--hope to see them again & again. Also Miss Keyse
+(her sister married Emerson's son) from Concord, and the Lesleys--Mary
+Lesley has married & gone to the West--St. Paul--has just got a little
+son.
+
+How does the "little shanty" answer, I wonder? Herby has been painting
+some charming little bits in an old terraced garden here. I do wish you
+could hear Giddy sing now; I am sure her voice would "go to the right
+spot," as you used to say. Good-bye, dearest friend. Love from all & most
+from
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Wolverhampton
+  Oct. 26, '84._
+
+DEAR WALT:
+
+I don't suppose the enclosed will give you nearly so much pleasure as it
+gives me. But Villiers Stanford is, I think, the best composer England has
+produced since the days of Purcell & Blow, and your words will be sent
+home to hundreds & thousands who had not before seen them. How lovely the
+words read as themes for great music!
+
+I have been staying with old friends who have a house you would enjoy--it
+stands all alone on the top of a heath-clad hill, with miles of coppice
+(young woods) below it, and spread out beyond is a rich valley with more
+wooded hills jutting out into it--and you see the storms a long way off
+travelling up from the sea, and you can wander for miles & miles through
+the woods or over the breezy hill--or, as you sit at your window, feel
+yourself in the very heart of a great, beautiful solitude. Very kind, warm
+friends, too, they are, who leave you as free as a bird to do what you
+like. I have had all the papers, dear friend, & have enjoyed them.
+
+Now I am in the heart of the "Black Country," as we call it--black with
+the smoke of thousands of foundries & works of all kinds--staying with
+Percy & his wife. Percy is having a very arduous time here starting some
+Steel Works--& what with his men being inexperienced & times bad & the
+machinery not yet perfectly adjusted, he seems harassed night & day--for
+these things have to be kept going all night too--but I hope he will get
+into smoother waters soon. The little son is rosy & bright & healthy--goes
+to school now, which, being an only child, he enjoys mightily for the sake
+of the companionship of other boys.
+
+Love from us all, dear friend.
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Grace & Herby well & busy when I left.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead
+  Dec. 17, '84._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+At last I have extracted a little bit of news about you from friend
+Carpenter, who never comes to see us and is [as] reluctant to write
+letters as--somebody else that I know. That you have a comfortable,
+elderly couple to keep house for you was a good hearing--for "the old
+shanty" had risen before my eyes as somewhat lonely, & perhaps the
+cooking, &c., not well attended to.--There seems a curious kind of ebb and
+flow about the recognition of you in England--just now there are signs of
+the flow--of a steadily gathering great wave, one indication of which is
+the little pamphlet just published in Edinburgh--one of the "Round Table"
+Series--no doubt a copy has been sent you. If not and you would care to
+see it, I will send you one. On the whole I like it (barring one or two
+stupidities)--at any rate, as compared with what has hitherto been
+written. My poor article has so far been rejected by editors--so I have
+laid it by for a little, to come with a fresh eye & see if I can make it
+in any way more likely to win a hearing--though I often say to myself, "If
+they have not ears to hear you, how is it likely one can unstop their
+ears?" But on the other hand there is always the chance of leading some
+to read the Poems who had not else done so.--Percy & Norah and Archie, now
+grown a very sturdy active little fellow, are coming to spend Xmas with
+us, which is a great pleasure.
+
+I am deep in Froude's last volumes of "Carlyle's Life in London". Folks
+are grumbling that they have had enough & too much of Carlyle & _his_
+grumblings and sarcasms. But he is an inexhaustibly interesting figure to
+me, & will remain so in the long run to the world, I am persuaded. It
+grieves me that he should have been so cruelly unjust to himself as a
+husband--that remorse, those bitter self-reproaches, were undeserved, were
+altogether morbid: he was not only an infinitely better husband than she
+was wife: he was wonderfully affectionate & tender & just--& as to his
+temper & irritable nerves, she knew what she was about when she married
+him. Herby was walking through the British Museum the other day with a
+friend when a group, a ready-made picture, struck him--it was a young
+student-sculptress, a graceful girl high on a pile of boxes modelling in
+clay a copy of an antique statue, & standing below, looking up at her, was
+a young sculptor in his blouse, criticising her work with much animation &
+gesture; the background of the group, a part of the Elgin Marbles. So this
+is what Herby is painting & I think he will make a very jolly little
+picture out of it. I have been much a prisoner to the house with bad colds
+ever since I returned from Wolverhampton, but am beginning to get out
+again--which puts new life into me. I have never envied anything in this
+world but a man's strong legs & powers of tramping, tramping, over hill &
+dale as long as he pleases--legs would content me and a sound breathing
+apparatus! I am in no hurry for wings. Giddy's voice, too, is just now
+eclipsed by cold.
+
+I hope you have escaped this evil and are able to jaunt to & fro on the
+ferries as freely as ever. And I hope the pleasant Quaker friends are
+well--and Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie--there is a fellow
+student of Giddy's at the Guild Hall music school who so reminds her of
+Hattie.
+
+Love from us all, dear friend. Most from me.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXIII
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Keats Corner
+  Hampstead, England
+  Feb. 27, '85._
+
+DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+How has the winter passed with you I wonder? Me it has imprisoned very
+much with bronchial & asthmatic troubles--and the four walls of the house
+& the ceiling seem to close in upon one's spirit as well as one's body,
+all too much. I hope you have been able to wend to and fro daily on the
+great ferry boats & enjoy the beautiful broad river & the sky & the
+throngs of people as of old--you are in my thoughts as constantly as ever,
+though I have been so silent. Percy & his wife & the little son spent some
+weeks with us at Christmas & now they have taken a house quite near, into
+which they will be moving in a week or two. I can't tell you what a dear,
+affectionate, reasonable, companionable little fellow Archie is--now six
+years old. Perhaps you will have seen in the American papers that Sidney
+Thomas, the cousin with whom Percy was associated in the discovery of the
+Basic process, is dead--he spent his strength too freely--wore himself out
+at 35--he was much loved by all with whom he had to do. His mother &
+sister have been watching & hoping against hope & taking him to warm
+climates, he himself full of hope--the mind bright and active to the
+last--& now he is gone--& his eldest brother died only two months before
+him.--I cannot help grieving over public affairs too--never in my lifetime
+has old England been in such a bad way--no honest & capable man seemingly
+to take the helm--& what Carlyle was fond of describing as the attempt to
+guide the ship by the shouts of the bystanders on shore--the newspapers
+&c. prospering very ill. A government that tries perpetually how to do it
+and how not to do it at the same moment! The best comfort is that I do not
+think there is any, the smallest sign, of deterioration in the English
+race; so we shall pull through somehow, after tremendous disasters. How
+many things should I like to sit and chat with you about, dear Walt--above
+all to see you again! I could not get my article into any of the magazines
+I most wished. I believe it is coming out in _To-Day_. Giddy was so
+pleased at your sending her a paper--a very capital article too it is of
+Miss Kellogg. I was interested also in a little paragraph I found about
+Pullman town, near Chicago, which confirmed my suspicion that it was not a
+thing with healthy roots--but only a benevolent despotism. I am seeing a
+good deal of your socialists just now--& I confess that though they mean
+well, I think they have less sense in their heads than any people I ever
+saw.
+
+I am going to pay a little visit to those friends (friendliest of friends)
+who live on the lonely top of a heath-covered hill--with such an outlook,
+such wooded slopes and broad valleys--and the storms travelling up hours
+before they arrive--such sweeps of sunshine too!--& they mean to drive me
+about till I am quite strong again. So the next letter I write, dear
+Friend, shall be more cheery. I am afraid to look back lest this one
+should read too grumbly to send. I don't feel grumbly however--only shut
+in. Herby has been working hard at getting up an exhibition here to help
+along our Public Library. It is so very hard to stir up anything like
+public spirit & unity of action in London or its suburbs--I suppose
+because of its vastness--& alas! also the social cliques & gentilities &
+snobbishnesses. Good-bye, dearest Walt, with love from all.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXIV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Hampstead
+  May 4, '85._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+Delays of Editors--there is no end to them! I am promised now that the
+art. shall appear in the June No., & if it does I will send you at once
+the number of copies you name. And if it does not, I think I had best get
+it back & have done with the editors of _To-day_ & try for some other &
+better opening again.
+
+I have been reading & re-reading & pondering over Froude's 9 vols of
+Carlyle--"The Reminiscences," "Letters," &c. &c.--and am pretty well at
+boiling point with indignation against Froude--boiling point of anger &
+freezing point of contempt. His betrayal at every point of a sacred trust!
+lazy, slip-shod editing! not even taking the pains to put letters and
+their answers together--but printing the one in 1882 & the others three or
+four years after--so that half the meaning and all the _mutuality_ of the
+letters are lost! And then the sly malignity of the comments with which
+they are preceded! If I live I will do my utmost to expose all this & to
+show that Mrs. Carlyle was no injured heroine, nor he a selfish &
+neglected husband. Both had their faults, but the balance of affection &
+tenderness was largely on his side, as well as of other great qualities:
+though I like her too--& think she would have scorned Froude's ignoble
+championship.
+
+Herby has had rather better luck with his pictures this year. Has
+one--"The Sculptor's Lesson"--fairly well hung at the Royal Academy--where
+it shines out very cheerfully & holds its own modestly, I may say without
+maternal vanity. I think I described to you the little bit of actual life
+it depicts--a young girl he saw at the British Museum modelling a copy of
+an antique statue & young sculptor in his blouse standing below & giving
+her some animated criticism--a little bit of the Elgin marbles in the
+background. Herb. has also a little picture he calls "Midsummer"--a bit of
+a very old & buttressed wall hung with roses in full bloom, & Giddy's
+figure standing above--at the Grosvenor. Now if he has the luck to sell
+too! He has a commission also to paint a small portrait of me for our
+friends at Marley, on which he is busy just now. As soon as he has a
+little spare money in his pocket I think his first use of it will be a run
+across the Atlantic & a glimpse of you, dear Friend. Giddy is going to
+sing at a Soiree of socialists & revolutionary folk in general on
+Wednesday. Her songs are to be "The Wearing of the Green"--& "Poland
+Dirge" & the "Marseillaise". You will think we are getting pretty red hot!
+But alas! though our sympathy with the Cause--the cause of suffering
+millions--is warm, our faith in the wisdom & ability of those who are
+aspiring to be the leaders, so far as we know anything of them--is
+infinitesimal.
+
+What a burst of beauty we have had during the last ten days! We look out
+just now on a sea of apple & pear blossoms, from the deepest pink to
+dazzling white--& the tenderest green intermingled with all. I hope you
+are able to be out nearly all day & enjoy all--and that home affairs go
+smoothly & comfortably & that Mrs. Davis[42] is attentive & good & every
+way adequate as care-taker.
+
+I am looking forward very much to the "After Songs" and "Letters of
+Parting". Does the sale of "Leaves of Grass" continue pretty steady? I
+look forward with a sort of dread to seeing my article in proof, lest I
+should feel very disappointed with it.
+
+Your loving friend,
+
+A. GILCHRIST.
+
+
+Do you ever see or hear from Mr. Marvin? He is a favourite with all of us.
+Do you remember how we laughed at his dramatic presentation of a negro
+prayer meeting?
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXV
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _Hampstead, London
+  Jan. 21, 85._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+I hope the _To-days_ have come safe to hand. I am thinking a great deal
+about the new edition; and cannot help hoping you are going to revert to
+the plan of the Centennial Edition, which issued your writings in two
+independent volumes. May I, without being presumptuous, dear Walt, tell
+you how I should dearly like to see them arranged? I want "Crossing
+Brooklyn Ferry," "Song at Sunset," "Song of the Open Road," "Starting from
+Paumanok," "Carol of Words," "Carol of Occupations" and either as "As I
+Sat by Blue Ontario's Shore" or the Preface to edit. 55 put into "Two
+Rivulets"--you could make room for them that the volumes might balance in
+size by making them exchange places with the "Centennial Songs" and the
+"Memoranda During the War"; not that these are not precious to me, but I
+want it dearest because I want in the Two Rivulet Volume what will best
+prepare the reader, lift him up to the true point of view, and make him
+all your own, before he comes to the inner sanctuary of "Calamus" & "Walt
+Whitman" & "Children of Adam."
+
+Monday morn. Your letter just to hand. It gives me deep joy, dear Friend.
+I have sent copies of _To-Day_ to Dr. Bucke & John Burroughs but did not
+know of his change of address; so fear it has miscarried. I will send
+another, and also one to W. O'Connor.--You did not tell me about your
+fall--unless indeed a letter has been lost. It fills me with concern
+because of the difficulty it increases in getting that free out-door life
+that is so dear & essential to your soul & body, and because, too, I still
+cherished in my heart a hope that I should yet see you again--here in my
+own home--& now it seems next to an impossibility. Right thankful am I to
+hear about Mrs. Davis--that she takes good care of you--please give her a
+friendly greeting from me. I am going to have rather a bothersome
+summer--first of all, the house full of workmen to make all clean & tidy;
+& then my Scotch lassie, friend & factotum rather than servant, must have
+a holiday & go to her friends in Scotland for a month. I shall heartily
+welcome your friend, no need to say, & be sure to like her. Love from
+Grace & Herb. & most of all from me. I have plenty more to say but won't
+delay this.
+
+Good-bye, dear Walt.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER LXXVI
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+  _12 Well Rd., Hampstead, Eng.
+  July 20, '85._
+
+MY DEAREST FRIEND:
+
+A kind of anxiety has for some time past weighed upon me and upon others,
+I find, who love & admire you, that you do not have all the comforts you
+ought to have; that you are perhaps sometimes straightened for means. We
+have had letters from several young men, almost or quite strangers to us,
+asking questions on this subject; and we hoped & thought that if this were
+so, you would permit those who have received such priceless gifts from you
+to put their gratitude into some tangible shape, some "free-will
+offering." Hence the paragraph was put into the _Athenaeum_ which I send
+with this, and we were proceeding to organize our forces when your paper
+came to hand this morning (the _Camden Post_, July 3), which seems
+decisively to bid us desist. Or at all events wait till we had told you of
+our wishes and plan. One thing would, I feel sure, give you pleasure in
+any case; and that is to know that there is over here a little
+band--perhaps indeed it is now quite a considerable one, for we had not
+yet had time to ascertain how considerable--who would joyfully respond to
+that Poem of yours, "To Rich Givers."
+
+A friend and near neighbour of ours, Frederick Wedmore, is coming over to
+America this autumn, and counts much on coming to see you. He is a
+well-known writer on Art here--a friendly, candid, open-minded man with
+whom, I think, you will enjoy a talk.
+
+I am on the lookout for Miss Smith[43]--shall indeed enjoy a talk with a
+special friend of yours, dear Walt. I hope she will not fail to come.
+Giddy is away at Haslemere. Herby just going to write for himself to you.
+
+That is a very graphic bit in the _Post_--the portrait of Hugo, the canary
+& the kitten--I like to know all that--as well as to hear the talk.
+
+My love, dear Walt.
+
+ANNE GILCHRIST.
+
+
+
+
+So far as can be ascertained this is the last letter. Anne Gilchrist died
+Nov. 29th, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+[1] Reprinted from the _Radical_ for May, 1870.
+
+[2] Reprinted from "Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings," by her son
+Herbert H. Gilchrist--London, 1887.
+
+[3] Reprinted from Horace Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in Camden," I,
+219-220. Although addressed to Rossetti, this letter is evidently intended
+as much for Mrs. Gilchrist, whose name was not at this time known to
+Whitman.
+
+[4] Alexander Gilchrist.
+
+[5] Mrs. Gilchrist's emotion here apparently prevents her memory from
+doing complete justice to her own past. For a very different expression of
+her feelings toward Alexander Gilchrist, written at the time of her
+betrothal, see her letter announcing the engagement which she sent to her
+friend, Julia Newton, and which is to be found on pp. 30-31 of her son's
+biography.
+
+[6] William Michael Rossetti.
+
+[7] To W. M. Rossetti. See _ante_, p. x.
+
+[8] First printed in Horace Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in Camden," III,
+513.
+
+[9] Evidently meaning the letter of September 3d.
+
+[10] Missing.
+
+[11] Percy Carlyle Gilchrist who became an inventive metallurgist.
+
+[12] Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist, who became an artist.
+
+[13] Printed from copy retained by Whitman.
+
+[14] To deliver his Dartmouth College ode.
+
+[15] William Douglas O'Connor, an ardent Washington friend of Whitman.
+
+[16] John Burroughs, the naturalist, then a young author and disciple of
+Whitman.
+
+[17] Anne Gilchrist's son.
+
+[18] Horace Greeley, nominated by the Democrats as their candidate for the
+Presidency.
+
+[19] Burlington, Vermont, where Whitman's sister, Mrs. Heyde, lived.
+
+[20] Henry M. Stanley, African Explorer.
+
+[21] Undated. Made up from copy among Whitman's papers. This letter
+evidently belongs to the summer of 1873.
+
+[22] The "Prayer of Columbus" was first published in _Harper's Magazine_
+in March, 1874.
+
+[23] John Cowardine. See "Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings," pp. 149
+ff.
+
+[24] Daughters of Thomas Jefferson Whitman.
+
+[25] Mrs. George Whitman.
+
+[26] Sister.
+
+[27] Niece.
+
+[28] Sidney Morse, the sculptor.
+
+[29] "Man's Moral Nature," by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke.
+
+[30] This extract (?) is taken from H. H. Gilchrist's "Anne Gilchrist," p.
+252. It is undated, but it is clearly a reply to the foregoing letter from
+Mrs. Gilchrist.
+
+[31] Durham Cathedral.
+
+[32] Anne Gilchrist's grandchild.
+
+[33] Reproduced in "Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings," facing p. 253.
+
+[34] Richard Watson Gilder.
+
+[35] Of Timber Creek, Camden County, New Jersey, whose hospitality helped
+Whitman to improve his health.
+
+[36] The second edition of Alexander Gilchrist's "William Blake."
+
+[37] Because of the death of her daughter Beatrice.
+
+[38] Whitman's London publisher.
+
+[39] Dr. Bucke, in his "Life of Whitman," had reprinted at the end of the
+volume many criticisms of the poet, adverse as well as favourable;
+likewise W. D. O'Connor's "Good Gray Poet."
+
+[40] Edward Dowden, of the University of Dublin.
+
+[41] Artists, famous for their etchings. Mr. Pennell made several etchings
+for Dr. Bucke's biography of Whitman.
+
+[42] Mrs. Mary Davis, who was Whitman's housekeeper until his death.
+
+[43] Daughter of Pearsall Smith, of Philadelphia.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt
+Whitman, by Walt Whitman and Anne Burrows Gilchrist
+
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