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diff --git a/35395.txt b/35395.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5a1367 --- /dev/null +++ b/35395.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7595 @@ +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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS--ANNE GILCHRIST, WALT WHITMAN *** + +***** This file should be named 35395.txt or 35395.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/9/35395/ + +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.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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