The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman

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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
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THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
[Illustration: Walt Whitman
Photograph taken about the year 1870]
THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
Edited
With an Introduction
BY THOMAS B. HARNED
One of Walt Whitman's Literary Executors
Illustrated
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
In Memoriam
AUGUSTA TRAUBEL HARNED
1856-1914
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE xix
INTRODUCTION xxi
A WOMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN 3
A CONFESSION OF FAITH 23
LETTER
I. WALT WHITMAN TO WILLIAM MICHAEL
ROSSETTI AND ANNE GILCHRIST 56
II. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne_
_September 3, 1871_ 58
III. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Shotter Mill, Haslemere, Surrey_
_October 23, 1871_ 65
IV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Washington, D. C._
_November 3, 1871_ 67
V. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_November 27, 1871_ 68
VI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_January 24, 1872_ 72
VII. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Washington, D. C._
_February 8, 1872_ 75
VIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_April 12, 1872_ 76
IX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_June 3, 1872_ 79
X. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_July 14, 1872_ 82
XI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq._
_November 12, 1872_ 85
XII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London, N. W._
_January 31, 1873_ 86
XIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London, N. W._
_May 20, 1873_ 88
XIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne, Halstead_
_August 12, 1873_ 91
XV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Camden, New Jersey_
_Undated. Summer of 1873_ 94
XVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne, Halstead_
_September 4, 1873_ 96
XVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_November 3, 1873_ 98
XVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_December 8, 1873_ 102
XIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_February 26, 1874_ 105
XX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_March 9, 1874_ 108
XXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_May 14, 1874_ 109
XXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_July, 4, 1874_ 112
XXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne_
_September 3, 1874_ 115
XXIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_December 9, 1874_ 119
XXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_December 30, 1874_ 121
XXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne, Halstead_
_February 21, 1875_ 123
XXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_May 18, 1875_ 126
XXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne_
_August 28, 1875_ 129
XXIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Square, London_
_November 16, 1875_ 133
XXX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_December 4, 1875_ 137
XXXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Blaenavon, Routzpool, Mon., England_
_January 18, 1876_ 139
XXXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_February 25, 1876_ 141
XXXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_March 11, 1876_ 143
XXXIV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Camden, New Jersey._
_Undated, March, 1876_ 145
XXXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_March 30, 1876_ 147
XXXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_April 21, 1876_ 149
XXXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_May 18, 1876_ 152
XXXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Round Hill, Northampton, Massachusetts_
_September, 1877_ 154
XXXIX. BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_New England Hospital, Codman Avenue, Boston Highlands_
_Undated_ 156
XL. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Chesterfield, Massachusetts_
_September 3, 1878_ 159
XLI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Concord, Massachusetts_
_October 25 (1878)_ 161
XLII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_39 Somerset Street, Boston_
_November 13, 1878_ 163
XLIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_January 5, 1879_ 166
XLIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_January 14, 1879_ 169
XLV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_January 27, 1879_ 171
XLVI. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_February, 2, 1879_ 173
XLVII. BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_33 Warrenton Street, Boston_
_February 16, 1879_ 175
XLVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_March 18, 1879_ 177
XLIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_March 26, 1879_ 179
L. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Glasgow, Scotland_
_June 20, 1879_ 181
LI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Lower Shincliffe, Durham_
_August 2, 1879_ 183
LII. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Camden, New Jersey_
_Undated, August, 1879_ 186
LIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Elm Villas, Elm Row, Heath Street, Hampstead, London_
_December 5, 1879_ 187
LIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_5 Mount Vernon, Hampstead_
_January 25, 1880_ 190
LV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Marley, Haslemere, England_
_August 22, 1880_ 193
LVI. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_November 30, 1880_ 195
LVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_April 18, 1881_ 197
LVIII. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, North London_
_June 5, 1881_ 200
LIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_December 14, 1881_ 203
LX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_January 29 and February 6, 1882_ 205
LXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_May 8, 1882_ 207
LXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_November 24, 1882_ 209
LXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_January 27, 1883_ 211
LXIV. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_April 29, 1883_ 213
LXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_May 6, 1883_ 215
LXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_July 30, 1883_ 217
LXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_October 13, 1883_ 220
LXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_April 5, 1884_ 223
LXIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Hampstead, London_
_May 2, 1884_ 225
LXX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, London_
_August 5, 1884_ 227
LXXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Wolverhampton_
_October 26, 1884_ 228
LXXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_December 17, 1884_ 230
LXXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_February 27, 1885_ 233
LXXIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Hampstead, London_
_May 4, 1885_ 236
LXXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Hampstead, London_
_June 21, 1885_ 239
LXXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_July 20, 1885_ 241
ILLUSTRATIONS
Walt Whitman _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Anne Gilchrist 54
Facsimile of a typical Whitman letter 94
Facsimile of one of Anne Gilchrist's letters
to Walt Whitman _in the text pages_ 131, 132
PREFACE
Probably there are few who to-day question the propriety of publishing the
love-letters of eminent persons a generation after the deaths of both
parties to the correspondence. When one recalls the published love-letters
of Abelard, of Dorothy Osborne, of Lady Hamilton, of Mary Wollstonecraft,
of Margaret Fuller, of George Sand, Bismarck, Shelley, Victor Hugo, Edgar
Allan Poe, and--to mention only one more illustrious example--of the
Brownings, one must needs look upon this form of presenting biographical
material as a well-established, if not a valuable, convention of letters.
As to the particular set of letters presented to the reader in this
volume, a word of explanation and history may be required. Most of these
letters are from Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman, a few are replies to her
letters, and a few are letters from her children to Whitman. Mrs.
Gilchrist died in 1885. When, two years later, her son, Herbert
Harlakenden Gilchrist, was collecting material for his interesting
biography of his mother, Whitman was asked for the letters that she had
written to him--or rather for extracts from them. In reply to this request
the poet said, "I do not know that I can furnish any good reason, but I
feel to keep these utterances exclusively to myself. But I cannot let your
book go to press without at least saying--and wishing it put on
record--that among the perfect women I have met (and it has been my
unspeakably good fortune to have had the very best, for mother, sisters,
and friends) I have known none more perfect in every relation, than my
dear, dear friend, Anne Gilchrist." But since Whitman carefully preserved
them for twenty years, refusing to destroy them as he had destroyed such
other written matter as he did not care to have preserved, it would appear
that he intended that so beautiful a tribute to the poetry that he had
written, no less than to the personality of the poet, should be included
in that complete biography which is being slowly written, by many hands,
of America's most unique man of genius. In any case, when these letters
came into my hands in the apportionment of Whitman's literary legacy under
the will which named me as one of his three literary executors, there were
but three things which I could honourably do with them--rather, on closer
analysis, there seemed to be but one. To leave them in _my_ will or to
place them in some public repository would have been to shift a
responsibility which was evidently mine to the shoulders of others who,
perhaps, would be in possession of fewer facts in the light of which to
discharge that responsibility. To destroy them would be to do what Whitman
should have done if it was to be done at all, and to erase forever one of
the finest tributes that either the man or the poet ever received, one of
the most touching self-revelations that a noble soul ever "poured out on
paper." The remaining alternative was to edit and publish them (after
keeping them a proper length of time), for the benefit, not only of the
general reader, but as an aid to the future biographer who from the
proper perspective will write the life of America's great poet and
prophet. In this determination my judgment has been confirmed by that of
the few sympathetic friends who, during the twenty-five years that the
letters have been in my possession, have been allowed to read them.
It is a matter of regret that so few of Whitman's letters to Mrs.
Gilchrist are available. Those included in this volume, sometimes in
fragmentary form, have been taken from loose copies found among his papers
after his death, or, in a few instances, are reprinted from Herbert
Harlakenden Gilchrist's "Anne Gilchrist" or Horace Traubel's "With Walt
Whitman in Camden." Acknowledgment of these latter is made in each
instance. But though Whitman's letters printed in this correspondence will
not compare with Mrs. Gilchrist's in point of number, enough are presented
to suggest the tenor of them all.
As a matter of fact, the first love-letter from Anne Gilchrist to Walt
Whitman was in the form of an essay written in his defense called "An
Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman." For that reason this well-known
essay is reprinted in this volume; and "A Confession of Faith," in reality
an amplification of the "Estimate" written several years after the
publication of the latter, is included. The reader who desires to follow
the story of this friendship in a chronological order will do well to read
at least the former of these tributes before beginning the letters.
Indebtedness is acknowledged to Prof. Emory Halloway of Brooklyn, New
York, for valuable suggestions.
T. B. H.
INTRODUCTION
Undoubtedly Mrs. Gilchrist's "Estimate of Walt Whitman," published in the
(Boston) _Radical_ in May, 1870, was the finest, as it was the first,
public tribute ever paid to the poet by a woman. Whitman himself so
considered it--"the proudest word that ever came to me from a woman--if
not the proudest word of all from any source." But a finer tribute was to
follow, in the sacred privacy of the love-letters which are now made
public forty years and more after they were written. The purpose of this
Introduction is not to interpret those letters, but to sketch the story in
the light of which they are to be read. And since both Anne Gilchrist and
Walt Whitman have had sympathetic and painstaking biographers, it will not
be necessary here to mention at length the already known facts of their
respective lives.
The story naturally begins with Whitman. He was born at West Hills, Long
Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. His father was of English descent, and
came of a family of sailors and farmers. His mother, to whom he himself
attributed most of his personal qualities, was of excellent Hollandic
stock. Moving to Brooklyn while still in frocks, he there passed his
boyhood and youth, but took many summer trips to visit relatives in the
country. He early left the public school for the printing offices of
local newspapers, picking enough general knowledge to enable him, when
about seventeen years of age, to teach schools in the rural districts of
his native island. Very early in life he became a writer, chiefly of short
prose tales and essays, which were accepted by the best New York
magazines. His literary and journalistic work was not confined to the
metropolis, but took him, for a few months in 1848, so far away from home
as New Orleans. In 1851-54, besides writing for and editing newspapers, he
was engaged in housebuilding, the trade of his father. Although this was,
it is said, a profitable business, he gave it up to write poetry, and
issued his first volume, "Leaves of Grass," in 1855. The book had been
written with great pains, according to a preconceived plan of the author
to be stated in the preface; and it was finally set up (by his own hands,
for want of a publisher) only, as he tells us, after many "doings and
undoings, leaving out the stock 'poetical' touches." Its publication was
the occasion of probably the most voluminous controversy of American
letters--mostly abuse, ridicule, and condemnation.
In 1862 Whitman's brother George, who had volunteered in the Union Army,
was reported badly wounded in the Fredericksburg fight. Walt, going at
once to the war front in Virginia, found that his brother's wound was not
serious enough to require his ministrations, but gradually he became
engaged in nursing other wounded soldiers, until this work, as a volunteer
hospital missionary in Washington, engrossed the major part of his time.
This continued until and for some years after the end of the war.
Whitman's own needs were supplied by occasional literary work and from his
earnings as a clerk first in the Interior and later in the Attorney
General's Department. He had gone to Washington a man of strong and
majestic physique, but his untiring devotion, fidelity, and vigilance in
nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the army hospitals in and about
Washington was soon to shatter that constitution which was ever a marvel
to its possessor, and to condemn him to pass the last two decades of his
life in unaccustomed invalidism. The history of the Civil War in America
presents no instance of nobler fulfilment of duty or of sublimer
sacrifice.
Meanwhile his muse was not neglected. His book had gone through four
editions, and, with the increment of the noble war poetry of "Drum Taps,"
had become a volume of size. At a very early period "Leaves of Grass" had
been hailed as an important literary contribution by a few of the best
thinkers in this country and in England but, generally speaking, nearly
all literary persons received it with much criticism and many
qualifications. In Washington devoted disciples like William Douglas
O'Connor and John Burroughs never varied in their uncompromising adherence
to the book and its author. This appreciation only by the few was likewise
encountered in England. The book had made a stir among the literary
classes, but its importance was not at all generally recognized. Men like
John Addington Symonds, Edward Dowden, and William Michael Rossetti were,
however, almost unrestricted in their praise.
It was William Rossetti who planned, in 1867, to bring out in England a
volume of selections from Whitman's poetry, in the belief that it was
better to leave out the poems that had provoked such adverse criticism, in
order to get Whitman a foothold among those who might prefer to have an
expurgated edition. Whitman's attitude toward the plan at the time is
given in a letter which he wrote to Rossetti on December 3, 1867: "I
cannot and will not consent of my own volition to countenance an
expurgated edition of my pieces. I have steadily refused to do so under
seductive offers, here in my own country, and must not do so in another
country." It appeared, however, that Rossetti had already advanced his
project, and Whitman graciously added: "If, before the arrival of this
letter, you have practically invested in, and accomplished, or partially
accomplished, any plan, even contrary to this letter, I do not expect you
to abandon it, at loss of outlay; but shall _bona fide_ consider you
blameless if you let it go on, and be carried out, as you may have
arranged. It is the question of the authorization of an expurgated edition
proceeding from me, that deepest engages me. The facts of the different
ways, one way or another way, in which the book may appear in England, out
of influences not under the shelter of my umbrage, are of much less
importance to me. After making the foregoing explanation, I shall, I
think, accept kindly whatever happens. For I feel, indeed know, that I am
in the hands of a friend, and that my pieces will receive that truest,
brightest of light and perception coming from love. In that, all other
and lesser requisites become pale...." The Rossetti "Selections" duly
appeared--with what momentous influence upon the two persons whose
friendship we are tracing will presently be shown.
On June 22, 1869, Anne Gilchrist, writing to Rossetti, said: "I was
calling on Madox Brown a fortnight ago, and he put into my hands your
edition of Walt Whitman's poems. I shall not cease to thank him for that.
Since I have had it, I can read no other book: it holds me entirely
spellbound, and I go through it again and again with deepening delight and
wonder. How can one refrain from expressing gratitude to you for what you
have so admirably done?..." To this Rossetti promptly responded: "Your
letter has given me keen pleasure this morning. That glorious man Whitman
will one day be known as one of the greatest sons of Earth, a few steps
below Shakespeare on the throne of immortality. What a tearing-away of the
obscuring veil of use and wont from the visage of man and of life! I am
doing myself the pleasure of at once ordering a copy of the "Selections"
for you, which you will be so kind as to accept. Genuine--i. e.,
_enthusiastic_--appreciators are not so common, and must be cultivated
when they appear.... Anybody who values Whitman as you do ought to read
the whole of him...." At a later date Rossetti gave Mrs. Gilchrist a copy
of the complete "Leaves of Grass," in acknowledging which she said, "The
gift of yours I have not any words to tell you how priceless it will be to
me...." This lengthy letter was later, at Rossetti's solicitation, worked
over for publication as the "Estimate of Walt Whitman" to which reference
has already been made.
Anne Gilchrist was primarily a woman of letters. Though her natural bent
was toward science and philosophy, her marriage threw her into association
with artists and writers of _belles lettres_. She was born in London on
February 25, 1828. She came of excellent ancestry, and received a good
education, particularly in music. She had a profoundly religious nature,
although it appears that she was never a believer in many of the orthodox
Christian doctrines. Very early in life she recognized the greatness of
such men as Emerson and Comte. In 1851, at the age of twenty-three, she
married Alexander Gilchrist, two months her junior. Though of limited
means, he possessed literary ability and was then preparing for the bar.
His early writings secured for him the friendship of Carlyle, who for
years lived next door to the Gilchrists in Cheyne Row. This friendship led
to others, and the Gilchrists were soon introduced into that supreme
literary circle which included Ruskin, Herbert Spencer, George Eliot, the
Rossettis, Tennyson, and many another great mind of that illustrious age.
Within ten years of their marriage the Gilchrists had four children, in
whom they were very happy. But in the year 1861, when Anne was
thirty-three years of age, her husband died. It was a terrible blow, but
she faced the future unflinchingly, and reared her children, giving to
each of them a profession. At the time of her husband's death his life of
William Blake was nearing completion. With the assistance of William and
Gabriel Rossetti Mrs. Gilchrist finished the work on this excellent
biography, and it was published by Macmillan. Whitman has paid a fitting
tribute to the pluck exhibited in this achievement: "Do you know much of
Blake?" said Whitman to Horace Traubel, who records the conversation in
his remarkable book "With Walt Whitman in Camden." "You know, this is Mrs.
Gilchrist's book--the book she completed. They had made up their minds to
do the work--her husband had it well under way: he caught a fever and was
carried off. Mrs. Gilchrist was left with four young children, alone: her
perplexities were great. Have you noticed that the time to look for the
best things in best people is the moment of their greatest need? Look at
Lincoln: he is our proudest example: he proved to be big as, bigger than,
any emergency--his grasp was a giant's grasp--made dark things light, made
hard things easy.... (Mrs. Gilchrist) belonged to the same noble breed:
seized the reins, was competent; her head was clear, her hand was firm."
The circumstances under which she first read Whitman's poetry have been
narrated. When in 1869 Whitman became aware of the Rossetti
correspondence, he felt greatly honoured, and through Rossetti he sent his
portrait to the as yet anonymous lady. In acknowledging this communication
his English friend has a grateful word from "the lady" to return: "I gave
your letter, and the second copy of your portrait, to the lady you refer
to, and need scarcely say how truly delighted she was. She has asked me to
say that you could not have devised for her a more welcome pleasure, and
that she feels grateful to me for having sent to America the extracts from
what she had written, since they have been a satisfaction to you...."
Early in 1870 the "Estimate" appeared in the _Radical_, still more than a
year before Mrs. Gilchrist addressed her first letter to Whitman. He
welcomed the essay, and its author as a new and peculiarly powerful
champion of "Leaves of Grass." To Rossetti he wrote: "I am deeply touched
by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from England,
and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to me to
get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them but approve
that action. I realize indeed of this smiling and emphatic _well done_
from the heart and conscience of a true wife and mother, and one, too,
whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your letter, after flowing
through the heart and conscience, must also move through and satisfy
science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto received no eulogium
so magnificent." Concerning this experience Whitman said to Horace
Traubel, at a much later period: "You can imagine what such a thing as her
'Estimate' meant to me at that time. Almost everybody was against me--the
papers, the preachers, the literary gentlemen--nearly everybody with only
here and there a dissenting voice--when it looked on the surface as if my
enterprise was bound to fail ... then this wonderful woman. Such things
stagger a man ... I had got so used to being ignored or denounced that the
appearance of a friend was always accompanied with a sort of shock....
There are shocks that knock you up, shocks that knock you down. Mrs.
Gilchrist never wavered from her first decision. I have that sort of
feeling about her which cannot easily be spoken of--...: love (strong
personal love, too), reverence, respect--you see, it won't go into words:
all the words are weak and formal." Speaking again of her first criticism
of his work, he said: "I remember well how one of my noblest, best
friends--one of my wisest, cutest, profoundest, most candid critics--how
Mrs. Gilchrist, even to the last, insisted that "Leaves of Grass" was not
the mouthpiece of parlours, refinements--no--but the language of strength,
power, passion, intensity, absorption, sincerity...." He claimed a closer
relationship to her than he allowed to Rossetti: "Rossetti mentions Mrs.
Gilchrist. Well, he had a right to--almost as much right as I had: a sort
of brother's right: she was his friend, she was more than my friend. I
feel like Hamlet when he said forty thousand brothers could not feel what
he felt for Ophelia. After all ... we were a family--a happy family: the
few of us who got together, going with love the same way--we were a happy
family. The crowd was on the other side but we were on our side--we: a few
of us, just a few: and despite our paucity of numbers we made ourselves
tell for the good cause."
From these expressions it is quite clear that Whitman's attitude toward
Mrs. Gilchrist was at first that of the unpopular prophet who finds a
worthy and welcome disciple in an unexpected place. And that he should
have so felt was but natural, for she had been drawn to him, as she
confided to him in one of her letters, by what he had written rather than
and not by her knowledge of the man. There can be no doubt, however, that
on Mrs. Gilchrist's part something more than the friendship of her
new-found liberator was desired. When she read the "Leaves of Grass" she
was forty-one years of age, in the full vigour of womanhood. To her the
reading meant a new birth, causing her to pour out her soul to the prophet
and poet across the seas with a freedom and abandon that were phenomenal.
This was in the first letter printed in this volume, under date of
September 3, 1871, and about the time that Whitman had sent to his new
supporter a copy of his poems. Perhaps the strongest reason why Whitman
did not reply to passion with passion lies in the fact that his heart was,
so far as attachments of that sort were concerned, already bestowed
elsewhere. I am indebted to Professor Holloway for the information that
Whitman was, in 1864, the unfortunate lover of a certain lady whose
previous marriage to another, while it did not dim their mutual devotion,
did serve to keep them apart. To her Whitman wrote that heart-wrung lyric
of separation, "Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd." This suggests that
there was probably a double tragedy, so ironical is the fate of the
affections, Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman both passionately yearning for
personal love yet unable to quench the one desire in the other.
But if there could not be between them the love which leads to marriage,
there could be a noble and tender and life-long friendship. Over this
Whitman's loss of his magnificent health, to be followed by an invalidism
of twenty years, had no power. In 1873 Whitman was stricken with
paralysis, which rendered him so helpless that he had to give up his work
and finally his position, and to go to live for the rest of his life in
Camden, New Jersey. Mrs. Gilchrist's affection for him did not waver when
this trial was made of it. Indeed, his illness had the effect, as these
letters show, of quickening the desire which she had had for several years
(since 1869) of coming to live in America, that she might be near him to
lighten his burdens, and, if she could not hope to cherish him as a wife,
that she might at least care for him as a mother. Whitman, it will be
noted, strongly advised against this plan. Just why he wished to keep her
away from America is unclear, possibly because he dared not put so
idealistic a friendship and discipleship to the test of personal
acquaintance with a prematurely broken old man. Nevertheless, on August
30, 1876, Mrs. Gilchrist set sail, with three of her children, for
Philadelphia. They arrived in September. From that date until the spring
of 1878 the Gilchrists kept house at 1929 North Twenty-second street,
Philadelphia, where Whitman was a frequent and regular visitor.
It is interesting to note that Mrs. Gilchrist's appreciation of Whitman
did not lessen after she had met and known him in the intimacy of that
tea-table circle which at her house discussed the same great variety of
topics--literature, religion, science, politics--that had enlivened the
O'Connor breakfast table in Washington. She shall describe it and him
herself. In a letter to Rossetti, under date of December 22, 1876, she
writes: "But I need not tell you that our greatest pleasure is the society
of Mr. Whitman, who fully realizes the ideal I had formed from his poems,
and brings such an atmosphere of cordiality and geniality with him as is
indescribable. He is really making slow but, I trust, steady progress
toward recovery, having been much cheered (and no doubt that acted
favourably upon his health) by the sympathy manifested toward him in
England and the pleasure of finding so many buyers of his poems there. It
must be a deep satisfaction to you to have been the channel through which
this help and comfort flowed...." And a year later she writes to the same
correspondent: "We are having delightful evenings this winter; how often
do I wish you could make one in the circle around our tea table where sits
on my right hand every evening but Sunday Walt Whitman. He has made great
progress in health and recovered powers of getting about during the year
we have been here: nevertheless the lameness--the dragging instead of
lifting the left leg continues; and this together with his white hair and
beard give him a look of age curiously contradicted by his face, which has
not only the ruddy freshness but the full, rounded contours of youth,
nowhere drawn or wrinkled or sunk; it is a face as indicative of serenity
and goodness and of mental and bodily health as the brow is of
intellectual power. But I notice he occasionally speaks of himself as
having a 'wounded brain,' and of being still quite altered from his former
self."
Whitman, on his part, thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon sunshine of such
friendly hospitality, for he considered Mrs. Gilchrist even more gifted as
a conversationalist than as a writer. For hints of the sort of talk that
flowed with Mrs. Gilchrist's tea I must refer the reader to her son's
realistic biography.
After two years of residence in Philadelphia, the Gilchrists went to dwell
in Boston and later in New York City, and met the leaders in the two
literary capitals. From these addresses the letters begin again, after the
natural interruption of two years. It is at this time that the first
letters from Herbert and Beatrice Gilchrist were written. These are given
in this volume to complete the chain and to show how completely they were
in sympathy with their mother in their love and appreciation of Whitman.
From New York they all sailed for their old home in England on June 7,
1879. Whitman came the day before to wish them good voyage. The chief
reason for the return to England seems to have been the desire to send
Beatrice to Berne to complete her medical education. After the return to
England, or rather while they are still en route at Glasgow, the letters
begin again.
Several years of literary work yet remained to Mrs. Gilchrist. The chief
writings of these years were a new edition of the Blake, a life of Mary
Lamb for the Eminent Women Series, an article on Blake for the Dictionary
of National Biography, several essays including "Three Glimpses of a New
England Village," and the "Confession of Faith." She was beginning a
careful study of the life and writings of Carlyle, with the intention of
writing a life of her old friend to reply to the aspersions of Freude.
This last work was, however, never completed, for early in 1882 some
malady which rendered her breathing difficult had already begun to cast
the shadow of death upon her. But her faith, long schooled in the optimism
of "Leaves of Grass," looked upon the steadily approaching end with
calmness. On November 29, 1885, she died.
When Whitman was informed of her death by Herbert Gilchrist, he could find
words for only the following brief reply:
_15th December 1885.
Camden, United States, America._
DEAR HERBERT:
I have received your letter. Nothing now remains but a sweet and rich
memory--none more beautiful all time, all life all the earth--I
cannot write anything of a letter to-day. I must sit alone and think.
WALT WHITMAN.
Later, in conversations with Horace Traubel which the latter has preserved
in his minute biography of Whitman, he was able to express his regard for
Mrs. Gilchrist more fully--"a supreme character of whom the world knows
too little for its own good ... If her sayings had been recorded--I do not
say she would pale, but I do say she would equal the best of the women of
our century--add something as great as any to the testimony on the side of
her sex." And at another time: "Oh! she was strangely different from the
average; entirely herself; as simple as nature; true, honest; beautiful as
a tree is tall, leafy, rich, full, free--_is_ a tree. Yet, free as she
was by nature, bound by no conventionalisms, she was the most courageous
of women; more than queenly; of high aspect in the best sense. She was not
cold; she had her passions; I have known her to warm up--to resent
something that was said; some impeachment of good things--great things; of
a person sometimes; she had the largest charity, the sweetest fondest
optimism.... She was a radical of radicals; enjoyed all sorts of high
enthusiasms: was exquisitely sensitized; belonged to the times yet to
come; her vision went on and on."
This searching interpretation of her character wants only her artist son's
description of her personal appearance to make the final picture complete:
"A little above the average height, she walked with an even, light step.
Brown hair concealed a full and finely chiselled brow, and her hazel eyes
bent upon you a bright and penetrating gaze. Whilst conversing her face
became radiant as with an experience of golden years; humour was present
in her conversation--flecks of sunshine, such as sometimes play about the
minds of deeply religious natures. Her animated manner seldom flagged, and
charmed the taciturn to talking in his or her best humour." Once, when
speaking to Walt Whitman of the beauty of the human speaking voice, he
replied: "The voice indicates the soul. Hers, with its varied modulations
and blended tones, was the tenderest, most musical voice ever to bless our
ears."
Her death was a long-lasting shock to Whitman. "She was a wonderful
woman--a sort of human miracle to me.... Her taking off ... was a great
shock to me: I have never quite got over it: she was near to me: she was
subtle: her grasp on my work was tremendous--so sure, so all around, so
adequate." If this sounds a trifle self-centred in its criticism, not so
was the poem which, in memory of her, he wrote as a fitting epitaph from
the poet she had loved.
"GOING SOMEWHERE"
My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend (Now buried in an English
grave--and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake),
Ended our talk--"The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern
learning, intuitions deep,
Of all Geologies--Histories--of all Astronomy--of Evolution, Metaphysics
all,
Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering,
Life, life an endless march, an endless army (no halt, but, it is duly
over),
The world, the race, the soul--in space and time the universes,
All bound as is befitting each--all surely going somewhere."
THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
A WOMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN[1]
[FROM LETTERS BY ANNE GILCHRIST TO W. M. ROSSETTI.]
_June 23, 1869._--I am very sure you are right in your estimate of Walt
Whitman. There is nothing in him that I shall ever let go my hold of. For
me the reading of his poems is truly a new birth of the soul.
I shall quite fearlessly accept your kind offer of the loan of a complete
edition, certain that great and divinely beautiful nature has not, could
not infuse any poison into the wine he has poured out for us. And as for
what you specially allude to, who so well able to bear it--I will say, to
judge wisely of it--as one who, having been a happy wife and mother, has
learned to accept all things with tenderness, to feel a sacredness in all?
Perhaps Walt Whitman has forgotten--or, through some theory in his head,
has overridden--the truth that our instincts are beautiful facts of
nature, as well as our bodies; and that we have a strong instinct of
silence about some things.
_July 11._--I think it was very manly and kind of you to put the whole of
Walt Whitman's poems into my hands; and that I have no other friend who
would have judged them and me so wisely and generously.
I had not dreamed that words could cease to be words, and become electric
streams like these. I do assure you that, strong as I am, I feel sometimes
as if I had not bodily strength to read many of these poems. In the series
headed "Calamus," for instance, in some of the "Songs of Parting," the
"Voice out of the Sea," the poem beginning "Tears, Tears," &c., there is
such a weight of emotion, such a tension of the heart, that mine refuses
to beat under it,--stands quite still,--and I am obliged to lay the book
down for a while. Or again, in the piece called "Walt Whitman," and one or
two others of that type, I am as one hurried through stormy seas, over
high mountains, dazed with sunlight, stunned with a crowd and tumult of
faces and voices, till I am breathless, bewildered, half dead. Then come
parts and whole poems in which there is such calm wisdom and strength of
thought, such a cheerful breadth of sunshine, that the soul bathes in them
renewed and strengthened. Living impulses flow out of these that make me
exult in life, yet look longingly towards "the superb vistas of Death."
Those who admire this poem, and don't care for that, and talk of
formlessness, absence of metre, &c., are quite as far from any genuine
recognition of Walt Whitman as his bitter detractors. Not, of course, that
all the pieces are equal in power and beauty, but that all are vital; they
grew--they were not made. We criticise a palace or a cathedral; but what
is the good of criticising a forest? Are not the hitherto-accepted
masterpieces of literature akin rather to noble architecture; built up of
material rendered precious by elaboration; planned with subtile art that
makes beauty go hand in hand with rule and measure, and knows where the
last stone will come, before the first is laid; the result stately, fixed,
yet such as might, in every particular, have been different from what it
is (therefore inviting criticism), contrasting proudly with the careless
freedom of nature, opposing its own rigid adherence to symmetry to her
willful dallying with it? But not such is this book. Seeds brought by the
winds from north, south, east, and west, lying long in the earth, not
resting on it like the stately building, but hid in and assimilating it,
shooting upwards to be nourished by the air and the sunshine and the rain
which beat idly against that,--each bough and twig and leaf growing in
strength and beauty its own way, a law to itself, yet, with all this
freedom of spontaneous growth, the result inevitable, unalterable
(therefore setting criticism at naught), above all things, vital,--that
is, a source of ever-generating vitality: such are these poems.
"Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and from the
pondside,
Breast sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than
vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the sun
is risen,
Breezes of land and love, breezes set from living shores out to you on
the living sea,--to you, O sailors!
Frost-mellowed berries and Third-month twigs, offered fresh to young
persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
Love-buds put before you and within you, whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms.
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
form, colour, perfume, to you:
If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
tall branches and trees."
And the music takes good care of itself, too. As if it _could_ be
otherwise! As if those "large, melodious thoughts," those emotions, now so
stormy and wild, now of unfathomed tenderness and gentleness, could fail
to vibrate through the words in strong, sweeping, long-sustained chords,
with lovely melodies winding in and out fitfully amongst them! Listen, for
instance, to the penetrating sweetness, set in the midst of rugged
grandeur, of the passage beginning,--
"I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
I call to the earth and sea half held by the night."
I see that no counting of syllables will reveal the mechanism of the
music; and that this rushing spontaneity could not stay to bind itself
with the fetters of metre. But I know that the music is there, and that I
would not for something change ears with those who cannot hear it. And I
know that poetry must do one of two things,--either own this man as equal
with her highest completest manifestors, or stand aside, and admit that
there is something come into the world nobler, diviner than herself, one
that is free of the universe, and can tell its secrets as none before.
I do not think or believe this; but see it with the same unmistakable
definiteness of perception and full consciousness that I see the sun at
this moment in the noonday sky, and feel his rays glowing down upon me as
I write in the open air. What more can you ask of the works of a man's
mouth than that they should "absorb into you as food and air, to appear
again in your strength, gait, face,"--that they should be "fibre and
filter to your blood," joy and gladness to your whole nature?
I am persuaded that one great source of this kindling, vitalizing power--I
suppose _the_ great source--is the grasp laid upon the present, the
fearless and comprehensive dealing with reality. Hitherto the leaders of
thought have (except in science) been men with their faces resolutely
turned backwards; men who have made of the past a tyrant that beggars and
scorns the present, hardly seeing any greatness but what is shrouded away
in the twilight, underground past; naming the present only for disparaging
comparisons, humiliating distrust that tends to create the very barrenness
it complains of; bidding me warm myself at fires that went out to mortal
eyes centuries ago; insisting, in religion above all, that I must either
"look through dead men's eyes," or shut my own in helpless darkness. Poets
fancying themselves so happy over the chill and faded beauty of the past,
but not making me happy at all,--rebellious always at being dragged down
out of the free air and sunshine of to-day.
But this poet, this "athlete, full of rich words, full of joy," takes you
by the hand, and turns you with your face straight forwards. The present
is great enough for him, because he is great enough for it. It flows
through him as a "vast oceanic tide," lifting up a mighty voice. Earth,
"the eloquent, dumb, great mother," is not old, has lost none of her fresh
charms, none of her divine meanings; still bears great sons and daughters,
if only they would possess themselves and accept their birthright,--a
richer, not a poorer, heritage than was ever provided before,--richer by
all the toil and suffering of the generations that have preceded, and by
the further unfolding of the eternal purposes. Here is one come at last
who can show them how; whose songs are the breath of a glad, strong,
beautiful life, nourished sufficingly, kindled to unsurpassed intensity
and greatness by the gifts of the present.
"Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy."
"O the joy of my soul leaning poised on itself,--receiving identity
through materials, and loving them,--observing characters, and
absorbing them!
O my soul vibrated back to me from them!
"O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist, fresh
stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the
forenoon.
"O to realize space!
The plenteousness of all--that there are no bounds;
To emerge, and be of the sky--of the sun and moon and the flying clouds,
as one with them.
"O the joy of suffering,--
To struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted,
To be entirely alone with them--to find how much one can stand!"
I used to think it was great to disregard happiness, to press on to a high
goal, careless, disdainful of it. But now I see that there is nothing so
great as to be capable of happiness; to pluck it out of "each moment and
whatever happens"; to find that one can ride as gay and buoyant on the
angry, menacing, tumultuous waves of life as on those that glide and
glitter under a clear sky; that it is not defeat and wretchedness which
come out of the storm of adversity, but strength and calmness.
See, again, in the pieces gathered together under the title "Calamus," and
elsewhere, what it means for a man to love his fellow-man. Did you dream
it before? These "evangel-poems of comrades and of love" speak, with the
abiding, penetrating power of prophecy, of a "new and superb friendship";
speak not as beautiful dreams, unrealizable aspirations to be laid aside
in sober moods, because they breathe out what now glows within the poet's
own breast, and flows out in action toward the men around him. Had ever
any land before her poet, not only to concentrate within himself her life,
and, when she kindled with anger against her children who were treacherous
to the cause her life is bound up with, to announce and justify her
terrible purpose in words of unsurpassable grandeur (as in the poem
beginning, "Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps"), but also to go
and with his own hands dress the wounds, with his powerful presence soothe
and sustain and nourish her suffering soldiers,--hundreds of them,
thousands, tens of thousands,--by day and by night, for weeks, months,
years?
"I sit by the restless all the dark night; some are so young,
Some suffer so much: I recall the experience sweet and sad.
Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have crossed and rested,
Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips:--"
Kisses, that touched with the fire of a strange, new, undying eloquence
the lips that received them! The most transcendent genius could not,
untaught by that "experience sweet and sad," have breathed out hymns for
her dead soldiers of such ineffably tender, sorrowful, yet triumphant
beauty.
But the present spreads before us other things besides those of which it
is easy to see the greatness and beauty; and the poet would leave us to
learn the hardest part of our lesson unhelped if he took no heed of these;
and would be unfaithful to his calling, as interpreter of man to himself
and of the scheme of things in relation to him, if he did not accept
all--if he did not teach "the great lesson of reception, neither
preference nor denial." If he feared to stretch out the hand, not of
condescending pity, but of fellowship, to the degraded, criminal, foolish,
despised, knowing that they are only laggards in "the great procession
winding along the roads of the universe," "the far-behind to come on in
their turn," knowing the "amplitude of Time," how could he roll the stone
of contempt off the heart as he does, and cut the strangling knot of the
problem of inherited viciousness and degradation? And, if he were not bold
and true to the utmost, and did not own in himself the threads of darkness
mixed in with the threads of light, and own it with the same strength and
directness that he tells of the light, and not in those vague generalities
that everybody uses, and nobody means, in speaking on this head,--in the
worst, germs of all that is in the best; in the best, germs of all that is
in the worst,--the _brotherhood_ of the human race would be a mere
flourish of rhetoric. And brotherhood is naught if it does not bring
brother's love along with it. If the poet's heart were not "a measureless
ocean of love" that seeks the lips and would quench the thirst of all, he
were not the one we have waited for so long. Who but he could put at last
the right meaning into that word "democracy," which has been made to bear
such a burthen of incongruous notions?
"By God! I will have nothing that all cannot have their counterpart of
on the same terms!"
flashing it forth like a banner, making it draw the instant allegiance of
every man and woman who loves justice. All occupations, however homely,
all developments of the activities of man, need the poet's recognition,
because every man needs the assurance that for him also the materials out
of which to build up a great and satisfying life lie to hand, the sole
magic in the use of them, all of the right stuff in the right hands.
Hence those patient enumerations of every conceivable kind of industry:--
"In them far more than you estimated--in them far less also."
Far more as a means, next to nothing as an end: whereas we are wont to
take it the other way, and think the result something, but the means a
weariness. Out of all come strength, and the cheerfulness of strength. I
murmured not a little, to say the truth, under these enumerations, at
first. But now I think that not only is their purpose a justification, but
that the musical ear and vividness of perception of the poet have enabled
him to perform this task also with strength and grace, and that they are
harmonious as well as necessary parts of the great whole.
Nor do I sympathize with those who grumble at the unexpected words that
turn up now and then. A quarrel with words is always, more or less, a
quarrel with meanings; and here we are to be as genial and as wide as
nature, and quarrel with nothing. If the thing a word stands for exists by
divine appointment (and what does not so exist?), the word need never be
ashamed of itself; the shorter and more direct, the better. It is a gain
to make friends with it, and see it in good company. Here at all events,
"poetic diction" would not serve,--not pretty, soft, colourless words,
laid by in lavender for the special uses of poetry, that have had none of
the wear and tear of daily life; but such as have stood most, as tell of
human heart-beats, as fit closest to the sense, and have taken deep hues
of association from the varied experiences of life--those are the words
wanted here. We only ask to seize and be seized swiftly, over-masteringly,
by the great meanings. We see with the eyes of the soul, listen with the
ears of the soul; the poor old words that have served so many generations
for purposes, good, bad, and indifferent, and become warped and blurred in
the process, grow young again, regenerate, translucent. It is not mere
delight they give us,--_that_ the "sweet singers," with their subtly
wrought gifts, their mellifluous speech, can give too in their degree; it
is such life and health as enable us to pluck delights for ourselves out
of every hour of the day, and taste the sunshine that ripened the corn in
the crust we eat (I often seem to myself to do that).
Out of the scorn of the present came skepticism; and out of the large,
loving acceptance of it comes faith. If _now_ is so great and beautiful, I
need no arguments to make me believe that the _nows_ of the past and of
the future were and will be great and beautiful, too.
"I know I am deathless.
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's compass.
I know I shall not pass, like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick
at night.
I know I am august.
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.
"My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite:
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of Time."
"No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and Death."
You argued rightly that my confidence would not be betrayed by any of the
poems in this book. None of them troubled me even for a moment; because I
saw at a glance that it was not, as men had supposed, the heights brought
down to the depths, but the depths lifted up level with the sunlit
heights, that they might become clear and sunlit, too. Always, for a
woman, a veil woven out of her own soul--never touched upon even, with a
rough hand, by this poet. But, for a man, a daring, fearless pride in
himself, not a mock-modesty woven out of delusions--a very poor imitation
of a woman's. Do they not see that this fearless pride, this complete
acceptance of themselves, is needful for her pride, her justification?
What! is it all so ignoble, so base, that it will not bear the honest
light of speech from lips so gifted with "the divine power to use words?"
Then what hateful, bitter humiliation for her, to have to give herself up
to the reality! Do you think there is ever a bride who does not taste more
or less this bitterness in her cup? But who put it there? It must surely
be man's fault, not God's, that she has to say to herself, "Soul, look
another way--you have no part in this. Motherhood is beautiful, fatherhood
is beautiful; but the dawn of fatherhood and motherhood is not beautiful."
Do they really think that God is ashamed of what he has made and
appointed? And, if not, surely it is somewhat superfluous that they should
undertake to be so for him.
"The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,"
Of a woman above all. It is true that instinct of silence I spoke of is a
beautiful, imperishable part of nature, too. But it is not beautiful when
it means an ignominious shame brooding darkly. Shame is like a very
flexible veil, that follows faithfully the shape of what it
covers,--beautiful when it hides a beautiful thing, ugly when it hides an
ugly one. It has not covered what was beautiful here; it has covered a
mean distrust of a man's self and of his Creator. It was needed that this
silence, this evil spell, should for once be broken, and the daylight let
in, that the dark cloud lying under might be scattered to the winds. It
was needed that one who could here indicate for us "the path between
reality and the soul" should speak. That is what these beautiful, despised
poems, the "Children of Adam," do, read by the light that glows out of the
rest of the volume: light of a clear, strong faith in God, of an
unfathomably deep and tender love for humanity,--light shed out of a soul
that is "possessed of itself."
"Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
Corroborating for ever the triumph of things."
Now silence may brood again; but lovingly, happily, as protecting what is
beautiful, not as hiding what is unbeautiful; consciously enfolding a
sweet and sacred mystery--august even as the mystery of Death, the dawn as
the setting: kindred grandeurs, which to eyes that are opened shed a
hallowing beauty on all that surrounds and preludes them.
"O vast and well-veiled Death!
"O the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments,
for reasons!"
He who can thus look with fearlessness at the beauty of Death may well
dare to teach us to look with fearless, untroubled eyes at the perfect
beauty of Love in all its appointed realizations. Now none need turn away
their thoughts with pain or shame; though only lovers and poets may say
what they will,--the lover to his own, the poet to all, because all are in
a sense his own. None need fear that this will be harmful to the woman.
How should there be such a flaw in the scheme of creation that, for the
two with whom there is no complete life, save in closest sympathy, perfect
union, what is natural and happy for the one should be baneful to the
other? The utmost faithful freedom of speech, such as there is in these
poems, creates in her no thought or feeling that shuns the light of
heaven, none that are not as innocent and serenely fair as the flowers
that grow; would lead, not to harm, but to such deep and tender affection
as makes harm or the thought of harm simply impossible. Far more beautiful
care than man is aware of has been taken in the making of her, to fit her
to be his mate. God has taken such care that _he_ need take none; none,
that is, which consists in disguisement, insincerity, painful hushing-up
of his true, grand, initiating nature. And, as regards the poet's
utterances, which, it might be thought, however harmless in themselves,
would prove harmful by falling into the hands of those for whom they are
manifestly unsuitable, I believe that even here fear is needless. For her
innocence is folded round with such thick folds of ignorance, till the
right way and time for it to accept knowledge, that what is unsuitable is
also unintelligible to her; and, if no dark shadow from without be cast on
the white page by misconstruction or by foolish mystery and hiding away of
it, no hurt will ensue from its passing freely through her hands.
This is so, though it is little understood or realized by men. Wives and
mothers will learn through the poet that there is rejoicing grandeur and
beauty there wherein their hearts have so longed to find it; where foolish
men, traitors to themselves, poorly comprehending the grandeur of their
own or the beauty of a woman's nature, have taken such pains to make her
believe there was none,--nothing but miserable discrepancy.
One of the hardest things to make a child understand is, that down
underneath your feet, if you go far enough, you come to blue sky and stars
again; that there really is no "down" for the world, but only in every
direction an "up." And that this is an all-embracing truth, including
within its scope every created thing, and, with deepest significance,
every part, faculty, attribute, healthful impulse, mind, and body of a
man (each and all facing towards and related to the Infinite on every
side), is what we grown children find it hardest to realize, too. Novalis
said, "We touch heaven when we lay our hand on the human body"; which, if
it mean anything, must mean an ample justification of the poet who has
dared to be the poet of the body as well as of the soul,--to treat it with
the freedom and grandeur of an ancient sculptor.
"Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy of the muse:--I say the
form complete is worthier far.
"These are not parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul.
"O, I say now these are soul."
But while Novalis--who gazed at the truth a long way off, up in the air,
in a safe, comfortable, German fashion--has been admiringly quoted by high
authorities, the great American who has dared to rise up and wrestle with
it, and bring it alive and full of power in the midst of us, has been
greeted with a very different kind of reception, as has happened a few
times before in the world in similar cases. Yet I feel deeply persuaded
that a perfectly fearless, candid, ennobling treatment of the life of the
body (so inextricably intertwined with, so potent in its influence on the
life of the soul) will prove of inestimable value to all earnest and
aspiring natures, impatient of the folly of the long-prevalent belief that
it is because of the greatness of the spirit that it has learned to
despise the body, and to ignore its influences; knowing well that it is,
on the contrary, just because the spirit is not great enough, not healthy
and vigorous enough, to transfuse itself into the life of the body,
elevating that and making it holy by its own triumphant intensity;
knowing, too, how the body avenges this by dragging the soul down to the
level assigned itself. Whereas the spirit must lovingly embrace the body,
as the roots of a tree embrace the ground, drawing thence rich
nourishment, warmth, impulse. Or, rather, the body is itself the root of
the soul--that whereby it grows and feeds. The great tide of healthful
life that carries all before it must surge through the whole man, not beat
to and fro in one corner of his brain.
"O the life of my senses and flesh, transcending my senses and flesh!"
For the sake of all that is highest, a truthful recognition of this life,
and especially of that of it which underlies the fundamental ties of
humanity--the love of husband and wife, fatherhood, motherhood--is needed.
Religion needs it, now at last alive to the fact that the basis of all
true worship is comprised in "the great lesson of reception, neither
preference nor denial," interpreting, loving, rejoicing in all that is
created, fearing and despising nothing.
"I accept reality, and dare not question it."
The dignity of a man, the pride and affection of a woman, need it too. And
so does the intellect. For science has opened up such elevating views of
the mystery of material existence that, if poetry had not bestirred
herself to handle this theme in her own way, she would have been left
behind by her plodding sister. Science knows that matter is not, as we
fancied, certain stolid atoms which the forces of nature vibrate through
and push and pull about; but that the forces and the atoms are one
mysterious, imperishable identity, neither conceivable without the other.
She knows, as well as the poet, that destructibility is not one of
nature's words; that it is only the relationship of things--tangibility,
visibility--that are transitory. She knows that body and soul are one, and
proclaims it undauntedly, regardless, and rightly regardless, of
inferences. Timid onlookers, aghast, think it means that soul is
body--means death for the soul. But the poet knows it means body is
soul--the great whole imperishable; in life and in death continually
changing substance, always retaining identity. For, if the man of science
is happy about the atoms, if he is not baulked or baffled by apparent
decay or destruction, but can see far enough into the dimness to know that
not only is each atom imperishable, but that its endowments,
characteristics, affinities, electric and other attractions and
repulsions--however suspended, hid, dormant, masked, when it enters into
new combinations--remain unchanged, be it for thousands of years, and,
when it is again set free, manifest themselves in the old way, shall not
the poet be happy about the vital whole? shall the highest force, the
vital, that controls and compels into complete subservience for its own
purposes the rest, be the only one that is destructible? and the love and
thought that endow the whole be less enduring than the gravitating,
chemical, electric powers that endow its atoms? But identity is the
essence of love and thought--I still I, you still you. Certainly no man
need ever again be scared by the "dark hush" and the little handful of
refuse.
"You are not scattered to the winds--you gather certainly and safely
around yourself."
"Sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together."
"All goes onward and outward: nothing collapses."
"What I am, I am of my body; and what I shall be, I shall be of my
body."
"The body parts away at last for the journeys of the soul."
Science knows that whenever a thing passes from a solid to a subtle air,
power is set free to a wider scope of action. The poet knows it too, and
is dazzled as he turns his eyes toward "the superb vistas of death." He
knows that "the perpetual transfers and promotions" and "the amplitude of
time" are for a man as well as for the earth. The man of science, with
unwearied, self-denying toil, finds the letters and joins them into words.
But the poet alone can make complete sentences. The man of science
furnishes the premises; but it is the poet who draws the final conclusion.
Both together are "swiftly and surely preparing a future greater than all
the past." But, while the man of science bequeaths to it the fruits of
his toil, the poet, this mighty poet, bequeaths himself--"Death making him
really undying." He will "stand as nigh as the nighest" to these men and
women. For he taught them, in words which breathe out his very heart and
soul into theirs, that "love of comrades" which, like the "soft-born
measureless light," makes wholesome and fertile every spot it penetrates
to, lighting up dark social and political problems, and kindling into a
genial glow that great heart of justice which is the life-source of
Democracy. He, the beloved friend of all, initiated for them a "new and
superb friendship"; whispered that secret of a godlike pride in a man's
self, and a perfect trust in woman, whereby their love for each other, no
longer poisoned and stifled, but basking in the light of God's smile, and
sending up to him a perfume of gratitude, attains at last a divine and
tender completeness. He gave a faith-compelling utterance to that "wisdom
which is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and of
the excellence of things." Happy America, that he should be her son! One
sees, indeed, that only a young giant of a nation could produce this kind
of greatness, so full of the ardour, the elasticity, the inexhaustible
vigour and freshness, the joyousness, the audacity of youth. But I, for
one, cannot grudge anything to America. For, after all, the young giant is
the old English giant--the great English race renewing its youth in that
magnificent land, "Mexican-breathed, Arctic-braced," and girding up its
loins to start on a new career that shall match with the greatness of the
new home.
A CONFESSION OF FAITH[2]
"Of genius in the Fine Arts," wrote Wordsworth, "the only infallible sign
is the widening the sphere of human sensibility for the delight, honour,
and benefit of human nature. Genius is the introduction of a new element
into the intellectual universe, or, if that be not allowed, it is the
application of powers to objects on which they had not before been
exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce
effects hitherto unknown. What is all this but an advance or conquest made
by the soul of the poet? Is it to be supposed that the reader can make
progress of this kind like an Indian prince or general stretched on his
palanquin and borne by slaves? No; he is invigorated and inspirited by his
leader in order that he may exert himself, for he cannot proceed in
quiescence, he cannot be carried like a dead weight. Therefore to create
taste is to call forth and bestow power."
A great poet, then, is "a challenge and summons"; and the question first
of all is not whether we like or dislike him, but whether we are capable
of meeting that challenge, of stepping out of our habitual selves to
answer that summons. He works on Nature's plan: Nature, who teaches
nothing but supplies infinite material to learn from; who never preaches
but drives home her meanings by the resistless eloquence of effects.
Therefore the poet makes greater demands upon his reader than any other
man. For it is not a question of swallowing his ideas or admiring his
handiwork merely, but of seeing, feeling, enjoying, as he sees, feels,
enjoys. "The messages of great poems to each man and woman are," says Walt
Whitman, "come to us on equal terms, only then can you understand us. We
are no better than you; what we enclose you enclose, what we enjoy you may
enjoy"--no better than you potentially, that is; but if you would
understand us the potential must become the actual, the dormant sympathies
must awaken and broaden, the dulled perceptions clear themselves and let
in undreamed of delights, the wonder-working imagination must respond, the
ear attune itself, the languid soul inhale large draughts of love and hope
and courage, those "empyreal airs" that vitalize the poet's world. No
wonder the poet is long in finding his audience; no wonder he has to abide
the "inexorable tests of Time," which, if indeed he be great, slowly turns
the handful into hundreds, the hundreds into thousands, and at last having
done its worst, grudgingly passes him on into the ranks of the Immortals.
Meanwhile let not the handful who believe that such a destiny awaits a man
of our time cease to give a reason for the faith that is in them.
So far as the suffrages of his own generation go Walt Whitman may, like
Wordsworth, tell of the "love, the admiration, the indifference, the
slight, the aversion, and even the contempt" with which his poems have
been received; but the love and admiration are from even a smaller
number, the aversion, the contempt more vehement, more universal and
persistent than Wordsworth ever encountered. For the American is a more
daring innovator; he cuts loose from precedent, is a very Columbus who has
sailed forth alone on perilous seas to seek new shores, to seek a new
world for the soul, a world that shall give scope and elevation and beauty
to the changed and changing events, aspirations, conditions of modern
life. To new aims, new methods; therefore let not the reader approach
these poems as a judge, comparing, testing, measuring by what has gone
before, but as a willing learner, an unprejudiced seeker for whatever may
delight and nourish and exalt the soul. Neither let him be abashed nor
daunted by the weight of adverse opinion, the contempt and denial which
have been heaped upon the great American even though it be the contempt
and denial of the capable, the cultivated, the recognized authorities; for
such is the usual lot of the pioneer in whatever field. In religion it is
above all to the earnest and conscientious believer that the Reformer has
appeared a blasphemer, and in the world of literature it is equally
natural that the most careful student, that the warmest lover of the
accepted masterpieces, should be the most hostile to one who forsakes the
methods by which, or at any rate, in company with which, those triumphs
have been achieved. "But," said the wise Goethe, "I will listen to any
man's convictions; you may keep your doubts, your negations to yourself, I
have plenty of my own." For heartfelt convictions are rare things.
Therefore I make bold to indicate the scope and source of power in Walt
Whitman's writings, starting from no wider ground than their effect upon
an individual mind. It is not criticism I have to offer; least of all any
discussion of the question of form or formlessness in these poems, deeply
convinced as I am that when great meanings and great emotions are
expressed with corresponding power, literature has done its best, call it
what you please. But my aim is rather to suggest such trains of thought,
such experience of life as having served to put me _en rapport_ with this
poet may haply find here and there a reader who is thereby helped to the
same end. Hence I quote just as freely from the prose (especially from
"Democratic Vistas" and the preface to the first issue of "Leaves of
Grass," 1855) as from his poems, and more freely, perhaps, from those
parts that have proved a stumbling-block than from those whose conspicuous
beauty assures them acceptance.
Fifteen years ago, with feelings partly of indifference, partly of
antagonism--for I had heard none but ill words of them--I first opened
Walt Whitman's poems. But as I read I became conscious of receiving the
most powerful influence that had ever come to me from any source. What was
the spell? It was that in them humanity has, in a new sense, found itself;
for the first time has dared to accept itself without disparagement,
without reservation. For the first time an unrestricted faith in all that
is and in the issues of all that happens has burst forth triumphantly into
song.
"... The rapture of the hallelujah sent
From all that breathes and is ..."
rings through these poems. They carry up into the region of Imagination
and Passion those vaster and more profound conceptions of the universe and
of man reached by centuries of that indomitably patient organized search
for knowledge, that "skilful cross-questioning of things" called science.
"O truth of the earth I am determined to press my way toward you.
Sound your voice! I scale the mountains, I dive in the sea after you,"
cried science; and the earth and the sky have answered, and continue
inexhaustibly to answer her appeal. And now at last the day dawns which
Wordsworth prophesied of: "The man of science," he wrote, "seeks truth as
a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his
solitude. The Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with
him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly
companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is
the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science, it
is the first and last of all knowledge; it is immortal as the heart of
man. If the labours of men of science should ever create any material
revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions
which we habitually receive, the Poet will then sleep no more than at
present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science not
only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side
carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of science itself. If the
time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized
to man, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood,
the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will
welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the
household of man." That time approaches: a new heaven and a new earth
await us when the knowledge grasped by science is realized, conceived as a
whole, related to the world within us by the shaping spirit of
imagination. Not in vain, already, for this Poet have they pierced the
darkness of the past, and read here and there a word of the earth's
history before human eyes beheld it; each word of infinite significance,
because involving in it secrets of the whole. A new anthem of the slow,
vast, mystic dawn of life he sings in the name of humanity.
"I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I am an encloser of things to
be.
"My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs;
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps;
All below duly travell'd and still I mount and mount.
"Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me:
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know
I was even there;
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
"Long I was hugg'd close--long and long.
"Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
"Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me;
My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it.
"For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with
care.
"All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me;
Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul."
Not in vain have they pierced space as well as time and found "a vast
similitude interlocking all."
"I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cypher, edge but the rim of
the farther systems.
"Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Outward, and outward, and for ever outward.
"My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
"There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage;
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were
this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in
the long run;
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther."
Not in vain for him have they penetrated into the substances of things to
find that what we thought poor, dead, inert matter is (in Clerk Maxwell's
words) "a very sanctuary of minuteness and power where molecules obey the
laws of their existence, and clash together in fierce collision, or
grapple in yet more fierce embrace, building up in secret the forms of
visible things"; each stock and stone a busy group of Ariels plying
obediently their hidden tasks.
"Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
* * * * *
"To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
same, ...
Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles."
The natural _is_ the supernatural, says Carlyle. It is the message that
comes to our time from all quarters alike; from poetry, from science, from
the deep brooding of the student of human history. Science materialistic?
Rather it is the current theology that is materialistic in comparison.
Science may truly be said to have annihilated our gross and brutish
conceptions of matter, and to have revealed it to us as subtle, spiritual,
energetic beyond our powers of realization. It is for the Poet to increase
these powers of realization. He it is who must awaken us to the perception
of a new heaven and a new earth here where we stand on this old earth. He
it is who must, in Walt Whitman's words, indicate the path between reality
and the soul.
Above all is every thought and feeling in these poems touched by the light
of the great revolutionary truth that man, unfolded through vast stretches
of time out of lowly antecedents, is a rising, not a fallen creature;
emerging slowly from purely animal life; as slowly as the strata are piled
and the ocean beds hollowed; whole races still barely emerged, countless
individuals in the foremost races barely emerged: "the wolf, the snake,
the hog" yet lingering in the best; but new ideals achieved, and others
come in sight, so that what once seemed fit is fit no longer, is adhered
to uneasily and with shame; the conflicts and antagonisms between what we
call good and evil, at once the sign and the means of emergence, and
needing to account for them no supposed primeval disaster, no outside
power thwarting and marring the Divine handiwork, the perfect fitness to
its time and place of all that has proceeded from the Great Source. In a
word that Evil is relative; is that which the slowly developing reason and
conscience bid us leave behind. The prowess of the lion, the subtlety of
the fox, are cruelty and duplicity in man.
"Silent and amazed, when a little boy,
I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements,
As contending against some being or influence."
says the poet. And elsewhere, "Faith, very old now, scared away by
science"--by the daylight science lets in upon our miserable, inadequate,
idolatrous conceptions of God and of His works, and on the
sophistications, subterfuges, moral impossibilities, by which we have
endeavoured to reconcile the irreconcilable--the coexistence of omnipotent
Goodness and an absolute Power of Evil--"Faith must be brought back by the
same power that caused her departure: restored with new sway, deeper,
wider, higher than ever." And what else, indeed, at bottom, is science so
busy at? For what is Faith? "Faith," to borrow venerable and unsurpassed
words, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen." And how obtain evidence of things not seen but by a knowledge of
things seen? And how know what we may hope for, but by knowing the truth
of what is, here and now? For seen and unseen are parts of the Great
Whole: all the parts interdependent, closely related; all alike have
proceeded from and are manifestations of the Divine Source. Nature is not
the barrier between us and the unseen but the link, the communication;
she, too, has something behind appearances, has an unseen soul; she, too,
is made of "innumerable energies." Knowledge is not faith, but it is
faith's indispensable preliminary and starting ground. Faith runs ahead to
fetch glad tidings for us; but if she start from a basis of ignorance and
illusion, how can she but run in the wrong direction? "Suppose," said that
impetuous lover and seeker of truth, Clifford, "Suppose all moving things
to be suddenly stopped at some instant, and that we could be brought
fresh, without any previous knowledge, to look at the petrified scene. The
spectacle would be immensely absurd. Crowds of people would be senselessly
standing on one leg in the street looking at one another's backs; others
would be wasting their time by sitting in a train in a place difficult to
get at, nearly all with their mouths open, and their bodies in some
contorted, unrestful posture. Clocks would stand with their pendulums on
one side. Everything would be disorderly, conflicting, in its wrong place.
But once remember that the world is in motion, is going somewhere, and
everything will be accounted for and found just as it should be. Just so
great a change of view, just so complete an explanation is given to us
when we recognize that the nature of man and beast and of all the world is
_going somewhere_. The maladaptions in organic nature are seen to be steps
toward the improvement or discarding of imperfect organs. The _baneful
strife which lurketh inborn in us, and goeth on the way with us to hurt
us_, is found to be the relic of a time of savage or even lower
condition." "Going somewhere!" That is the meaning then of all our
perplexities! That changes a mystery which stultified and contradicted the
best we knew into a mystery which teaches, allures, elevates; which
harmonizes what we know with what we hope. By it we begin to
"... see by the glad light,
And breathe the sweet air of futurity."
The scornful laughter of Carlyle as he points with one hand to the
baseness, ignorance, folly, cruelty around us, and with the other to the
still unsurpassed poets, sages, heroes, saints of antiquity, whilst he
utters the words "progress of the species!" touches us no longer when we
have begun to realize "the amplitude of time"; when we know something of
the scale by which Nature measures out the years to accomplish her
smallest essential modification or development; know that to call a few
thousands or tens of thousands of years antiquity, is to speak as a child,
and that in her chronology the great days of Egypt and Syria, of Greece
and Rome are affairs of yesterday.
"Each of us inevitable;
Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth;
Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth;
Each of us here as divinely as any are here.
"You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly hair'd hordes!
You own'd persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of
brutes!
I dare not refuse you--the scope of the world, and of time and space are
upon me.
* * * * *
"I do not prefer others so very much before you either;
I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand;
(You will come forward in due time to my side.)
My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole
earth;
I have look'd for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
lands;
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.
"O vapours! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
continents and fallen down there, for reasons;
I think I have blown with you, O winds;
O waters, I have finger'd every shore with you.
"I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run
through;
I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on the high
embedded rocks, to cry thence.
"_Salut au monde!_
What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities
myself;
All islands to which birds wing their way I wing my way myself.
"Toward all,
I raise high the perpendicular hand--I make the signal,
To remain after me in sight forever,
For all the haunts and homes of men."
But "Hold!" says the reader, especially if he be one who loves science,
who loves to feel the firm ground under his feet, "That the species has a
great future before it we may well believe; already we see the
indications. But that the individual has is quite another matter. We can
but balance probabilities here, and the probabilities are very heavy on
the wrong side; the poets must throw in weighty matter indeed to turn the
scale the other way!" Be it so: but ponder a moment what science herself
has to say bearing on this theme; what are the widest, deepest facts she
has reached down to. INDESTRUCTIBILITY: Amidst ceaseless change and
seeming decay all the elements, all the forces (if indeed they be not one
and the same) which operate and substantiate those changes, imperishable;
neither matter nor force capable of annihilation. Endless transformations,
disappearances, new combinations, but diminution of the total amount
never; missing in one place or shape to be found in another, disguised
ever so long, ready always to re-emerge. "A particle of oxygen," wrote
Faraday, "is ever a particle of oxygen; nothing can in the least wear it.
If it enters into combination and disappears as oxygen, if it pass through
a thousand combinations, animal, vegetable, mineral--if it lie hid for a
thousand years and then be evolved, it is oxygen with its first qualities
neither more nor less." So then out of the universe is no door. CONTINUITY
again is one of Nature's irrevocable words; everything the result and
outcome of what went before; no gaps, no jumps; always a connecting
principle which carries forward the great scheme of things as a related
whole, which subtly links past and present, like and unlike. Nothing
breaks with its past. "It is not," says Helmholtz, "the definite mass of
substance which now constitutes the body to which the continuance of the
individual is attached. Just as the flame remains the same in appearance
and continues to exist with the same form and structure although it draws
every moment fresh combustible vapour and fresh oxygen from the air into
the vortex of its ascending current; and just as the wave goes on in
unaltered form and is yet being reconstructed every moment from fresh
particles of water, so is it also in the living being. For the material of
the body like that of flame is subject to continuous and comparatively
rapid change--a change the more rapid the livelier the activity of the
organs in question. Some constituents are renewed from day to day, some
from month to month, and others only after years. That which continues to
exist as a particular individual is, like the wave and the flame, only the
_form of motion_ which continually attracts fresh matter into its vortex
and expels the old. The observer with a deaf ear recognizes the vibration
of sound as long as it is visible and can be felt, bound up with other
heavy matter. Are our senses in reference to life like the deaf ear in
this respect?"
"You are not thrown to the winds--you gather certainly and safely
around yourself;
* * * * *
It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and
father--it is to identify you;
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form'd in you,
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.
"O Death! the voyage of Death!
The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments for
reasons;
Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd or reduced to
powder or buried.
My real body doubtless left me for other spheres,
My voided body, nothing more to me, returning to the purifications,
farther offices, eternal uses of the earth."
Yes, they go their way, those dismissed atoms with all their energies and
affinities unimpaired. But they are not all; the will, the affections, the
intellect are just as real as those affinities and energies, and there is
strict account of all; nothing slips through; there is no door out of the
universe. But they are qualities of a personality, of a self, not of an
atom but of what uses and dismisses those atoms. If the qualities are
indestructible so must the self be. The little heap of ashes, the puff of
gas, do you pretend that is all that was Shakespeare? The rest of him
lives in his works, you say? But he lived and was just the same man after
those works were produced. The world gained, but he lost nothing of
himself, rather grew and strengthened in the production of them.
Still farther, those faculties with which we seek for knowledge are only a
part of us, there is something behind which wields them, something that
those faculties cannot turn themselves in upon and comprehend; for the
part cannot compass the whole. Yet there it is with the irrefragable proof
of consciousness. Who should be the mouthpiece of this whole? Who but the
poet, the man most fully "possessed of his own soul," the man of the
largest consciousness; fullest of love and sympathy which gather into his
own life the experiences of others, fullest of imagination; that quality
whereof Wordsworth says that it
"... in truth
Is but another name for absolute power,
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind
And reason in her most exalted mood."
Let Walt Whitman speak for us:
"And I know I am solid and sound;
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow:
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
"I know I am deathless;
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's compass;
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick
at night.
"I know I am august;
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood;
I see that the elementary laws never apologize;
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after
all.)
"I exist as I am--that is enough;
If no other in the world be aware I sit content;
And if each one and all be aware, I sit content.
"One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself;
And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand or ten million
years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
"My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite;
I laugh at what you call dissolution;
And I know the amplitude of time."
What lies through the portal of death is hidden from us; but the laws that
govern that unknown land are not all hidden from us, for they govern here
and now; they are immutable, eternal.
"Of and in all these things
I have dream'd that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us
changed,
I have dream'd that heroes and good doers shall be under the present and
past law,
And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and
past law,
For I have dream'd that the law they are under now is enough."
And the law not to be eluded is the law of consequences, the law of silent
teaching. That is the meaning of disease, pain, remorse. Slow to learn are
we; but success is assured with limitless Beneficence as our teacher, with
limitless time as our opportunity. Already we begin--
"To know the Universe itself as a road--as many roads
As roads for travelling souls.
For ever alive; for ever forward.
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble,
dissatisfied;
Desperate, proud, fond, sick;
Accepted by men, rejected by men.
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go.
But I know they go toward the best, toward something great;
The whole Universe indicates that it is good."
Going somewhere! And if it is impossible for us to see whither, as in the
nature of things it must be, how can we be adequate judges of the way? how
can we but often grope and be full of perplexity? But we know that a
smooth path, a paradise of a world, could only nurture fools, cowards,
sluggards. "Joy is the great unfolder," but pain is the great enlightener,
the great stimulus in certain directions, alike of man and beast. How else
could the self-preserving instincts, and all that grows out of them, have
been evoked? How else those wonders of the moral world, fortitude,
patience, sympathy? And if the lesson be too hard comes Death, come "the
sure-enwinding arms of Death" to end it, and speed us to the unknown land.
"... Man is only weak
Through his mistrust and want of hope,"
wrote Wordsworth. But man's mistrust of himself is, at bottom, mistrust of
the central Fount of power and goodness whence he has issued. Here comes
one who plucks out of religion its heart of fear, and puts into it a heart
of boundless faith and joy; a faith that beggars previous faiths because
it sees that All is good, not part bad and part good; that there is no
flaw in the scheme of things, no primeval disaster, no counteracting
power; but orderly and sure growth and development, and that infinite
Goodness and Wisdom embrace and ever lead forward all that exists. Are you
troubled that He is an unknown God; that we cannot by searching find Him
out? Why, it would be a poor prospect for the Universe if otherwise; if,
embryos that we are, we could compass Him in our thoughts:
"I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the
least."
It is the double misfortune of the churches that they do not study God in
His works--man and Nature and their relations to each other; and that they
do profess to set Him forth; that they worship therefore a God of man's
devising, an idol made by men's minds it is true, not by their hands, but
none the less an idol. "Leaves are not more shed out of trees than Bibles
are shed out of you," says the poet. They were the best of their time, but
not of all time; they need renewing as surely as there is such a thing as
growth, as surely as knowledge nourishes and sustains to further
development; as surely as time unrolls new pages of the mighty scheme of
existence. Nobly has George Sand, too, written: "Everything is divine,
even matter; everything is superhuman, even man. God is everywhere. He is
in me in a measure proportioned to the little that I am. My present life
separates me from Him just in the degree determined by the actual state of
childhood of our race. Let me content myself in all my seeking to feel
after Him, and to possess of Him as much as this imperfect soul can take
in with the intellectual sense I have. The day will come when we shall no
longer talk about God idly; nay, when we shall talk about Him as little
as possible. We shall cease to set Him forth dogmatically, to dispute
about His nature. We shall put compulsion on no one to pray to Him, we
shall leave the whole business of worship within the sanctuary of each
man's conscience. And this will happen when we are really religious."
In what sense may Walt Whitman be called the Poet of Democracy? It is as
giving utterance to this profoundly religious faith in man. He is rather
the prophet of what is to be than the celebrator of what is. "Democracy,"
he writes, "is a word the real gist of which still sleeps quite
unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out
of which its syllables have come from pen or tongue. It is a great word,
whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet
to be enacted. It is in some sort younger brother of another great and
often used word, Nature, whose history also waits unwritten." Political
democracy, now taking shape, is the house to live in, and whilst what we
demand of it is room for all, fair chances for all, none disregarded or
left out as of no account, the main question, the kind of life that is to
be led in that house is altogether beyond the ken of the statesmen as
such, and is involved in those deepest facts of the nature and destiny of
man which are the themes of Walt Whitman's writings. The practical outcome
of that exalted and all-accepting faith in the scheme of things, and in
man, toward whom all has led up and in whom all concentrates as the
manifestation, the revelation of Divine Power is a changed estimate of
himself; a higher reverence for, a loftier belief in the heritage of
himself; a perception that pride, not humility, is the true homage to his
Maker; that "noblesse oblige" is for the Race, not for a handful; that it
is mankind and womankind and their high destiny which constrain to
greatness, which can no longer stoop to meanness and lies and base aims,
but must needs clothe themselves in "the majesty of honest dealing"
(majestic because demanding courage as good as the soldier's, self-denial
as good as the saint's for every-day affairs), and walk erect and
fearless, a law to themselves, sternest of all lawgivers. Looking back to
the palmy days of feudalism, especially as immortalized in Shakespeare's
plays, what is it we find most admirable? what is it that fascinates? It
is the noble pride, the lofty self-respect; the dignity, the courage and
audacity of its great personages. But this pride, this dignity rested half
upon a true, half upon a hollow foundation; half upon intrinsic qualities,
half upon the ignorance and brutishness of the great masses of the people,
whose helpless submission and easily dazzled imaginations made
stepping-stones to the elevation of the few, and "hedged round kings,"
with a specious kind of "divinity." But we have our faces turned toward a
new day, and toward heights on which there is room for all.
"By God, I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart
of on the same terms"
is the motto of the great personages, the great souls of to-day. _On the
same terms_, for that is Nature's law and cannot be abrogated, the
reaping as you sow. But all shall have the chance to sow well. This is
pride indeed! Not a pride that isolates, but that can take no rest till
our common humanity is lifted out of the mire everywhere, "a pride that
cannot stretch too far because sympathy stretches with it":
"Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you;
These immense meadows--these interminable rivers--
You are immense and interminable as they;
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
dissolution--you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
passion, dissolution.
"The hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency;
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever
you are promulges itself;
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is
scanted;
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance and ennui, what you are
picks its way."
This is indeed a pride that is "calming and excellent to the soul"; that
"dissolves poverty from its need and riches from its conceit."
And humility? Is there, then, no place for that virtue so much praised by
the haughty? Humility is the sweet spontaneous grace of an aspiring,
finely developed nature which sees always heights ahead still unclimbed,
which outstrips itself in eager longing for excellence still unattained.
Genuine humility takes good care of itself as men rise in the scale of
being; for every height climbed discloses still new heights beyond. Or it
is a wise caution in fortune's favourites lest they themselves should
mistake, as the unthinking crowd around do, the glitter reflected back
upon them by their surroundings for some superiority inherent in
themselves. It befits them well if there be also due pride, pride of
humanity behind. But to say to a man, 'Be humble' is like saying to one
who has a battle to fight, a race to run, 'You are a poor, feeble
creature; you are not likely to win and you do not deserve to.' Say rather
to him, 'Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made
for victory: go forward with a joyful confidence in that result sooner or
later, and the sooner or the later depends mainly on yourself.'
"What Christ appeared for in the moral-spiritual field for humankind,
namely, that in respect to the absolute soul there is in the possession of
such by each single individual something so transcendent, so incapable of
gradations (like life) that to that extent it places all being on a common
level, utterly regardless of the distinctions of intellect, virtue,
station, or any height or lowliness whatever" is the secret source of that
deathless sentiment of Equality which how many able heads imagine
themselves to have slain with ridicule and contempt as Johnson, kicking a
stone, imagined he had demolished Idealism when he had simply attributed
to the word an impossible meaning. True, _In_equality is one of Nature's
words: she moves forward always by means of the exceptional. But the
moment the move is accomplished, then all her efforts are toward equality,
toward bringing up the rear to that standpoint. But social inequalities,
class distinctions, do not stand for or represent Nature's inequalities.
Precisely the contrary in the long run. They are devices for holding up
many that would else gravitate down and keeping down many who would else
rise up; for providing that some should reap who have not sown, and many
sow without reaping. But literature tallies the ways of Nature; for though
itself the product of the exceptional, its aim is to draw all men up to
its own level. The great writer is "hungry for equals day and night," for
so only can he be fully understood. "The meal is equally set"; all are
invited. Therefore is literature, whether consciously or not, the greatest
of all forces on the side of Democracy.
Carlyle has said there is no grand poem in the world but is at bottom a
biography--the life of a man. Walt Whitman's poems are not the biography
of a man, but they are his actual presence. It is no vain boast when he
exclaims,
"Camerado! this is no book;
Who touches this touches a man."
He has infused himself into words in a way that had not before seemed
possible; and he causes each reader to feel that he himself or herself has
an actual relationship to him, is a reality full of inexhaustible
significance and interest to the poet. The power of his book, beyond even
its great intellectual force, is the power with which he makes this felt;
his words lay more hold than the grasp of a hand, strike deeper than the
gaze or the flash of an eye; to those who comprehend him he stands "nigher
than the nighest."
America has had the shaping of Walt Whitman, and he repays the filial debt
with a love that knows no stint. Her vast lands with their varied,
brilliant climes and rich products, her political scheme, her achievements
and her failures, all have contributed to make these poems what they are
both directly and indirectly. Above all has that great conflict, the
Secession War, found voice in him. And if the reader would understand the
true causes and nature of that war, ostensibly waged between North and
South, but underneath a tussle for supremacy between the good and the evil
genius of America (for there were just as many secret sympathizers with
the secession-slave-power in the North as in the South) he will find the
clue in the pages of Walt Whitman. Rarely has he risen to a loftier height
than in the poem which heralds that volcanic upheaval:--
"Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier and fiercer
sweep!
Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour'd what the earth gave
me;
Long I roam'd the woods of the north--long I watch'd Niagara pouring;
I travel'd the prairies over, and slept on their breast--
I cross'd the Nevadas, I cross'd the plateaus;
I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail'd out to sea;
I sail'd through the storm, I was refresh'd by the storm;
I watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves;
I mark'd the white combs where they career'd so high, curling over;
I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds;
Saw from below what arose and mounted (O superb! O wild as my heart,
and powerful!)
Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellow'd after the lightning;
Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast
amid the din they chased each other across the sky;
--These, and such as these, I, elate, saw--saw with wonder, yet pensive
and masterful;
All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me;
Yet there with my soul I fed--I fed content, supercilious.
"'Twas well, O soul! 'twas a good preparation you gave me!
Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill;
Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us;
Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities;
Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring;
Torrents of men (sources and rills of the Northwest, are you indeed
inexhaustible?)
What, to pavements and homesteads here--what were those storms of the
mountains and sea?
What, to passions I witness around me to-day? Was the sea risen?
Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?
Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage;
Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front--Cincinnati, Chicago,
unchain'd;
--What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here!
How it climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes!
How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes
of lightning!
How DEMOCRACY, with desperate, vengeful port strides on, shown through
the dark by those flashes of lightning!
(Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark,
In a lull of the deafening confusion.)
"Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! stride with vengeful stroke!
And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities!
Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good;
My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong
nutriment,
--Long had I walk'd my cities, my country roads, through farms, only
half satisfied;
One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the ground
before me,
Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing
low;
--The cities I loved so well, I abandon'd and left--I sped to the
certainties suitable to me;
Hungering, hungering, hungering for primal energies, and nature's
dauntlessness;
I refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish it only;
I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire--on the water and air I
waited long;
--But now I no longer wait--I am fully satisfied--I am glutted;
I have witness'd the true lightning--I have witness'd my cities
electric;
I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise;
Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,
No more on the mountain roam, or sail the stormy sea."
But not for the poet a soldier's career. "To sit by the wounded and soothe
them, or silently watch the dead" was the part he chose. During the whole
war he remained with the army, but only to spend the days and nights,
saddest, happiest of his life, in the hospital tents. It was a beautiful
destiny for this lover of men, and a proud triumph for this believer in
the People; for it was the People that he beheld, tried by severest tests.
He saw them "of their own choice, fighting, dying for their own idea,
insolently attacked by the secession-slave-power." From the workshop, the
farm, the store, the desk, they poured forth, officered by men who had to
blunder into knowledge at the cost of the wholesale slaughter of their
troops. He saw them "tried long and long by hopelessness, mismanagement,
defeat; advancing unhesitatingly through incredible slaughter; sinewy with
unconquerable resolution. He saw them by tens of thousands in the
hospitals tried by yet drearier, more fearful tests--the wound, the
amputation, the shattered face, the slow hot fever, the long impatient
anchorage in bed; he marked their fortitude, decorum, their religious
nature and sweet affection." Finally, newest, most significant sight of
all, victory achieved, the cause, the Union safe, he saw them return back
to the workshop, the farm, the desk, the store, instantly reabsorbed into
the peaceful industries of the land:--
"A pause--the armies wait.
A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait.
The world, too, waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn
They melt, they disappear."
"Plentifully supplied, last-needed proof of Democracy in its
personalities!" ratifying on the broadest scale Wordsworth's haughty claim
for average man--"Such is the inherent dignity of human nature that there
belong to it sublimities of virtue which all men may attain, and which no
man can transcend."
But, aware that peace and prosperity may be even still severer tests of
national as of individual virtue and greatness of mind, Walt Whitman scans
with anxious, questioning eye the America of to-day. He is no
smooth-tongued prophet of easy greatness.
"I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue questioning every
one I meet;
Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?"
He sees clearly as any the incredible flippancy, the blind fury of
parties, the lack of great leaders, the plentiful meanness and vulgarity;
the labour question beginning to open like a yawning gulf.... "We sail a
dangerous sea of seething currents, all so dark and untried.... It seems
as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial
destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep intestine difficulty,
and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection saying lo! the roads! The
only plans of development, long and varied, with all terrible balks and
ebullitions! You said in your soul, I will be empire of empires, putting
the history of old-world dynasties, conquests, behind me as of no
account--making a new history, a history of democracy ... I alone
inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of America,
are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your soul, be it so. But
behold the cost, and already specimens of the cost. Thought you greatness
was to ripen for you like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that
you must conquer it through ages ... must pay for it with proportionate
price. For you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily
person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the
demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long
postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions,
prophets, thunderstorms, deaths, new projections and invigorations of
ideas and men."
"Yet I have dreamed, merged in that hidden-tangled problem of our fate,
whose long unravelling stretches mysteriously through time--dreamed,
portrayed, hinted already--a little or a larger band, a band of brave and
true, unprecedented yet, arm'd and equipt at every point, the members
separated, it may be by different dates and states, or south or north, or
east or west, a year, a century here, and other centuries there, but
always one, compact in soul, conscience-conserving, God-inculcating,
inspired achievers not only in literature, the greatest art, but achievers
in all art--a new undying order, dynasty from age to age transmitted, a
band, a class at least as fit to cope with current years, our dangers,
needs, as those who, for their time, so long, so well, in armour or in
cowl, upheld and made illustrious that far-back-feudal, priestly world."
Of that band, is not Walt Whitman the pioneer? Of that New World
literature, say, are not his poems the beginning? A rude beginning if you
will. He claims no more and no less. But whatever else they may lack they
do not lack vitality, initiative, sublimity. They do not lack that which
makes life great and death, with its "transfers and promotions, its superb
vistas," exhilarating--a resplendent faith in God and man which will
kindle anew the faith of the world:--
"Poets to come! Orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before
known,
"Arouse! Arouse--for you must justify me--you must answer.
"I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
"I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a
casual look upon you, and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you."
ANNE GILCHRIST.
[Illustration: ANNE GILCHRIST
Photogravure from a painting by her son, made in 1882]
LETTER I[3]
WALT WHITMAN TO W. M. ROSSETTI AND ANNE GILCHRIST
_Washington,
December 9, 1869._
DEAR MR. ROSSETTI:
Your letter of last summer to William O'Connor with the passages
transcribed from a lady's correspondence, had been shown me by him, and
copy lately furnished me, which I have just been rereading. I am deeply
touched by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from
England, and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to
me to get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them to Mr.
O'Connor but approve that action. I realize indeed of this emphatic and
smiling _well done_ from the heart and conscience of a true wife and
mother, and one too whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your
letter, after flowing through the heart and conscience, must also move
through and satisfy science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto
received no eulogium so magnificent.
I send by same mail with this, same address as this letter, two
photographs, taken within a few months. One is intended for the lady (if I
may be permitted to send it her)--and will you please accept the other,
with my respects and love? The picture is by some criticised very severely
indeed, but I hope you will not dislike it, for I confess to myself a
perhaps capricious fondness for it, as my own portrait, over some scores
that have been made or taken at one time or another.
I am still employed in the Attorney General's office. My p. o. address
remains the same. I am quite well and hearty. My new editions,
considerably expanded, with what suggestions &c. I have to offer,
presented I hope in more definite form, will probably get printed the
coming spring. I shall forward you early copies. I send my love to Moncuré
Conway, if you see him. I wish he would write to me. If the pictures don't
come, or get injured on the way, I will try again by express. I want you
to loan this letter to the lady, or if she wishes it, give it to her to
keep.
WALT WHITMAN.
LETTER II
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_September 3, 1871._
DEAR FRIEND:
At last the beloved books have reached my hand--but now I have them, my
heart is so rent with anguish, my eyes so blinded, I cannot read in them.
I try again and again, but too great waves come swaying up & suffocate me.
I will struggle to tell you my story. It seems to me a death struggle.
When I was eighteen I met a lad of nineteen[4] who loved me then, and
always for the remainder of his life. After we had known each other about
a year he asked me to be his wife. But I said that I liked him well as my
friend, but could not love him as a wife should love & felt deeply
convinced I never should. He was not turned aside, but went on just the
same as if that conversation had never passed. After a year he asked me
again, and I, deeply moved by and grateful for his steady love, and so
sorry for him, said yes. But next day, terrified at what I had done and
painfully conscious of the dreary absence from my heart of any faintest
gleam of true, tender, wifely love,[5] said no again. This too he bore
without desisting & at the end of some months once more asked me with
passionate entreaties. Then, dear friend, I prayed very earnestly, and it
seemed to me (that) that I should continue to mar & thwart his life so was
not right, if he was content to accept what I could give. I knew I could
lead a good and wholesome life beside him--his aims were noble--his heart
a deep, beautiful, true Poet's heart; but he had not the Poet's great
brain. His path was a very arduous one, and I knew I could smooth it for
him--cheer him along it. It seemed to me God's will that I should marry
him. So I told him the whole truth, and he said he would rather have me on
those terms than not have me at all. He said to me many times, "Ah, Annie,
it is not you who are so loved that is rich; it is I who so love." And I
knew this was true, felt as if my nature were poor & barren beside his.
But it was not so, it was only slumbering--undeveloped. For, dear Friend,
my soul was so passionately aspiring--it so thirsted & pined for light, it
had not power to reach alone and he could not help me on my way. And a
woman is so made that she cannot give the tender passionate devotion of
her whole nature save to the great conquering soul, stronger in its
powers, though not in its aspirations, than her own, that can lead her
forever & forever up and on. It is for her soul exactly as it is for her
body. The strong divine soul of the man embracing hers with passionate
love--so alone the precious germs within her soul can be quickened into
life. And the time will come when man will understand that a woman's soul
is as dear and needful to his and as different from his as her body to his
body. This was what happened to me when I had read for a few days, nay,
hours, in your books. It was the divine soul embracing mine. I never
before dreamed what love meant: not what life meant. Never was alive
before--no words but those of "new birth" can hint the meaning of what
then happened to me.
The first few months of my marriage were dark and gloomy to me within, and
sometimes I had misgivings whether I had judged aright, but when I knew
there was a dear baby coming my heart grew light, and when it was born,
such a superb child--all gloom & fear forever vanished. I knew it was
God's seal to the marriage, and my heart was full of gratitude and joy. It
was a happy and a good life we led together for ten short years, he ever
tender and affectionate to me--loving his children so, working earnestly
in the wholesome, bracing atmosphere of poverty--for it was but just
possible with the most strenuous frugality and industry to pay our way. I
learned to cook & to turn my hand to all household occupation--found it
bracing, healthful, cheerful. Now I think it more even now that I
understand the divineness & sacredness of the Body. I think there is no
more beautiful task for a woman than ministering all ways to the health &
comfort & enjoyment of the dear bodies of those she loves: no material
that will work sweeter, more beautifully into that making of a perfect
poem of a man's life which is her true vocation.
In 1861 my children took scarlet fever badly: I thought I should have lost
my dear oldest girl. Then my husband took it--and in five days it carried
him from me. I think, dear friend, my sorrow was far more bitter, though
not so deep, as that of a loving tender wife. As I stood by him in the
coffin I felt such remorse I had not, could not have, been more tender to
him--such a conviction that if I had loved him as he deserved to be loved
he would not have been taken from us. To the last my soul dwelt apart &
unmated & his soul dwelt apart unmated. I do not fear the look of his dear
silent eyes. I do not think he would even be grieved with me now. My
youngest was then a baby. I have had much sweet tranquil happiness, much
strenuous work and endeavour raising my darlings.
In May, 1869, came the voice over the Atlantic to me--O, the voice of my
Mate: it must be so--my love rises up out of the very depths of the grief
& tramples upon despair. I can wait--any time, a lifetime, many
lifetimes--I can suffer, I can dare, I can learn, grow, toil, but nothing
in life or death can tear out of my heart the passionate belief that one
day I shall hear that voice say to me, "My Mate. The one I so much want.
Bride, Wife, indissoluble eternal!" It is not happiness I plead with God
for--it is the very life of my Soul, my love is its life. Dear Walt. It is
a sweet & precious thing, this love; it clings so close, so close to the
Soul and Body, all so tenderly dear, so beautiful, so sacred; it yearns
with such passion to soothe and comfort & fill thee with sweet tender joy;
it aspires as grandly as gloriously as thy own soul. Strong to soar--soft
& tender to nestle and caress. If God were to say to me, "See--he that you
love you shall not be given to in this life--he is going to set sail on
the unknown sea--will you go with him?" never yet has bride sprung into
her husband's arms with the joy with which I would take thy hand & spring
from the shore.
Understand aright, dear love, the reason of my silence. I was obeying the
voice of conscience. I thought I was to wait. For it is the instinct of a
woman's nature to wait to be sought--not to seek. And when that May & June
I was longing so irrepressibly to write I resolutely restrained myself,
believing if I were only patient the right opening would occur. And so it
did through Rossetti. And when he, liking what I said, suggested my
printing something, it met and enabled me to carry into execution what I
was brooding over. For I had, and still have, a strong conviction that it
was necessary for a woman to speak--that finally and decisively only a
woman can judge a man, only a man a woman, on the subject of their
relations. What is blameless, what is good in its effect on her, is
good--however it may have seemed to men. She is the test. And I never for
a moment feared any hard words against myself because I know these things
are not judged by the intellect but by the unerring instincts of the soul.
I knew any man could not but feel that it would be a happy and ennobling
thing for him that his wife should think & feel as I do on that
subject--knew that what had filled me with such great and beautiful
thoughts towards men in that writing could not fail to give them good &
happy thoughts towards women in the reading. The cause of my consenting to
Rossetti's[6] urgent advice that I should not put my name, he so kindly
solicitous, yet not altogether understanding me & it aright, was that I
did not rightly understand how it might be with my dear Boy if it came
before him. I thought perhaps he was not old enough to judge and
understand me aright; nor young enough to let it altogether alone. But it
has been very bitter & hateful to me this not standing to what I have said
as it were, with my own personality, better because of my utter love and
faithfulness to the cause & longing to stand openly and proudly in the
ranks of its friends; & for the lower reason that my nature is proud and
as defiant as thine own and immeasurably disdains any faintest appearance
of being afraid of what I had done.
And, my darling, above all because I love thee so tenderly that if hateful
words had been spoken against me I could have taken joy in it for thy dear
sake. There never yet was the woman who loved that would not joyfully bare
her breast to wrest the blows aimed at her beloved.
I know not what fiend made me write those meaningless words in my letter,
"it is pleasantest to me" &c., but it was not fear or faithlessness--& it
is not pleasantest but hateful to me. Now let me come to beautiful joyous
things again. O dear Walt, did you not feel in every word the breath of a
woman's love? did you not see as through a transparent veil a soul all
radiant and trembling with love stretching out its arms towards you? I
was so sure you would speak, would send me some sign: that I was to
wait--wait. So I fed my heart with sweet hopes: strengthened it with
looking into the eyes of thy picture. O surely in the ineffable tenderness
of thy look speaks the yearning of thy man-soul towards my woman-soul? But
now I will wait no longer. A higher instinct dominates that other, the
instinct for perfect truth. I would if I could lay every thought and
action and feeling of my whole life open to thee as it lies to the eye of
God. But that cannot be all at once. O come. Come, my darling: look into
these eyes and see the loving ardent aspiring soul in them. Easily, easily
will you learn to love all the rest of me for the sake of that and take me
to your breasts for ever and ever. Out of its great anguish my love has
risen stronger, more triumphant than ever: it cannot doubt, cannot fear,
is strong, divine, immortal, sure of its fruition this side the grave or
the other. "O agonistic throes," tender, passionate yearnings, pinings,
triumphant joys, sweet dreams--I took from you all. But, dear love, the
sinews of a woman's outer heart are not twisted so strong as a man's: but
the heart within is strong & great & loving. So the strain is very
terrible. O heart of flesh, hold on yet a few years to the great heart
within thee, if it may be. But if not all is assured, all is safe.
This time last year when I seemed dying I could have no secrets between me
& my dear children. I told them of my love: told them all they could
rightly understand, and laid upon them my earnest injunction that as soon
as my mother's life no longer held them here, they should go fearlessly to
America, as I should have planted them down there--Land of Promise, my
Canaan, to which my soul sings, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come & the
glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." After the 29th of this month I
shall be in my own home; dear friend--it is at Brookebank, Haslemere,
Surrey. Haslemere is on the main line between Portsmouth & London.
Good-bye, dear Walt,
ANNE GILCHRIST.
_Sept. 6._
The new portrait also is a sweet joy & comfort to my longing, pining heart
& eyes. How have I brooded & brooded with thankfulness on that one word in
thy letter[7] "the comfort it has been to me to get her words," for always
day & night these two years has hovered on my lips & in my heart the one
prayer: "Dear God, let me comfort him!" Let me comfort thee with my whole
being, dear love. I feel much better & stronger now.
LETTER III
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Brookebank, Shotter Mill
Haslemere, Surrey
October 23, 1871._
DEAR FRIEND:
I wrote you a letter the 6th September & would fain know whether it has
reached your hand. If it have not, I will write its contents again quickly
to you--if it have, I will wait your time with courage with patience for
an answer; but spare me the needless suffering of uncertainty on this
point & let me have one line, one word, of assurance that I am no longer
hidden from you by a thick cloud--I from thee--not thou from me: for I
that have never set eyes upon thee, all the Atlantic flowing between us,
yet cleave closer than those that stand nearest & dearest around
thee--love thee day & night:--last thoughts, first thoughts, my soul's
passionate yearning toward thy divine Soul, every hour, every deed and
thought--my love for my children, my hopes, aspirations for them, all
taking new shape, new height through this great love. My Soul has staked
all upon it. In dull dark moods when I cannot, as it were, see thee,
still, still always a dumb, blind yearning towards thee--still it comforts
me to touch, to press to me the beloved books--like a child holding some
hand in the dark--it knows not whose--but knows it is enough--knows it is
a dear, strong, comforting hand. Do not say I am forward, or that I lack
pride because I tell this love to thee who have never sought or made sign
of desiring to seek me. Oh, for all that, this love is my pride my glory.
Source of sufferings and joys that cannot put themselves into words.
Besides, it is not true thou hast not sought or loved me. For when I read
the divine poems I feel all folded round in thy love: I feel often as if
thou wast pleading so passionately for the love of the woman that can
understand thee--that I know not how to bear the yearning answering
tenderness that fills my breast. I know that a woman may without hurt to
her pride--without stain or blame--tell her love to thee. I feel for a
certainty that she may. Try me for this life, my darling--see if I cannot
so live, so grow, so learn, so love, that when I die you will say, "This
woman has grown to be a very part of me. My soul must have her loving
companionship everywhere & in all things. I alone & she alone are not
complete identities--it is I and she together in a new, divine, perfect
union that form the one complete identity."
I am yet young enough to bear thee children, my darling, if God should so
bless me. And would yield my life for this cause with serene joy if it
were so appointed, if that were the price for thy having a "perfect
child"--knowing my darlings would all be safe & happy in thy loving
care--planted down in America.
Let me have a few words directly, dear Friend. I shall get them by the
middle of November. I shall have to go to London about then or a little
later--to find a house for us--I only came to the old home here from which
I have been absent most four years to wind up matters and prepare for a
move, for there is nothing to be had in the way of educational advantages
here--it has been a beautiful survey for the children, but it is not what
they want now. But we leave with regret, for it is one of the sweetest,
wildest spots in England, though only 40 miles from London.
Good-bye, dear friend,
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER IV[8]
WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Washington, D. C.
November 3, 1871._
(TO A. G., EARL'S COLNE, HALSTED, ESSEX, ENG.)
I have been waiting quite a while for time and the right mood, to answer
your letter in a spirit as serious as its own, and in the same unmitigated
trust and affection. But more daily work than ever has fallen to me to do
the present season, and though I am well and contented, my best moods seem
to shun me. I wish to give to it a day, a sort of Sabbath, or holy day,
apart to itself, under serene and propitious influences, confident that I
could then write you a letter which would do you good, and me too. But I
must at least show without further delay that I am not insensible to your
love. I too send you my love. And do you feel no disappointment because I
now write so briefly. My book is my best letter, my response, my truest
explanation of all. In it I have put my body and spirit. You understand
this better and fuller and clearer than any one else. And I too fully and
clearly understand the loving letter it has evoked. Enough that there
surely exists so beautiful and a delicate relation, accepted by both of us
with joy.
LETTER V
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_27 November '71._
DEAR FRIEND.
Your long waited for letter brought me both joy & pain; but the pain was
not of your giving. I gather from it that a long letter[9] which I wrote
you Sept. 6th after I had received the precious packet, a letter in which
I opened all my heart to you, never reached your hands: nor yet a shorter
one[10] which, tortured by anxiety & suspense about its predecessor, I
wrote Oct. 15, it, too, written out of such stress & intensity of painful
emotion as wrenches from us inmost truth. I cannot face the thought of
these words of uttermost trust & love having fallen into other hands. Can
both be simply lost? Could any man suffer a base curiosity, to make him so
meanly, treacherously cruel? It seems to cut and then burn me.
I was not disappointed at the shortness of your letter & I do not ask nor
even wish you to write save when you are inwardly impelled & desirous of
doing so. I only want leave and security to write freely to you. Your book
does indeed say all--book that is not a book, for the first time a man
complete, godlike, august, standing revealed the only way possible,
through the garment of speech. Do you know, dear Friend, what it means for
a woman, what it means for me, to understand these poems? It means for her
whole nature to be then first kindled; quickened into life through such
love, such sympathy, such resistless attraction, that thenceforth she
cannot choose but live & die striving to become worthy to share this
divine man's life--to be his dear companion, closer, nearer, dearer than
any man can be--for ever so. Her soul stakes all on this. It is the
meaning, the fulfilment, the only perfect development & consummation of
her nature--of her passionate, high, immortal aspirations--her Soul to
mate with his for ever & ever. O I know the terms are obdurate--I know how
hard to attain to this greatness, the grandest lot ever aspired to by
woman. I know too my own shortcomings, faults, flaws. You might not be
able to give me your great love yet--to take me to your breast with joy.
But I can wait. I can grow great & beautiful through sorrow & suffering,
working, struggling, yearning, loving so, all alone, as I have done now
nearly three years--it will be three in May since I first read the book,
first knew what the word _love_ meant. Love & Hope are so strong in me, my
soul's high aspirations are of such tenacious, passionate intensity, are
so conscious of their own deathless reality, that what would starve them
out of any other woman only makes them strike out deeper roots, grow more
resolute & sturdy, in me. I know that "greatness will not ripen for me
like a pear." But I could face, I could joyfully accept, the fiercest
anguish, the hardest toil, the longest, sternest probation, to make me fit
to be your mate--so that at the last you should say, "This is the woman I
have waited for, the woman prepared for me: this is my dear eternal
comrade, wife--the one I so much want." Life has no other meaning for me
than that--all things have led up to help prepare me for that. Death is
more welcome to me than life if it means that--if thou, dear sailor, thou
sailing upon thy endless cruise, takest me on board--me, daring, all with
thee, steering for the deep waters, bound where mariner has not yet dared
to go: hand in hand with thee, nestled close--one with thee. Ah, that word
"enough" was like a blow on the breast to me--breast that often & often is
so full of yearning tenderness I know not how to draw my breath. The tie
between us would not grow less but more beautiful, dear friend, if you
knew me _better_: if I could stand as real & near to you as you do to me.
But I cannot, like you, clothe my nature in divine poems & so make it
visible to you. Ah, foolish me! I thought you would catch a glimpse of it
in those words I wrote--I thought you would say to yourself, "Perhaps this
is the voice of my mate," and would seek me a little to make sure if it
were so or not. O the sweet dreams I have fed on these three years nearly,
pervading my waking moments, influencing every thought & action. I was so
sure, so sure if I waited silently, patiently, you would send me some
sign: so full of joyful hope I could not doubt nor fear. When I lay dying
as it seemed, [I was] still full of the radiant certainty that you would
seek me, would not lose [me], that we should as surely find one another
there as here. And when the ebb ceased & life began to flow back into me,
O never doubting but it was for you. Never doubting but that the sweetest,
noblest, closest, tenderest companionship ever yet tasted by man & woman
was to begin for us here & now. Then came the long, long waiting, the hope
deferred: each morning so sure the book would come & with it a word from
you that should give me leave to speak: no longer to shut down in stern
silence the love, the yearning, the thoughts that seemed to strain & crush
my heart. I knew what that means--"if thou wast not gifted to sing thou
wouldst surely die." I felt as if my silence must kill me sometimes. Then
when the Book came but with it no word for me alone, there was such a
storm in [my] heart I could not for weeks read in it. I wrote that long
letter out in the Autumn fields for dear life's sake. I knew I might, and
must, speak then. Then I felt relieved, joyful, buoyant once more. Then
again months of heart-wearying disappointment as I looked in vain for a
letter-O the anguish at times, the scalding tears, the feeling within as
if my heart were crushed & doubled up--but always afterwards saying to
myself "If this suffering is to make my love which was born & grew up &
blossomed all in a moment strike deep root down in the dark & cold,
penetrate with painful intensity every fibre of my being, make it a love
such as he himself is capable of giving, then welcome this anguish, these
bitter deferments: let its roots be watered as long as God pleases with my
tears."
ANNE GILCHRIST.
_50 Marquis Road
London
Camden Sqr. N. W._
LETTER VI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Sqre.
London, N. W.,
January 24, '72._
DEAR FRIEND:
I send you photographs of my oldest and youngest children, I wish I had
some worth sending of the other two. That of myself done in 1850 is a copy
of a daguerrotype. The recent one was taken just a week or so before I
broke down in my long illness & when I was struggling against a terrible
sense of inward prostration; so it has not my natural expression, but I
think you will like to have [it] rather than none, & the weather here is
too gloomy for there to be any chance of a good one if I were to try
again. Your few words lifted a heavy weight off me. Very few they are,
dear friend: but knowing that I may give to every word you speak its
fullest, truest meaning, the more I brood over them the sweeter do they
taste. Still I am not as happy & content as I thought I should be if I
could only know my words reached you & were welcome to you,--but restless,
anxious, impatient, looking so wistfully towards the letters each
morning--above all, longing, longing so for you to come--to come & see if
you feel happy beside me: no more this painful struggle to put myself into
words, but to let what I am & all my life speak to you. Only so can you
judge whether I am indeed the woman capable of rising to the full height
of great destiny, of justifying & fulfilling your grand thoughts of
women. And see my faults, flaws, shortcomings too, dear Friend. I feel an
earnest wish you should do this too that there may be the broad unmovable
foundation-rock of perfect truth and candour for our love. I do not fear.
I believe in a large all-accepting, because all-comprehending, love, a
boundless faith in growth & development--in your judging "not as the judge
judges but as the sunshine falling around me." To have you in the midst of
us! we clustered round you, shone upon, vivified, strengthened by your
presence, surrounding you with an atmosphere of love & cheerful life.
When I wrote to you in Nov. I was in lodgings in London, having just
accomplished the difficult task of finding a house for us in London, where
rents are so high. And I have succeeded better than I anticipated, for we
find this a comfortable, dear, little home--small, indeed, but not so
small as to interfere with health or comfort, and at rent that I may
safely undertake. My Husband was taken from us too young to be able to
have made any provision for his children. I have a little of my own--about
£80 a year; & for the rest depend upon my Mother, whose only surviving
child I am. And she, by nature generous & self-denying as well as prudent,
has never made anything but a pleasure of this & as long as she was able
to see to her own affairs, was such a capital manager that she used to
spare me about £150 out of an income of £350. But now though she retains
her faculties in a wonderful degree for her years (just upon 86), she is
no longer able to do this & has put the management of the whole into my
hands. And I, feeling that she needs, and ought to have, now an easier
scale of expenditure at Colne, have to manage a little more cleverly still
to make a less sum serve for us. But I succeed capitally, dear friend--do
not want a better home, never get behind hand & find it no hardship, but
quite the contrary to have to spend a good deal of time & pains in
domestic management. And then, just to help me through at the right
moment, dear Percy[11] obtained in November a good opening in some large
copper & iron mining & smelting works in South Wales at a salary upon
which he can comfortably live; & he likes his work well--writes very
cheerfully--lodges in a farmhouse in the midst of grand scenery, within a
walk of the sea. So this enables me to give the girls a turn in education,
for hitherto they have had hardly any teaching but mine. And I chose this
part because there is a capital day school for them handy. And Herby[12]
walks in to the best drawing school in London & is very diligent and happy
at his work. His bent is unmistakably strong. It was well I have had to be
so busy this autumn & winter, dear Walt, for I suffered keenly, sometimes
overwhelmingly, through the delay in my letters' reaching you. What caused
it? And when did you get the Sept. & Oct. letters & did you get the two
copies that I, baffled & almost despairing, sent off in Nov.? Good-bye,
dear Friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
LETTER VII[13]
WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_(Washington, D. C.)
Feb. 8 '72._
I send by same mail with this my latest piece copied in a newspaper--and
write you just a line. I suppose you only received my former letters
(two)--I ought to have written something about your children (described to
me in your letter of last summer--[July 23d] which I have just been
reading again.) Dear boys and girls--how my heart goes out to them.
Did I tell you that I had received letters from Tennyson, and that he
cordially invites me to visit him? Sometimes I dream of coming to Old
England, on such visit.--& thus of seeing you & your children----But it is
a dream only.
I am still living here in employment in a Government office. My health is
good. Life is rather sluggish here--yet not without the sunshine. Your
letters too were bright rays of it. I am going on to New York soon, to
stay a few weeks, but my address will still be here. I wrote lately to Mr.
Rossetti quite a long letter. Dear friend, best love & remembrance to you
& to the young folk.
LETTER VIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq. N. W.
April 12th, '72._
DEAR FRIEND:
I was to tell you about my acquaintanceship with Tennyson, which was a
pleasant episode in my life at Haslemere. Hearing of the extreme beauty of
the scenery thereabouts & specially of its comparative wildness &
seclusion, he thought he would like to find or build a house, to escape
from the obtrusive curiosity of the multitudes who flock to the Isle of
Wight at certain seasons of the year. He is even morbidly sensitive on
this point & will not stir beyond his own grounds from week's end to
week's end to avoid his admiring or inquisitive persecutors. So, knowing
an old friend of mine, he called on me for particulars as to the resources
of the neighbourhood. And I, a good walker & familiar with every least
frequent spot of hill & dale for some miles round, took him long ambles in
quest of a site. Very pleasant rambles they were; Tennyson, under the
influence of the fresh, outdoor, quite unconstrained life in new scenery &
with a cheerful aim, shaking off the languid ennuyé air, as of a man to
whom nothing has any longer a relish--bodily or mental--that too often
hangs about him. And we found something quite to his mind--a coppice of 40
acres hanging on the south side two thirds of the way up a hill some 1000
ft. high so as to be sheltered from the cold & yet have the light, dry,
elastic hill air--& with, of course, a glorious outlook over the wooded
weald of Sussex so richly green & fertile & looking almost as boundless as
the great sweep of sky over it--the South Downs to Surrey Hills & near at
hand the hill curving round a fir-covered promontory, standing out very
black & grand between him & the sunset. Underfoot too a wilderness of
beauty--fox gloves (I wonder if they grow in America) ferns, purple heath
&c &c. I don't suppose I shall see much more of him now I have left
Haslemere, though I have had very friendly invitations; for I am a home
bird--don't like staying out--wanted at home and happiest there. And I
should not enjoy being with them in the grand mansion half so much as I
did pic-nicing in the road & watching the builders as we did. It is
pleasant to see T--with children--little girls at least--he does not take
to boys but one of my girls was mostly on his knee when they were in the
room & he liked them very much. His two sons are now both 6 ft. high. I
have received your letters of March 20 from Brooklyn: but the one you
speak of as having acknowledged the photograph never came to hand--a sore
disappointment to me, dear Friend. I can ill afford to lose the long &
eagerly watched for pleasure of a letter. If it seems to you there must
needs be something unreal, illusive, in a love that has grown up entirely
without the basis of personal intercourse, dear Friend, then you do not
yourself realize your own power nor understand the full meaning of your
own words, "whoso touches this, touches a man"--"I have put my Soul & Body
into these Poems." Real effects imply real causes. Do you suppose that an
ideal figure conjured up by her own fancy could, in a perfectly sound,
healthy woman of my age, so happy in her children, so busy & content,
practical, earnest, produce such real & tremendous effect--saturating her
whole life, colouring every waking moment--filling her with such joys,
such pains that the strain of them has been well nigh too much even for a
strong frame, coming as it does, after twenty years of hard work?
Therefore please, dear Friend, do not "warn" me any more--it hurts so, as
seeming to distrust my love. Time only can show how needlessly. My love,
flowing ever fresh & fresh out of my heart, will go with you in all your
wanderings, dear Friend, enfolding you day and night, soul & body, with
tenderness that tries so vainly to utter itself in these poor, helpless
words, that clings closer than any man's love can cling. O, I could not
live if I did not believe that sooner or later you will not be able to
help stretching out your arms towards me & saying "Come, my Darling." When
you get this will you post me an American newspaper (any one you have done
with) as a token it has reached you--& so on at intervals during your
wanderings; it will serve as a token that you are well, & the postmark
will tell me where you are. And thus you will feel free only to write when
you have leisure & inclination--& I shall be spared [the] feeling I have
when I fancy my letters have not reached you--as if I were so hopelessly,
helplessly cut off from you, which is more than I can stand. We all read
American news eagerly too. The children are so well & working on with all
their might. The school turns out more what I desire for them than I had
ventured to hope. Good-bye, dearest Friend.
ANN GILCHRIST.
LETTER IX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden, Sqre.
June 3d, 1872._
DEAR FRIEND:
The newspapers have both come to hand & been gladly welcomed. I shall
realize you on the 26th sending living impulses into those young men, with
results not to cease--their kindled hearts sending back response through
glowing eyes that will be warmer to you than the June sunshine. Perhaps,
too, you will have pleasant talks with the eminent astronomers there.
Prof. Young, who is so skilful a worker with that most subtle of tidings
from the stars, the spectroscope--always, it seems hitherto bringing word
of the "vast similitude that interlocks all," nay, of the absolute
identity of the stuff they are made of with the stuff we are made of. The
news from Dartmouth that too, is a great pleasure.
It has been what seems to me a very long while since last writing, because
it has been a troubled time within & what I wrote I tore up again,
believing it was best, wisest so. You said in your first letter that if
you had leisure you could write one that "would do me good & you too";
write that letter dear Friend after you have been to Dartmouth[14]--for I
sorely need it. Perhaps the letters that I have sent you since that first,
have given you a feeling of constraint towards me because you cannot
respond to them. I will not write any more such letters; or, if I write
them because my heart is so full it cannot bear it, they shall not find
their way to the Post. But do not, because I give you more than
friendship, think that it would not be a very dear & happy thing to me to
have friendship only from you. I do not want you to write what it is any
effort to write--do not ask for deep thoughts, deep feelings--know well
those must choose their own time & mode--but for the simplest current
details--for any thing that helps my eyes to pierce the distance & see you
as you live & move to-day. I dearly like to hear about your Mother--want
to know if all your sisters are married, & if you have plenty of little
nephews & nieces--I like to hear anything about Mr. O'Connor[15] & Mr.
Burroughs,[16] towards both of whom I feel as toward friends. (Has Mr.
O'Connor succeeded in getting practically adopted his new method of making
cast steel? Percy[17] being a worker in the field of metallurgy makes me
specially glad to hear about this.) Then, I need not tell you how deep an
interest I feel in American politics & want to know if you are satisfied
with the result of the Cincinnati Convention & what of Mr. Greely?[18] &
what you augur as to his success--I am sure dear friend, if you realize
the joy it is to me to receive a few words from you--about anything that
is passing in your thoughts & around--how beaming bright & happy the day a
letter comes & many days after--how light hearted & alert I set about my
daily tasks, it would not seem irksome to you to write. And if you say,
"Read my books, & be content--you have me in them," I say, it is because I
read them so that I am not content. It is an effort to me to turn to any
other reading; as to highest literature what I felt three years ago is
more than ever true now, with all their precious augmentations. I want
nothing else--am fully fed & satisfied there. I sit alone many hours busy
with my needle; this used to be tedious; but it is not so now--for always
close at hand lie the books that are so dear, so dear, I brooding over the
poems, sunning myself in them, pondering the vistas--all the experience of
my past life & all its aspirations corroborating them--all my future & so
far as in me lies the future of my children to be shaped modified
vitalized by & through these--outwardly & inwardly. How can I be content
to live wholly isolated from you? I am sure it is not possible for any
one,--man or woman, it does not matter which, to receive these books, not
merely with the intellect critically admiring their power & beauty, but
with an understanding responsive heart, without feeling it drawn out of
their breasts so that they must leave all & come to be with you sometimes
without a resistless yearning for personal intercourse that will take no
denial. When we come to America I shall not want you to talk to me, shall
not be any way importunate. To settle down where there are some that love
you & understand your poems, somewhere that you would be sure to come
pretty often--to have you sit with me while I worked, you silent, or
reading to yourself, I don't mind how: to let my children grow fond of
you--to take food with us; if my music pleased you, to let me play & sing
to you of an evening. Do your needlework for you--talk freely of all that
occupied my thoughts concerning the children's welfare &c--I could be very
happy so. But silence with the living presence and silence with all the
ocean in between are two different things. Therefore, these years stretch
out your hand cordially, trustfully, that I may feel its warm grasp.
Good-bye, my dearest friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
LETTER X
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq. London
July 14, '72._
The 3d July was my rejoicing day, dearest Friend,--the day the packet from
America reached me, scattering for a while the clouds of pain and
humiliation & filling me through & through with light & warmth; indeed I
believe I am often as happy reading, as you were writing, your Poems. The
long new one "As a Strong Bird" of itself answers the question hinted in
your preface & nobly fulfils the promise of its opening lines. We want
again & again in fresh words & from the new impetus & standpoint of new
days the vision that sweeps ahead, the tones that fill us with faith & joy
in our present share of life & work--prophetic of the splendid issues. It
does not need to be American born to believe & passionately rejoice in the
belief of what is preparing in America. It is for humanity. And it comes
through England. The noblest souls the most heroic hearts of England were
called to be the nucleus of the race that (enriched with the blood &
qualities of other races & planted down in the new half of the world
reserved in all its fresh beauty & exhaustless riches to be the arena) is
to fulfil, justify, outstrip the vision of the poets, the quenchless
aspirations of all the ardent souls that have ever struggled forward upon
this earth. For me, the most precious page in the book is that which
contains the Democratic Souvenirs. I respond to that as one to whom it
means the life of her Soul. It comforts me very much. You speak in the
Preface of the imperious & resistless command from within out of which
"Leaves of Grass" issued. This carried with it no doubt the secret of a
corresponding resistless power over the reader wholly unprecedented,
unapproached in literature, as I believe, & to be compared only with that
of Christ. I speak out of my own experience when I say that no myth, no
"miracle" embodying the notion of a direct communication between God & a
human creature, goes beyond the effect, soul & body, of those Poems on me:
& that were I to put into Oriental forms of speech what I experienced it
would read like one of those old "miracles" or myths. Thus of many things
that used to appear to me incomprehensible lies, I now perceive the germ
of truth & understand that what was called the supernatural was merely an
inadequate & too timid way of conceiving the natural. Had I died the
following year, it would have been the simple truth to say I died of joy.
The doctor called it nervous exhaustion falling with tremendous violence
on the heart which "seemed to have been strained": & was much puzzled how
that could have come to pass. I left him in his puzzle--but it was none to
me. How could such a dazzling radiance of light flooding the soul,
suddenly, kindling it to such intense life, but put a tremendous strain on
the vital organs? how could the muscles of the heart suddenly grow
adequate to such new work? O the passionate tender gratitude that flooded
my breast, the yearnings that seemed to strain the heart beyond endurance
that I might repay with all my life & soul & body this debt--that I might
give joy to him who filled me with such joy, that I might make his outward
life sweeter & more beautiful who made my inner life so divinely sweet &
beautiful. But, dear friend, I have certainly to see that this is not to
be so, now: that for me too love & death are folded inseparably together:
Death that will renew my youth.
I have had the paper from Burlington[19]--with the details a woman likes
so to have. I wish I had known for certain whether you went on to Boston &
were enjoying the music there. My youngest boy has gone to spend his
holiday with his brother in South Wales & he writes me such good news of
Per., that he is "looking as brown as a nut & very jolly"; his home in a
"clean airy old farm house half way up a mountain in the midst of wild
rough grand scenery, sea in sight near enough to hear the sound of it
about as loud as the rustling of leaves"--so the boys will have a good
time together, and the girls are going with me for the holiday to their
grandmother at Colne. W. Rossetti does not take his till October this
year. I suppose it will be long & long before this letter reaches you as
you will be gone to California--may it be a time full of enjoyment--full
to the brim.
Good-bye, dearest Friend,
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
What a noble achievement is Mr. Stanley's:[20] it fills me with pleasure
that Americans should thus have been the rescuer of our large-hearted,
heroic traveller. We have just got his letters with account of the five
races in Central Africa copied from N. Y. _Herald_, July 29.
LETTER XI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road
Camden Sqre.
Novr. 12, 1872._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I must write not because I have anything to tell you--but because I want
so, by help of a few loving words, to come into your presence as it
were--into your remembrance. Not more do the things that grow want the
sun.
I have received all the papers--& each has made a day very bright for me.
I hope the trip to California has not again had to be postponed--I realize
well the enjoyment of it, & what it would be to California & the fresh
impulses of thought & emotion that would shape themselves, melodiously,
out of that for the new volume.
My children are all well. Beatrice is working hard to get through the
requisite amount of Latin, &c. that is required in the preliminary
examination--before entering on medical studies. Percy, my eldest, whom I
have not seen for a year, is coming to spend Xmas with us.
Good-bye, dearest Friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road
Camden Sq. London
Jan. 31, '73._
DEAREST FRIEND:
Shall you never find it in your heart to say a kind word to me again? or a
word of some sort? Surely I must have written what displeased you very
much that you should turn away from me as the tone of your last letter &
the ten months' silence which have followed seem to express to me with
such emphasis. But if so, tell me of it, tell me how--with perfect
candour, I am worthy of that--a willing learner & striver; not afraid of
the pain of looking my own faults & shortcomings steadily in the face. It
may be my words have led you to do me some kind of injustice in thought--I
then could defend myself. But if it is simply that you are preoccupied,
too busy, perhaps very eagerly beset by hundreds like myself whose hearts
are so drawn out of their breasts by your Poems that they cannot rest
without striving, some way or other, to draw near to you personally--then
write once more & tell me so & I will learn to be content. But please let
it be a letter just like the first three you wrote: & do not fear that I
shall take it to mean anything it doesn't mean. I shall never do that
again, though it was natural enough at first, with the deep unquestioning
belief I had that I did but answer a call; that I not only might but
ought, on pain of being untrue to the greatest, sweetest instincts &
aspirations of my own soul, to answer it with all my heart & strength &
life. I say to myself, I say to you as I did in my first letters, "This
voice that has come to me from over the Atlantic is the one divine voice
that has penetrated to my soul: is the utterance of a nature that sends
out life-giving warmth & light to my inward self as actually as the Sun
does to my body, & draws me to it and shapes & shall shape my course just
as the sun shapes the earth's." "Interlocked in a vast similitude" indeed
are these inner & outer truths of our lives. It may be that this shaping
of my life course toward you will have to be all inward--that to feed upon
your words till they pass into the very substance & action of my soul is
all that will be given to me & the grateful, yearning, tender love growing
ever deeper & stronger out of that will have to go dumb & actionless all
my days here. But I can wait long, wait patiently; know well, realize more
clearly indeed that this wingless, clouded, half-developed soul of me has
a long, long novitiate to live through before it can meet & answer yours
on equal terms so as fully to satisfy you, to be in very truth & deed a
dear Friend, a chosen companion, a source of joy to you as you of light &
life to me. But that is what I will live & die hoping & striving for. That
covers & includes all the aspirations all the high hopes I am capable of.
And were I to fall away from this belief it would be a fall into utter
blackness & despair, as one for whom the Sun in Heaven is blotted out.
Good-bye, dearest Friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
50 Marquis Road
Camden Sq. N. W.
May 20th, '73.
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Such a joyful surprise was that last paper you sent me with the Poem
celebrating the great events in Spain--the new hopes the new life wakening
in the breasts of that fine People which has slumbered so long, weighed
down & tormented with hideous nightmares of superstition. Are you indeed
getting strong & well again? able to drink in draughts of pleasure from
the sights & sounds & perfumes of this delicious time, "lilac
time"--according to your wont? Sleeping well--eating well, dear friend?
William Rossetti is coming to see me Thursday, before starting for his
holiday trip to Naples. His father was a Neapolitan, so he narrowly
escaped a lifelong dungeon for having written some patriotic songs--he
fled in disguise by help of English friends & spent the rest of his life
here. So this, his first visit to Naples, will be specially full of
interest & delight to our friend. He is also in great spirits at having
discovered a large number of hitherto unknown early letters of Shelley's.
Of modern English Poets Shelley is the one he loves & admires incomparably
the most. Perhaps this letter will just reach you on your birthday. What
can I send you? What can I tell you but the same old story of a heart
fast anchored--of a soul to whom your soul is as the sun & the fresh,
sweet air, and the nourishing, sustaining earth wherein the other one
breathes free & feeds & expands & delights itself. There is no occupation
of the day however homely that is not coloured, elevated, made more
cheerful to me by thoughts of you & by thoughts you have given me blent in
& suffusing all: No hope or aim or practical endeavour for my dear
children that has not taken a higher, larger, more joyous scope through
you. No immortal aspiration, no thoughts of what lies beyond death, but
centre in you. And in moods of pain and discouragement, dear Friend, I
turn to that Poem beginning "Whoever you are holding me now in hand," and
I don't know but that that one revives and strengthens me more than any.
For there is not a line nor a word in it at which my spirit does not rise
up instinctively and fearlessly say--"So be it." And then I read other
poems & drink in the draught that I know is for me, because it is for
all--the love that you give me on the broad ground of my humanity and
womanhood. And I understand the reality & preciousness of that. Then I say
to myself, "Souls are not made to be frustrated--to have their greatest &
best & sweetest impulses and aspirations & yearnings made abortive.
Therefore we shall not be 'carried diverse' forever. This dumb soul of
mine will not always remain hidden from you--but some way will be given me
for this love, this passion of gratitude, this set of all the nerves of my
being toward you, to bring joy & comfort to you. I do not ask the When or
the How."
I shall be thinking of your great & dear Mother in her beautiful old age,
too, on your birthday--happiest woman in all the world that she was & is:
forever sacred & dear to America & to all who feed on the Poems of her
Son.
Good-bye, my best beloved Friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
I suppose you see all that you care to see in the way of English
newspapers. I often long to send you one when there is anything in that I
feel sure would interest you, but am withheld by fearing it would be quite
superfluous or troublesome even.
LETTER XIV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earls Colne
Halstead
August 12, 1873._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
The paper has just been forwarded here which tells me you are still
suffering and not, as I was fondly believing, already quite emerged from
the cloud of sickness. My Darling, let me use that tender caressing word
once more--for how can I help it, with heart so full & no outlet but
words? My darling--I say it over & over to myself with voice, with eyes so
full of love, of tender yearning, sorrowful, longing love. I would give
all the world if I might come (but am held here yet awhile by a duty
nothing may supersede) & soothe & tend & wait on you & with such cheerful
loving companionship lift off some of the weight of the long hours & days
& perhaps months that must still go over while nature slowly,
imperceptibly, but still so surely repairs the mischief within: result of
the tremendous ordeal to your frame of those great over-brimming years of
life spent in the Army Hospitals. You see dear Friend, a woman who is a
mother has thenceforth something of that feeling toward other men who are
dear to her. A cherishing, fostering instinct that rejoices so in tending,
nursing, caretaking & I should be so happy it needs must diffuse a
reviving, comforting, vivifying warmth around you. Might but these words
breathed out of the heart of a woman who loves you with her whole soul &
life & strength fulfil their errand & comfort the sorrowful heart, if
ever so little--& through that revive the drooping frame. This love that
has grown up, far away over here, unhelped by the sweet influences of
personal intercourse, penetrating the whole substance of a woman's life,
swallowing up into itself all her aspirations, hopes, longings, regardless
of Death, looking earnestly, confidently beyond that for its fruition,
blending more or less with every thought & act of her life--a guiding star
that her feet cannot choose but follow resolutely--what can be more real
than this, dear Friend? What can have deeper roots, or a more immortal
growing power? But I do not ask any longer whether this love is believed
in & welcomed & precious to you. For I know that what has real roots
cannot fail to bear real flowers & fruits that will in the end be sweet &
joyful to you; and that if I am indeed capable of being your eternal
comrade, climbing whereon you climb, daring all that you dare, learning
all that you learn, suffering all that you suffer (pressing closest then)
loving, enjoying all that you love & enjoy--you will want me. You will not
be able to help stretching out your hand & drawing me to you. I have
written this mostly out in the fields, as I am so fond of doing--the
serene, beautiful harvest landscape spread around--returned once more as I
have every summer for five & twenty years to this old village where my
mother's family have lived in unbroken succession three hundred years,
ever since, in fact, the old Priory which they have inhabited, ceased to
be a Priory. My Mother's health is still good--wonderful indeed for 88,
though she has been 30 years crippled with rheumatism. Still she enjoys
getting out in the sunshine in her Bath chair, & is able to take pleasure
in seeing her friends & in having us all with her. Her father was a hale
man at 90. These eastern counties are flat & tame, but yet under this
soft, smiling, summer sky lovely enough too--with their rich green meadows
& abundant golden corn crops, now being well got in. Even the sluggish
little river Colne one cannot find fault with, it nourishes such a
luxuriant border of wild flowers as it creeps along--& turns & twists from
sunshine into shade & from shade into sunshine so as to make the very best
& most of itself. But as to the human growth here, I think that more than
anywhere else in England perhaps it struggled along choked & poisoned by
dead things of the past, still holding their place above ground. Carlyle
calls the clergy "black dragoons"--in these rural parishes they are black
Squires, making it their chief business to instruct the labourer that his
grinding poverty & excessive toil, & the Squire's affluence & ease are
equally part of the sacred order of Providence. When I have been here a
little I wish myself in London again, dearly as I love outdoor life &
companionship with nature. For though the same terrible & cruel facts are
there as here, they are not choked down your throat by any one, as a
beautiful & perfect ideal. Even in England light is unmistakably breaking
through the darkness for the toilers.
I did not see William Rossetti before I came down, but heard he had had a
very happy time in Italy & splendid weather all the while. Mr. Conway &
his wife are going to spend their holiday in Brittany. Do not think me
childish dear friend if I send a copy of this letter to Washington as well
as to Camden. I want it so to get to you--long & so long to speak with
you--& the Camden one may never come to hand--or the Washington one might
remain months unforwarded--it is easy to tear up.
I hope it will find you by the sea shore!--getting on so fast toward
health & strength again--refreshed & tranquillized, soul & body. Good-bye,
beloved Friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XV[21]
WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
I must write
friend once more at
Since I last wrote, clouds have darkened over me, and still remain.
On the night of 3d January last I was paralyzed, left side, and have
remained so since. Feb. 19 I lost a dear dear sister, who died in St.
Louis leaving two young daughters. May 23d, my dear inexpressibly beloved
mother died in Camden, N. J. I was just able to get from Washington to her
dying bed & sit there. I thought I was bearing it all stoutly, but I find
it affecting the progress of my recovery since and now. I am still feeble,
palsied & have spells of great distress in the head. But there are points
more favourable.
I am up & dressed every day, sleep & eat middling well & do not change
much yet, in flesh & face, only look very old.
Though I can move slowly very short distances, I walk with difficulty &
have to stay in the house nearly all the time. As I write to-day, I feel
that I shall probably get well--though I may not.
Many times during the past year have I thought of you & your children.
Many times indeed have I been going to write, but did not. I have just
been reading over again several of this & last year's letters from you &
looking at the pictures sent in the one of Jan. 24, '72. (Your letters
of Jan. 24, June 3 & July 14, of last year and of Jan. 31, and May 20,
this year, with certainly one other, maybe two) all came safe. Do not
think hard of me for not writing in reply. If you could look into my
spirit & emotion you would be entirely satisfied & at peace. I am at
present temporarily here at Camden, on the Delaware river, opposite
Philadelphia, at the house of my brother, and I am occupying, as I write,
the rooms wherein my mother died. You must not be unhappy about me, as I
am as comfortably situated as can be--& many things--indeed every
thing--in my case might be so much worse. Though my plans are not
definite, my intention as far as anything is on getting stronger, and
after the hot season passes, to get back to Washington for the fall &
winter.
My post office address continues at Washington. I send my love to Percy &
all your dear children.
The enclosed ring I have just taken from my finger, & send to you, with my
love.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A TYPICAL WHITMAN LETTER.
FROM THOMAS B. HARNED'S COLLECTION]
LETTER XVI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earls Colne
Sept. 4, 1873._
I am entirely satisfied & at peace, my Beloved--no words can say how
divine a peace.
Pain and joy struggle together in me (but joy getting the mastery, because
its portion is eternal). O the precious letter, bearing to me the living
touch of your hand, vibrating through & through me as I feel the pressure
of the ring that pressed your flesh--& now will press mine so long as I
draw breath. My Darling! take comfort & strength & joy from me that you
have made so rich & strong. Perhaps it will yet be given us to see each
other, to travel the last stage of this journey side by side, hand in
hand--so completing the preparation for the fresh start on the greater
journey; me loving and blessing her you mourn, now for your dear
sake--then growing to know & love her in full unison with you.
I hope you will soon get to the sea--as soon as you are strong enough,
that is--& if you could have all needful care & comfort & a dear friend
with you there. For I believe you would get on faster away from Camden--&
that it tends so to keep the wound open & quivering to be where the blow
fell on you--where every object speaks of her last hours & is laden with
heart-stirring associations; though I realize, dearest Friend, that in the
midst of the poignant sorrow come immortal sweet moments--communings, rapt
anticipations. But these would come the same in nature's great soothing
arms by the seashore, with her reviving, invigorating breath playing
freely over you. If only you could get just strong enough prudently to
undertake the journey. When my eyes first open in the morning, often such
tender thoughts, yearning ineffably, pitying, sorrowful, sweet thoughts
flow into my breast that longs & longs to pillow on itself the suffering
head (with white hair more beautiful to me than the silvery clouds which
always make me think of it.) My hands want to be so helpful, tending,
soothing, serving my whole frame to support his stricken side--O to
comfort his heart--to diffuse round him such warm sunshine of love,
helping time & the inborn vigour of each organ that the disease could not
withstand the influences, but healthful life begin to flow again through
every part. My children send their love, their earnest sympathy. Do not
feel anyways called on to write except when inwardly impelled. Your
silence is not dumb to me now--will never again cloud or pain, or be
misconstrued by me. I can feast & feast, & still have wherewithal to
satisfy myself with the sweet & precious words that have now come & with
the feel of my ring, only send any old paper that comes to hand (never
mind whether there is anything to read in it or not) just as a sign that
the breath of love & hope these poor words try to bear to you, has reached
you. And just one word literally that, dearest, when you begin to feel you
are really getting on--to make me so joyful with the news.
Good-bye, dearest Friend,
ANNE GILCHRIST.
Back again in Marquis Road.
LETTER XVII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq.
Nov. 3, '73 London_
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
All the papers have reached me--3 separate packets (with the handwriting
on them that makes my heart give a glad bound). I look through them full
of interest & curiosity, wanting to realize as I do, in things small as
well as things large, my Land of Promise--the land where I hope to plant
down my children--so strong in the faith that they, & perhaps still more
those that come after them will bless me for that (consciously or
unconsciously, it doesn't matter which) I should set out with a cheerful
heart on that errand if I knew the first breath I drew on American soil
would be my last in life. I searched hopeful for a few words telling of
improvement in your health in the last paper. But perhaps it does not
follow from there being no much mention that there is no progress. May you
be steadily though ever so slowly gaining ground, my Darling! Now that I
understand the nature of the malady (a deficient flow of blood to the
brain, if it has been rightly explained to me) I realize that recovery
must be very gradual: as the coming on of it must have been slow &
insidious. And perhaps that, & also even from before the war time with its
tremendous strain, emotional & physical, is part of the price paid for the
greatness of the Poems & for their immortal destiny--the rapt exaltation
the intensity of joy & sorrow & struggle--all that went to give them
their life-giving power. For I have felt many times in reading them as if
the light and heat of their sacred fire must needs have consumed the vital
energies of him in whose breast it was generated, faster then even the
most splendid physique could renew itself. For our sakes, for humanity's
sake, you suffer now, I do not doubt it, every bit as much as the
soldier's wounds are for his country's sake. The more precious, the more
tenderly cherished, the more drawing the hearts that understand with
ineffable yearnings, for this.
My children all continue well in the main, I am thankful to say, though
Beatrice (the eldest girl) looks paler than I could wish and is working
her brains too much and the rest of her too little just at present, with
the hope of getting through the Apothecaries Hall exam. in Arts next
Sept., which involves a good bit of Latin and mathematics. This is all
women can do in England toward getting into the medical profession & as
the Apoth. Hall certificate is accepted for the preliminary studies at
Paris & Zurich, I make no doubt it is also at Philadelphia & New York; so
that she would be able to enter on medical studies, the virtual
preliminary work, when we come. For she continues steadfastly desirous to
win her way into that field of usefulness, & I believe is well fitted to
work there, with her grave, earnest, thoughtful, feeling nature & strong
bodily frame. She is able to enjoy your Poems & the vistas; broods over
them a great deal. Percy is bending his energies now to mastering the
processes that go to the production of the very best quality of copper
such as is used for telegraph wires &c. No easy matter, copper being the
most difficult, in a metallurgical point of view, of all the metals to
deal with & the Company in whose employ he is having hitherto been
unsuccessful in this branch. His looks, too, do not quite satisfy me--it
is partly rather too long hours of work--but still more not getting a good
meal till the end of it. It is so hard to make the young believe that the
stomach shares the fatigue of the rest of the body and that there is not
nervous energy enough left for it to do all its principal work to
perfection after a long, exhausting day. But I hope now I, or rather his
own experience and I together, have convinced him in time, and he promises
me faithfully to arrange for a good meal in the middle of the day however
much grudging the time. My little artist Herby is still chiefly working
from the antique, but tries his hand at home occasionally with oils & to
life & has made an oil sketch of me which, though imperfect in drawing
&c., gives far more the real character & expression of my face than the
photographs. Have you heard, I wonder, of William Rossetti's approaching
marriage? It is to take place early in the New Year. The lady is Lucy
Brown, daughter of one of our most eminent artists (he was the friend who
first put into my hand the "Selections" from your Poems). Lucy is a very
sweet-tempered, cultivated, lovable woman, well fitted, I should say, to
make William Rossetti happy. They are to continue in the old home, Euston
Sq., with Mrs. Rossetti & the sisters, who are one and all fond of Lucy. I
am glad he is going to be married for I think he is a man capable both of
giving and receiving a large measure of domestic happiness. I hope the
dear little girls at St. Louis are well. And you, my Darling, O surely the
sun is piercing through the dark clouds once more and strength & health
and gladness returning. O fill yourself with happy thoughts for you have
filled others with joy & strength & will do so for countless generations,
& from these hearts flows back, and will ever flow, a steady current of
love & the beautiful fruits of love.
When you next send me a paper, if you feel that you are getting on ever so
little, dearest friend, just a dash under the word _London_. I have looked
back at all your old addresses & I see you never do put any lines, so I
shall know it was not done absently but really means you are better. And
how that line will gladden my eyes, Darling!
Love from us all. Good-bye.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XVIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq., N. W.
Dec. 8, 1873._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
The papers with Prof. Young's speech came safely & I read it, my hand in
yours, happy and full of interest. Are you getting on, my Darling? When I
know that you no longer suffer from distressing sensations in the head &
can move without such effort and difficulty, a hymn of thankfulness will
go up from my heart. Perhaps this week I shall get the paper with the line
on it that is to tell me so much--or at least that you are well on your
way towards it. And what shall I tell you about? The quiet tenor of our
daily lives here? but that is very restricted, though, I trust, as far as
it goes, good & healthful. O the thoughts and hopes that leap from across
the ocean & the years! But they hide themselves away when I want to put
them into words. Do not think I live in dreams. I know very well it is
strictly in proportion as the present & the past have been busy shaping &
preparing the materials of a beautiful future, that it really will be
beautiful when it comes to exist as a present, seeing how it needs must be
entirely a growth from all that has preceded it & that there are no sudden
creations of flowers of happiness in men & women any more than in the
fields. But if the buds lie ready folded, ah, what the sunshine will do!
What fills me with such deep joy in your poems is the sense of the large
complete acceptiveness--the full & perfect faith in humanity--in _every
individual unit of humanity_--thus for the first time uttered. That alone
satisfies the sense of justice in the soul, responds to what its own
nature compels it to believe of the Infinite Source of all. That too
includes within its scope the lot as well as the man. His infinite,
undying self must achieve and fulfil itself out of any & all experiences.
Why, if it takes such ages & such vicissitudes to compact a bit of
rock--fierce heat, & icy cold, storms, deluges, crushing pressure & slow
subsidences, as if it were like a handful of grass & all sunshine--what
would it do for a man!
_Dec. 18._
The longed-for paper has come to hand. O it _is_ a slow struggle back to
health, my Darling! I believe in the main it is good news that is
come--and there is the little stroke I wanted so on the address. But for
all that, I feel troubled & conscious--for I believe you have been a great
deal worse since you wrote--and that you have still such a steep, steep
hill to climb.
Perhaps if my hand were in yours, dear Walt, you would get along faster.
Dearer and sweeter that lot than even to have been your bride in the full
flush & strength and glory of your youth. I turn my face to the westward
sky before I lie down to sleep, deep & steadfast within me the silent
aspiration that every year, every month & week, may help something to
prepare and make fitter me and mine to be your comfort and joy. We are
full of imperfections, short-comings but half developed, but half
"possessing our own souls." But we grow, we learn, we strive--that is the
best of us. I think in the sunshine of your presence we shall grow fast--I
too, my years notwithstanding. May the New Year lead you out into the
sunshine again--shed out of its days health & strength, so that you tread
the earth in gladness again. This with love from us all. Good-bye, dearest
Friend.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
Herby was at a Conversation last night where were many distinguished men &
beautiful women. Among the works of art displayed on the walls was a fine
photograph of you.
19th, afternoon.
And now a later post has brought me the other No. of the _Graphic_ with
your own writing in it--so full of life and spirit, so fresh & cheerful &
vivid, dear Friend, it seems to scatter all anxious sad thoughts to the
winds. And are you then really back at Washington, I wonder, or have you
only visited it in spirit, & written the recollection of former evenings?
I shall have none but cheerful thoughts now. I shall reread it
carefully--read it to the young folk at tea to-night.
LETTER XIX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq.
London
26 Feb., 1874._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Glad am I when the time comes round for writing to you again--though I
can't please myself with my letters, poor little echoes that they are of
the loving, hoping, far-journeying thoughts so busy within. It has been a
happy time since I received the paper with the joyful news you were back
at Washington, well on your way to recovery, able partially to resume
work--scenting from afar the fresh breeze & sunshine of perfect health--by
this time, not from afar, perhaps. The thought of that makes dull days
bright & bright days glorious to me too. I note in the New York _Graphic_
that a new edition of "Leaves of Grass" was called for--sign truly that
America is not so very slowly & now absorbing the precious food she needs
above all else? Perhaps, dear Friend, even during your lifetime will begin
to come the proof you will alone accept--that "your country absorbs you as
affectionately as you have absorbed it." I have had two great pleasures
since I last wrote you. One is that Herby has read with a large measure of
responsive delight "Leaves of Grass" quite through, so that he now sees
you with his own eyes & has in his heart the living, growing germs of a
loving admiration that will grow with his growth & strengthen every fibre
of good in him. Also he read & took much pride in my "letters," now shown
him for the first time. Percy has had a fortnight's holiday with us, and
looks better in health, though still not altogether as I could wish. He
says he is getting such good experience he would not care just yet to
change his post even for better pay. Music is his greatest pleasure--he
seems to get more enjoyment out of that than out of literature, & is
acquiring some practical skill.
To-day (Feb. 25th) is my birthday, dearest Friend--a day my children
always make very bright & happy to me: and on it they make me promise to
"do nothing but what I like all day." So I shall spend it with you--partly
in finishing this letter, partly reading in the book that is so dear to
me--for that is indeed my soul coming into the presence of your
soul--filled by it with strength & warmth & joy. In discouraged moods,
when oppressed with the consciousness of my own limitations, failures,
lack of many beautiful gifts, I say to myself, "What sort of a bird with
unfledged wings are you that would mate with an eagle? Can your eyes look
the sun in the face like his? Can you sustain your long, lifelong flights
upward? Can you rest in dizzy rocks overhanging dark, tempestuous abysses?
Is your heart like his, a great glowing sun of Love?" Then I answer, "Give
me Time." I can bide my time--a long, long growing & unfolding time. That
he draws me with such power, that my soul has found the meaning of itself
in him--the object of all its deep, deathless aspirations in comradeship
with him, means, if life is not a mockery clean ended by death, that the
germs are in me, that through cleaving & loving & ever striving up & on I
shall grow like him--like but different--the correlative--what his soul
needs & desires; and if when I reach America he is not so drawn towards
me,--if seeing how often I disappoint myself, needs must that he too is
disappointed, still I can hold bravely, lovingly on to this
inextinguishable faith & hope--with the added joy of his presence,
sometimes winning from him more & more a dear friendship, yielding him
some joy & comfort--for he too turns with hope, with yearning, towards
me--bids me be "satisfied & at peace!" So I am, so I will be, my darling.
Surely, surely, sooner or later I shall justify that hope, satisfy that
yearning. This is what I say to myself & to you this 46th birthday. Have I
said it over & over again? That is because it is the undercurrent of my
whole life. The _Tribune_ with Proctor's "Lecture on the Sun" (& a great
deal besides that interests me) came safe. A masterly lecture. And two
days ago came the Philadelphia paper with Prof. Morton's speech--deeply
interesting. And as I read these things, the feeling that they have come
from, & been read by, you turns them into Poems for me.
Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
W. Rossetti's marriage is to be the end of next month. Had a pleasant chat
with Mr. Conway, who took supper with us a week or two ago.
LETTER XX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_March 9th, 1874._
With full heart, with eyes wet with tears of joy & I know not what other
deep emotion--pain of yearning pity blent with the sense of
grandeur--dearest Friend, have I read and reread the great, sacred Poem
just come to me.[22] O august Columbus! whose sorrows, sufferings,
struggles are more to be envied than any triumph of conquering warrior--as
I see him in your poem his figure merges into yours, brother of Columbus.
Completer of his work, discoverer of the spiritual, the ideal America--you
too have sailed over stormy seas to your goal--surrounded with mocking
disbelievers--you too have paid the great price of health--our Columbus.
Your accents pierce me through & through.
Your loving ANNIE.
LETTER XXI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq.
May 14, 1874._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Two papers have come to hand since I last wrote, one containing the
memoranda made during the war--precious records, eagerly read & treasured
& reread by me.
How the busy days slip by one so like another, yet each with its own fresh
& pleasant flavour & scent, as like and as different as the leaves on a
tree, or the plants in the hedgerows. Days they are busy with humble
enough occupations, but lit up for me not only with the light of hope, but
with the half-hidden joy of one who knows she has found what she sought
and laid such strong hold upon it that she fears nothing, questions
nothing--no life, or death, nor in the end, in her own imperfections,
flaws, shortcomings. For to be so conscious of these, and to love and
understand you so, are proofs [that] the germs of all are in her, &
perhaps in the warmth & joyous sunshine of your presence would grow fast.
Anyhow, distance has not baffled her, and time will not. A great deal of
needlework to be done at this time of year; for my girls have not time for
any at present; it is not a good contrast or the right thing after longish
hours of study--much better household activity of any sort. If they would
but understand this in schools & colleges for girls & young women. No
healthier or more cheerful occupation as a relief from study, could be
found than household work--sweeping, scrubbing, washing, ironing,
cooking--in the variety of it, & equable development of the muscles, I
should think equal to the most elaborate gymnastics. I know very well how
I have felt, & still feel, the want of having been put to these things
when a girl. Then the importance afterwards of doing them easily & well &
without undue fatigue, to all who aim to give practical shape to their
ardent belief in equality & fair play for all. In domestic life under one
roof, at all events, it is already feasible to make the disposals without
ignominious distinctions--not all the rough bodily work, never ending,
leisure all to the other; but a wholesome interchange and sharing of
these. Not least too among the advantages of taking an active share in
these duties is the zest, the keen relish, it gives to the hours not too
easily secured for reading & music. Besides, I often think that just as
the Poem Nature is made up half of rude, rough realities and homely
materials & processes, so it is necessary for women to construct their
Poem, Home, on a groundwork of homeliest details & occupations, providing
for the bodily wants & comforts of their household, and that without
putting their own hands to this, their Poem will lack the vital, fresh,
growing, nature-like quality that alone endures, and that of this soil
will grow, with fitting preparation & culture, noble & more vigorous
intellectual life in women, fit to embody itself in wider spheres
afterwards--if the call comes.
This month of May that comes to you so laden with great and sorrowful &
beautiful & tender memories, and that is your birth-month too, I cannot
say that I think of you more than at any other time, for there is no month
nor day that my thoughts do not habitually & spontaneously turn to you,
refer all to you--yet I seem to come closer because of the Poems that tell
me of what relates to that time; but most of all when I think of your
beloved Mother, because then I often yearn, more than I know how to bear,
to comfort you with love and tender care and silent companionship. May is
in a sense (& a very real one) my birth-month too, for in it were your
Poems first put into my hand. I wish I were _quite sure_ that you no
longer suffer in your head, and that you can move about without effort or
difficulty--perhaps before long there will be a paper with some paragraph
about your health, for though we say to ourselves no news is good news, it
is a very different thing to have the absolute affirmation of good news.
My children are all well and hearty, I am thankful to say, & working
industriously. Grace means to study the best system of kindergarten
teaching--I fancy she is well suited for kindergarten teaching & that it
is very excellent work.
Herby is still drawing from the antique in the British Museum. I hope he
will get into the Academy this summer. He is going to spend his holidays
with his brother in South Wales--and we as usual at Colne, but that will
not be till August.
Did I tell you William Rossetti and his bride were spending their
honeymoon at Naples? & have found it bitterly cold there, I learn. Mr. &
Mrs. Conway & their children are well. Eustace is coming to spend the
afternoon with Herby to-morrow.
Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq.
July 4, 1874._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Are you well and happy, and enjoying this beautiful summer? London is, in
one sense, a sort of big prison at this time of year: but still at a wide
open window, with the blue sky opening to me & a soft breeze blowing in &
the Book that is so dear--my life-giving treasure--open on my lap, I have
very happy times. No one hundreds of years hence will find deeper joy in
these poems than I--breathe the fresh, sweet, exhilarating air of them,
bathe in it, drink in what nourishes & delights the whole being, body,
intellect & soul, more than I. Nor could you, when writing them, have
desired to come nearer to a human being & be more to them forever &
forever than you are & will be to me. O I take the hand you stretch out
each day--I put mine into it with a sense of utter fulfilment: I ask
nothing more of time and of eternity but to live and grow up to that
companionship that includes all.
6th. This very morning has come the answer to my question. First I only
saw the Poem--read it so elate--soared with it to joyous heights, said to
myself: "He is so well again, he is able to take the journey into
Massachusetts & speak the kindling words." Then I turned over and my joy
was dashed. My Darling; such patience yet needed along the tedious path!
Oh, it makes me long, with passionate longings, with yearnings I know not
how to bear, to come, to be your loving, cheerful companion, the one to
take such care, to do all for you--to beguile the time, to give you of my
health as you have done to tens of thousands. I do not doubt, either, but
that you will get well. I feel sure, sure, it will be given me to see you;
and perhaps a very slow, gradual recovery is safest--is the only way in
this as in other matters to thoroughness; & a very speedy rally would be
specious, treacherous, in the end, leading you to do what you were not yet
fit for. I believe if I could only make you conscious of the love, the
enfolding love, my heart breathes out toward you it would do you physical
good; many-sided love--Mother's love that cherishes, that delights so in
personal service, that sees in sickness & suffering such dear appeals to
an answering, limitless tenderness--wife's love--ah, you draw that from me
too, resistlessly--I have no choice--comrade's love, so happy in sharing
all, pain, sorrow, toil, effort, enjoyments, thoughts, hopes, aims,
struggles, disappointment, beliefs, aspirations. Child's love, too, that
trusts utterly, confides unquestioningly. Not more spontaneously, & wholly
without effort or volition on my part, does the sunlight flow into my eyes
when I open them in the morning than does the sense of your existence
enter like bright light into my awaking soul. And then I send to you
thoughts--tender, caressing thoughts--that would fain nestle so close--ah,
if you could feel them, take them in, let them lie in your breast, each
morning.
My children are all well, dear Friend. Herbert is going to spend his
holidays with his brother in Wales--& we shall all go to Colne as usual
the end of this month & remain there through August and September; so if
you think of it, address any paper you may send [to] Earls Colne,
Halstead, because I should get it a day sooner. But it does not signify if
you forget & send it here; it will be forwarded all right. Beatrice has
just got through one of the Govern. Exams. in elementary mathematics; and
I hope Herby has got into the Academy, but do not know for certain yet. He
works away zealously and with great delight in his work. William Rossetti
and his wife are coming to dine with us Wednesday--they look so well and
happy, it does one good to see them. The Conways are going to Ostend, I
think, for their holiday, & when they come back [are] going to move into a
larger house. I heard an American lady, Miss Whitman, sing at a concert
the other day, who delighted me, fascinated me--I longed to kiss her after
each song, though some of them were poor enough Verdi stuff--but she
contrived to impart genuineness & beauty to them. I hope you will hear her
when she returns to America, which will be soon, I believe.
Good-bye, dearest Friend. Beatrice, Herby & Grace join their love with
mine. I had the sweet little Bridal Poem all safe, & by the bye I liked
that Springfield paper very much.
Your loving ANNIE.
LETTER XXIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earls Colne
Sept. 3, 1874._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
The change down here has refreshed me more than usual and I find my Mother
still wonderful for her years (the 89th), able to get out daily in her
Bath chair for two or three hours--to enjoy our being with her, and
suffering little or no pain from rheumatism now. I hope you have had as
glorious a summer & harvest as we have, and that you are able to be much
out of doors and absorb the health-giving influences, dear Friend. Such
mornings! So fresh and invigourating. I have been before breakfast mostly
in a beautiful garden (the old Priory garden) with my beloved Poems and
the dew-laden flowers and liquid light and sweet, fresh air; & the sparkle
of the pond & delicious greenness of the meadows beyond & rustling trees,
and had a joyful time with you, my Darling--sometimes with thoughts that
lay hold on "the solid prizes of the Universe," sometimes so busy building
up a home in America, thinking, dreaming, hoping, loving, groping among
dim shadows, straining wistful eyes into the dim distance--then to my
poems again--ah! not groping then, but hand in hand with you, breathing
the air you breathe, with eyes ardently fixed in the same direction your
eyes look, heart beating strong with the same hopes, aspirations, yours
beats with. It does not need to be American to love America and to believe
in the great future of humanity there; it is curious to be human, still
more English to do that. I love & believe in & understand her in & through
you: but was always drawn towards her, always a believer, though in a
vaguer way, that a new glorious day for men & women was dawning there, and
recognized a new, distinctive American quality, very congenial to me, even
in American virtues, which you not perhaps rate highly or retard as
decisively national, not adequately or commandingly so, at any rate. Did I
ever tell you the cousin of mine[23] who owns the priory here fought for
two years in the Secession war in the army of the Potomac when Burnside &
McClellan were at the head? John Cowardine was Major in a Cavalry
regiment--was at Vicksburg, Frederickburg, &c. Never wounded, or but
slightly--had a good deal of outpost duty, being just the right sort of a
man for that, & has letters of approval from his generals of which he is
not a little proud. Before that fought under the Stars & Stripes in Mexico
& has had a curiously adventurous career, which he commenced by running
away from a military college, where he was being prepared for a cadetship,
& enlisting as a private--getting out of that by & bye and working his way
before the mast as a sailor--then mining in California--then in Australia,
riding steeplechases, keeper of the Melrose hounds, market gardening,
hotel keeping, then on his way back to California, cast ashore on one of
the Navigator Islands, where he remained for six months, the only white
man among savages, who were friendly & made much of him--now, come into a
good estate, married to a woman who seems to suit him well & is healthy,
cheerful rich & handsome, he has fallen into indifferent health &
considerable depression of spirits. Perhaps he finds the atmosphere of
Squirearchical gentility very stagnant, the bed of roses
stifling--perhaps, too, the severe privations he has at different times
undergone have injured him. I often think he was perhaps one of those
your eyes rested on with pride & admiration--"handsome, tan-faced, dressed
in blue." He is the very ideal of a soldier in appearance & bearing--has
now some fine children, of whom he is very fond.
It was just this time of year I received the precious letter and ring that
put peace and joy, and yet such pain of yearning, into my heart--pain for
you, my Darling. O sorrowing helpless love that waits, and must wait,
useless, afar off, while you suffer. But trying every day of my life to
grow fitter, more capable of being your comfort and joy and true
comrade--never to cease trying this side death or the other--rejoicing in
my children more than I ever rejoiced in them before, now that in and
through you I for the first time see and understand humanity (myself
included)--its divine nature, its possibilities, nay, its certainties. How
I do long for you to see my children, dear Friend, and for them to see and
love you as they will love you, and all their nature unfold and grow more
vigorously and joyously under your influence. Gracie, of whom you have
photographs, grows fast,--is such a fine, blooming girl. I hope soon to
send you one of Beatrice too. They have been enjoying their visit here and
are now gone home. Gracie for school, Beatrice for the examination at
Apoth. Hall she is hoping to get through. Then she is coming here to be
with my Mother, & I going back to London. We mean now one or other of us
always to be with my Mother here. Herby has had such a happy time with his
brother in Wales--& is looking as brown as a nut & full of health &
life--he had a swim in the sea every day. He did succeed in getting into
the Academy, & will begin work there Oct. 1st! Be sure, dear Friend, if
there is a word about your health in any paper to send it me--that is what
I search for so eagerly--to have the joyful news you are getting on--but
even if it is but so very very slowly, still I would rather know the
truth? I do not like thinking of you mistakenly. I want to send you the
thoughts, the yearnings, that belong to you, the cherishing love that
enfolds you most tenderly of all when you suffer. O if I could send it!
and the cheerful companionship, beguiling the time while strength creeps
back. I hope your little nieces at St. Louis are well.
Good-bye, my dearest Friend. Herby, the only one here with me, would like
to join his love with mine.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
I go back the beginning of October.
_Sep. 14th._
LETTER XXIV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq. London
Dec. 9, 1874._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
It did me much good to get your Poem--beautiful, earnest, eloquent words
from the soul whose dear companionship mine seeks with persistent
longing--wrestling with distance & time. It seems to me, too, from your
having spoken the Poem yourself I may conclude you have made fair
progress. What I would fain know is whether you have recovered the use of
the left side so far as to get about pretty freely and to have as much
open-air life as you need & like; and also whether you have quite ceased
to suffer distressing sensations in the head. If you can say yes to the
first question, will you in sign of it put a dash under the word _London_,
and if yes to the second under _England_, when you next send me a paper?
Unless indeed the paper itself contain a notice of your health. But if it
does not, that would be an easy way of gladdening me with good news, if
good news there is. I wish I could send you good letters, dearest Friend,
making myself the vehicle of what is stirring around me in life & thought
that would interest you; for there is plenty. But that is very hard to
do--though I watch, hear, read eagerly, full of interest. Everything stirs
in me a cloud of questions, makes me want to see its relationship to what
I hold already. I am forever brooding, pondering, sifting, testing--but
that is not the bent of mind that enables one to reproduce one's
impressions in compact & lively form. So please, dear Friend, be
indulgent, as indeed I know you will be, of these poor letters of mine
with their details of my children & their iterated and reiterated
expressions of the love and hope and aspiration you have called into life
within me--take them not for what they are, but for all they have to stand
for. Beatrice is at Colne (having got well through the exam. we were
anxious about in the autumn) and is a very great comfort to my Mother--as
I well knew she would be; for a more affectionate, devoted, care-taking
nature does not breathe--with a strong active mental life of her own too.
So, though missing her sorely, I am well satisfied she should be there;
and the country life and rest are doing her a world of good. My artist boy
is working away cheerily at the R. Academy, his heart in his work. Percy
is coming to spend Xmas with us--he, too, continues well content with his
work and in good health. Gracie is blooming. The Rossettis have had a
heavy affliction this first year of their married life in the premature
death of her only brother--a young man of considerable promise--barely 20.
The Conways are well. I feel more completely myself than I have done since
my illness--so you see, dear friend, if it has taken me quite four years
to recover the lost ground, one must not be discouraged if two do not
accomplish it in your case. I hope your little nieces[24] at St. Louis are
well--and the brothers you are with, and that you have many dear friends
round you at Camden.
I think my thoughts fly to you on strongest and most joyous wings when I
am out walking in the clear, cold, elastic air I enjoy so much.
Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
A cheerful Christmas, a New Year of which each day brings its share of
restorative influence, be yours.
LETTER XXV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq.
Dec. 30, 1874._
I see, my dearest Friend, I must not look for those dashes under the words
I thought were going to convey a joyful confirmation of my hopes. I see
how the dark clouds linger. Full of pain & indignation. I read the
paragraph--but fuller still of yearning tenderness & trust and hope. I
believe, my dear love, that what you need to help on your recovery is a
woman's tender, cherishing love and care, and that in that warm, genial
atmosphere the spring of life will be quickened once more and flow full
and strong through all its channels as of old, gradually, not quickly,
even so. I dare say: but with plenty of patience; with utmost intelligent
care of all conditions favourable to health, of diet, of abundant oxygen
in the rooms you inhabit, of as much outdoor life as possible, of happy,
cheerful companionship, & all the homely everyday domestic joys which are
so helpful in their influences. America is doing what nations in all times
have done towards that which is profoundly new & great, that which
discredits their old ideals and offers them strange fruits & flowers from
another world than that they have been content to dwell in all their
lives. But for all that I do not believe the precious seed is lying
dormant even now--everywhere a few in whose hearts it is treasured &
yields a noble growth. Since it is America that has produced you nourished
your soul and body, she is silently, unnoticed, producing men & women who
will justify you, who will understand the meaning of all and respond with
a love that will quicken & exalt humanity as Christ's influence once did.
Still it is inscrutable to me that the heart of America is not now
passionately drawn toward the great heart that beats & glows in these
Poems--that "Drum Taps," at any rate, are not as dear to her as the memory
of her dead heroes, sons, brothers, husbands. It must be that they really
do not reach the hands of the American people at large--that the
professedly literary, cultivated class asking for nothing better than the
pretty sing-song sentimentalities which "join them in their nonsense," or
else slavishly prostrating their judgments before the models of the past
(so perfect for their day, so wholly inadequate for ours), raise their
voices so loud in newspapers & magazines as to prevent or everywhere check
the circulation.
_Jan. 1._ The New Year has come in bleakly & keenly to the inner as well
as to the outer sense, with the papers full of the details of the dark
fate of the emigrant ship & of the terrible railway accidents. Percy was
not able to join us at Xmas (through business) but I am expecting him
to-night. My mother bears up against the cold wonderfully--& even
continues to go out in her chair. Bee's letters are very bright &
cheerful--she & indeed all my children enjoy the cold much, provided they
have plenty of out-door exercise--above all skating, which they are now
enjoying. I too like it, but am so haunted by the thought of the increased
misery it brings to our hundreds of thousands of ill-fed, ill-clothed,
ill-housed. I trust the family circle round you & your nieces at St. Louis
& all near & dear to you are well, and that you have felt the warm grasp
of many loving friends this wintry, cloudy time, my dearest--and that
there may breathe out of these poor words a warm, bright glow of love and
hope & unrestricted trust in the future.
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXVI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earls Colne, Halstead
Feb. 21, 1875._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I have run down to Colne for a glimpse of my dear Bee, whom I had not seen
for five months, and of my Mother; & now I am alone with the latter,
Beatrice taking my place at home with her brother & sister for a week or
two. A wonderful evergreen my Mother continues; still able to face the
keen winds & the frost daily in her Bath chair--well swathed, of course in
eiderdown & flannels. Beatrice takes beautiful care of her & is happy &
content with her life here, loving the country as dearly as I do & having
time enough for study & reading, as well as for domestic activities, to
keep her mind as busy as her body. How I do long for you to see my
children, dearest Friend. I wonder if you are surrounded with any in your
brother's home--young, growing, blossoming plants that gladden you. And I
wonder if the winter, which I hear is so severe in America this year,
tries you--whether you can yet move briskly enough to keep up the
circulation--and whether you have as many dear friends round you as you
had at Washington. In my walks I keep thinking of these things. Write me a
little letter once more, it would do me such good. No one of all your
friends so easy as I to write to because none to whom any & every little
detail is so welcome, so precious--lifting a tiny corner of the great vast
of space between us, giving me for a moment to feel the friendly grasp of
your hand--I that long for it so. Two years are over since your illness
began, or seemed to begin, dearest friend--so slow & stealthy in its
approaches, so slow & stealthy in its retreat--may the spring that is
coming (the birds have already caught sight of it, cold & brown & bare as
the landscape still is)--may it but come laden with healing,
strengthening, refreshing influences--so that you begin to feel again the
joyous freedom of health, warbling once more a song of joy for lilac time.
True, I know indeed, my dearest, that anyhow you are content, not grudging
the price paid for your life work, but even some way or other the richer
for paying it--garnering precious equivalents for pain & privation of
health in your inmost soul. I cannot choose but believe this
earnestly--the resplendent faith that there is not "one cause nor result
lamentable, at last, in the Universe" which glows throughout the Poems is
for me an exhaustless source of strength & comfort.--I see every now &
then & like the more each time the Conways. I am half afraid Mr. Conway
works too incessantly--that is, does not like well enough the
indispensable supplement of close mental work--plenty of air & exercise,
&c.,--hates walking, & indeed it is not to be wondered at in great, smoky
London (I shall be fond enough & proud enough of it too when I am over the
Atlantic). Unless one has a real passion for open air & the sense of sky
overhead, like me. I hear Mr. Conway is coming to America for six months
in October.
_Feb. 25_--I kept my letter till to-day that I might have the happiness of
speaking to you on my birthday. See me this evening in the bright,
cheerful parlour of our cottage, which stands just in the middle of the
old village (it has been a village & jogged on through all change at its
own sober, sleepy pace this 800 years)--my mother in her arm chair by the
fire; I chatting with her & working or playing to her when she is awake; &
with the Poems I love beside me, reading, musing, wondering while she
dozes. Ah, shall I ever attain to the Ideal that burst upon me with such
splendour of light & joy in those Poems in 1869--so filling, so possessing
me, I seemed as if I had by one bound attained to that ideal--as if I were
already a very twin of the soul from whom they emanated. But now I know
that divine foretaste indicated what was possible for me, not what was
accomplished--I know the slow growth--the standstill winters that follow
the growing joyous springs & ripening summers. I believe it will take more
lives than this one to reach that mountain on which I was transfigured
again, never to descend more, but to start thence for new heights, fresh
glories. Ah, dear friend, will you be able to have patience with me, for
me?
Good-bye, my dearest.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXVII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq.
London,
May 18, 1875._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Since last I wrote to you at the beginning of April (enclosing a little
photograph of that avenue just by our cottage at Colne) I have been into
Wales for a fortnight to see Percy, & have looked for the first time in my
life on the Atlantic--the ocean my mental eyes travel over & beyond so
often and that your eyes and ears & heart have been fed by, have communed
with and interpreted, as in a new tongue, to the soul of man. Looking upon
that, watching the tides ebb & flow on your shores, sharing, through my
beloved book, in those greatest movements you have spent alone with
it--that was a new joyful experience, a fresh kind of communing with
you.--I went to Wales because I felt anxious about Percy, who is not happy
just now. I must not tell friends here about it (except his brother &
sisters) but I am sure I may tell you, for you will listen with sympathy.
He has attached himself very deeply, I think it will prove, to a girl, &
she to him, whose parents welcomed him cordially to their house for a year
or two & allowed plenty of intercourse till they became aware through
Percy himself (who thought it right to tell the father as soon as he was
fully aware of his own feelings & more than suspected Norah's response to
them) that there was a strong affection growing up between the two. Then
they peremptorily forbade all intercourse--not because they have any
objection to Percy--quite the contrary, they say; but solely and simply
because he is not yet earning money enough to marry on, & they hold that a
man has no right to engage a girl's affections till he can do so. As if
these things could be timed to the moment the money comes in! Percy was in
hopes, & so was I, that if I went down, I might get sense enough into
their heads, if not kindness & sympathy into their hearts, to see that the
sole effect of such arbitrary & narrow-sighted conduct would be to
alienate & embitter the young people's feelings toward them, while it
would make them more restless & anxious to marry without adequate means.
Whereas if a reasonable amount of intercourse were allowed, it would be a
happy time with them, & Norah being still so young (18), & Percy working
away with all his might, doing very well for his age & sure,
conscientious, thorough, capable, & well trained worker that he is (for
the L. School of Mais gives a first rate scientific preparation for his
profession) to be making a modest sufficiency in a year or two. Well, they
were very courteous & indeed friendly to me, & I think I have won over the
mother; but the father remains obdurate, & Percy feels bitterly the
separation--all the more trying as they live almost within sight of each
other. So Beatrice & Grace are going to spend their holidays with him this
summer to cheer him up. Meanwhile, dear friend, I am on the whole happier
than not about him. I liked what I saw of Norah & believe he has found a
very sweet, affectionate girl of quiet, domestic nature, practical,
industrious, sensible--thoroughly well to suit him, & that there is true &
deep love between them--also, she took to me very much, & I feel will be
quite another child to me. It is besides no little joy to me to find how
Percy has confided in me in this & chooses me as the friend to whom he
tells all--far from being any separation, as sometimes happens, this love
of his seems to draw us closer together. Only I am very, very anxious for
his sake to see him in a better berth--they would let her marry him on
£300 a year; now he has only £175. He is quite competent to manage iron or
copper or tin works, only he looks so young, not having yet any beard or
moustache to speak of. That is the end of my long story.
This will reach you on your birthday perhaps, my dearest Friend; at any
rate it must bear you a greeting of love and fond remembrance for that
dear day such as my heart will send you when it actually comes: patiently
waiting heart, with the fibres of love and boundless trust & joy & hope
which bind me to you bedded deep, grown to be, during these long years, a
very part of its immortal substance, untouchable by age or varying moods
or sickness, or death itself, as I surely believe. I long more than words
can tell to know how it fares with you now in health and spirit. My
children are all well & growing & unfolding to my heart's content.
Beatrice & Herbert deeply influenced by your Poems. Good-bye, my dearest
Friend.
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXVIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Address
1 Torriano Gardens
Camden Road, N. W.
London
Earls Colne
Aug. 28, 1875._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Your letter came to me just when I most needed the comfort of it--when I
was watching and tending my dear Mother as she gently, slowly, with but
little suffering, sank to rest. There was no sick bed to sit by--we got
her up and out into the air and sunshine for an hour or two even the day
before she died--No disease, only the stomach could not do its work any
longer & for the last three weeks she lived wholly on stimulants,
suffering somewhat from sickness. She drew her last breath very gently
before daybreak on the 15th inst., in her 90th year, which she had entered
in Jan. She looked very beautiful in death, notwithstanding her great
age--as well she might--tranquil sunset that it was of a beautiful day--a
fulfilled life--joy & delight of her father in youth (who used to call her
the apple of his eye), good wife, devoted, self-sacrificing, wise
mother--patient, courageous sufferer through thirty years of chronic
rheumatism, which, however, neutralized & ceased its pains the last few
years--unsurpassed, & indeed I think unsurpassable, in
conscientiousness--in the strong sense of duty & perfect obedience to that
highest sense--she is one of those who amply justify your large faith in
women.
I do not need to tell you anything, my dearest friend--you know all--I
feel your strong comforting hand--I press it very close.
I had all my children with me at the funeral.
O the comfort your dear letter was & is to me. Thinking over & over the
few words you say of yourself--& what is said in the paper (so eagerly
read--every word so welcome) I cannot help fancying that the return of the
distressing sensations in the head must be caused by your having worked at
the book--the "Two Rivulets" (I dearly like the title & the idea of
bringing the Poems & Prose together so)--that you must be more patient
with yourself and submit still to perfect rest--& that perhaps in regard
to the stomach--you have not enough adapted your diet to the privation of
exercise--that you must be more indulgent to the stomach too in the sense
of giving it only the very easiest & simplest work to do. My children join
their love with mine.
Your own loving
ANNE.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ONE OF ANNE GILCHRIST'S LETTERS TO WALT
WHITMAN]
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ONE OF ANNE GILCHRIST'S LETTERS TO WALT
WHITMAN]
LETTER XXIX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens
Camden Rd., Nov. 16, 1875.
London_
I have been wanting the comfort of a talk with you, dearest Friend, for
weeks & weeks, without being able to get leisure & tranquillity enough to
do it to my heart's content--indeed, heart's content is not for me at
present--but restless, eager, longing to come--& the struggle to do
patiently & completely & wisely what remains for me here before I am free
to obey the deep faith and love which govern me--so let me sit close
beside you, my Darling--& feel your presence & take comfort & strength &
serenity from it as I do, as I can when with all my heart & soul I draw
close to you, realizing your living presence with all my might.--First,
about Percy--things are beginning to look a little brighter for him. He is
just entering upon a new engagement with some very large & successful
works--the Blenavon Iron Co.--where, though his salary will not be higher
at first, his opportunities of improvement will be better & he is also to
be allowed to take private practice (in assaying & analyzing). The manager
there believes in Science & is friendly to Percy & will give him every
facility for showing what he can do, so that he hopes to prove to the
Directors before long that he is worth a good salary. The parents of Norah
(whom he loves) have released from their unfriendly attitude since my
Beatrice has been staying with them; the two girls have attached
themselves to one another & Per. has had delightful opportunities of
being with Norah, & best of all, she is to return here with Beatrice (they
are coming to-morrow), & Per. is to have a week's holiday & come up, so
that he & Norah will be wholly together & have, I suspect, the happiest
week they have yet had in their lives. Then I have stored away for them
the furniture of the dear old home at Colne, & I really think that by the
time '76 is out they will be able to marry. I see, and indeed I have known
ever since he formed this attachment, that I must not look for him to come
to America with me. But what I build upon, Dearest Friend, is that when I
have been a little while in America & have made friends & had time to look
about me I might hear of a good certainty for him--his excellent training
at the School of Mines, large experience at Blenavon, energy, ability, &
sturdy uprightness will make him a first-rate manager of works by & bye.
But the leaving him so happy with his young wife will make it easier for
us to part. _Nov. 26_--Beatrice has begun to work at anatomy at the School
of Medicine for Women lately founded, & seems to delight in her work. She
will not enter on the full course all at once--I am for taking things
gently. Women have plenty of strength but it is of a different kind from
men's & must work by gentler & slower means--Above all I do not like what
pushes violently aside domestic duties & pleasures. The special work must
combine itself with these; I am sure it can. Herby is getting on very
nicely--never did student love his work better. He is eager, & by making
the best use of present opportunities & advantages yet looking towards
America full of cheerful hopes & sympathy. Grace is less developed in
intellect but not less in character than the others. I can't describe her
but send you her photograph. There is a freshness & independence of
character about her--yet withal a certain waywardness & reserve. She is a
good, instinctive judge of character--more influenced by it than by
books--yet with a growing taste for them too. She comes to America with a
gay and buoyant curiosity, declining to make up her mind about anything
till she gets there. We want, as far as possible, to transplant our home
bodily--to bring as much as we can of our own furniture because we have
beautiful old things precious in Herby's eyes & that we are all fond of.
And [by] coming straight to Philadelphia & taking a house somewhere on the
outskirts of it or Camden immediately we fancy this might be practicable,
but have not yet launched into the matter. I have just heard from Mr.
Rossetti, and also from Mrs. Conway of her husband having seen you, & if
his report be not too sanguine it is a cheering one & would comfort me
much, dearest Friend. But what he says is so favourable I am afraid to
believe it altogether, knowing that you would make the very best of
yourself & indeed be probably at your best with the pleasure of seeing an
old friend fresh from England. _Nov._ 30. And now, dear Friend, I have had
a very great pleasure indeed, thanks to you--a visit from Mr. Marvin--& I
hope to have another when he returns from Paris. And the account he gives
of you is so cheerful--so vivid--it seems to part asunder a gloomy cloud
that was brooding in my mind. And though I know that for the short hours
that you feel bright & well are many long hours when you are far
otherwise, still I feel sure those short hours are the earnest of perfect
recovery--with a fine patience--boundless patience. And now I can picture
you sitting in your favourite window, having a friendly word with
passers-by--& feel quite sure that you are happy & comfortable in your
surroundings. And a great deal else full of interest Mr. Marvin told me. I
was loth for him to go, but one hour is so small, we have noticed, for a
friend, I am sorry to say.
William Rossetti has a little girl which is a great delight to him. Miss
Hillard of Brooklyn has also paid me a visit & spoken to me of you. She
charmed me much--only I felt a little cross with her for giving Herby such
a dismal account of his chances as an artist in America. However, we both
refused to be discouraged, for after all he can send his pictures to
England to be established &c., having plenty of friends who would see to
it; & we are both firm in the faith that if you can only paint the really
good pictures the rest will take care of itself, somehow or other--& that
can be done as well in America as in England, but of course he must finish
his training here.
With best love from us all, good-bye, my dearest Friend.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens
Camden Rd., London
Dec. 4, 1875._
Though it is but a few days since I posted a letter, my dearest friend, I
must write you again--because I cannot help it, my heart is so full--so
full of love & sorrow & struggle. The day before yesterday I saw Mr.
Conway's printed account of you, & instead of the cheerful report I had
been told of, he speaks of your having given up hope of recovery. Those
words were like a sharp knife plunged into me--they choked me with bitter
tears. _Don't give up that hope_ for the sake of those that so tenderly,
passionately, love you--would give their lives with joy for you. Why, who
knows better than you how much hope & the will have to do with it, & I
know quite well that the belief does not depress you--that you are ready
to accept either lot with calmness, cheerfulness, perfect faith, perhaps
with equal joy. But for all that, it does you harm. Ideas always have a
tendency to accomplish themselves. And what right have the Doctors to
utter gloomy prophecies? The wisest of them know the best how profoundly
in the dark they are as to much that goes on within us, especially in
maladies like yours. O cling to life with a resolute hold, my beloved, to
bless us with your presence unspeakably dear, beneficent presence--me to
taste of it before so very long now--thirsting, pining, loving me. Take
through these poor words of mine some breath of the tender, tender,
ineffable love that fills my heart and soul and body--take of it to
strengthen the very springs of your life: it is capable of that; O its
cherishing warmth and joy, if it could only get to you, only fold you
round close enough, would help, I know. Soon, soon as ever my boy has one
to love & care for him all his own, I will come; I may not before, not if
it should break my heart to stop away from you, for his welfare is my
sacred charge & nearer & dearer than all to me. Verily, my God, strengthen
me, comfort me, stay for me--let that have a little beginning on this dear
earth which is for all eternity, which will live & grow immortally into a
diviner reality than the heart of man has conceived.
I am well satisfied with Norah, dear Friend. She is very affectionate,
loveable, prudent, & clear in all practical matters, well suited to Percy
in tastes, &c.
Your own
ANNIE.
LETTER XXXI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Blaenavon
Routzpool
Mon. England
Jan. 18, '76._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Do not think me too wilful or headstrong, but I have taken our tickets &
we shall sail Aug. 30 for Philadelphia. I found if I did not come to a
decision now, we could not well arrange it before next summer. And since
we _have_ come to a decision my mind has been quite at rest. Do not feel
any anxiety or misgivings about us. I have a clear and strong conviction I
am doing what is right & best for us all. After a busy anxious time I am
having a week or two of rest with Percy, who I find fairly well in health
& prospering in his business--indeed, he bids fair to have a large private
practice as an analyst here, & is already making income enough to marry
on, only there is to build the nest--& I think he will have actually to
_build_ it, for there seem no eligible houses--& to furnish--so that the
wedding will not be till next spring or early summer. Nevertheless, with a
definite goal & a definite time & the way between not so very rugged,
though rather dull and lonely, I think he will be pretty cheery. This
little town (of 11,000 inhabitants, all miners, smelters &c.) lies up
among the hills 1100 ft. above the sea--glorious hills here, spreading,
then converging, with wooded flanks, & swift brooklets leaping over stones
in the hollows--the air, too, of course deliciously light & pure. I have
heard through a friend of ours of Bee's fellow student who lives in Camden
(Mr. Suerkrop, I think his name is) that we shall be able to get a very
comfortable home with pleasant garden there for about £55 per an. I think
I can manage that very well--so all I need is to hear of a comfortable
lodging or boarding house (the former preferred) where we can be, avoiding
hotels even while we hunt for the house. I have arranged for my goods to
sail a week later than we do, so as to give us time.
Good-bye for a short while, my dearest Friend.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
Bee has obtained a very satisfactory account of the Women's Medical
College in Philadelphia & introductions to the Head, &c.
LETTER XXXII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens
Camden Rd.
London
Feb. 25, '76._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I received the paper & enclosed slip Saturday week, filling me so full of
emotion I could not write, for I am too bitterly impatient of mere words.
Soon, very soon, I come, my darling. I am not lingering, but held yet a
little while by the firm grip of conscience--this is the last spring we
shall be asunder--O I passionately believe there are years in store for
us, years of tranquil, tender happiness--me making your outward life
serene & sweet--you making my inward life so rich--me learning, growing,
loving--we shedding benign influences round us out of our happiness and
fulfilled life--Hold on but a little longer for me, my Walt--I am
straining every nerve to hasten the day--I have enough for us all (with
the simple, unpretending ways we both love best).
Percy is battling slowly--doing as well as we could expect in the time. I
think he will soon build the nest for his mate. I think he never in his
heart believed I really should go to America, and so it comes as a great
blow to him now. You must be very indulgent towards him for my sake, dear
friend.
I am glad we know about those rascally book agents--for many of us are
wanting a goodish number of copies of the new edition & it is important
to understand we may have them straight from you. Rossetti is making a
list of the friends & the number, so that they may all come together.
Perhaps, dearest friend, you may be having a great difficulty in getting
the books out for want of funds--if so, let me help a little--show your
trust in me and my love thus generously.
Your own loving
ANNIE.
LETTER XXXIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens
March 11, '76._
I have had such joy this morning, my Darling--Poems of yours given in the
_Daily News_--sublime Poems one of them reaching dizzy heights, filling my
soul with strong delight. These prefaced by a few words, timid enough yet
kindly in tone, & better than nothing. The days, the weeks, are slipping
by, my beloved, bearing me swiftly, surely to you--before the beauty of
the year begins to fade we shall come. The young folk too are full of
bright anticipation & eagerness now, I am thankful to say; and Percy
getting on with, I trust, such near & definite prospect of his happiness
that he will be able to pull along cheerily towards it after we are gone,
in spite of loneliness.
I expect, Darling, we must go to some little town or village ten or twenty
miles short of Philadelphia till the tremendous influx of visitors to the
Centennial has ceased, else we shall not be able to find a corner
there.--By the bye, I feel a little sulky at your always taking a fling at
the poor piano. I see I have got to try & show you it too is capable of
waking deep chords in the human soul when it is the vehicle of a great
master's thought & emotions--if only my poor fingers prove equal to the
task! (All my heart shall go into them.) Take from my picture a long, long
look of tender love and joy and faith, deathless, ever young, ever
growing, ever learning, aspiring love, tender, cherishing, domestic love.
Oh, may I be full of sweet comfort for my Beloved's Soul and Body through
life, through and after death.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXXIV
WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Camden, New Jersey
March, 1876._
DEAREST FRIEND:
To your good & comforting letter of Feb. 25th I at once answer, at least
with a few lines. I have already written this morning a pretty full letter
to Mr. Rossetti (to answer one just rec'd from him) & requested him to
loan it you for perusal. In that I have described my situation fully &
candidly.
My new edition is printed & ready. Upon receipt of your letter I sent you
a set, two Vols. (by Mail, March 15) which you must have rec'd by this
time. I wish you to send me word soon as they arrive.
My health, I am encouraged to think, is perhaps a shade better--certainly
as well as any time of late.
I even already vaguely contemplate plans (they may never be fulfilled, but
yet again they may) of changes, journeys--even of coming to London &
seeing you, visiting my friends, &c. My dearest friend, _I do not approve
your American trans-settlement. I see so many things here you have no idea
of--the social, and almost every other kind of crudeness, meagreness, here
(at least in appearance)._
_Don't do anything towards it nor resolve in it nor make any move at all
in it without further advice from me. If I should get well enough to
voyage, we will talk about it yet in London._
You must not be uneasy about me--dearest friend, I get along much better
than you think for. As to the literary situation here, my rejection by the
coteries and the poverty (which is the least of my troubles), am not sure
but I enjoy them all--besides, as to the latter, I am not in want.
LETTER XXXV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens
Camden Rd., London
March 30, '76._
Yesterday _was_ a day for me, dearest Friend. In the morning your letter,
strong, cheerful, reassuring--dear letter. In the afternoon the books. I
don't know how to settle down my thoughts calmly enough to write, nor how
to lay down the books (with delicate yet serviceable exterior, with
inscription making me so proud, so joyous). But there are a few things I
want to say to you at once in regard to our coming to America. I will not
act without "further advice from you"; but as to not resolving on it, dear
friend, I can't exactly obey that, for it has been my settled, steady
purpose (resting on a deep, strong faith) ever since 1869. Nor do I feel
discouraged or surprised at what you say of American "crudeness," &c. (of
which, in truth, one hears not a little in England). I have not shut my
eyes to the difficulties and trials & responsibilities (for the children's
sake) of the enterprise. I am not urged on by any discontent with old
England or by any adverse circumstances here which I might hope to better
there: my reasons, emotions, the sources of my strength and courage for
the uprooting & transplanting--all are inclosed in those two volumes that
lie before me on the table. That America has brought them forth makes me
want to plant some, at least, of my children on her soil. I understand &
believe in & love her in & through them. They teach me to look beneath
the surface & to get hints of the great future that is shaping itself out
of the crude present, & I believe we shall prove to be of the right sort
to plant down there.--O to talk it all over with you, dearest Friend, here
in London first; I feel as if that would really be--the joy, the comfort,
of that. I cannot finish this to-day but send what I have written without
delay that you may know of the safe arrival of the books. With reverent,
grateful love from us all.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXXVI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens
Camden Rd. London
April 21, 1876._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I must write again, out of a full heart. For the reading of this book,
"The Two Rivulets," has filled it very full. Ever the deep inward assent,
rising up strong, exultant my immortal self recognizing, responding to
your immortal self. Ever the sense of dearness, the sweet, subtle perfume,
pervading every page, every line, to my sense--O I cannot put into any
words what I perceive nor what answering emotion pervades me, flows out
towards you--sweetest, deepest, greatest experience of my life--what I was
made for--surely I was made as the soil in which the precious seed of your
thoughts & emotions should be planted--try to fulfil themselves in me,
that I might by & bye blossom into beauty & bring forth rich
fruits--immortal fruits. So no doubt other women feel, and future women
will.
Do not dissuade me from coming this autumn, my dearest Friend. I have
waited patiently--7 years--patiently, yet often, especially since your
illness, with such painful yearning your heart would yearn towards me if
you realized it--I cannot wait any longer. Nor ought I to--that would
indeed be sacrificing the prudence that concerns itself with immortal
things to the prudence that concerns itself only with temporary ones. But,
indeed, even so far as this latter is concerned, there is no sacrifice
for any. It is by far the best step, for instance, I could take on
Beatrice's account. She is heartily in earnest in her medical studies. I
am persuaded, too, it is a splendid training for her whether or no she
ever makes a money-earning profession of it. And in England women have at
present no means of obtaining a complete medical education. They cannot
get admission to any Hospital for the clinical part of the course. So that
she is exceedingly anxious to come where it is possible for her to follow
out her aims effectually. Then, I am confident she will find America
congenial to her--that she is in her essential nature democratic--& that
she has the intelligence, the sympathies, earnestness, affectionateness,
unconventionality needed to pierce through appearances surface "crudeness"
& see & love the great reality unfolding below. So I believe has Herby.
Then an artist is as free as an author to work where he pleases & reaps as
much from fresh and widened experiences. He does not contemplate cutting
himself off from England--will exhibit here--very likely take a studio in
London for a season, a couple of years hence to work among old friends &
associations & so have double chance & opportunities. Then above all,
dearest friend, they too see America in & through you--they too would fain
be near you. Have no anxiety or misgivings for us. Let us come & be near
you--& see if we are made of the right sort of stuff for transplanting to
American soil. Only advise us where. If it be Philadelphia (which as far
as offering facilities for Beatrice would, as far as I can learn, suit us
very well). We must not come, I think, till the end of October, because of
its being so full. Perhaps indeed, dearest Friend (but dare not build on
it) we shall talk this over in England. If you are able to take the
journey, it might, and would, be sure to do you good as well as to rejoice
the hearts of English friends. But if not, if we are not able to talk over
our coming, do not feel the least anxious about us. We shall light on our
feet & do very well. Percy seems getting on fairly well, considering what
a bad time it is in his line of business. I think he will be able to marry
this autumn or following winter. I shall go and spend a month with him in
July. Perhaps, indeed, if, as many are prophecying, the iron trade does
not recover its old pre-eminence here, he may be glad by & bye that I have
gone over to America & opened a way for him. But if he does not follow me
then, if I live, I hope to spend a few months with him every three or four
years, instead of as now a few weeks once a year. Anyhow we have to live
widely apart. Thanks for the papers just received. Specially welcome the
account of some stranger's interview with you--for me too before very long
now the joy of hearing the "strong musical voice" read the "Wound Dresser"
or speak.
I have happy thoughts for my companions all day long, helping me over
every difficulty--strengthening me. Good-bye, dearest Friend. Love from us
all.
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXXVII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens
Camden Rd., London
May 18, 1876._
Just a line of birthday greeting, my dearest Friend. May it find you
enjoying the beautiful spring-time & the grand sights of people & products
& the music at Philadelphia, notwithstanding drawbacks (but lessening
drawbacks, I earnestly hope) of health, lameness. Rejoiced, too, perhaps
with the sight of many dear old friends occasion has brought to your city.
May all that will do you good come, my dearest Friend. And not least the
sense of relief & joy in having fulfilled the great task, in the teeth of
such difficulties relaunched safely, more fully, richly equipt, the ship
to sail down the great ocean of Time, bearing precious, precious freight
of seed to be planted in countless successions of human souls, helping
forward more than even the best lovers of your poems dream, the great
future of humanity. That is what I believe as surely as I believe in my
own existence.
The "low star," the great star drooping low in the west, has been
unusually resplendent of a night here lately & by day lilacs & the
labernums wonderfully brightening dear old smoky London, constant
reminders all, if I needed any, of the Poet & the Poems, so dear to me.
If I do not hear from you to the contrary I am to take our passage by one
of the "States" Line of Steamers that come straight to Philadelphia
sailing about the 1st Sept.--& I am told one ought to secure one's cabin a
couple of months or so beforehand. But if there be indeed an increasing
hope of your coming here in the course of the summer, or if you think it
would be best for us to go to New York (only I want to go at once where we
are likely to stop, because of my furniture), let me hear as soon as may
be, dear Friend. Looking at it purely as concerns the young ones, for some
reasons it is very desirable to come this year & for others to wait till
next. With Bee, for instance, we are both losing time & wasting money by
going over another winter here when there is no complete & satisfactory
medical course to be had. Then as regards dear Percy, he writes me now
that though he is doing fairly well, he does not think he will be able to
take a house & marry till next summer--& that I am very sorry for. But
then I think that as I could not be with him nor help him forward, the
balance goes down on Beatrice's side, if I am able to accomplish it.
Good-bye, my dearest Friend. Loving, tender thoughts shall I send you on
the 30th. Solemn thoughts outleaping life, immortal aspirations of my soul
toward your soul. The children's love too, please, dearest Friend.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXXVIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Round Hill, Northampton, Mass.
Monday, Sept., '77._
DEAREST FRIEND:
I have had joyful news to-day! Percy's wife has a fine little boy--it was
born on the 10th, and Norah got through well & is doing nicely; so I feel
very happy.
Since then Per. has gone to Paris where he is to read a paper before the
"Iron and Steel Institute" on the Elimination of phosphorus from
Iron--which is also a little triumph of another kind for him--for the
Council which accepted his paper is composed of eminent English
scientists, & eminent foreign ones will hear it.--I need not tell you it
is indescribably lovely here now--no doubt Kirkwood is the same--the light
so brilliant, and yet soft--the rich autumn tints just beginning to
appear--the temperature delicious--crisp & bracing, yet genial.
The throng of people is gone--but a few of the pleasantest of the old set
remain--& a few interesting new ones have come!--among them Mrs. Dexter
from Boston, who was a Miss Ticnor, daughter of the author of the book on
Spanish literature--she and her husband full of interesting talk. Also Mr.
Martin B---- and his wife--a fine specimen of a leading Bostonian. Besides
these also a physician from Florida whom I much admire--with a beautiful
firm tenor voice--very handsome & graceful too, a true southerner, I
should say--(but of Scotch extraction).
Next week we go to Boston.
I went over the Lunatic Asylum here the other day & saw some strange, sad
sights--some figures crouched down in attitudes of such profound dejection
I shall never forget them--some very bright and talkative. It is said to
be the best managed in America. Dr. Earle, who is at the head, is a man of
splendid capacity for the post--a noble-looking old man (uncle of those
Miss Chases you met at our house).
I can't settle to anything or think of any thing since I received Percy's
letter but the baby & Norah. Love to you & to Mrs. Whitman[25] &
Hattie[26] & Jessie.[27]
Good-bye, dear Friend.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXXIX
BEATRICE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_New England Hospital
Codman Avenue
Boston Highlands_
DEAR WALT:
Hospital life is beginning to seem a long-accustomed life. I enjoy all the
duties involved & all the human relations. Even getting up in the night is
compensated for by yielding a sense of importance & independence. I sleep
in a large room with three windows, & three beds in a row. Breakfast at 7,
& we are supposed to have seen all our patients before breakfast, but do
not keep to that rule.
After breakfast, round to count pulses & respirations, note condition,
dress any wound, in charge, etc. At 1/2 past 8 o'clock go the rounds with
the resident physician (Dr. Berlin), all the students, & superintendent of
nurses. Then put up medicine, each for her own patients (about 8 in no.),
give electricity, etc. If one's patient has an ache or pain, the nurse
whistles for the student (my whistle is 2). She sees the patient orders
what is necessary, or if serious reports to Dr. Berlin. Then there is some
microscopic work, & copying out the history & daily record of the case &
making out the temperature charts more than fills in the day. At 8 o'clock
we all in conclave report about our patients & talk over any interesting
case. One of my patients has empyema following pleurisy. I inject into her
chest about a doz. of different preparations. Several of my patients (I
have all the very sick just now) require very careful watching.
In the evening we go round again & count pulses & respirations & note
temperatures. If a very sick patient, in the middle of the day; also take
pulse, etc. The number of visits depending on the need & the competency of
the nurse. I like introducing lint into wounds (such simple ones as an
incised abscess of the breast) with the probe, because if I take trouble
enough I can do it without hurting the patient, much to the patient's
surprise.
The other day Mr. & Mrs. Marvin called to see me with Mrs. & Miss
Callender--I enjoyed their visit much. To-day Mr. Marvin drove over to
fetch me to lunch, & I had a beautiful drive over to Dorchester; in the
afternoon a game of lawn tennis, a stroll down to the creek, & drive home
by Forest Hill Cemetery & Jamaica Pond. The air was fresh after a shower &
golden-tinted, & the drive through beautiful lanes & country. All were
friendly & it was refreshing to emerge from the little hospital world. Mr.
Marvin's cordial face greeted me when I was speaking to some patients in
hammocks, under the trees, the day he called, much to my surprise.
I was to-day feeling the need of a little change of air & scene, so that
the visit was most opportune.
Mr. Morse[28] is working away desperately at the bust of you; he feels as
if he would get on famously if he could only catch a glimpse of you. Now
might not you come to Boston on your way to Chesterfield, ride up in the
open horsecars (a very pleasant ride) to see me also and give Mr. Morse
the benefit of a sitting? How I wish we could get Mrs. Stafford in here;
the patients get most excellent care. I have great confidence in Dr.
Berlin & in the attending physician. I do not want her to come for a
month, because Dr. Berlin has just gone away for a vacation.
I fear no mere visiting once a day of a doctor will do her any good--she
needs hygienic treatment--massage (a woman works here every day on the
patients who need rubbing & massage), feeding up (I have never yet seen a
patient whom we could not make eat, appetite or not, by aid of beef-tea &
milk), perfect rest, & judicious treatment.
Dr. Berlin is a learned, charming woman of 28--she takes advanced views,
gives no medicine at all in some cases, & if any, few at a time, but
efficient. She is perfectly unaffected, very intelligent, & has been
thoroughly trained. She is a Russian.
Please give my love to Mrs. Whitman & remember me to Colonel Whitman. This
afternoon, when driving with Mr. Marvin, I thought of the pleasant drives
I have had with Colonel Whitman.
Yours affectionately,
BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST.
If it were not for records accumulating mountain high I should have time
to write to my friends.
LETTER XL
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Sept. 3, '78.
Chesterfield, Mass._
I am half afraid Herby has got a malarious place by his description.
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I had a lingering hope--till Herby went south again--that I should have a
letter from you, in answer to mine, saying you were coming up to see us
here. In truth, it was a great disappointment to me, his going back to
Philadelphia instead of your joining us, or him, either here or somewhere
near to New York. I wonder where that North Amboyna is that you once
mentioned to me--and what kind of a place it is. I have had a long, quiet
time here, and have enjoyed it very much--never did I breathe such sweet,
light, pure air as is always blowing freely over these rocky hills. Rocky
as they are--and their sides & ravines are strewn with huge boulders of
every conceivable size & shape--they nourish an abundant growth of woods,
and I fancy the farmers here do a great deal better with their winter
crops of lumber and bark and maple sugar than with their summer one of
grain & corn. I expect Herby has described our neighbours to
you--specially Levi Bryant, the father of my hostess--a farmer who lives
just opposite and has put such heart & soul and muscle & sinew into his
farming that he has continued to win quite a handsome competence from this
barren soil (it isn't muscle & industry only that are wanted here--but
pluck and endurance) hauling his timber up & down over the snow & through
the drifts, along roads that are pretty nearly vertical. I am never tired
of hearing his stories (nor he of telling them) of hairbreadth escapes for
him & his cattle--when the harness or the shafts have broken under the
tremendous strain--& nothing but coolness & daring have got him or them
out of it alive. Generally, as he sits talking, his little boy of eleven
who bids fair to be like him and can now manage a team or a yoke of oxen
as well as any man in the parish--and work almost as hard--sits close by
him leaning his head on his father's shoulder or breast--for the rugged
old fellow has a vein of great gentleness and affectionateness in him & I
notice the child nestles up to him always rather than to the mother--who
is all the same a very kind, amiable, good mother. Then there are
neighbours of another sort up at the "Centre"--Mr. Chadwick, &c., from New
York, with whom I have pleasant chats daily when I trudge up to fetch my
letters--now & then I get a delightful drive or go on a blackberrying
party with the folks round--I expect Giddy over to-day & we shall remain
here together for about a fortnight--then back to Round Hill--where I am
to meet the Miss Chase whom you may remember taking tea with &
liking--then on to Boston to see dear Bee--& then to New York, where we
shall meet again at last, I hope ere long. Love to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman--I
enjoy her letters. Also to Hattie & Jessie--who will hear from me by &
bye. With love to you, dear Friend.
Good-bye.
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER XLI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Concord, Mass.
Oct. 25th._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
The days are slipping away so pleasantly here that weeks are gone before I
know it. The Concord folk are as friendly as they are intellectual, and
there is really no end to the kindness received. We are rowed on the
beautiful river every day that it is warm enough--a very winding river not
much broader than your favourite creek--flowing sometimes through level
meadows, sometimes round rocky promontories & steep wooded hills which,
with their wonderful autumn tints, are like a gay flower border mirrored
in the water. Never in my life have I enjoyed outdoor pleasures more--I
hardly think, so much--enhanced as they are by the companionship of very
lovable men and women. They lead an easy-going life here--seem to spend
half their time floating about on the river--or meeting in the evening to
talk & read aloud. Judge Hoar says it is a good place to live and die in,
but a very bad place to make a living in. Beatrice spent one Sunday with
us here. We walked to Hawthorne's old house in the morning, & in the
afternoon to the "Old Manse" and to Sleepy Hollow, most beautiful of last
resting places. Tuesday we go on to Boston for a week very loth to leave
Concord--at least, I am!--but Giddy begins to long for city life again.
And then to New York about the 5th Nov. Herby told you, no doubt, that I
spent an hour or two with Emerson--and that he looked very beautiful--and
talked in a friendly, pleasant manner. A long letter from my sister in
England tells me Per. looks well and happy & is so proud of his little
boy--and that Norah is really a perfect wife to him--affectionate,
devoted, and the best of housewives. How glad I am Herby is painting you.
I wonder if you like the landscape he is working on as well as you did
"Timber Creek." Miss Hillard has undertaken the charge of a young lady's
education, and is very much pleased with her task. She is in a delightful
family who make her quite one with them--live in the best part of New
York, and pay her a handsome salary. She has the afternoons and Saturday &
Sunday to herself.--Concord boasts of having been first to recognize your
genius. Mr. Alcott & Mr. Sanborn say so. Good-bye, dear Friend.
A. G.
LETTER XLII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_39 Somerset St.
Boston
Nov. 13, '78._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I feel as if I didn't a bit deserve the glorious budget you sent me
yesterday, for I have been a laggard, dull correspondent of late, because,
leading such an unsettled kind of life, I don't seem to have got well hold
of myself. Beautiful is the title prose poem--the glimpse of the autumn
cornfield: one smells the sweet fragrance, basks in the sunshine with
you--tastes all the varied, subtle outdoor pleasures, just as you want us
to. A lady who has just been calling on me--Miss Hillard--no relation of
the odious Dr. H.--said, "Have you seen a lovely little bit about a
cornfield by Walt Whitman in a New York paper?" She did not know your
poems, but was so taken with this. By the bye, I am not quite American
enough yet to enjoy the sound of the locusts & big grasshoppers--ours are
modest little things that only make a gentle sort of whirr--not that loud
brassy sound--couldn't help wishing for more birds & less insects when I
was at Chesterfield--but I like our English name "ladybird" better than
"ladybug". Do your children always say when they see one, as ours do,
"Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home: your house is on fire, your children
are flown"? But for the rest--I believe I am growing a very good American;
indeed, certain am I there is no more lovable people to live amongst
anywhere in the world--and in this respect it has been good to give up
having a home of my own here for awhile--for I have been thrown amongst
many more intimately than I could have been otherwise. What you say of
Herby's picture delights me, dear Friend. I have been grieving he was not
with us, sharing the pleasant times we have had and enlarging his circle
of friends--but after all he could not have been doing better--he must
come on here by & bye. I wonder if you are as satisfied with his portrait
of you as with the landscape. I suppose he is gone on to New York to-day.
I have sighed for dear little Concord many times since I came
away--beautiful city as Boston is & many the interesting & kindly people I
am seeing here: but the outdoor life & the entirely simple, unpretending,
cordial, friendly ways of Concord & its inhabitants won my heart
altogether--one of them came to see me to-day & to ask us to go and spend
a couple of days with them there again before we leave & I could not say
nay, though our time is short. There are some portraits in the Art Museum
here, which interested me a good deal--of Adams, Hancock, Quincy, &c.,--&
of some of the women of that time--they would form an excellent nucleus of
a national portrait gallery, which (together with good biographies while
yet materials & recollections are fresh & abundant) would be a very
interesting & important contribution to the world's history.--Tennyson's
letter is a pleasure to me to see--considering his age & the imperfection
of his sight through life, matters are better rather than worse with him
than one could have expected. Since that was written a friend (Walter
White) tells me they--the Tennysons--have taken a house in Eaton Sq.,
London, for the winter. And last, not least, thanks for Mr. Burroughs's
beautiful letter--that young man is indeed, as he says, like a bit out of
your poems.
There are two or three fine young men boarding here, & Giddy & I enjoy
their society not a little. Love to your Brothers & Sister. I shall write
soon as I am settled down in New York to her or Hattie. Love to Mrs.
Stafford. And most of all to you.
Good-bye, dear friend.
A. GILCHRIST.
I will send T's letter in a day or two.
LETTER XLIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Ave.
New York
Jan. 5, '79._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Herby has told you of our difficulties in getting comfortable quarters
here--and also that we seem now to have succeeded--not indeed in the way I
most wished & hoped we had--in 19th St., taking rooms & boarding
ourselves--so that we could have a friend with us when & as we pleased. It
seems as if that were not practicable unless we were to furnish for
ourselves. Certainly our experiences there of using another's kitchen were
discouraging--it was so dirty and uncomfortable that we were glad to take
refuge in a regular boarding house again before one week was out. It seems
to me more difficult to get anything of a medium kind in New York than
elsewhere I have been--if it isn't the best, it is very uninviting indeed.
Herby is enjoying his work and companionship at the League very much. We
stand the cold well--how does it suit you? Is your arm free from rheumatic
pains? When you come to Mr. J. H. Johnstons, which will be very soon I
hope, we shall be quite handy, and have a pretty, sunny room--a sitting
room by day!--with a handsome piece of furniture which is metamorphosed
into a bed at night--and a large dressing closet with hot & cold water
adjoining--all very comfortable. O how wistfully do I think of one evening
in Philadelphia, last winter. I shan't begin really to like New York till
you come and we have had some chats together. I have news from England
which makes me rather anxious. The Blaenavon Co., to which Per. is
chemist, has gone into liquidation--& I don't know whether it will
continue to exist--or how soon in these dull times he may find a good
opening elsewhere. Should things go badly for him, either Giddy and I will
return to England to share [our] home with him there, or else I want him
to take into serious consideration coming out here, instead of our going
back. Of course it would be a risky thing for him to do with wife & child,
in these times, unless some definite opening presented itself, but I
cannot help thinking that, being an expert in his profession, with first
rate training & experience, and iron work & metallurgy promising here to
have such enormous developments, he would be sure to do well in the end;
and meanwhile we could rub on together somehow. However, we shall see. I
have laid the matter before him, he & his dear little wife wrote me a very
brave, cheery letter when they told me the bad news--& I shall have an
answer to mine, I suppose, by the end of the month. Kate Hillard read an
amusing paper on Swinburne at a meeting of the Woman's Club in Brooklyn--&
we had some fine music too. For the rest, I have not yet presented any
introductions here.
Have had some beautiful glimpses of the North & East River effects of the
shipping at sunset, &c.--Have subscribed to the Mercantile library,--& are
beginning to feel at home. Herby & Giddy had been to hear Mr. Frothingham
this morning, & were much interested. Bee missed us sorely at first--but
writes--when she does write, which is but seldom--pretty cheerily.
Friendly remembrance to your brother & sister. I wonder where Hattie &
Jessie are spending their holidays. Love from us all. Good-bye, dear
friend.
A. GILCHRIST.
Had a letter from Mr. Marvin--all well--he is doing the Washington letter
of a N. Eng. paper. Hopes & trusts you are really going to Washington.
LETTER XLIV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Ave.
14 Jan., '79._
DEAREST FRIEND:
The pleasantest event since I last wrote has been a visit from Mr.
Eldridge. We had a long, friendly chat that did me good. Saturday evening
we went to one of Miss Booth's receptions--met Joaquin Miller there, who
is just back from Europe--of course we talked of you. Mrs. Moulton too is
hoping so you will come to New York during her stay here, which is to last
a week or two longer. John Burroughs has just sent me a post card to say
he has returned from a 3-weeks stay with his folks in Delaware Co.--that
he hopes to come here soon--wants Mrs. Burroughs to come too & board for a
month or so--wants also "Walt to come--& lecture"--but "Walt will not be
hurried." Did I tell you that we found boarding here a young man, Mr.
Arthur Holland, one of the family who were so very friendly to me & made
my stay so pleasant both in Concord & Cambridge? He often comes to our
room of an evening for an hour or two's chat, & by the bye, being
connected with the iron trade he has been able to make some enquiries for
me as to what Per's chances as a scientific metallurgist would be in this
country--& I am sorry to say he thinks they would be very poor indeed.
Prof. Lesley said the same thing; so it is clear I must not urge him to
try the experiment, seeing he has a wife & child. Herby & Giddy both well.
Love from us all. Good bye, Dear Friend.
A. GILCHRIST.
Friendly greeting to your brother & sister.
LETTER XLV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Ave.,
Jan. 27, '79._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Are you never coming? I do long & long to see you. I am beginning to like
New York better than I did and to have pleasant times. Had some friendly
chats with Kate Hillard last week, & went with her to call on Mrs. Putman
Jacobi, who has a little baby 3 weeks old & is still in her room, but has
got through very nicely--She talks well, doesn't she? & has a face with
plenty of individuality in it. Also we went together on Saturday again to
one of Miss Booth's receptions, & there met Mrs. Croly, & had the best
talk about you I have had this long while. I like her cordiality--we are
going to her reception on Sunday & to one at Mrs. Bigelow's Wednesday. It
is true there is not much that can be called social enjoyment at these
crowded receptions, but they enable you to start many acquaintanceships,
some of which turn out lasting good. We had some fine harp playing & a
witty recital at Miss Booth's. Miss Selous is back in America. I should
not wonder if she comes on here soon. Bee is living at the Dispensary now,
instead of in the Hospital, & finds the comparatively outdoor life--& the
freedom from being "whistled" for all hours of the day and night as she
was there--a wonderful refreshment. That coloured lady, Mrs. Wiley, whom
you met once at our house, is her fellow labourer & room mate at the
Dispensary. Bee likes her much. I am not sure whether you know the
Gilders? We spent a couple of hours delightfully with them yesterday
afternoon. She has a very attractive face, a musical voice, & such a sweet
smile. They are going to Europe for a four months' holiday this spring. I
admire the simple, unconventional way in which they live. Herby is working
away in the best spirits. He is going to paint that bowling alley subject
on a large scale. Giddy is sitting by me with her nose in the French
Dictionary, working away at a novel of Balzac's. I have had scarcely any
letters from England lately!--and the papers bring none but dismal
tidings; nevertheless I don't believe our sun is going down yet awhile--we
shall emerge from this dark crisis the better, not the worse, because
compelled to grapple with the evils that have caused it, instead of
passively enduring them. Please give friendly remembrance from me to your
brothers & sister. Have you been at Kirkwood lately, I wonder? I suppose
Timber Creek is frozen over. Good-bye, dear Friend. Write soon, or better
still Come!
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER XLVI
HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_New York
112 Madison Avenue
February 2nd, 1879._
DEAR DARLING WALT:
I read your long piece in the Philadelphia _Times_ with ever so much
interest, & with especial delight the delicately told bit about the dear
old Pond, artistic, because so true. I know that it will please you to
hear that I have gained tenfold facility with my brush since the autumn.
It has agreed uncommonly well with me having enlisted under such an
experienced & able painter as Chase; as a manipulator of the brush he is
agreed by the experts (Eaton) to have no rival. I may yet be able to paint
a head of you in _one_ sitting that will do justice to you. Three of my
pictures are nicely hung at the Water Colour Exhibition Academy of Design,
the first time that I have exhibited in New York. We had two & three
engagements every night (with one exception) last week, & go to Mrs.
Croley's to-night. Your friend John Burroughs called last Wednesday--came
to try Turkish baths for his malarious trouble, but it seemed to bring on
his attacks of neuralgia worse. I am sorry that I can report but poorly of
his health, so painfully excruciating was his neuralgia about his arms at
times that a Dr. was sent for & morphia injected in his wrist, but I am
glad to say he reported himself a little better. He hopes that you will
come and give the lecture on Lincoln this winter; why not, confound it, it
would be most interesting.
Quite often we go to Miss Booth's receptions. Saturday evening, they are
gay & amusing. Met Mr. Bliss, the gentleman that talked like "a house
afire" one Sunday at your house last winter, you remember.
Last Wednesday I, mother, Giddy, & Kate Hillard went to Mrs. Bigelow's
reception. Miss H. was asked to recite & she recited the "Swineherd"
(Anderson's) charmingly, & "The Faithful Lovers," which took every one.
"Walk in" Miller was there (I can't spell his name) & lots more.
This morning being Sunday, I took my skates to the Park. The wind was high
& whirled us about fantastically; ladies seated in wicker chairs were
pushed rapidly along the Pond's smooth icy surface by their gentlemen
escorts, tall men kissed the ice or sprawled full length on their backs,
while others flew by like swallows; all this with a church spire peeping
behind hills dappled with snow & sunshine: what more inspiriting than
this?
And now dear Walt.
Good-bye for the present.
HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.
LETTER XLVII
BEATRICE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_33 Warrenton St.
Feb. 16, 1879._
DEAR MR. WHITMAN:
Although not in word, I have thanked you for your letter & papers by
enjoying them thoroughly.
Down at this Dispensary we work just as hard as at the Hospital, but our
spare minutes are our own (no records to write out); our work is under our
own control; we are out in fresh air half the day, sometimes half the
night, making intimate acquaintance with all sorts of people & places &
with far distant parts of Boston.
We have all the responsibility that it is good for young doctors to have,
i. e., in all difficult or obscure & dangerous cases we are obliged to
call in older heads & are obliged to report verbally to the visiting
physician of the month all our cases & our treatment. Only two students
live at the Dispensary--Dr. Wiley (the coloured Philadelphia student you
saw) & myself. In tastes we have much in common & on the whole I prefer to
live with her rather than with any of the other students. We share rooms.
We have a bedroom, a drug-room, a treatment room, waiting room for
patients, & take our meals in the kitchen.
A widow woman with two children housekeeps.
I think Boston a very beautiful city. The public Gardens & Commons in the
busiest part, sloping down from the gilt domed state house on Beacon
hill, threaded by paths in all directions, traversed by the business men,
the fine ladies, the beggars, etc., etc. One broad, sloping path is given
up to the boys who want to coast, temporary wooden bridges being thrown
over the cross paths. Then, crossing South Bay to South Boston is a
beautiful walk I take from one to four times a day. South Boston looks
rather dingy; it is inhabited mostly by artisans & mill hands & fishermen,
but walking up 3rd St., as you cross the lettered streets A, B, C, D,
etc., you look down upon the harbour--on bright days bright blue, & a few
sails to be seen--at sunset the colours of course are reflected
gorgeously.
Somehow or other the sea looks doubly beautiful set in dingy S. Boston.
Far over in the West End too we have patients. Last Tuesday I had twins
all by myself; only one, however, was born alive; the other had been dead
a week. How delightful that you are feeling so much better. Shall you not
be coming to Boston sometime before I leave, 1st June?
The Boston I know is not the Boston I knew in books; I am as far off from
that as if I lived in England--is not the "hub"--I was reminded of that
last Sunday when I had time for once to go to church & went to hear Mr. E.
E. Hale preach and went home to dinner with him....
I like his daughter whom we knew in Philadelphia. She is a clever young
artist. Dr. Wiley is very popular with her patients, far more so than I.
Please remember me to all the Staffords & give my especial love to Mrs.
Stafford. Also to Mrs. Whitman.
Yours affectionately,
BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST.
LETTER XLVIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Ave.
March 18, 1879._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I hope you are enjoying this splendid, sunshiny weather as much as we
are--the atmosphere here is delicious. In the morning Giddy and I set at
home busy with needle work, letter writing, and reading. After lunch we go
out for a walk or to pay visits--and of an evening very often to
receptions (but they are not half so jolly as our evenings at
Philadelphia). Still we have a lively, pleasant time. I like Miss Booth
very much, with her kindly, generous character and active practical mind.
So I do Mrs. Croly--she is more impulsive and enthusiastic. Kate Hillard
often goes with us, & she is always good company. I had a note from Edward
Carpenter the other day brought by a lady who had been living near him at
Sheffield--an American lady with two very fine little girls who has lately
lost her husband in England and was on her way back to her parents' home
in Pennsylvania--somewhere beyond Pittsburg. She is one who loves your
poems, & has great hopes of seeing you in New York. She told me her little
girls were so fond of Carpenter he of them--he is first rate with
children. I hope you will not put off coming to New York till we are
returning to Philadelphia, which will be some time in May. I find Beatrice
is so anxious to get further advantages for study in England or Paris
before she begins to practise, and Herby is so strongly advised by Mr.
Eaton, of whose judgment & experience he thinks very highly, to study in
Duron's Studio in Paris for a year, that I have made up my mind to go
back, for a time at any rate, this summer; but I shall leave my furniture
here, and the question of where our future home is to be, open. Herby is
making great progress. I wish you could see the head of an old woman he
has just painted--and I wish he had had as much power when he had such
splendid chances of painting you. I cannot tell you how vividly and
pleasantly Chestnut St. on a sunny day rose before me in your jottings.
Love from us all. Tell your sister I often think of her & shall enjoy a
chat ever so.
A. G.
LETTER XLIX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Ave.
March 26, '79._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
It seems quite a long while since I wrote, & a _very long_ while since you
wrote. I am beginning to turn my thoughts Philadelphia-wards that we may
have some weeks near you before we set out on fresh wanderings across the
sea; and though I feel quite cheery about them, I look eagerly forward to
the time beyond that when we have a fixed, final nest of our own again,
where we can welcome you just when and as you please. Whichever side the
Atlantic it is, you will come surely? for you belong to the one country as
much as to the other. And I shall always feel that I do too. I take back
with me a deep and hearty love for America--I came indeed with a good deal
of that, but what I take back is different--stronger, more real. I went
over to see friends in Brooklyn yesterday, & it was more lovely than I can
tell you on the Ferry--in fact, it was just your poem, "Crossing Brooklyn
Ferry". Herby still painting away _con amore_, & making good progress. I
met Joaquin Miller at the Bigelows last week, & he was very pleasant
(which isn't always the case) and said some very good things to me.
Thursday we are going to lunch with Mrs. Albert Brown--perhaps you may
have heard of her as Bessie Griffiths. She was a Southern lady who, when
she was about 18, freed all her slaves & left herself penniless. On Sunday
we take tea at Prof. Rood's of Columbia College. Kate Hillard we often
see & have lively chats with. We meet also & see a good deal of General
Edward Lee--a fine soldierly looking man, & I believe he distinguished
himself in the war & was afterwards sent to organize the new Territory of
Wyoming, & was the first governor. I wish very much that if you or your
brother knew him or know anything about him, you would tell me--for
reasons that I will tell you by & bye. Bee is seeing a great deal of the
educated coloured people at Boston--was at the meeting of a literary
club--the only white among 20 or 30 coloured ladies--likes them much.
Write soon, dear Friend. Meanwhile, best love & good-bye.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
No letters from England this long while.
Please give friendly greetings from me to your brother & sister.
LETTER L
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Glasgow
Friday, June 20, 1879._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
We set foot on dry land again Wednesday morning after a good passage--not
a very smooth one--and not without four or five days of seasickness, but
after that we really enjoyed the sea & the sky--it was mostly cloudy, but
such lovely lights and shades & invigorating breezes! and as we got up
into northern latitudes, daylight in the sky all night through. The last
three days we had glorious scenery--sailed close in under the Giant's
Causeway on the north coast of Ireland--great sort of natural ramparts &
bastions or rock, wonderfully grand. Then we sailed on Lough Fozle to land
a group of Irish folk at Moville--some of them old people who had not seen
Ireland for forty years, and who were so happy they did not know what to
do with themselves. And what with this human interest, and the first
getting near land again and the rich green-and-golden gorse-covered hills
& the setting sun streaming along the beautiful lough with golden light,
it was a sight & a time I shall never forget. Then we entered the Firth of
Clyde & sailed among the islands--mountainous Arran, level Bute--& on the
other hand the green hills of Ayr, with pleasant towns nestled under them,
sloping to the Clyde--this was during the night--we did not go to bed at
all it was so beautiful--& then came a gorgeous sunrise--& then the
landing at Greenock & a short railway journey to Glasgow, the tide not
serving to bring our big ship up so far. We had very pleasant (& learned
withal) companions on the voyage--the Professor of Greek & of Philosophy
from Harvard and a young student from Concord, all of whom we have seen
since we landed and hope to see often again, especially the young student,
Frank Bigelow, who is a very nice fellow. Herby enjoyed the voyage much &
so did Giddy. Glasgow is a great, solidly built city, very pleasant [in]
spite of smoky atmosphere--full of sturdy, rosy-cheeked people with broad
Scotch accent. We have been rushing about shopping--have not yet seen
Per.--shall meet him at Durham in a week's time & spend a month together
there where he will be superintending your works. Meanwhile we are going
to Edinburgh for a few days. I kept thinking of you on the voyage, dear
friend, & wondering how you would like it--& whether you could stand being
stowed away in the little box-like berth at night. I should recommend any
American friend coming over to try this line--we had a fine ship--fine
officers & crew--& the latter part, fine scenery. Love to your Brother &
Sister & to Mr. Burroughs. Address to me for the present.
Care Percy C. Gilchrist
Blaenavon
Poutzpool
Mon.
Love from us all. I shall write soon again. Good-bye dear Friend.
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER LI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Lower Shincliffe
Durham
August 2d, '79._
DEAREST FRIEND:
I am sitting in my room with my dear little grandson, the sweetest little
fellow you ever saw, asleep beside me. Giddy and Norah (my 3d daughter)
are gone into Durham to do some shopping. Bee is up in London on her way
to Berne in Switzerland, where she has finally decided to complete her
medical studies. Herby is, I think, staying with Eustace Conway at
Hammersmith just now. He has been spending a week at Brighton with Edward
Carpenter & his family--but I will leave him to tell his own news. We are
lodging in this little village with its red-tiled roofs & gray stone
walls, lying among wooded hills, corn fields, meadows, and collieries on
the banks of the Weir, for the sake of being near Percy & his wife. He is
superintending here the erection of some kilns for making the peculiar
kind of basic firebricks needed in his dephosphorization process. Durham
Cathedral, which was mainly built soon after the Norman conquest, is in
sight, crowning a wooded hill that rises abruptly from the river-side. It
looks as solid, majestic, venerable as the rocks & hills--the interior is
of wonderful grandeur & beauty. When you enter one of these cathedrals you
are tempted to say architecture is a lost art with us moderns so far as
sublimity is concerned--except in vast engineering works. You would not
dignify the Weir with the name of a river in America--it is no bigger than
Timber Creek--but it winds about so capriciously through the picturesque
little city as to make almost an island of the hill on which the castle &
cathedral stand & to need three great solid stone bridges within a quarter
of a mile of each other, & with its steep wooded sides carrying nature
right into the heart of the old town. But the rainy season (we have
scarcely seen the sun since we have been in England & I believe it is the
same in France & Italy) and the great depression in trade, especially the
coal & iron, which chiefly concerns this district, seem to cast a gloom
over everything. There are whole rows of colliers' cottages in this
village empty. Where they go to no one knows, but as soon as the
collieries reopen they will all reappear. We often meet Colliers returning
from work--they look as if they had just emerged from Hades, poor
fellows--their faces black as soot--their lean, bowed legs bare--I believe
the mines are hot here; they work with little on--but they are really the
cleanest of all workmen, as they take a bath every night on their return
before supping. The speech here is almost like a foreign tongue to any one
from the south or middle of England. I wonder if you have yet read Dr.
Bucke's book.[29] It is about the only thing I have read since my return.
It suggests deeply interesting trains of thought.
I wonder if you are at Camden, taking your daily trips across the ferry &
strolls up Chestnut St. I hardly realized till I left it how dearly I love
America--great sunny land of hope and progress--or how my whole life has
been enriched with the human intercourse I had there. Give my love to
those of our friends whom you know & tell them not to forget us. I have
had a long letter from Emma Lazarus. I suppose Hattie and Jessie are
spending their holidays at Camden & that Hattie has pretty well done with
school. We have been chiefly busy with needlework since we came--preparing
dear Bee for Berne. I miss her sadly--had quite hoped we should have all
been together at Paris this winter--but it seems the course is much longer
& more arduous [there]. We spent a week in Edinburgh before we came on
here. It is by far the most beautiful city I have ever seen. The journey
between it and Berwick-on-Tweed lies through the richest & best cultivated
farm land in Britain--the sea sparkling on one side of us & these fertile
fields dotted with splendid flocks & herds--with large comfortable-looking
farmhouses, & here & there an old castle; it was singularly enjoyable. How
I have wished everywhere that you were with us to share the sight--and the
best is that you would return home more than ever proud & rejoicing in
America. It is a land where humanity is having, and is going to have, such
chances as never before. Giddy sends her love. Mine also & to your brother
& sister. Good-bye, dear Friend.
A. GILCHRIST.
Please write soon; I am longing for a letter.
LETTER LII[30]
WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_(Camden, New Jersey.)
(August, 1879.)_
Thank you, dear friend, for your letter; how I should indeed like to see
that _Cathedral_[31], I don't know which I should go for first, the
Cathedral or _that baby_.[32] I write in haste, but I am determined you
shall have a word, at least, promptly in response.
LETTER LIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Elm Villas, Elm Row, Heath St.
Hampstead, Dec. 5, '79, London, England._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
You could not easily realize the strong emotion with which I read your
last note and traced on the little map[33]--a most precious possession
which I would not part with for the whole world--all your
journeyings--both in youth & now. Mingled emotions! for I cannot but feel
anxious about your health, & if I didn't know it was very naught to ask
you questions, should beg you [to] tell me in what way your health has
failed--whether it is the rheumatic & neuralgic affection that troubled
you the last spring we were in Philadelphia, or whether the fatigues &
excitements & the very enjoyments & full life, & burst of prophetic joy,
as it were, had proved too great a strain. But you have accomplished
another thing, that had to be done in your life & I exult with you--have
seen the vast magnificent theatre, the free, unfettered conditions whereon
humanity will enact a new drama, with the parts all so differently cast!
the rest--the moving spirit of it all--hints of this, at least--flashes,
glimpses, I find in your greatest poems. But, dear Friend, I think
humanity moves forward [slowly] even under splendid conditions--you must
give it a century or two instead of 50 years--before at least the crowning
glories of a corresponding literature & art will develope
themselves--Nature has got plenty of time before her, & obstinately
refuses to be hurried; witness her dealings with the mere rocks & stones.
Bee is at Berne, working away merrily, rejoicing in the really splendid
advantage for medical study there open to her. She mastered German so as
to be able to speak & understand it--lectures & all--with ease during the
two months at Wiesbaden & she has found a thoroughly comfortable home with
some excellent, intelligent ladies who are fond of her & see to her bodily
welfare in every possible way. I have my dear little grandson with me
here--as engaging a little toddler as the sun ever shone upon--so
affectionate & sweet-tempered & bright. I wish I could see him sitting on
your knee. You will certainly have to come to us as soon as ever we have a
comfortable home, won't you? Giddy is well & as rosy as ever. She & Herby
send their love. I have seen Rossetti--he was full of enquiries &
affectionate interest in all that concerns you--& loth we were to break
off our conversation & hurry back--but Hampstead, the pleasantest &
prettiest of all our suburbs, is terribly inaccessible & cuts us off a
good deal from the intercourse with old friends I had looked forward to.
It is on the top of a high hill (as high as the top of St. Pauls), & looks
down on one side over the great city with its canopy of smoke, & on the
other over a wide, pleasant stretch of green & fertile Middlesex--has
moreover pleasant lanes, solid old houses, shaded by big elms, & other
picturesque features & such an abundance of keen, fresh air this cold
weather too! We sigh for the warmth of an American house indoors often &
for American sunshine out of doors. Rossetti has a beautiful little group
of children growing up around him--I think the eldest girl will grow up a
real beauty & the boy too is a noble little fellow. I meet numbers so
delighted to hear about you. I believe Addington Symonds is preparing a
book which treats largely of your Poems.
Glad to hear that Brother & Sister & nieces are all well. I wish I could
write to some of them, but what with needlework, an avalanche of letters,
the care of my dear little man--the re-editing of my husband's life of
Blake, to which there will be a considerable addition of letters newly
come to light, I hardly know which way to turn. Per. & my nephew & the
"Process" have made a great stride forward. Won two important law suits at
Berlin, where the Bessemer ring & Krupp at their head were trying to oust
them of their patent rights. Also it is practically making good way in
England. So by & bye the money will begin to flow in, I suppose--but has
not done so yet.
I trust, dearest Friend, this will find you safe & fairly well again at
Camden, with plenty of great, happy thoughts to brood over for the winter.
Love from us all. Good-bye.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER LIV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_5 Mount Vernon
Hampstead
Jan. 25, '80._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Welcome was your postcard announcing recovered health & return to Camden!
May this find you safe there, well & hearty, able to go freely to & fro on
the ferries & streets. I wish one of those old red Market Ferry cars were
going to land you at our door once more! What you would have to tell us of
western scenes & life! What teas & what evenings we would have--you would
certainly have to say "there is a point beyond which"--& would have pretty
late trips back of moonlight. Strange episode in my life! so unlike what
went before & what comes after--those evenings in Philadelphia--yet so
natural, familiar, dear! If I were American-born, I certainly should not
want to change it for any country in the world, and if as you have
dreamed--as I too have dreamed--it is given us hereafter to have another
spell of life on this old earth, may my lot be cast there when the great
time dimly preparing is actually come. But meanwhile, dear Friend, my work
lies here: innumerable are the ties that bind us. And I can only hope &
dream that you will come & stay with us awhile when we have a home of our
own. That dear little grandson stayed with me two months till I really
didn't know how to part with him, & grew more & more engaging & pretty in
his ways every day--rapid indeed is the opening of the little bud at that
age--between 1 & 3--& the way he had of looking up & giving you little
kisses of his own accord would win anybody's heart. Bee's letters continue
as cheery as ever--she is heartily enjoying work & life, and accomplishing
the purpose she has set her heart upon, & the people she is with are so
good and kindly, it is quite a home. She is working a good deal with the
microscope. Her outdoor recreation is skating. Herby is getting on very
nicely. He has had a commission to make some designs for a new kind of
painted tapestry--and his figures "Audrey & Touchstone" are very much
admired & have been bought by a rich American, & he has a commission for
more. But the summer work he has set his heart upon is a portrait of you
from all the material he brought with him--the many attempts he made
there--handled with his present improved skill with the brush. I hope you
will be able by & bye to send him the photograph he asked for--but no
hurry. Edward Carpenter came up from Sheffield and spent an evening with
us--which we all heartily enjoyed--he is a dear fellow. We talked much of
you. He has been giving lectures this winter on the Lives of the Great
Discoverers in Science. Carpenter knows intimately, goes freely among, a
greater range & variety of men than any Englishman I know--he has a way of
making himself thoroughly welcome by the firesides of mechanics & factory
workers--his own kith & kin are aristocratic.
Giddy is taking singing lessons again, & hoping by the time you next see
her to be able to contribute her share of the evening's pleasure. Percy is
still working away indomitably at the "process," which is gaining ground
rapidly on the continent, & I hope I may say slowly & surely in England. I
see the Gilders now & then--indeed they are coming up to lunch with us
to-morrow--Mr. Gilder[34] is the better for rest--& they seem to enjoy
England; but England has done her very worst in the way of climate ever
since they have been here. O I do long for a little American sunshine. We
met Henry James at the Conways last Sunday & found him one of the
pleasantest of talkers. Rossetti & all your friends are well. Please give
my love to your brothers & sister. Were Jessie & Hattie at home in St.
Louis, I wonder, when you were there? Love from us all.
Good-bye, Dearest Friend.
A. GILCHRIST.
Please give my love to John Burroughs when you write or see him.
LETTER LV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Marley, Haslemere
England
Aug. 22, '80._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I have had all the welcome papers with accounts of your doings, and to-day
a nice long letter from Mrs. Whitman, which I much enjoyed, giving me
better account of your health again, & of your great enjoyment of the
water travel through Canada. So I hope, spite of drawbacks, you will
return to Camden for the winter quite set up in body, as well as full of
delightful memories. If only we were at 22nd St. to welcome you back &
talk it all over at tea! Ah, those evenings! My friends told me I looked
ten years younger when I came back from America than when I went. And I am
not yet quite re-acclimatized; & what with missing the sunshine & working
a little too hard, was feeling quite knocked up: so Bee insisted on my
coming down, or rather up, here to stay with some very kind & dear
friends. The house stands all alone on a great heath-covered hill, and
below & around are endless coppices, so that you step from the lawn into
[a] winding wood-path, along which I wander by the hour: and from my
window I look over much such a view as we had at Round Hill Hotel,
Northampton, this time two years, only that with the soft haze that is so
often spread over our landscape, the distant hill looks more ghostly in
the moonlight. My friend is a noble, large-hearted, capable woman, who
devotes all her life and energies to keeping alive an invalid husband; and
he well deserves her care, for he has a beautiful nature, too, & their
mutual affection is unbounded. He is just ordered by the doctors to leave
the home they have made for themselves up here--which is as lovely as it
can be--& to spend two years at least in Italy. So it is a sorrowful time
with them--they have no children, but have adopted a little niece. Our new
house is just ready & we are daily expecting our furniture from America.
Herby has been working as usual, making good progress & has just done a
beautiful little drawing for the new edition of his father's book. Bee,
you will be glad to hear, has decided to continue her medical studies & is
going to be assistant to a lady doctor at Edinburgh, who is to pay her
sufficient salary to cover all remaining expenses. Meanwhile we have got
her at home for a few weeks to help us through with the move in, and a sad
pinch it will be to part with her again. Giddy has been paying a
delightful visit to some friends of Carpenter's near Leeds--a Quaker
family--the daughter very lovable & admirable. We do not forget the
Staffords[35] nor they us. Mont. often sends Herby a magazine or a token.
Love to them when you see them, & to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie
& kindest remembrance to Dr. Bucke. Send me a line soon, dear Friend--I
think of you continually & know that somewhere & somehow we are to meet
again, & that there is a tie of love between us that time & change & death
itself cannot touch.
With love,
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER LVI
HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, England
12 Well Road, Hampstead, London
November 30th, 1880._
MY DEAR WALT:
Your postcard came to hand some little time ago. I was pleased to get it,
to hear of your being well, & with your friends. I have been extremely
busy seeing after the new edition of my father's book;[36] the work of
seeing such a richly illustrated "edition de luxe" through the press was
enormous, but it is done! The binders are now doing their work, & next
Tuesday the reviewers will be doing theirs--I defy them to find any fault
with the book. I dare say you think it "tall" talk, but I think that it is
the most perfectly gotten up book that I ever have seen. My mother has
written an admirable memoir of my father at the end of the second vol.
POND MUSINGS
(Pen sketch of a butterfly)
by
WALT WHITMAN
I thought that this was to be the title of your prose volume. I will
undertake the illustrations, choosing the paper (hand made), everything
except the expense of reproducing, etc. I should say London is the place
to have things executed in: if you wish to give photos they must be drawn
by an artist and reproduced; no photo ever looked well in a book yet! they
haven't decorative importance and don't blend with type. I should suggest
that we should imitate the artistic size & style of your earliest edition
of "Leaves of G.," a large, thin, flat volume, a fanciful, but as
inexpensive as possible, cover written in gold on blue, a waterlily say:
but I could think this over. I will design fanciful tailpieces to be woven
in with the text; as a frontispiece the drawing that I gave you, retouched
by me, and reproduced by the Typographic Etching Company, 23 Farringdon
street, London, E. C. All these are only suggestions, which I am prepared
to execute in right earnest thought. I read your letter to mother with
interest. We like our new house so much, & I am sure that you would. You
must come and stay with us & stroll on Hampstead Heath, & ride down into
London upon an omnibus & sit to some good sculptor here in London (Boem
say). And you yourself could make arrangements with the publishers. With
remembrance to friends,
HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.
LETTER LVII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Well Rd., Hampstead
Apr. 18, '81._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I have just been sauntering in our little but sunny garden which slopes to
the South--surveying with much satisfaction some fruit trees--plum, green
gage, pear, cherry, apple--which we have just had planted to train up
against the house and fence--in which fashion fruit ripens much better
with our English modicum of sunshine, besides taking no room & casting no
shade over your little bit of ground--Then we have filled our large window
with flowers in pots which make the room smell as delicious as a garden.
Giddy is assiduous in keeping them well watered & tended.--Welcome was
your postcard--with the little rain-bird's coy note in it. But I had not
before heard of your illness, dear friend--the letter before, you spoke of
being unusually well, as I trust you are again now, & enjoying the spring.
I am well again so far as digestion &c. goes; but bronchitis asthma of a
chronic kind still trouble me. My breath is so short I cannot walk, which
is a privation. I am going, at the beginning of June, to stay with Bee in
Edinburgh, as she will not have any holiday or be able to come & see us
this year, & much am I longing to be with her. Have you begun to have any
summer thoughts, dear Walt? And do they turn towards England, & our nest
therein? Yes, I have received & have enjoyed all the papers &
cuttings--dearly like what you said of Carlyle. Everyone here is speaking
bitterly of the harsh judgments & sarcastic descriptions of people in the
"reminiscenses." But I know that at bottom his heart was genial and good &
that he wrote those in a miserable mood--& never looked at them again
afterwards. I hope you received the little memoir of my husband all right.
Herby is very busy with a drawing of you--hopes that with the many
sketches he made, & the vivid impress on his memory & the help of
photographs, it will be good. I wish he had possessed as much power with
the brush when he was in America as he has now--he is making very great
progress in mastery of the technique. I observe, too, that he reads &
dwells upon your poems--especially the "Walt Whitman"--with growing
frequency & delight. We often say, "Won't Walt like sitting in that sunny
window?" or "by that cheery open fire" or "sauntering on the heath"--&
picture you here in a thousand different ways. I believe Maggie Lesley is
coming from Paris, where she is studying art in good earnest, at the
beginning of May, & then will come and spend a few days with us. Welcome
are American friends! The Buxton Forman's took tea with us last week & we
had pleasant talk of you & of Dr. Bucke. Mrs. Forman is a sincere,
sympathetic, motherly woman whom you would like. The Rossetti's too have
been to see us--we didn't think William in the best health or spirits--&
his wife was not looking well either, but then another baby is just
coming.
This Easter time the poorest of London working folk flock in enormous
numbers to Hampstead Heath; it is a sight that would interest you--they
are rougher & noisier & poorer than such folks in America--& the men more
prone to get the worse for drink--but there is a good deal of fun &
merriment too--the girls & boys racing about on donkeys (who have a pretty
hard time of it)--plenty of merry-go-rounds--& enjoyment of the pure air
& sunshine, & such sights, more than they know. The light is failing,
dearest friend; so with love from us all, good-bye.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
Friendliest greeting to your brother & sister & to Hattie & Jessie when
you write & to the Staffords.
LETTER LVIII
HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Well Road
North London
Hampstead, England
June 5th, 1881, Sunday afternoon_
5 P. M.
MY DEAR WALT:
You don't write me a letter nor take any notice of my magnificent offers
concerning "Pond Musings", etc. however, I will forgive you this
oft-repeated offence. I often think of you, very often of America and
things generally there, and nearly always with pleasure.
My mother is away staying with Beatrice in Edinburgh city, recruiting her
health, which has most sadly needed it of late. So I and Grace & a new
Scotch lassie, one Margaret, who officiates as servant most efficaciously
too, I can tell you (such scrubbing & cleaning as you never saw the like)
we three, I say, are alone at Keats Corner; cool sitting here in our long
drawing-room (hung with innumerable pictures as of yore), although it has
been scorchingly hot this past month. The morning I spend sketching on
Hampstead Heath, which is lovely just now, all the May-trees are in full
bloom the gorse & broom are a blaze of yellow, the rooks fly constantly by
a quarter of a mile (seemingly) overhead, the sly fellows giving some side
like dart when you look up at them even at that height. I am painting one
of them; so I have to look up pretty often. In the early morning the
nightingale sings, oh, so sweetly, long trills & roulades in the most
accomplished manner.
Last Wednesday Miss Ellen Terry, whose name you are doubtless familiar
with as being the leading actress in London, well, she called upon me to
ask my advice or opinion of a drawing connected with my father's book.
Ellen Terry expressed herself highly interested in our house, pictures,
decorations and so forth. Her manner was a little stagey, but graceful to
the extreme, and you could see peeping out of this theatric manner a kind,
good heart, oh, so kind, I feel as if I would do anything for her, her
manners were so winning. "Will you come to the stage entrance of the
Lyceum some day soon and you shall have stalls for two; now will you come?
Do." Were her last words to Grace. I called on her at Kensington last
week, returning the drawing, and I was so charmed with two beautiful
children of hers, a tall, fair girl, a pretty mixture of shyness and
self-possession that quite won me. She too I should fancy will be a great
actress some day, she has such a bright face. The boy, Master Ted, was
nice too.
Well, I gave Ellen Terry a proof of a drawing that I have just completed
for Dr. Bucke's book--a job I got through Buxton Forman, a great friend of
Bucke's, done _con amore_ on my part. This drawing has been beautifully
reproduced by the new photo intaglio-process. I hope Dr. Bucke will like
it, but I should not expect great things from him in that line, judging
from the twopenny hapenny little pen & ink sketch by Waters which he sent
over in the first instance; however, Forman rescued him from that & so far
he has been guided by his friend. Whether he will when he sees my drawing,
we neither of us know; but both feel to have done our best in the matter.
I said that Ellen Terry must ask for you when she goes to America, which
she contemplates some day. I have sold the last drawing I made in New
York of you for £10. 10s to Buxton Forman ($50. odd). Church bells have
just commenced chiming in the distance, a sound I like better than the
parsons. I hear that the young American artists are doing capitally
filling their pockets. My cousin Sidney Thomas is, or was, in America, a
good deal lionized, I understand. If at any time you favour me with a
letter let it be a letter and not a postcard please. I have been reading
Carlyle's reminiscences--good stuff in them, brilliant touches, but
dreadfully morbid, don't you think? & one shuts the book up with a feeling
that in some respect one Carlyle is enough in the world: & yet in some
respects a million wouldn't be too many. I often think of your remark to
us one day that tolerance is the rarest quality in the world.
Interested in those Boston scraps you send my mother. You have always been
pretty well received in Boston, have you not--I mean in the Emerson days?
Pity that when Emerson is no more there will be no fine portrait of him in
existence; there was a nobility stamped upon his face that I never saw the
like of, and which should have been caught and stamped forever on canvas.
We all see something of the Formans & all like them; they have so much
character, rather unusual in literary folk of the lighter sort, I fancy;
but there is something very fresh and original about Forman. Nice children
they have, too. Miss Blind is bringing out a volume of poems; why will
people all imagine they can write poetry? William Rossetti is writing a
hundred sonnets--writes one a day; one about John Brown is not bad: and
many are instructive, but are in no sense poems. I am going down to tea &
must not keep Grace waiting any longer. Love to you.
HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.
LETTER LIX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead
London, Dec. 14, '81._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Your welcome letter to hand. I have longed for a word from you--could not
write myself[37]--was stricken dumb--nay, there is nothing but silence for
me still. Herby wrote to Mrs. Stafford first, thinking that so the shock
would come less abruptly to you.
I heard of you at Concord in a kind long letter from Frederick Holland,
with whose wife you had some conversation. Indeed all that sympathy and
warm & true words of love & sorrow & highest admiration & esteem for my
darling could do to comfort me I have had--and most & best from America.
And many of her poor patients at Edinburgh went sobbing from the door when
they heard they should see her no more.
The report of your health is comforting dear friend. Mine too is better--I
am able to take walks again--though still liable to sudden attacks of
difficult breathing.
Herby is working hard--has just been disappointed over a competition
design which he sent in to the Royal Academy--a very poor & specious work
obtaining the premium--but is no whit discouraged & has no need to be, for
he is making great progress--works hard, loves his work & is of the stuff
where of great painters are made, I am persuaded--so he can afford to
wait. Giddy is not quite so well & strong as I could wish, but there
seems nothing serious. She is working diligently at the development of her
voice--& is learning German. Dr. Bucke's friend, Mr. Buxton Forman, & his
wife are very warm, staunch friends of Herby's.
Please give my love to your sister, and tell her that her good letter
spoke the right words to me & that I shall write before very long. Thanks
for the paper, dear friend--& for those that came when I was too
overwhelmed but which I have since read with deep interest--those about
your visit to your birthplace. With love from us all--good-bye, dearest
Friend.
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER LX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road
Jan 29, '82._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Your letter to Herby was a real talk with you. I don't know why I punish
myself by writing to you so seldom now, for indeed to be near you, even in
that way would do me good--often & often do I wish we were back in America
near you. As I write this I am sitting to Herby for my portrait again--he
has never satisfied himself yet: but this one seems coming on nicely--and
so is the Consuelo picture. Another one he has in his mind is to be called
"The tea-party," and it is to be the old group round our table in
Philadelphia--you & me and dear Bee & Giddy & himself. He thinks that what
with memory & photograph & the studies he made when with you, he will be
able to put you & my darling on the canvas.
Giddy's voice is developing into a really fine contralto & she has the
work in her to become an artist, I think & will turn out one of the
tortoises who outstrip the hares. Percy and Norah are spending the winter
in London (at Kensington)--and we can get round by train in half an hour;
so I often see them and the dear little man. Do you remember the Miss
Chases--two pleasant maiden ladies who took tea with us once in
Philadelphia & talked about Sojourner Truth? One of the sisters is in
London this winter & has been several times to see us. The birds are
beginning to sing very sweetly here--& our room is full of the perfume of
spring flowers--indoor ones. Did dear Bee tell you, in the long letter she
once wrote you, how much she loved the Swiss ladies with whom she made her
home while in Berne? A more tender & beautiful love and sorrow than that
with which they cherish the memory of her never grew in any heart. I think
you will like to see some of their letters--please return them, for they
are very precious to me (the little matters they thank me for are some of
dear Bee's things which I sent them for tokens). Love to your sister &
brother. How are Mr. Marvin & Mr. Burroughs? Best love from us all.
Good-bye, dear Friend.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road
Hampstead
May 8th, '82._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Herby went to David Bognes[38] about a week ago: he himself was out, but
H. saw the head man, who reported that the sale of "Leaves of Grass" was
progressing satisfactorily. I hope you have received, or will receive,
tangible proof of the same. Bognes is a young publisher, but, I believe
from what I hear, a man to be relied on. His father was the publisher of
my husband's first literary venture & behaved honourably. Herby brought
away for me a copy of the new edition. I like the type like that of '73, &
the pale green leaf it is folded in so to speak. I find a few new friends
to love--perhaps I have not yet found them all out. But you must not
expect me to take kindly to any changes in the titles or arrangement of
the old beloved friends. I love them too dearly--every word & _look_ of
them--for that. For instance, I want "Walt Whitman" instead of "Myself" at
the top of the page. Also my own longing is always for a chronological
arrangement, if change at all there is to be; for that at once makes
biography of the best kind. What deaths, dear Friend! As for me, my heart
is already gone over to the other side of the river, so that sometimes I
feel a kind of rejoicing in the swelling of the ranks of the great company
there. Darwin, with his splendid day's work here gently closed; Rossetti,
whose brilliant genius had got entangled in a premature physical decay, so
that _his_ day's work was over too! In a letter to me, William, who was
the best, most faithful & loving of brothers to him, says, "I doubt
whether he would ever have regained that energy of body & concentration of
mental resource which could have enabled him to resume work at his full &
wonted power. Without these faculties at ready command my dear Gabriel
would not have been himself." Edward Carpenter's father, too, is gone, but
he at a ripe age without disease--sank gently.
The photographs I enclose are but poor suggestions--please give one to
Mrs. Whitman with my love, or if you prefer to keep both, I will send her
others. Does the idea ever come into your head, dear Friend, of spending a
little time this summer or autumn in your English home at Hampstead?
Herby is well and working happily. So is Grace. Little grandson & his
parents away in Worcestershire.
It is indescribably lovely spring weather here just now. A carpenter near
us has a sky-lark in a cage which sings as jubilantly as if it were
mounting into the sky, & is so tame that when he takes it out of the cage
to wash its little claws, which are apt to get choked up with earth, in
warm water, it breaks out singing in his hand! Love from us all, dearest
Friend. Good-bye.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
Affectionate greetings to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.
Do you ever see Mr. Marvin? If so, give our love, we hope to see him one
day.
LETTER LXII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Well Rd., Hampstead, London
Nov. 24, '82._
DEAREST FRIEND:
You have long ere this, I hope, received Herby's letter telling of the
safe arrival of the precious copy of "Specimen Days," with the portraits:
it makes me very proud. Your father had a fine face too--there is
something in it that takes hold of me & that seems to be a kind of natural
background or substratum to the radiant sweetness of that other sacred &
beloved face completing your parentage. I like heartily too the new
portraits of you: they are all wanted as different aspects: but the two
that remain my favourites are the portrait taken about 30 without coat of
any kind, and the one you sent me in '69 next to those I love these two
latest--& in some respects better, because they are the Walt I saw & had
such happy hours with. The second copy of book & my lending one, has come
safe--too--and the card that told of your attack of illness, & the welcome
news of your recovery in the Paper; & I have been fretting with impatience
at my own dumbness--but tied to as many hours a day writing as I could
possibly manage, at my little book now (last night)--finished, all but
proofs, so that I can take my pleasure in "Specimen Days" at last; but
before doing that must have a few words with you, dearest Friend. First a
gossip. Do you remember Maggie Lesley? She came to see us on her way to
Paris, where she is working all alone & very earnestly to get through
training as an artist--then going to start in a studio of her own in
Philadelphia. She, like my mother's sister, are to me fine, lovable
samples of American women--in whom, I mean, I detect, like the distinctive
aroma of a flower, something special--that is American--a decisive new
quality to old-world perceptions. Herby is working away still chiefly at
the Consuelo picture--has got a very beautiful model to-day sitting to
him. His summer work was down in Warwickshire, making sketches--& very
charming ones they are, of George Eliot's native scenes--one of a
garden-nook--up steep, old, worn stone steps bordered with flowers that is
enticing--it will make a lovely background for a figure picture.--Giddy's
voice is growing in richness & strength--& she works with all her heart,
hoping one day to be a real artist vocally--in church & oratorio music.
She will not have power or dramatic ability for opera--nor can I wish that
she had; there are so many thorns with the roses in that path. I fear you
will be a loser by Bogne's bankruptcy. Did I tell you that among our
friends one of your warmest admirers is Henry Holmes, the great violinist
(equal [to] Joachim some think--we among them). Per. & wife & little
grandson all well. My love to brother & sister & to Hattie [&] Jessie.
Good-bye, dear Walt. I hope to write more & better soon.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
Greetings to the Staffords.
LETTER LXIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Rd.
Hampstead
Jan. 27, '83._
It is not for want of thinking of you, dear Walt, that I write but seldom:
for indeed my thoughts are chiefly occupied with you & your other
self--your Poems--& with struggles to say a few words that I think want
saying about them; that might help some to their birthright who now stand
off, either ignorant or misapprehending.
We all go on much as usual.
_Feb. 13._ I wonder if you will like a true story of Lady Dilke that I
heard the other day--I do: It was before her marriage. She was a handsome
young heiress, a daring horsewoman, fond of hunting. There was a man,
weakly & of good position, who had behaved very basely & cruelly to a
young girl in her neighbourhood, & when (as is the case in England) half
the county was assembled on the hunting field, Lady D. faced him & said in
a voice that could be heard afar, "Sir you are a black-guard, & if these
gentlemen had the right spirit in them they would horsewhip you." He
looked at her with effrontery & made a mocking bow. "But," she continued,
"since they won't, I will"--and she cut him across the face with her
riding whip; upon which he turned and rode off the field, like a dog with
his tail between his legs, & reappeared in that neighbourhood no more. She
was a woman much beloved--died at the birth of her first child (from too
much chloroform having been given her). Her husband was heart-broken. I
see you, too, are having floods. With us it pours five days out of seven,
& so in Germany & France. We have made the acquaintance of Arabella
Buckley, who has just written an interesting article about Darwin, whom
she knew well, for the _Century_. She says his was the most entirely
beautiful & perfect nature she ever came in contact with. How I wish we
could have a glimpse of each other, dear Friend--half an hour talk--nay, a
good long look & a hand-shake. Herby is overhead painting in his
studio--such a pleasant room. How is John Burroughs? We owe him a letter &
thanks for a good art. on Carlyle. Love to you, dearest friend.
Hearty remembrances to your brother & sister & Hattie & Jessie.
A. G.
LETTER LXIV
HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Well Road, Hampstead, London, England
April 29th, '83._
MY DEAR WALT:
Your card to hand last night, with its sad account of dear Mrs. Stafford's
health; but what the doctor says is cheering. I wonder, though, what the
doctor would call good weather--mild spring, I suppose.
Very glad, my dear old Walt, to see your strong familiar handwriting
again; it does one good, it's so individual that it is next to seeing you.
Right glad to hear of your good health--had an idea that you were not so
well again this winter. John Burroughs was very violent against my
intaglio; on the other hand, Alma Tadema--our great painter here--liked it
very much. I take violent criticism pretty philosophically, now that I see
how unreliable it nearly always is. John Burroughs has got a fixed idea
about your personality, and that is that the top of your head is a foot
high and any portrait that doesn't develop the "dome" is no
portrait.--Curious what eyes a man may have for everything except a
picture. I finished lately a life-size portrait of James Simmons, J.P., a
hunting (fox) squire of the old school--such a fine old fellow. My
portrait represents him standing firmly, in a scarlet hunting-coat well
stained with many a wet chase, his great whip tucked under his arm whilst
buttoning on his left glove, white buckskin trousers in shade relieving
the scarlet coat, black velvet hunting cap, dark rich blue background to
qualify and cool the scarlet. I wish you could see it. Then I have painted
a subject "The Good Gray Poet's Gift." I have long meant to build up
something of you from my studies, adding colour. You play a prominent part
in this picture--seated at table bending over a nosegay of flowers,
poetizing, before presenting them to mother. I am standing up bending over
the tea-pot, with the kettle, filling it up; opposite you sits Giddy; out
of the window a pretty view of Cannon place, Hampstead. Mater thinks it a
pretty picture and a good likeness of you, just as you used to sit at tea
with us at 1729 N. 22nd St. Now I am going out for a stroll on Hampstead
Heath. Have just come in from a long ramble over the Heaths--a lovely soft
spring day, innumerable birds in full song. I think J. B. is right when he
says that your birds are more plaintive than ours--it's nature's way of
compensating us for a loss of sunshine: what would England be without the
merry lark, the very embodiment of cheeriness. Are not the Carlyle &
Emerson letters interesting? It seems to me to be one of the most
beautiful and pathetic things in literature, C's fondness for E. But all
Englishmen, I must tell you, are not grumblers like Carlyle; he stands
quite alone in that quality--look at Darwin!
I should be grateful for another postcard. With all love,
HERB. GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Hampstead
May 6, '83._
DEAREST FRIEND:
I feel as if this beautiful spring morning here in England must send you
greetings through me. Our sunny little mound of garden, which runs down
toward the south, is fragrant with hyacinths and wall-flowers (beautiful,
tawny, reddish, yellow fellows laden with rich perfume)--and at the bottom
is a big old cherry tree--one mass of snowy blossom; in a neighbour's gay
garden & beyond is a distant glimpse of some tall elms just putting on
their first tender green: our little breakfast room where I always sit of
a morning opens with glass doors into this garden. Herby is gone with the
"Sunday Tramps," of whom he is a member, for a ten or fifteen-mile walk.
Said tramps are some half dozen friends & neighbours, some of them very
learned professors but genial good fellows withal, who agree to spend
every other Sunday morning in taking one of their long walks together--& a
very good time they have. Giddy is gone to hear a lecture; our bonnie
Scotch girl is roasting the beef for dinner, singing the while in the
kitchen; and pussy & I are sitting very companionable & meditative in the
little room before described.
You cannot think, dear friend, what a pleasure it was to have a whole big
letter from you (not that I despise Postcards--they are good stop-gaps,
but not the real thing). Yes, I have & prize the article on the Hebrew
Scriptures. How I wish you could make up your mind to spend your summer
holiday with us.
I am still struggling along, striving to say something which, if I can say
it to my mind, will be useful--will clear away a little of the rubbish
that hides you from men's eyes. I hear the "Eminent Women Series" is
having quite a large sale in America. Good-bye. Love to Mrs. Whitman.
Greetings to your brother. Love from us all to you.
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXVI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Hampstead, Jul. 30, 1883._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Lazy me, that have been thinking letters to you instead of writing them!
We have Dr. Bucke's book at last; could not succeed in buying one at
Türbner's--I believe they all sold directly--but he has sent us one. There
are some things in it I prize very highly--namely, Helen Price's
"Memoranda" and Thomas A. Gere's. These I like far better than any
personal reminiscences of you I have ever read & I feel much drawn to the
writers of them. Also your letter to Mrs. Price from the Hospitals, dear
Friend. That makes one hand-in-hand with you--then & there--& gives one a
glimpse of a very beautiful friendship. But why & why did Dr. Bucke set
himself to counteract that beneficient law of nature's by which the dust
tends to lay itself? And carefully gathering together again all the
rubbish stupid or malevolent that has been written of you, toss it up in
the air again to choke and blind or disgust as many as it may? What a
curious piece of perversity to mistake this for candour & a judicial
spirit.[39] Then again, how do I hate all that unmeaning, irrelevant
clatter about what Rabelais or Shakespeare or the ancients & their times
tolerated in the way of coarseness or plainness of speech. As if you
wanted apologizing for or could be apologized for on that ground! If these
poems are to be _tolerated_, I, for one, could not tolerate them. If they
are not the highest lesson that has yet been taught in refinement &
purity, if they do not banish all possibility of coarseness of thought &
feeling, there would be nothing to be said for them. But they do: I am as
sure of that as of my own existence. When will men begin to understand
them?
We have had pleasant glimpses of several American friends this summer--of
Kate Hillard for instance, who, by the bye narrowly escaped a bad accident
just at our door--the harness broke & the cab came down on the horse &
frightened him so that he bolted--struck the cab against a lamp-post
(happily, else it would have been worse)--overturned them & it--but when
they crawled out no worse harm was done than a few cuts from the glass--&
Kate & her friend behaved very pluckily, & we had a pleasant evening
together after all. Then there was Arthur Peterson, looking much as in the
old Philadelphia days: and Emma & Annie Lazarus--who, owing to some
letters of introduction from James the novelist, have had a very gay time
indeed--been quite lionized--and last, not least, Mr. Dalton Dorr, the
curator of the Pennsylvania Museum in Fairmount Park--whom we all liked
much. He is enjoying his visit here with all his heart--is a great
enthusiast for our old Gothic Cathedrals, and for everything
beautiful--but says there is nothing such a source of unceasing wonder &
delight as riding about London & over the bridges &c on the top of an
omnibus watching the endless flow of people--it is indeed a kind of human
Mississippi or Niagara.
The young folks are busy packing up to start for the seaside. Herby wants
a background for a picture in which green turf & trees and all the
richness of vegetation come down to the very edge of the sea and I seem to
remember such a place near Lynn Regis, where I was thirty years ago, when
my eldest child was born, so they are going to look it up. We hear the
heat is very tremendous in America this year. I hope you are as well as
ever able to stand it & enjoy it? I wonder where you are. Friendly
greetings to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie & the Staffords. Love to
you, dear Friend, from us all.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
My little book on Mary Lamb just out--will send you a copy in a day or
two.
LETTER LXVII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Hampstead
Oct. 13, '83._
DEAREST FRIEND:
Long & long does it seem since I have had any word or sign from you. I
hope all goes well & that you have had a pleasant, refreshing summer trip
somewhere. All goes on much as usual with us.
_Hythe. Kent. Oct. 21._ Not having felt very well the last month or two,
and Giddy also seeming to need a little bracing up, we came down to this
ancient town by the sea--one of the Cinque Ports--on Wednesday, and much
we like it--a fine open sea--a delicious "briny odour"--and inland much
that is curious and interesting--for this part of the Kentish Coast--so
near to France--has innumerable old castles, forts, moats, traces
everywhere of centuries of warfare and of means of defence against our
great neighbour. It is a fine hilly, woody country, too, and very
picturesque these gray massive ruins, many of them used now as farm
houses, look. The men of Kent are very proud of their country and are
reckoned a fine race--tall, muscular, ruddy-complexioned, and often too
with thick, tawny-red beards--curious how in our little island the
differences of race-stock are still so discernible--keep along this same
coast to the west only about a couple of hundred miles & you come to such
a different type--dark--blackest and Cornish men.--I get a nice letter
now & then from John Burroughs. I also saw this summer two women doctors
who were very kind & good friends to my darling Bee--Drs. Pope--twin
sisters from Boston, whom it did me good to see. They work hard--have a
good practice--& say they don't know what a day's illness means so far as
they themselves are concerned. They tell me also that the women doctors
are doing capital work in America--and that one of them, who was with dear
Beatrice at the Penn. Med. Col., Dr. Alice Bennett, is the efficient head
of the woman's department of a large lunatic asylum. We are getting on in
England too--but the field where English women doctors find the most work
& the best position is India, where as the women are not allowed by their
male relatives to be attended by men, the mortality was immense.--Herby
has taken a better studio than our house afforded--both as to light &
size--& finds the advantage great. I expect he is having a delightful walk
this brilliant morning with the "Hampstead Tramps"--of whom I think I have
told you. They often walk fifteen miles or so on Sunday morning.
Such a glorious afternoon it has been by the sea--sapphire colour--the air
brisk & elastic, yet soft. To-morrow Gran goes home & I shall be all alone
here.--I hear of "Specimen Days" in a letter from Australia--there will be
a large audience for you there some day, dear Friend. I like what John
Burroughs has been writing about Carlyle much. We have had nothing but
stupidities of late about him here--but there will come a great reaction
from all this abuse, I have no doubt--he did put so much gall in his ink
sometimes, human nature can't be expected to take it altogether meekly. I
hope you received my little book safely. I should be a hypocrite if I
pretended not to care whether you found patience to read it--for I grew to
love Mary & Charles Lamb so much during my task that I want you to love
them too--& to see what a beautiful friendship was theirs with Coleridge.
How are Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie? Send me a few words soon.
Good-bye, dearest Friend.
ANN GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXVIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Hampstead
April 5, '84._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Those few words of yours to Herby "tasted good" to us--few, but enough,
seeing that we can fill out between the lines with what you have given us
of yourself forever & always in your books--& that is how I comfort myself
for having so few letters. But I turn many wistful thoughts toward
America, and were not I & mine bound here by unseverable ties, did we not
seem to grow & belong here as by a kind of natural destiny that has to be
fulfilled very cheerfully, could I make America my home for the sake of
being near you in body as I am in heart & soul--but Time has good things
in store for us sooner or later, I doubt not. I could hardly express to
you how welcome is the thought of death to me--not in the sense of any
discontent with life--but as life with fresh energies & wider horizon &
hand in hand again with those that are gone on first.
Herby found the little bit of gray cloth very useful--but one day _save
him an old suit_. Your figure in the picture is, I think, a fair
suggestion of one aspect of you; but not, could not of course be, an
adequate portrait. He will never rest till he has done his best to achieve
that. As soon as he can afford it (for it is a very slow business indeed
for a young artist to make money in England, though when he does begin he
is better paid than in America) he means to run over to see you. He says
he should like always to spend his winters in New York. I say how very
highly I prize that last slip you sent me, "A backward glance on my own
road"? It both corroborates & explains much that I feel very deeply.--If
you are seeing Mrs. Whitman, please say her letter was a pleasure & that I
shall write again before very long. I feel as if this letter would never
find you--be sure & let us know your whereabouts.
Remembrance & love.
Good-bye, dear Walt.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXIX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Hampstead
May 2, '84._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Your card (your very voice & touch, drawing me across the Atlantic close
beside you) was put into my hand just as I was busy copying out "With
husky, haughty lips O sea" to pin into my "Leaves of Grass." I hardly
think there is anything grander there. I think surely they must see that
that is the very Soul of Nature uttering itself sublimely.
Who do you think came to see us on Sunday? Professor Dowden.[40] And I
know not when I have set eyes on a more beautiful personality. I think you
would be as much attracted towards him as I was. It was he who told me
(full of enthusiasm) of the Poems in _Harper's_ which I had not seen or
heard of. We had a very happy two or three hours together, talking of you
& looking through Blake's drawings. He is a tall man, complexion tanned &
healthy, nose finely modelled, dark eyes with plenty of life & meaning in
them, hair grayish--I should think he was between forty & fifty--but says
his father is still a fine hale old man.
Herby disappointed again this year of getting anything into the R.
Academy.
I think I like the idea of the shanty, if you have any one to take good
care of you, to cook nicely, keep all neat & clean &c. I wonder if I have
ever been in Mickle St. I, still busy, still hammering away to see if I
can help those that "balk" at "Leaves of Grass". Perhaps you will smile at
me--at any rate it bears good fruit to me--I seem to be in a manner living
with you the while.
Everything full of beauty just now here, as no doubt it is with you.
Good-bye, dearest friend--don't forget the letter that is to come soon.
Love from us all, love & again love from
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXX
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Aug. 5, '84._
DEAREST FRIEND:
The notion [that] one is going to write a nice long letter is fatal to
writing at all. And so I mean to scribble something, somehow, a little
oftener & make up in quantity for quality! For after all the great thing,
the thing one wants, is to _meet_--if not in the flesh--then in the
spirit. A word will do it. I am getting on--my heart is in my work--&
though I have been long about it, it won't be long--but I think & hope it
will be strong. Quite a sprinkling of American friends--some new ones this
spring--among them Mr. & Mrs. Pennell[41] from Philadelphia--whom you
know--we like them well--hope to see them again & again. Also Miss Keyse
(her sister married Emerson's son) from Concord, and the Lesleys--Mary
Lesley has married & gone to the West--St. Paul--has just got a little
son.
How does the "little shanty" answer, I wonder? Herby has been painting
some charming little bits in an old terraced garden here. I do wish you
could hear Giddy sing now; I am sure her voice would "go to the right
spot," as you used to say. Good-bye, dearest friend. Love from all & most
from
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXXI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Wolverhampton
Oct. 26, '84._
DEAR WALT:
I don't suppose the enclosed will give you nearly so much pleasure as it
gives me. But Villiers Stanford is, I think, the best composer England has
produced since the days of Purcell & Blow, and your words will be sent
home to hundreds & thousands who had not before seen them. How lovely the
words read as themes for great music!
I have been staying with old friends who have a house you would enjoy--it
stands all alone on the top of a heath-clad hill, with miles of coppice
(young woods) below it, and spread out beyond is a rich valley with more
wooded hills jutting out into it--and you see the storms a long way off
travelling up from the sea, and you can wander for miles & miles through
the woods or over the breezy hill--or, as you sit at your window, feel
yourself in the very heart of a great, beautiful solitude. Very kind, warm
friends, too, they are, who leave you as free as a bird to do what you
like. I have had all the papers, dear friend, & have enjoyed them.
Now I am in the heart of the "Black Country," as we call it--black with
the smoke of thousands of foundries & works of all kinds--staying with
Percy & his wife. Percy is having a very arduous time here starting some
Steel Works--& what with his men being inexperienced & times bad & the
machinery not yet perfectly adjusted, he seems harassed night & day--for
these things have to be kept going all night too--but I hope he will get
into smoother waters soon. The little son is rosy & bright & healthy--goes
to school now, which, being an only child, he enjoys mightily for the sake
of the companionship of other boys.
Love from us all, dear friend.
A. GILCHRIST.
Grace & Herby well & busy when I left.
LETTER LXXII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Hampstead
Dec. 17, '84._
DEAREST FRIEND:
At last I have extracted a little bit of news about you from friend
Carpenter, who never comes to see us and is [as] reluctant to write
letters as--somebody else that I know. That you have a comfortable,
elderly couple to keep house for you was a good hearing--for "the old
shanty" had risen before my eyes as somewhat lonely, & perhaps the
cooking, &c., not well attended to.--There seems a curious kind of ebb and
flow about the recognition of you in England--just now there are signs of
the flow--of a steadily gathering great wave, one indication of which is
the little pamphlet just published in Edinburgh--one of the "Round Table"
Series--no doubt a copy has been sent you. If not and you would care to
see it, I will send you one. On the whole I like it (barring one or two
stupidities)--at any rate, as compared with what has hitherto been
written. My poor article has so far been rejected by editors--so I have
laid it by for a little, to come with a fresh eye & see if I can make it
in any way more likely to win a hearing--though I often say to myself, "If
they have not ears to hear you, how is it likely one can unstop their
ears?" But on the other hand there is always the chance of leading some
to read the Poems who had not else done so.--Percy & Norah and Archie, now
grown a very sturdy active little fellow, are coming to spend Xmas with
us, which is a great pleasure.
I am deep in Froude's last volumes of "Carlyle's Life in London". Folks
are grumbling that they have had enough & too much of Carlyle & _his_
grumblings and sarcasms. But he is an inexhaustibly interesting figure to
me, & will remain so in the long run to the world, I am persuaded. It
grieves me that he should have been so cruelly unjust to himself as a
husband--that remorse, those bitter self-reproaches, were undeserved, were
altogether morbid: he was not only an infinitely better husband than she
was wife: he was wonderfully affectionate & tender & just--& as to his
temper & irritable nerves, she knew what she was about when she married
him. Herby was walking through the British Museum the other day with a
friend when a group, a ready-made picture, struck him--it was a young
student-sculptress, a graceful girl high on a pile of boxes modelling in
clay a copy of an antique statue, & standing below, looking up at her, was
a young sculptor in his blouse, criticising her work with much animation &
gesture; the background of the group, a part of the Elgin Marbles. So this
is what Herby is painting & I think he will make a very jolly little
picture out of it. I have been much a prisoner to the house with bad colds
ever since I returned from Wolverhampton, but am beginning to get out
again--which puts new life into me. I have never envied anything in this
world but a man's strong legs & powers of tramping, tramping, over hill &
dale as long as he pleases--legs would content me and a sound breathing
apparatus! I am in no hurry for wings. Giddy's voice, too, is just now
eclipsed by cold.
I hope you have escaped this evil and are able to jaunt to & fro on the
ferries as freely as ever. And I hope the pleasant Quaker friends are
well--and Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie--there is a fellow
student of Giddy's at the Guild Hall music school who so reminds her of
Hattie.
Love from us all, dear friend. Most from me.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXXIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner
Hampstead, England
Feb. 27, '85._
DEAREST FRIEND:
How has the winter passed with you I wonder? Me it has imprisoned very
much with bronchial & asthmatic troubles--and the four walls of the house
& the ceiling seem to close in upon one's spirit as well as one's body,
all too much. I hope you have been able to wend to and fro daily on the
great ferry boats & enjoy the beautiful broad river & the sky & the
throngs of people as of old--you are in my thoughts as constantly as ever,
though I have been so silent. Percy & his wife & the little son spent some
weeks with us at Christmas & now they have taken a house quite near, into
which they will be moving in a week or two. I can't tell you what a dear,
affectionate, reasonable, companionable little fellow Archie is--now six
years old. Perhaps you will have seen in the American papers that Sidney
Thomas, the cousin with whom Percy was associated in the discovery of the
Basic process, is dead--he spent his strength too freely--wore himself out
at 35--he was much loved by all with whom he had to do. His mother &
sister have been watching & hoping against hope & taking him to warm
climates, he himself full of hope--the mind bright and active to the
last--& now he is gone--& his eldest brother died only two months before
him.--I cannot help grieving over public affairs too--never in my lifetime
has old England been in such a bad way--no honest & capable man seemingly
to take the helm--& what Carlyle was fond of describing as the attempt to
guide the ship by the shouts of the bystanders on shore--the newspapers
&c. prospering very ill. A government that tries perpetually how to do it
and how not to do it at the same moment! The best comfort is that I do not
think there is any, the smallest sign, of deterioration in the English
race; so we shall pull through somehow, after tremendous disasters. How
many things should I like to sit and chat with you about, dear Walt--above
all to see you again! I could not get my article into any of the magazines
I most wished. I believe it is coming out in _To-Day_. Giddy was so
pleased at your sending her a paper--a very capital article too it is of
Miss Kellogg. I was interested also in a little paragraph I found about
Pullman town, near Chicago, which confirmed my suspicion that it was not a
thing with healthy roots--but only a benevolent despotism. I am seeing a
good deal of your socialists just now--& I confess that though they mean
well, I think they have less sense in their heads than any people I ever
saw.
I am going to pay a little visit to those friends (friendliest of friends)
who live on the lonely top of a heath-covered hill--with such an outlook,
such wooded slopes and broad valleys--and the storms travelling up hours
before they arrive--such sweeps of sunshine too!--& they mean to drive me
about till I am quite strong again. So the next letter I write, dear
Friend, shall be more cheery. I am afraid to look back lest this one
should read too grumbly to send. I don't feel grumbly however--only shut
in. Herby has been working hard at getting up an exhibition here to help
along our Public Library. It is so very hard to stir up anything like
public spirit & unity of action in London or its suburbs--I suppose
because of its vastness--& alas! also the social cliques & gentilities &
snobbishnesses. Good-bye, dearest Walt, with love from all.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXXIV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Hampstead
May 4, '85._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
Delays of Editors--there is no end to them! I am promised now that the
art. shall appear in the June No., & if it does I will send you at once
the number of copies you name. And if it does not, I think I had best get
it back & have done with the editors of _To-day_ & try for some other &
better opening again.
I have been reading & re-reading & pondering over Froude's 9 vols of
Carlyle--"The Reminiscences," "Letters," &c. &c.--and am pretty well at
boiling point with indignation against Froude--boiling point of anger &
freezing point of contempt. His betrayal at every point of a sacred trust!
lazy, slip-shod editing! not even taking the pains to put letters and
their answers together--but printing the one in 1882 & the others three or
four years after--so that half the meaning and all the _mutuality_ of the
letters are lost! And then the sly malignity of the comments with which
they are preceded! If I live I will do my utmost to expose all this & to
show that Mrs. Carlyle was no injured heroine, nor he a selfish &
neglected husband. Both had their faults, but the balance of affection &
tenderness was largely on his side, as well as of other great qualities:
though I like her too--& think she would have scorned Froude's ignoble
championship.
Herby has had rather better luck with his pictures this year. Has
one--"The Sculptor's Lesson"--fairly well hung at the Royal Academy--where
it shines out very cheerfully & holds its own modestly, I may say without
maternal vanity. I think I described to you the little bit of actual life
it depicts--a young girl he saw at the British Museum modelling a copy of
an antique statue & young sculptor in his blouse standing below & giving
her some animated criticism--a little bit of the Elgin marbles in the
background. Herb. has also a little picture he calls "Midsummer"--a bit of
a very old & buttressed wall hung with roses in full bloom, & Giddy's
figure standing above--at the Grosvenor. Now if he has the luck to sell
too! He has a commission also to paint a small portrait of me for our
friends at Marley, on which he is busy just now. As soon as he has a
little spare money in his pocket I think his first use of it will be a run
across the Atlantic & a glimpse of you, dear Friend. Giddy is going to
sing at a Soiree of socialists & revolutionary folk in general on
Wednesday. Her songs are to be "The Wearing of the Green"--& "Poland
Dirge" & the "Marseillaise". You will think we are getting pretty red hot!
But alas! though our sympathy with the Cause--the cause of suffering
millions--is warm, our faith in the wisdom & ability of those who are
aspiring to be the leaders, so far as we know anything of them--is
infinitesimal.
What a burst of beauty we have had during the last ten days! We look out
just now on a sea of apple & pear blossoms, from the deepest pink to
dazzling white--& the tenderest green intermingled with all. I hope you
are able to be out nearly all day & enjoy all--and that home affairs go
smoothly & comfortably & that Mrs. Davis[42] is attentive & good & every
way adequate as care-taker.
I am looking forward very much to the "After Songs" and "Letters of
Parting". Does the sale of "Leaves of Grass" continue pretty steady? I
look forward with a sort of dread to seeing my article in proof, lest I
should feel very disappointed with it.
Your loving friend,
A. GILCHRIST.
Do you ever see or hear from Mr. Marvin? He is a favourite with all of us.
Do you remember how we laughed at his dramatic presentation of a negro
prayer meeting?
LETTER LXXV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Hampstead, London
Jan. 21, 85._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I hope the _To-days_ have come safe to hand. I am thinking a great deal
about the new edition; and cannot help hoping you are going to revert to
the plan of the Centennial Edition, which issued your writings in two
independent volumes. May I, without being presumptuous, dear Walt, tell
you how I should dearly like to see them arranged? I want "Crossing
Brooklyn Ferry," "Song at Sunset," "Song of the Open Road," "Starting from
Paumanok," "Carol of Words," "Carol of Occupations" and either as "As I
Sat by Blue Ontario's Shore" or the Preface to edit. 55 put into "Two
Rivulets"--you could make room for them that the volumes might balance in
size by making them exchange places with the "Centennial Songs" and the
"Memoranda During the War"; not that these are not precious to me, but I
want it dearest because I want in the Two Rivulet Volume what will best
prepare the reader, lift him up to the true point of view, and make him
all your own, before he comes to the inner sanctuary of "Calamus" & "Walt
Whitman" & "Children of Adam."
Monday morn. Your letter just to hand. It gives me deep joy, dear Friend.
I have sent copies of _To-Day_ to Dr. Bucke & John Burroughs but did not
know of his change of address; so fear it has miscarried. I will send
another, and also one to W. O'Connor.--You did not tell me about your
fall--unless indeed a letter has been lost. It fills me with concern
because of the difficulty it increases in getting that free out-door life
that is so dear & essential to your soul & body, and because, too, I still
cherished in my heart a hope that I should yet see you again--here in my
own home--& now it seems next to an impossibility. Right thankful am I to
hear about Mrs. Davis--that she takes good care of you--please give her a
friendly greeting from me. I am going to have rather a bothersome
summer--first of all, the house full of workmen to make all clean & tidy;
& then my Scotch lassie, friend & factotum rather than servant, must have
a holiday & go to her friends in Scotland for a month. I shall heartily
welcome your friend, no need to say, & be sure to like her. Love from
Grace & Herb. & most of all from me. I have plenty more to say but won't
delay this.
Good-bye, dear Walt.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
LETTER LXXVI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Rd., Hampstead, Eng.
July 20, '85._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
A kind of anxiety has for some time past weighed upon me and upon others,
I find, who love & admire you, that you do not have all the comforts you
ought to have; that you are perhaps sometimes straightened for means. We
have had letters from several young men, almost or quite strangers to us,
asking questions on this subject; and we hoped & thought that if this were
so, you would permit those who have received such priceless gifts from you
to put their gratitude into some tangible shape, some "free-will
offering." Hence the paragraph was put into the _Athenaeum_ which I send
with this, and we were proceeding to organize our forces when your paper
came to hand this morning (the _Camden Post_, July 3), which seems
decisively to bid us desist. Or at all events wait till we had told you of
our wishes and plan. One thing would, I feel sure, give you pleasure in
any case; and that is to know that there is over here a little
band--perhaps indeed it is now quite a considerable one, for we had not
yet had time to ascertain how considerable--who would joyfully respond to
that Poem of yours, "To Rich Givers."
A friend and near neighbour of ours, Frederick Wedmore, is coming over to
America this autumn, and counts much on coming to see you. He is a
well-known writer on Art here--a friendly, candid, open-minded man with
whom, I think, you will enjoy a talk.
I am on the lookout for Miss Smith[43]--shall indeed enjoy a talk with a
special friend of yours, dear Walt. I hope she will not fail to come.
Giddy is away at Haslemere. Herby just going to write for himself to you.
That is a very graphic bit in the _Post_--the portrait of Hugo, the canary
& the kitten--I like to know all that--as well as to hear the talk.
My love, dear Walt.
ANNE GILCHRIST.
So far as can be ascertained this is the last letter. Anne Gilchrist died
Nov. 29th, 1885.
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
Footnotes:
[1] Reprinted from the _Radical_ for May, 1870.
[2] Reprinted from "Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings," by her son
Herbert H. Gilchrist--London, 1887.
[3] Reprinted from Horace Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in Camden," I,
219-220. Although addressed to Rossetti, this letter is evidently intended
as much for Mrs. Gilchrist, whose name was not at this time known to
Whitman.
[4] Alexander Gilchrist.
[5] Mrs. Gilchrist's emotion here apparently prevents her memory from
doing complete justice to her own past. For a very different expression of
her feelings toward Alexander Gilchrist, written at the time of her
betrothal, see her letter announcing the engagement which she sent to her
friend, Julia Newton, and which is to be found on pp. 30-31 of her son's
biography.
[6] William Michael Rossetti.
[7] To W. M. Rossetti. See _ante_, p. x.
[8] First printed in Horace Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in Camden," III,
513.
[9] Evidently meaning the letter of September 3d.
[10] Missing.
[11] Percy Carlyle Gilchrist who became an inventive metallurgist.
[12] Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist, who became an artist.
[13] Printed from copy retained by Whitman.
[14] To deliver his Dartmouth College ode.
[15] William Douglas O'Connor, an ardent Washington friend of Whitman.
[16] John Burroughs, the naturalist, then a young author and disciple of
Whitman.
[17] Anne Gilchrist's son.
[18] Horace Greeley, nominated by the Democrats as their candidate for the
Presidency.
[19] Burlington, Vermont, where Whitman's sister, Mrs. Heyde, lived.
[20] Henry M. Stanley, African Explorer.
[21] Undated. Made up from copy among Whitman's papers. This letter
evidently belongs to the summer of 1873.
[22] The "Prayer of Columbus" was first published in _Harper's Magazine_
in March, 1874.
[23] John Cowardine. See "Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings," pp. 149
ff.
[24] Daughters of Thomas Jefferson Whitman.
[25] Mrs. George Whitman.
[26] Sister.
[27] Niece.
[28] Sidney Morse, the sculptor.
[29] "Man's Moral Nature," by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke.
[30] This extract (?) is taken from H. H. Gilchrist's "Anne Gilchrist," p.
252. It is undated, but it is clearly a reply to the foregoing letter from
Mrs. Gilchrist.
[31] Durham Cathedral.
[32] Anne Gilchrist's grandchild.
[33] Reproduced in "Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings," facing p. 253.
[34] Richard Watson Gilder.
[35] Of Timber Creek, Camden County, New Jersey, whose hospitality helped
Whitman to improve his health.
[36] The second edition of Alexander Gilchrist's "William Blake."
[37] Because of the death of her daughter Beatrice.
[38] Whitman's London publisher.
[39] Dr. Bucke, in his "Life of Whitman," had reprinted at the end of the
volume many criticisms of the poet, adverse as well as favourable;
likewise W. D. O'Connor's "Good Gray Poet."
[40] Edward Dowden, of the University of Dublin.
[41] Artists, famous for their etchings. Mr. Pennell made several etchings
for Dr. Bucke's biography of Whitman.
[42] Mrs. Mary Davis, who was Whitman's housekeeper until his death.
[43] Daughter of Pearsall Smith, of Philadelphia.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt
Whitman, by Walt Whitman and Anne Burrows Gilchrist
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