12 Well Rd.HampsteadJan. 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 firstchild (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 theCentury. 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.
Keats CornerWell Road, Hampstead, London, EnglandApril 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 hisleft 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.
Keats CornerHampsteadMay 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—theyare 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.
Keats CornerHampstead, 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. Asif you wanted apologizing for or could be apologized for on that ground! If these poems are to betolerated, 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 placenear 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.
Keats CornerHampsteadOct. 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 Cornishmen.—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 themtoo—& 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.
Keats CornerHampsteadApril 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 daysave 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 hedoes 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.
HampsteadMay 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 inHarper’swhich 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, stillbusy, 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.
Keats CornerAug. 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 tomeet—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.
WolverhamptonOct. 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 harassednight & 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.
Keats CornerHampsteadDec. 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 thechance 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 &hisgrumblings 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 thepleasant 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.
Keats CornerHampstead, EnglandFeb. 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—& nowhe 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 inTo-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 upanything 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.
HampsteadMay 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 ofTo-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 themutualityof 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 thisyear. 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?
Hampstead, LondonJan. 21, 85.
My Dearest Friend:
I hope theTo-dayshave 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 ofTo-Dayto 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.
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 theAthenaeumwhich I send with this, and we were proceeding to organize our forces when your paper came to hand this morning (theCamden 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—afriendly, 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 thePost—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 theRadicalfor 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. Seeante, 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 inHarper’s Magazinein 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.
Transcriber’s Note:The text in the list of illustrations is presented as in the original text, but the links navigate to the page number closest to the illustration’s loaction in this document.