The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman Part 17

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 Middles.e.x--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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 n.o.ble 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 accomplis.h.i.+ng 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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 suns.h.i.+ne & 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 n.o.ble, 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 a.s.sistant 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 ill.u.s.trated "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 b.u.t.terfly) by WALT WHITMAN

I thought that this was to be the t.i.tle of your prose volume. I will undertake the ill.u.s.trations, 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.