The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman Part 21

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 quant.i.ty 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 hara.s.sed 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 companions.h.i.+p 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. .h.i.therto 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 st.u.r.dy 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociated 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 s.h.i.+p by the shouts of the bystanders on sh.o.r.e--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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 & sn.o.bbishnesses. Good-bye, dearest Walt, with love from all.

ANNE GILCHRIST.

LETTER LXXIV

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

_Hampstead May 4, '85._