The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman Part 20

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 p.u.s.s.y & 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 Trbner'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 coa.r.s.eness 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 gla.s.s--& 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 ma.s.sive 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 Gra.s.s." 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 Gra.s.s". 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.