The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman Part 7

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 pa.s.s 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s of that fine People which has slumbered so long, weighed down & tormented with hideous nightmares of superst.i.tion. 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 Sh.e.l.ley's.

Of modern English Poets Sh.e.l.ley 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 anch.o.r.ed--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 pa.s.sion of grat.i.tude, 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-br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 sh.o.r.e!--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