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The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman
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The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman

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A. Gilchrist.

Please write soon; I am longing for a letter.

LETTER LII 30

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 Cathedral31, 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 map33– 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 Middlesex – 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 sunshine 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 noble 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 VernonHampsteadJan. 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 accomplishing 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. Gilder34 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 sunshine. 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, HaslemereEnglandAug. 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 sunshine & 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 noble, 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 assistant 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 Staffords35 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, England12 Well Road, Hampstead, LondonNovember 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 illustrated “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 butterfly) by WALT WHITMAN

I thought that this was to be the title of your prose volume. I will undertake the illustrations, 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.

LETTER LVII

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Keats CornerWell Rd., HampsteadApr. 18, ’81.

My Dearest Friend:

I have just been sauntering in our little but sunny garden which slopes to the South – surveying with much satisfaction some fruit trees – plum, green gage, pear, cherry, apple – which we have just had planted to train up against the house and fence – in which fashion fruit ripens much better with our English modicum of sunshine, besides taking no room & casting no shade over your little bit of ground – Then we have filled our large window with flowers in pots which make the room smell as delicious as a garden. Giddy is assiduous in keeping them well watered & tended. – Welcome was your postcard – with the little rain-bird’s coy note in it. But I had not before heard of your illness, dear friend – the letter before, you spoke of being unusually well, as I trust you are again now, & enjoying the spring. I am well again so far as digestion &c. goes; but bronchitis asthma of a chronic kind still trouble me. My breath is so short I cannot walk, which is a privation. I am going, at the beginning of June, to stay with Bee in Edinburgh, as she will not have any holiday or be able to come & see us this year, & much am I longing to be with her. Have you begun to have any summer thoughts, dear Walt? And do they turn towards England, & our nest therein? Yes, I have received & have enjoyed all the papers & cuttings – dearly like what you said of Carlyle. Everyone here is speaking bitterly of the harsh judgments & sarcastic descriptions of people in the “reminiscenses.” But I know that at bottom his heart was genial and good & that he wrote those in a miserable mood – & never looked at them again afterwards. I hope you received the little memoir of my husband all right. Herby is very busy with a drawing of you – hopes that with the many sketches he made, & the vivid impress on his memory & the help of photographs, it will be good. I wish he had possessed as much power with the brush when he was in America as he has now – he is making very great progress in mastery of the technique. I observe, too, that he reads & dwells upon your poems – especially the “Walt Whitman” – with growing frequency & delight. We often say, “Won’t Walt like sitting in that sunny window?” or “by that cheery open fire” or “sauntering on the heath” – & picture you here in a thousand different ways. I believe Maggie Lesley is coming from Paris, where she is studying art in good earnest, at the beginning of May, & then will come and spend a few days with us. Welcome are American friends! The Buxton Forman’s took tea with us last week & we had pleasant talk of you & of Dr. Bucke. Mrs. Forman is a sincere, sympathetic, motherly woman whom you would like. The Rossetti’s too have been to see us – we didn’t think William in the best health or spirits – & his wife was not looking well either, but then another baby is just coming.

This Easter time the poorest of London working folk flock in enormous numbers to Hampstead Heath; it is a sight that would interest you – they are rougher & noisier & poorer than such folks in America – & the men more prone to get the worse for drink – but there is a good deal of fun & merriment too – the girls & boys racing about on donkeys (who have a pretty hard time of it) – plenty of merry-go-rounds – & enjoyment of the pure air & sunshine, & such sights, more than they know. The light is failing, dearest friend; so with love from us all, good-bye.

Anne Gilchrist.

Friendliest greeting to your brother & sister & to Hattie & Jessie when you write & to the Staffords.

LETTER LVIII

HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Keats Corner, Well RoadNorth LondonHampstead, EnglandJune 5th, 1881, Sunday afternoon5 P. M.

My Dear Walt:

You don’t write me a letter nor take any notice of my magnificent offers concerning “Pond Musings”, etc. however, I will forgive you this oft-repeated offence. I often think of you, very often of America and things generally there, and nearly always with pleasure.

My mother is away staying with Beatrice in Edinburgh city, recruiting her health, which has most sadly needed it of late. So I and Grace & a new Scotch lassie, one Margaret, who officiates as servant most efficaciously too, I can tell you (such scrubbing & cleaning as you never saw the like) we three, I say, are alone at Keats Corner; cool sitting here in our long drawing-room (hung with innumerable pictures as of yore), although it has been scorchingly hot this past month. The morning I spend sketching on Hampstead Heath, which is lovely just now, all the May-trees are in full bloom the gorse & broom are a blaze of yellow, the rooks fly constantly by a quarter of a mile (seemingly) overhead, the sly fellows giving some side like dart when you look up at them even at that height. I am painting one of them; so I have to look up pretty often. In the early morning the nightingale sings, oh, so sweetly, long trills & roulades in the most accomplished manner.

Last Wednesday Miss Ellen Terry, whose name you are doubtless familiar with as being the leading actress in London, well, she called upon me to ask my advice or opinion of a drawing connected with my father’s book. Ellen Terry expressed herself highly interested in our house, pictures, decorations and so forth. Her manner was a little stagey, but graceful to the extreme, and you could see peeping out of this theatric manner a kind, good heart, oh, so kind, I feel as if I would do anything for her, her manners were so winning. “Will you come to the stage entrance of the Lyceum some day soon and you shall have stalls for two; now will you come? Do.” Were her last words to Grace. I called on her at Kensington last week, returning the drawing, and I was so charmed with two beautiful children of hers, a tall, fair girl, a pretty mixture of shyness and self-possession that quite won me. She too I should fancy will be a great actress some day, she has such a bright face. The boy, Master Ted, was nice too.

Well, I gave Ellen Terry a proof of a drawing that I have just completed for Dr. Bucke’s book – a job I got through Buxton Forman, a great friend of Bucke’s, done con amore on my part. This drawing has been beautifully reproduced by the new photo intaglio-process. I hope Dr. Bucke will like it, but I should not expect great things from him in that line, judging from the twopenny hapenny little pen & ink sketch by Waters which he sent over in the first instance; however, Forman rescued him from that & so far he has been guided by his friend. Whether he will when he sees my drawing, we neither of us know; but both feel to have done our best in the matter. I said that Ellen Terry must ask for you when she goes to America, which she contemplates some day. I have sold the last drawing I made in New York of you for £10. 10s to Buxton Forman ($50. odd). Church bells have just commenced chiming in the distance, a sound I like better than the parsons. I hear that the young American artists are doing capitally filling their pockets. My cousin Sidney Thomas is, or was, in America, a good deal lionized, I understand. If at any time you favour me with a letter let it be a letter and not a postcard please. I have been reading Carlyle’s reminiscences – good stuff in them, brilliant touches, but dreadfully morbid, don’t you think? & one shuts the book up with a feeling that in some respect one Carlyle is enough in the world: & yet in some respects a million wouldn’t be too many. I often think of your remark to us one day that tolerance is the rarest quality in the world.

Interested in those Boston scraps you send my mother. You have always been pretty well received in Boston, have you not – I mean in the Emerson days? Pity that when Emerson is no more there will be no fine portrait of him in existence; there was a nobility stamped upon his face that I never saw the like of, and which should have been caught and stamped forever on canvas.

We all see something of the Formans & all like them; they have so much character, rather unusual in literary folk of the lighter sort, I fancy; but there is something very fresh and original about Forman. Nice children they have, too. Miss Blind is bringing out a volume of poems; why will people all imagine they can write poetry? William Rossetti is writing a hundred sonnets – writes one a day; one about John Brown is not bad: and many are instructive, but are in no sense poems. I am going down to tea & must not keep Grace waiting any longer. Love to you.

Herbert H. Gilchrist.

LETTER LIX

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

12 Well Road, HampsteadLondon, Dec. 14, ’81.

My Dearest Friend:

Your welcome letter to hand. I have longed for a word from you – could not write myself37– was stricken dumb – nay, there is nothing but silence for me still. Herby wrote to Mrs. Stafford first, thinking that so the shock would come less abruptly to you.

I heard of you at Concord in a kind long letter from Frederick Holland, with whose wife you had some conversation. Indeed all that sympathy and warm & true words of love & sorrow & highest admiration & esteem for my darling could do to comfort me I have had – and most & best from America. And many of her poor patients at Edinburgh went sobbing from the door when they heard they should see her no more.

The report of your health is comforting dear friend. Mine too is better – I am able to take walks again – though still liable to sudden attacks of difficult breathing.

Herby is working hard – has just been disappointed over a competition design which he sent in to the Royal Academy – a very poor & specious work obtaining the premium – but is no whit discouraged & has no need to be, for he is making great progress – works hard, loves his work & is of the stuff where of great painters are made, I am persuaded – so he can afford to wait. Giddy is not quite so well & strong as I could wish, but there seems nothing serious. She is working diligently at the development of her voice – & is learning German. Dr. Bucke’s friend, Mr. Buxton Forman, & his wife are very warm, staunch friends of Herby’s.

Please give my love to your sister, and tell her that her good letter spoke the right words to me & that I shall write before very long. Thanks for the paper, dear friend – & for those that came when I was too overwhelmed but which I have since read with deep interest – those about your visit to your birthplace. With love from us all – good-bye, dearest Friend.

A. Gilchrist.

LETTER LX

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

12 Well RoadJan 29, ’82.

My Dearest Friend:

Your letter to Herby was a real talk with you. I don’t know why I punish myself by writing to you so seldom now, for indeed to be near you, even in that way would do me good – often & often do I wish we were back in America near you. As I write this I am sitting to Herby for my portrait again – he has never satisfied himself yet: but this one seems coming on nicely – and so is the Consuelo picture. Another one he has in his mind is to be called “The tea-party,” and it is to be the old group round our table in Philadelphia – you & me and dear Bee & Giddy & himself. He thinks that what with memory & photograph & the studies he made when with you, he will be able to put you & my darling on the canvas.

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